´óÏó´«Ã½

Deafblind charity Sense's latest long-running campaign, , was launched in the knowledge that "The Government is reviewing the way social care is provided to disabled and older people."

According to the Sense website, the campaign aims "to make sure the system provides everyone with a basic quality of life, including the ability to get out of the house, have a social life, make a contribution to society, and lead a healthy lifestyle."

Getting from A to B poses a unique set of challenges for people with a combination of visual and hearing impairments. Sense is celebrating Deafblind Awareness Week by drawing attention to the fact that independent travel is possible, with the right support. Walks have been organised by and for deafblind people all over the country and Sense has launched an art exhibition on the same theme.

wrote for Ouch! about how she gets from A to B in The Deafblind Traveller. She went on to explain how the rise of satellite navigation technology is a big step forward in deafblind mobility with her 2007 article, GPS to guide, or guide to GPS?

Liz's harrowing 2005 experience of being mugged outside her local tube station, as written about in My story: deafblind street attack, exposed an incredible lack of deafblind awareness among the police and the general public at that time.

Read about recent deafblind experiences of travel and journeys or find out how to get involved this week, by visiting the .

The Quadfather - aka World no 2 quad tennis champ Peter Norfolk - joins us to explain wheelchair tennis ahead of Wimbledon red button coverage on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ this weekend. And we're all about social media with a roundtable discussion on how disabled people are using it. Rob Crossan and Kiruna Stamell present.

Listen or subscribe to the show by following this link

Read the transcript

Show Notes

• Kiruna is branching into a bit of standup comedy, something that pretty much all of the other Ouch! presenters have tried at some time or other. What 'short person' gags does she crack, if at all? And Rob wonders why there aren't more disabled comedians - what's on his mind?

• How are disabled people using social media? we're joined by uber tweeter, Facebooker and campaigning blogger ; startup internet businessman ; and PhD student who is researching accessibility of social media for people with cerebral palsy.

• Current world number 2 quad tennis champ joins us to explain the rules of quad tennis ahead of this weekend's grand slam doubles wheelie event at Wimbledon. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport Exec Tony Garrett also makes an appearance and gives details on how you can watch the matches via the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s red button service on digital television. Don't miss it. Have a party round your telly. Check back on the Ouch! blog later in the week for more details of what you can see, when and how.

In other news, Mat Fraser and Liz Carr are reunited on the next podcast due out in early July. We know Liz has been a bit sick but where's Mat been? On a soap on Irish television. possibly?

And, if all goes to plan, we'll be meeting up with Jazz and Bev - a daughter and mother both of restricted growth - ahead of their new encore TV series 'Small Teen, Bigger World' now confirmed for July 12 on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three. Plus a look at the recent computer hacker cases "through an Asperger lens" as they say.

It's all kicking off in Athens this week, and I'm not talking about banks or bail-outs. From the 25th of June until the fourth of July, the Greek capital plays host to the 13th .

The was founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and the first games took place in Chicago in the summer of 1968. Today, over three million athletes are involved with Special Olympics sports training in 175 countries and compete at the summer and winter world games.

The motto for the Special Olympics is: "Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.".

This year, seven thousand athletes from 180 nations will be part of the event they're calling "the Olympics before the Olympics". 30 sports will be represented over 22 venues.

The UK delegation is made up of 157 competitors and will compete at 17 sports, including football, powerlifting and .

General strikes are planned for Athens on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Kirsten Seckler, world communications director for the games expects "minimal disruption".

A noteworthy highlight was Tuesday's All In The Mind on Radio 4. Working with the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Lab UK, the programme launched a pioneering online scientific experiment to test the nation's mental health and well being. The test can be completed online and you receive personalised feedback about your own levels of stress, your coping strategies and tips on how to manage. Also, Peter Kinderman, clinical psychologist at the University of Liverpool explained how the experiment would help understanding of the causes of mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

Other highlights this week include:

Listen - Radio 4 - Midweek
Libby Purves meets Henry Winkler who is best known for playing The Fonz in television's Happy Days. He is touring the UK visiting schools with First News, the national newspaper for children. He'll be introducing children to his Hank Zipzer stories which focus on a ten year old boy with dyslexia and are based on his own past experiences.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ One - Inside Out West
A documentary following two West Country children with cerebral palsy who are undergoing pioneering surgery that will help them walk unaided.

