So the house is rented, the furniture has started to arrive and there’s only one week left before I go. Thankfully there is now a ramp to get into the house so I thought I’d post a few photos of it.
Accessible Everything
An accessible & inclusive travel blog for people with disabilities
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II Certamen Internacional de Fotografía sobre la Discpacidad
II Certamen Internacional de Fotografía sobre la Discapacidad
Nota de prensa Fundación ANADE (13/09/2007)
Este Certamen Internacional de fotografía, está convocado por la Fundación ANADE
El objetivo de estos premios es el de visualizar la realidad del colectivo de personas con discapacidad psíquica, física, sensorial o enfermedad mental.
Para ello convocamos a los profesionales de la fotografía o a las personas con inquietudes para mostrar instantáneas acerca de estos colectivos de personas
Convocando este II Certamen Internacional de Fotografía, intentamos dar a conocer a la sociedad en general las situaciones cotidianas de estas personas. Para ello intentamos reflejar momentos felices, dramáticos, situaciones peculiares, retratos, obstáculos urbanos que dificulta la movilidad de las personas con movilidad reducida, rostros de alegría y cualquier instante en la vida de las personas con discapacidad o enfermedad mental.
Ser diferente no es ser menos, es tener otro punto de vista sobre las cosas.
Por ello queremos ofrecer un foro de participación a todas las personas diferentes para que nos muestren aquello que son capaces de imaginarse. Por este motivo realizaremos una exposición con las mejores fotografías recibidas en varias ciudades.
Con ello creemos que fomentaremos el interés de la sociedad acerca de la verdadera realidad de la vida de estos colectivos de personas.
Planning for Nicaragua 5
Just a quick photo update of the house in Matagalpa as it starts to take shape.
The blog may have a little less activity over the next few days as I’ll be online less and less while trying to make the final arrangements. I’m leaving my current apartment in Barcelona which means lots of packing and storing things at people’s houses (You know who you are… Thank you).
I’m also leaving the business in the capable hands of Andy and Tracey Grimes while I’m away, so I’m doing lots of training with them. There are other lose ends to be tied up too, sending invoices, arranging final things for clients that are arriving in Barcelona this month and just generally trying to put everything in order.
There’s a lot to be done and so little time to achieve it!
Anyway, a photo update:
Planning for Nicaragua 4 - Vacinations, Wheelchair & Wikipedia
Time is counting down and in less than 3 weeks I’ll be in Nicaragua, slap bang in the middle of the hurricane season. Although this doesn’t overly worry me, there is the reminder of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 which devastated the area.
My preparations in Barcelona continue, earlier in the week I went to the Tropical Disease Centre and had the first of my vacinations. I’m having 3 in total, Hepatitis A, Typhoid and Rabies. They stung a bit but all is well, I have to go back as the rabies vaccination is a course of 3 jabs.
Disability Travel Blogs
Today I’ve been researching a little about other disabled people’s travel blogs to see what they are getting up to. Here are a selection of a few of them:
Accessing Arizona: Loren Worthington, a C5/6 tetra writes about his home state of Arizona and accessible things to do in a wheelchair.
Barrier Free Travels: Candy Harrington is the editor of the American magazine Emerging Horizons about accessible travel and author of Barrier-Free Travel; A Nuts And Bolts Guide For Wheelers And Slow Walkers — the definitive book about accessible travel. Candy’s second book There is Room at the Inn was released June 2006.
Get Around Guide: A look at news relating to travel for people with disabilities by Darren Hillock.
Wheelchair Dancer: The experiences and opinions of a wheelchair dancer that seems to be on the road a lot. There is also a long list of disability blogs included in the lefthand sidebar.
Views from Accessible Terraces
Outside the Box
Tonight sees the return of RTE’s (Irish National Radio) disability show “Outside the Box” with presenter Owen McGowen. The show which is both produced and presented by Olan McGowan, Outside the Box shines a spotlight on issues of broad concern to disabled people, their families and representative organisations. The show confronts issues head on and is not afraid to challenge commonly held assumptions about disabled people and the disability sector. With an estimated 300,000 people in touched by some sort of physical, sensory or intellectual disability, the relevance of Outside the Box stretches far beyond the disabled community to industry, policymakers and the general public.
Of Outside The Box, Olan himself says: “The programme has always been about focusing on a sector of society which has traditionally been hidden away in, and the same is largely true even now. Media coverage comes in little bursts and tends to promote what they feel are either either tragic cases or heroes, with nothing in between. Disabled people are just that, people. They are disabled principally because society disables, rather than enables, them. But they are also brothers, sisters, parents, lovers of music, art, film, travel, nightclubs, current affairs, the latest goings-on in Big Brother. I like to think the show brings that core fact home to listeners, while also highlighting the specific problems facing those with disability in Ireland.”
For example, there are so many poverty issues concerned with disability; it can cost people significant money to be disabled, or to have disability in their family. We have to have a clear awareness of rights, and the more corners we can look into the better.” “Issues aside, the show is principally about people and their lives. If I were to ask one thing of the general public out there it would be this: when you meet somebody with a disability, start from the premise that their “disability” is possibly the least interesting thing about them.”
Outside the Box starts again tonight and is on every Tuesday at 10.30pm (GMT). You can listen to the show and old shows through the RTE website.
Accessible Accommodation in Argentina
Sol y Paz in Argentina have six accessible cabins that adapted for wheelchair users on the ground floor. The cabins were designed by Vega German who is himself a wheelchair user (see photos). Unfortunately, the do not give any details about the facilities in the bathroom on the website apart from saying that it is totally accessible. I contacted them to see if I could get more information about the bathrooms and they sent me some photographs.
Adapted Off-Road Biking
A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a 4 cross for coming down the ski slopes in the Pyrenees during the summer. After lots of research on the web, sending emails and phoning various companies in the USA and Canada I eventually gave up. The whole experience was very frustrating and even though you could find websites with the relevant information, I couldn’t find a company to sell me one.
In the end I bought a “Flyer” from Titanium Arts which is a very nifty hand mountain bike. This baby has a shed load of gadgets and gears so that you can get up almost anything (if you’re fit, unlike me) and then come back down very, very fast…. Mike Augspurger the owner of Titanium Arts sent me an email a little while ago telling me about the Second Annual Off-Road Handcycling Championship at Crested Butte Adaptive Sports Center, Colerado on the 24th - 26 August 2007. Unfortunately, I can’t find the results on The US Hand Cylcing News website!
My hopes of riding a 4 cross have since been rekindled as I read 2 articles in the UK based charity the Spinal Injuries Association’s magazine FORWARD in February and April 2007. The articles titled “Mountain Biking” and “Rough Riderz” were by David Bower and Phillip Hall. They have set up a club called Rough Riderz for people that are interested in 4 Croos in the UK.