Disability History Month: taking action need not be komplicated!
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Irish in Britain jave launched a pilot project with KOMP devices to aid communication with people who are isolated and unfamiliar with using the internet to connect with family and friends.
Zibiah Loakthar, our Cuimhne Coordinator writes:
This year’s United Kingdom Disability History Month 2020 runs from 18 November until Friday 18 December. The theme is Access: How far have we come? How far have we to go?
Dementia is classed as a disability, albeit one that is not always so easily visible.
At Irish in Britain and within our Cuimhne work we are committed to championing equality and inclusion. We consider disability from the social model perspective.
We advocate considering how our social structures and systems may inadvertently create barriers and disable people. By reflecting on the things that we can do to dismantle barriers, and then of course actually taking action, we can facilitate people participating in our community as fully as possible.
This Disability History Month, our Cuimhne team encourages everyone to reflect not only on how far we have come in our community and the voluntary sector, but upon what else we can still do to take action on promoting access and inclusion for disabled people.
With the pandemic and the need for physical distancing restricting some of our usual community activities, many groups have responded innovatively and creatively, setting up activities online. Just as we are accustomed to considering the physical access of community venues, we can also review the barriers and bridges to our virtual meeting spaces.
Enabling disabled people to be able to participate in virtual meeting spaces involves review our digital inclusion practices and considering things we can do to improve communication. We are excited about the launch of our new pilot KOMP project this Disability History Month.
We are enabling four community organisations to support older, isolated people who may find touch screens and laptops to complicated and fiddly to explore simpler technology to connect with people.
Please watch this space to find out how we get on.