Listen - Radio 4 - Today In Parliament
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster where an MP has suggested that people with disabilities might want to work for less than the minimum wage.

Listen - Radio 4 - When The Bough Breaks
Julia Hollander's play, inspired by her own experience, about the dilemma she faced over whether to put her badly brain-damaged child up for adoption in order to keep the rest of her family together.

Listen - Radio 4 - Blind Date with Bloomsday
Peter White travels to Dublin on Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, to hear how the author used blindness and myopia to great symbolic effect in his work. He also meets celebrants who enthusiastically enact sections of the book.

Listen - Radio 4 - In Touch
Jonathan Conteh explains how he is fighting to provide education to blind children in Sierra Leone. Sylvia Syms looks at the latest research on falls and young people who have lost their sight suggest some changes to the services they are offered.

All these programmes are now on iPlayer although, please note, they may only be available for a limited time.

Coming Up

Listen - Radio 4 - Shall I Say A Kiss?
Morris Davis was born deaf in 1898 in Whitechapel in London. In 1924 he moved to New York but on a visit to the UK in 1935 he saw a photo of Eva Weintrobe - also deaf - and went to Liverpool to meet her. He soon proposed but before a date could be set he had to go back to New York. So began an unusual transatlantic romance and courtship conducted through the exchange of letters now dramatised in this play.

Henry Winkler, known to many as The Fonz from Happy Days, co-hosted the launch of the First News My Way! awards at Downing Street with Chancellor George Osborne on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday morning the actor/director popped in to the Midweek studios to chat with presenter Libby Purves and her other guests.

Winkler has dyslexia and admitted he didn't read a novel until he reached his thirties due to "feeling intimidated by all those words inside the covers." He is now the author of a 17 book series about Hank Zipzer, who he says is modelled on himself.

He told Libby: "They're funny books that happen to be about a kid with learning challenges and it turns out that reluctant readers read one, and then read five, because they identify."

He received an OBE earlier this year in recognition of his work on the My Way! campaign and tells children: "Just because we learn differently, that does not mean that we are not incredibly smart human beings. That's something I need every child to understand."

Listen to Midweek on ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer now or download it as a podcast.

Fast Show comedian Simon Day also appears on the programme and talks about growing up with Attention Deficit Disorder and an addictive personality.

Midweek airs every Wednesday on Radio 4 at 9 am.

First News is a weekly newspaper for children published every Friday.

• Every Friday morning on the Ouch! Blog we retrospectively bring you a list of disability themed programmes from ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV and radio which are available to watch on iPlayer or via podcast. Watch out for it.

LDW, is taking place between the 20th and 26th of June. This year, Mencap have taken the opportunity to launch a three year campaign against hate crime,

According to the Mencap website, "Stand by me will challenge the police, the criminal justice system and the courts to end hate crime against people with a learning disability."

To coincide with the campaign's launch, a report has been released by Mencap into how 14 UK police services deal with learning disability hate crime. Over all, the report found that police officers lacked training in hate crime and forces lacked procedures for tackling disability-related crimes in particular, rarely considering specific impairments.

As a result of the report, the Stand by me campaign is urging every police force in the UK to sign up to a ten point plan, or what they're calling which Mencap hopes will make a "huge difference for the victims of disability hate crime".

Awareness of learning disability hate crime is also being raised at local level this week with numerous taking place around the UK, including street campaigning, a parliamentary reception, stands at festivals and even a March in London this Sunday. Mencap wants learning disabled people who have experienced this kind of crime, to speak out and tell their stories.

The irrepressible learning disabled punk band, , have even released a single to mark Learning Disability Week 2011. It's a cover of That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings. The lyrics have been modified to reflect the verbal abuse and name-calling that people with learning difficulties regularly face. Using their trademark chalenging shoutyness, they belt out the chorus at top volume:

"They call me 'crip', they call me 'retard', they call me 'spaz', they call me 'special', that's not my name, that's not my name, that's not my name, that's not my name."

You can listen to the entire track and read the lyrics on

Who knows, it might even become the war cry for Mencap's 'Stand by me' campaign.

An interesting event kicks off today in Birmingham: , where a11y is short for 'accessibility' as per the Twitter convention. Run by DevCSI (Developer Community Supporting Innovation), it puts web developers, the further education community and interested parties together, to come up with some software solutions to real life problems or inconveniences experienced by "disabled, elderly and everyone".

DevSCI's Mahendra Mahey told me: "We throw them into a room for 24 hours to see what happens. Typically these things work late into the night. The deal is they have to come up with some ideas and prototypes; these events can be pretty intense."

The event is being live tweeted and you can join in too. The hash tag to use is .

So, why have I gone all geek this morning? The answer to that is that I've been really interested in how uber geeks have been giving up their time to go to events like this one. There is a sense on the air, voiced to us by people at and accessibility evangelist , that there are lots of solutions already out there but they only come out when you bring geeks together with your average non-techie technology user and their real life needs.

A full report will appear at the end of the event where you'll be able to see some of the solutions they've brainstormed and created while there. Look out for it on .

Twitter allows anyone with a computer or smartphone to create a snapshot of what they are thinking or experiencing in that moment and put it on the web for all to read. Here are four such Tweets, as sent by disabled people over the weekend.

It's Learning Disability Week. It's hard to know what to do to show support.Not calling anyone "a Retard" is a great place to start. #ldw
campaigner and mum to two disabled daughters.

I like to say I'm retiring instead of quitting to give myself hope that 1 day, through scientific advances, I'll be able to work again. #EDS

That new shoe smell.. You like it? Well my shoes smell like that forever! POW!!!* #plasticfeetrule!
Paralympic sprinter and double amputee.

Lady on tube woke me to ask if I was in Afghanistan. Then proceeded to tell me about dismembered Egyptian kings and astral bodies.
a journalist born with no hands or feet.

In a new twist to the debate on getting disabled people off benefits and back to work, a Conservative MP suggested to the House of Commons this morning that disabled people were unable to be competitive because of the existence of the minimum wage.

Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, said:

"The people who are most disadvantaged by the national minimum wage are the most vulnerable in society."

Read the full story, with reactions, here:
MP says minimum wage a hindrance to disabled jobseekers

The MP argued that if a disabled person were able to offer their services at a lower rate, they would be a more attractive employment proposition and could build trust if taken on.

"If they were able to prove themselves earlier on and reassure the employer who took them on that they weren't causing a problem in a way that they might feel they were going to- I'm sure that there are a lot of myths out there as well - I'm sure that many of these people will be just as productive as people without a disability - but if they could take them on and give them a chance they would be able to find themselves moving up the pay rate much more quickly. At the moment they're just not getting any opportunity at all."

Mr Davies also suggested ex-prisoners might benefit from the abolition of the national minimum wage.

If an employer takes someone on at a rate lower than the NMW - presently £5.93 per hour for people over 21 - they risk receiving a large fine.

The bill - a private members bill on Employment Opportunities - was opposed by government today.

Your weekly fix of disability related programmes from the ´óÏó´«Ã½, available on iPlayer for a limited time.

Listen - Radio 4 Afternoon Play - If You Try Sometimes
Chloe has cerebral palsy and is certain she will lose her adored carer Rose, when Rose falls for an apparently perfect man.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three - Angry Boys
Chris Lilley, the creator and star of Summer Heights High, has a new mockumentary series focusing on young twin brothers. Watch out for the antics of deaf brother Nathan. Find out more about the show in this ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three blog post. Contains very strong language and adult humor.

Listen - Radio 4 - In Touch
Why some councils are cutting subscriptions for talking books to save money. Plus, how accessible are e-books for blind and partially sighted people?

Listen - Radio 4 - Call You and Yours
At home or in care? Where's the best place for young people with disabilities to enjoy a safe and happy life?

Listen - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Norfolk - Louise Priest
A survey by disability charity Scope suggests disabled Britons are facing more discrimination. Louise speaks to those in Norfolk who have faced abuse because of their disability.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two - Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die
Author Sir Terry Pratchett considers whether he might be able to end his life before Alzheimer's disease takes over. He travels to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland and witnesses first hand the procedures set out for assisted death.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two - Choosing To Die: Newsnight Debate
Jeremy Paxman speaks to Terry Pratchett about his documentary and a panel of studio guests debate the controversial issues around assisted dying.

Coming Up

Watch - Inside Out West
Beau Britton, seven, from Cornwall is the first child to be funded by a local NHS trust for a procedure which aims to permanently reduce spasticity in people with cerebral palsy. An Inside Out special documentary tells his story on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One in the west, on Monday the 20th of June at 7.30 PM. Or watch afterwards anywhere in the UK via iPlayer

Listen - Radio 4's Friday Play - When The Bough Breaks
Julia Hollander's play, inspired by her own experience, about the dilemma she faced over whether to put her badly brain-damaged child up for adoption in order to keep the rest of her family together. Friday the 17th of June at 9 PM.

I saw an interesting, succinct and creative post on a blog last night which sums up a lot of fears I've heard voiced by disabled people in recent months.

There is an anxiety that the current program which aims to get people off benefits and back to work, is not intelligent enough to capture the complex circumstances of many disabled people.

At the bottom of a post on , a user called Mary applied some gentle satire and cynicism in her comment:

"... If there is a button-pushing factory in my town (despite offshoring), or a town I could move to (despite lack of accessible housing and the housing benefit caps), and if they're hiring (despite record UK unemployment), and if I can actually get up and washed and dressed in the morning (despite cutbacks to Social Services), and if I can actually get to work (despite inaccessibility of public transport), and if the button-pushing workstation and the route to it is or can be made accessible (despite Access to Work cuts)...

"...and if the bosses and co-workers are happy to accommodate my need for frequent breaks at unpredictable moments (despite the hundreds of other applicants for the button-pushing job who are equally qualified for button-pushing and *don't* need breaks or adjustments), and if I will earn a living wage (despite the messing about with Tax Credits)...

"...and if we can account for the fact that I only have the energy to function for about 10 non-contiguous hours out of every 24 and I must keep three or four hours of that aside for necessary things like eating, medicating, grocery shopping, banking, cleaning and managing my household, and the bureaucratic maze of disability...

"...then I, along with many others, will be right there."

If we'd asked the government to give a comment, which we didn't, we think they'd probably suggest that, on the face of it, this blog commenter isn't the kind of person they intend to target.

Turns out that and, once we tracked her down, she gave us permission to post this.

It's TV limelight time for people of restricted growth in the next few months.

"Small Teen, Big World is the most viewed single documentary ever on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three" said a spokesperson from the programme's makers, Nine Lives Media. "It was beaten only by Junior Doctors and Our War, which are both longer series".

Jazz now has a multi-part series: Small Teen, Bigger World, where she meets her long lost father and seeks greater independence as she moves towards the end of her teenage years.

• is Channel 4's new observational documentary, following the lives of who appeared together last Christmas in Woking's panto production of Snow White.

Channel 4's website says: "During the Christmas pantomime season all across Britain, people of restricted height - some of whom are employed in ordinary jobs from February to November - take on paying roles in the theatre ... [it] aims to cut across some of the preconceptions that small people often encounter."

Web pundits are suggesting it could be a big hit perhaps as big as the internationally popular US show which ran for four years.

Seven Dwarves starts on 4 August. They obviously couldn't wait until Christmas.

• The long-awaited sitcom Life's Too Short, from Ricky Gervais, is also on the horizon. It stars Warwick Davis (Professor Flitwick in Harry Potter) and a star studded cast in similar vain to Extras where Davis originally met Gervais. It looks at life as an actor with restricted growth.

Gervais is the master of 'saying the wrong thing when trying to say the right thing' and somehow brings an understanding nation along with him via his cringeworthy observations.

The sitcom is being filmed right now and Gervais is regularly calling Richard Bacon's Five Live show in the afternoons, giving updates on their progress. Last week we discovered that Hollywood actor Johnny Depp is appearing on the show. Who else is lining up to embarrass themselves? You may just find out if you tune in to your radio next week.

I thought it would be helpful to jump in before the weekend and respond to some of your concerns raised since we announced the closure of the Ouch! messageboard a couple of days ago.

We're reading your messages and, as I said the other day, we'll be assessing where everyone's up to and helping to connect people in the final week; we will indeed be relaxing some of our usual rules to achieve this if necessary. The board is set to close on Wednesday 6 July.

We're pleased to see that alternative brand new communities are already springing up and, if you think we can help, get in touch with us via email. Our Facebook page and our blog remain though and we hope to see you there adding your invaluable thoughts and ideas.

Some of you have asked how we came to the conclusion to close the message board, and as I mentioned before, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s plan to close a range of message boards shaped the new format of Ouch! now that it's moving to ´óÏó´«Ã½ News. We did consider the impact on users before making the final decision, though these types of editorial decisions are not subject to the public sector equality duty.

Safety and privacy have proven to be big talking topics over the last couple of years in social media circles and many empowering improvements have been made as a result. If you've been scared away in the past, it might be worth taking a new look.

We follow many existing Ouch! messageboard users via Twitter, and some on Facebook. We know it can work well and keep you connected with people and information. There are other forums and blogs with both general and specific focus. Some of them are quite fantastic and we encourage you to share your findings on the Ouch! boards while they're still here.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s webwise site has some great informative pages about safety online and how to understand new online communities you might come across. Here are some links to help you:

´óÏó´«Ã½ Webwise on messageboards

´óÏó´«Ã½ Webwise on social media

´óÏó´«Ã½ Webwise on internet privacy

We'll also be searching out specific advice and experiences around mental wellbeing online and posting this to our blog. Do look out for our posts and again we invite you to add to it and make our content better and richer in doing so.

Jobs, music, getting taken seriously, obesity, disabled celebs, they all get an airing in our latest podcast presented this time by Rob Crossan and Kiruna Stamell.

Listen or subscribe to the show by following this link

Click to to read the transcript

• Rob and Kiruna's thoughts turn to eating disorders after Rob saw a champion pizza eater on a newspaper's front page
• Caroline Casey from joins us to look at some recent disability news stories that caught her attention.
• Grae and Suzanne from the festival access promoters Attitude is Everything talk to us about their stage at Glastonbury and we hear music from three of the acts appearing on it.

We know listeners like to hear the goss behind each show, so maybe you'd like to know that regular presenter Liz Carr called in sick 3 hours before we were due to record! Happily we were able to bundle stand-in Kiruna Stamell into a taxi and drag her across town to meet a bleary-eyed Rob Crossan who'd just got off a plane from Kuwait. Liz is better now, we think.

If you've never seen or heard our guest news reviewer Caroline Casey before, take a look at her recent TED talk presentation: . She's a social entrepreneur who set up the Ability Awards in her home country Ireland, as part of a focus on getting employers to see the value of disabled people in the workplace.

We end the show with a montage of music from three acts you'll see on the Club Attitude disability stage on Saturday afternoon at the Glastonbury Festival, should you be there: Captain Angelo, Heavy Load and The Band of Holy Joy.

• In a couple of weeks, we're all about wheelchair tennis as Wimbledon approaches: world number two tennis champ Peter Norfolk joins us to explain the different rules so you can watch it with knowledge on ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV during the tournament. We also take a look at how disabled people are using social media.

Here are some programmes which have been broadcast recently on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s channels which include disability subjects and related matters. You can now catch them again via iPlayer although, please note, they may only be available for a limited time.

Listen - Radio 4 - In Touch
Lee Kumutat goes to a beauty session aimed at helping visually impaired teenagers get to grips with putting on make-up.

Listen - World Service - Health Check
As the first ever survey of mental illness in Hong Kong is carried out, policy makers are hoping the results will lead to a radical overhaul of mental health services. Claudia Hammond reports.

Listen - Radio 4 - All In The Mind
Compassion for our fellow human beings is something that has long been taught by different faiths and traditions, but could it be used as a tool within therapy to improve mental health? Professor Paul Gilbert, Director of the Mental Health Research Unit at Derbyshire Mental Health Trust, and one of his patients explain what is involved.

Listen - World Service - Outlook
A shocking report about the treatment of mentally ill people in Bali who, in some cases, are chained to stocks and treated inhumanely in their own homes.

Listen - Radio 4 - You And Yours
Julian Worricker considers a new treatment for addressing Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which is being tried by the Ministry of Defence.

Listen - Radio 4 - In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of infectious disease exploring where the agents of disease might come from and what determines where and when new viruses and bacteria appear.

Listen - Radio 4 - Britain's Labs
Professor Iain Stewart visits the Institute of Cancer Research in Surrey, one of the main centres for the investigation of the genetic causes and possible cures/remedies for cancer.

Listen - World Service - Witness
Alan Johnston talks to Ugandan born Winnie Ssanya Sseruma about her experiences of having HIV in the early 80s, when carriers of the virus were stigmatised and treatment was in its infancy.

Coming Up

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two - Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die - Monday 13 June 21.00
Author Sir Terry Pratchett considers whether he might be able to end his life before Alzheimer's disease takes over. He travels to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland and witnesses first hand the procedures set out for assisted death.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two - Choosing To Die: Newsnight Debate - Monday 13 June 22.00
Jeremy Paxman speaks to Terry Pratchett about his documentary and a panel of studio guests debate the controversial issues around assisted dying.

A day in the life:

There are many videos on the web presenting themselves as an insight into the life of a person with a visible impairment. Some of these can be schmaltzy and many could be considered on the pitying side. When we were sent this film about a Canadian blind working dad, who was asked to go through a normal day with a camera attached to his head, we were pleasantly surprised.

The film includes footage of Jeff as he navigates train stations and busy road crossings on his commute to work. As Jeff walks along, he describes how he orientates himself using "sound shadows" and familiar every day noises . He also takes the opportunity to explain that it is him who decides when it is safe to cross the road, not his guide dog.

Music to deaf ears:

Pop sensation has said that after seeing deaf young people signing along to her songs on YouTube, she intends to learn ASL, American Sign Language, in order to communicate better with her hard of hearing fans. And that wasn't the only treat in store for deaf music enthusiasts this week.

Finnish Deaf Rapper video single Let's mambo, featuring Oscar-winning deaf actress has just been released.

Sean Forbes spoke at length to me earlier in the year on how he, as a deaf child, became a music enthusiast, met Eminem and began gigging to audiences of thousands.
AccessApple

Two iPhone apps, and have been launched this week, aimed specifically at blind people. Both make use of the phone's camera and Voiceover screen-reading software, to audibly identify visually presented information.

VizWiz requires the user to take a picture of an object with their phone as best they can. They then record, in their own voice, a question about the picture. A list of different answering options then appears. A user's Twitter followers, internet databases and real people known as web workers can be called upon to view the picture and respond. A reply will usually appear within a matter of seconds.

Can I Eat it scans the barcodes on food packaging and reads their contents aloud. The application also includes an option to quickly establish whether your food intolerances might mean that the scanned product is out of bounds.

Then on Monday, Apple announced updates to many of their products and services, including lots of new even some which weren't particularly aimed at disabled people.

When journalist with no hands, Paul Carter, found out that the volume button will be used for taking photos in future updates to Apple devices, he tweeted,
"Yes! No more using my nose to take pictures".

You will notice a few changes to Ouch! in the coming weeks. The service is now moving across to ´óÏó´«Ã½ News after a successful ten years within the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Learning family of websites.

In ´óÏó´«Ã½ News, we hope to bring diverse disability stories and context to a broader audience whilst also maintaining a conversation with the disability community.

As part of the move, older articles, videos and audio from the last ten years will still be available in our archive. The Ouch! blog will be the main site you reach when you tap in our familiar address bbc.co.uk/ouch

The web and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online have changed a lot over the last decade and we believe it's now time to close the Ouch! messageboard. You regularly tell us that our current service doesn't always deliver the kind of interaction and relationships you want and, indeed, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ realises there are now many more effective ways to involve its audience. Social networking is immensely enabling and has outclassed what we can provide in terms of specialisms, privacy and personal connections for this community. Plus it brings great control: you are able to block unwanted users and manage your personal interactions more immediately and effectively.

Ian Hunter, Managing editor of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online, recently wrote a blog entry about the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s approach to messageboards and social media explaining how we intend to move forward. Ouch! will continue to be a place where you can feedback on disability matters alongside the content on our blog, via Facebook and Twitter.

The messageboard will close on Wednesday 6 July. That gives us almost a month to help you find each other again. In the final week, we will see how this process has gone and help out if need be.

We have our own Ouch! Facebook page and we encourage you to pop along there now and 'like' us; a quick and easy way of staying in touch with your online friends. When the board has closed, you can continue to comment on our blog with your messageboard login.

Our podcast, The Ouch! Talk Show, will remain a regular fixture. Now in its fifth year, with three awards under its belt, we shall continue to make the undiscussable, discussable - to partially coin a phrase. The show will remain available on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s main podcast site.

• Read more about the move on the Editor's Blog.

Awareness week:

Every calendar year holds many more than 52 awareness weeks. Mostly favoured by charities, these dedicated five to seven day clusters aim to raise the visibility of various health conditions, disabilities or other social issues. The sixth until the twelfth of June is a bumper week for Scotland.

It is throughout the UK but in Scotland, the focus is also on and

doesn't start until next Monday, but the number of relevant stories and links around the web at the moment, would suggest that the lead up has already begun in earnest. 8000 events are planned for between the thirteenth and nineteenth of June and the aim is to unmask "the true face of carers".

Sugababe spoke to the Daily Mail recently about being a young carer to her disabled parents.

For the Guardian's The Cuts Get Personal series, Kate Belgrave writes that in light of the possible closure of short break centres,

And, comedian with MS, has been talking about his care "package" in the latest in a series of YouTube videos.

The assisted suicide debate:

Jack Kevorkian died of natural causes this week, aged 83. Nicknamed Doctor Death, Kevorkian was known throughout the world as a champion of assisted suicide, claiming to have facilitated the deaths of over 100 people. In an opinion piece for the Ross Douthat challenges the claim by some that Dr. Kevorkian's actions were "a form of humanitarianism".

Back in the UK, Emmerdale's featuring recently disabled quadriplegic character Jackson, has been commented on by Aspire, a charity supporting people with a spinal injury. A recent episode saw Jackson take his own life, with the help of boyfriend Aaron.

Next Monday, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two's Choosing to Die featuring Sir Terry Pratchett, will air at 9 PM, directly followed by a Newsnight debate including representatives from all sides of the argument.

Epic journeys:

On Monday, brain-injured ex-stuntman Eddie Kidd finished the London Marathon. Eddie had been travelling around a mile per day, over almost two months, using a specially designed walking aid. He was raising money for a children's cancer charity.

And just the morning before, journalist started an epic journey of his own. The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s wheelchair using security correspondent is undertaking a 350 mile bike ride across France, in aid of Help for Heroes, a charity involved in supporting wounded servicemen.

Frank tweeted on the first day of the challenge ...

"Amazing atmos here in Portsmth at start of 560km H4H bike challenge.
Bagpipes, nerves, the fit, the fat and a forest of prosthetic legs."

You can follow Frank Gardner's progress on Twitter @FrankRGardner.

Tuesday's Panorama programme, Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed, laid bare the bullying and mistreatment experienced by residents of Winterbourne View, a purpose-built private hospital for people with learning disabilities and autism in Bristol.

After a tip off, a freelance journalist took a job as a support worker at the facility and secretly filmed what happened on the top floor over a five week period.

Scenes of apparent abuse by support workers towards the hospital's residents, coupled with an entirely separate breaking news story around the UK's leading care home provider Southern Cross and its serious financial woes, sent private care provision for elderly and disabled people straight to the top of the news agenda.

The Panorama programme in particular has provoked strong reactions from care providers, disabled people, politicians and journalists alike. Failures have been acknowledged by Dame Jo Williams of the Care Quality Commission, CQC, whose organisation had been made aware by a former member of staff, and apologies have been made.

Reviews and inspections have been promised by the social care minister Paul Burstow. reports he has pledged that 30 homes run by Castlebeck, the owners of Winterbourne View, and 150 'similar' homes, will now be inspected.

"There can be no place for such inhumanity in care services. I have already asked the CQC to undertake a series of unannounced inspections of similar services. I am determined to strengthen the system of safeguarding to protect vulnerable adults from abuse."

Yesterday, Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow said in his that cuts are making it difficult for the care regulator to carry out enough necessary checks.

"The numbers of inspectors have been cut, the number of inspections they can make has consequently been reduced in some areas by a staggering 70%. In neither the Bristol abuse case nor the Southern Cross failure did the regulator warn early enough of catastrophe. But was the regulator in either case still adequately equipped to do the job? Or had 'cuts' neutralised their capacity for oversight?"

In this time of austerity, with benefits and service cuts possibly on the horizon, what about disabled people who live independently in the community at the moment? Can those who hoped that life in a care home was either far in their past or unlikely to become a necessity in the future, rest easy knowing that this kind of abuse still happens?

In a blog post reacting to the scenes from Winterbourne View, Liz Sayce, chief executive of the Radar, isn't so sure. She remembers a similar situation from 30 years ago and expresses a hint of despair that ...

"After all the battles we fought to close down the old institutions the same old abuse still goes on. I personally remember working in an old asylum in Kent just after an Inquiry had found abuses of people's human rights (assaults, lack of the most basic dignity and respect). I watched senior staff respond by making cosmetic changes (improving their record keeping!), while the authors of the Inquiry met hate from colleagues and had their tyres slashed. To begin with not much changed in the hospital. But in the end, after strenuous campaigns by mental health and learning disability activists, that hospital and many others closed. All the research shows people who moved out were much happier with their lives than they were in the institutions - even if they encountered challenges. Yet here we are again 30 years on - with new private institutions, repeating the pattern of systematic abuse."

The provider, Castlebeck, was shocked by the scenes and has immediately implemented its own review and suspended 13 members of staff. The patients featured in Panorama have since been moved to safety. Four members of staff were arrested and have since been bailed.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ One - Panorama Special
On the top floor of a hospital, locked away from their families and friends, a group of men and women are subjected to a regime of physical assaults, systematic brutality, and torture by the very people supposed to be caring for them. In a special programme, Paul Kenyon exposes the truth about a gang of carers out of control and how the care system ignored all the warning signs. This programme has led to arrests and the sparking of a public debate on how we care for our severely disabled loved ones.

Watch - ´óÏó´«Ã½ One - Countryfile
Julia Bradbury walks along the Offa's Dyke National Trail to celebrate its fortieth anniversary and learns how sections of the 177 mile path are being opened up for disabled ramblers.

Listen - Radio 4 - In Touch
Feedback on the (in)accessibility of iPlayer after a recent upgrade and information on other ways of listening to ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio.

Listen - World Service - Health Check
The first of two special programmes about the reality of mental illness in Hong Kong. Claudia Hammond hears from those who have experienced discrimination and talks to mental health campaigners and professionals about the urgent need to expand and modernise mental health care.

Listen - Radio 4 - Frontiers
Our body is the playground for around 100 trillion microbes hiding in our mouth, nose, guts, skin and genitals. In the first in a new series Geoff Watts visits the Human Microbiome Project in the US where they are sequencing the genomes of bacteria which live on our body. New research has suggested that pathogenic microbes could be implicated in a whole host of diseases including obesity, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, arthritis and autism. The hope is that this new research may pave the way for more personalised treatments.

Listen - World Service - Outlook
Kate Allatt was a busy woman until a sudden stroke left her unable to move yet still totally aware of her surroundings. She explains about her ongoing recovery from 'locked in syndrome'.

Guest blogger: Jonathan Hassell, Head of Usability & Accessibility, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Future Media & Technology

"I've been waiting for something like this for years..."

That's just one of the reactions we've had to the trial of MyDisplay - the ´óÏó´«Ã½ accessibility tool which allows people to change the way every one of ´óÏó´«Ã½'s 3million+ pages look.

The tool is already helping many people with dyslexia, literacy difficulties, limited-vision, ADHD and Aspergers get ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online in a way which works much better for them. From feedback so far, what they like is MyDisplay's simple interface for setting preferences, that they can customise MyDisplay themes to their precise choice of colour, that MyDisplay doesn't require them to download anything to get it to work, and that it works on smartphones as well as computers.

Since launching the trial back in December we have made some enhancements to MyDisplay:

• We've made the tool much faster and more reliable in transforming pages to the user's preferences
• We've made it work better on smartphones - you can now get both the ´óÏó´«Ã½ desktop and ´óÏó´«Ã½ mobile sites using MyDisplay preferences (your choice of font, text size, spacing, colours, images, and list view) on iPhone, iPad and Android
• MyDisplay's list view now works better for people using screen magnifying software - transforming pages into list view brings the text of the main article to the top-left and allows it to be wrapped into narrow window sizes to avoid horizontal scrolling
• We've also fixed a few bugs with the MyDisplay control panel and its ability to store user preferences in a ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD

And, as some users said they wanted MyDisplay turned on for most but not all pages on bbc.co.uk, we recently launched the MyDisplay toolbar which allows users to quickly turn their preferences on and off on a page per page basis once they've set them.

The toolbar also allows users to bring up the MyDisplay control panel from any page, so they can tweak their preferences without needing to go back to the MyDisplay website. And finally, it provides a quick mechanism for users to let the ´óÏó´«Ã½ know if a page they're viewing doesn't look right through MyDisplay.

We're hoping these updates enhance our existing users' experience of MyDisplay, and also encourage more people to

We'd really value your feedback, either here or via MyDisplay's feedback form, as this will let us know how important the tool is for you.

If feedback is good, MyDisplay may become a permanent feature of bbc.co.uk and be extended to offer preferences to help people with learning difficulties, hearing difficulties, and older people. It may also be included on other websites off the ´óÏó´«Ã½ so you can use your preferences on more of your web journeys.

The future of MyDisplay is in your hands. and let us know what you think of it now, and what it could include to help you get a better experience of bbc.co.uk in the future.