±«Óãtv

The ±«Óãtv's Head of Audience Experience & Usability, Jonathan Hassell, has recently written an important post on the ±«Óãtv Internet Blog, discussing the release of some long-awaited updates to the ±«Óãtv iPlayer service. The new version adds the ability for blind users to tab around all of its controls - including the volume and the timeline (so you can skip forward or back in a programme) - using only the keyboard.

This is not just a good thing for blind and visually impaired people, either. Anyone with dexterity impairments can now use just two keys - tab and space/enter - to control the iPlayer's functions.

You can read all the technical details - plus news of a second set of improvements still to come, which will provide an additional set of keyboard shortcuts allowing keyboard users to control all of the player's functions directly - by clicking over to Jonathan's blog post.

Falling over, we've all done it. Probably more times than we'd care to remember. Now, thanks to the wonder of the internet, you can do it from the comfort of your computer.

This flash game pitches you as '', your nation's sole representative at the Olympic Games. Use the keyboard to try and manoeuvre the hero's calves and thighs to compete in the race.

However, as he hasn't been very well trained, more often than not, you'll find yourself falling head first on the track. The game also comes complete with patronising messages, celebrating your courageous falls.

So for a chance to re-live painful memories I encourage you to
Warning: This flash game is probably not very accessible to users of assistive technologies, sorry

Before linking to this captivating and indeed scintillating story, I wish to apologise. It is not funny - I repeat, not funny - to laugh at news reports that have obviously badly suffered in translation from another language. Okay?

Then again: I found myself powerless to resist investigating further when I glimpsed this headline from China: :

The first loving care supermarket, the Loving Carer 'Food King' Supermarket Chain,was launched yesterday morning in Mawangdui,Furong District, Changsha city. This supermarket chain will be .anaged by social vulnerable groups and offer commodities with 'loving care discount price' for the disabled.

I have been asking for a 'loving care discount price' on chocolate from my local corner shop for months, with no luck. Damn.

Ouch readers, it's time to look at The Sun, which earlier today brought us a punning headline and an incredulous byline the likes of which I thought we just didn't get in the average newspaper in this day and age any:

: Daredevil teenager Aaron Fotheringham performs amazing acrobatic stunts -- in a WHEELCHAIR.

Wheelie great? Do people really still use that one?

Interestingly, the actual title of the page is different from the headline, and says "Teen Aaron Fotheringham is flipping great". So this means that, possibly, at some point, editors on The Sun had a brainwave: "No! No! Stop the presses! 'Wheelie' is just so much more amusing than 'flipping', isn't it?"

A quick straw poll in the Ouch! office revealed that, no, we thought 'flipping' was rather funnier. Oh well.

You may have read in the today, that more parents are choosing to keep babies with Down's syndrome. On Radio 4 tonight you can hear the story of some of these families.

The programme is presented by Felicity Finch, who follows three mothers in Leeds; Frances, Louise and Kerry-Ann. The friends vary in age from 21-37 and share their own experiences of bringing up children with Down's.

You can catch Born with Down's on Radio 4 at 8:00pm tonight, or for the next week on iPlayer.

If you've enjoyed using the new colour themes on the Ouch magazine site. You can now having a similar experience when reading your email. If you are a user, that is.
They have just introduced a variety of stylish themes you can use to change the look of your mail. Whilst some are purely cosmetic like the Graffiti theme. Others are optimised for those with visual impairments, like Contrast Black, which is just like the Ouch Hi-Viz option. As with Ouch, when you return to the site it will also remember your chosen theme.

To try them out:
- Log-in to your Gmail account
- Click on the Settings link on the top right of the page
- Click on Themes
- Take your pick from the themes on offer

You can read more and see examples on the official . If your webmail provider offers something similar, we'd love to hear about it in the Comments.

A disabled character from the controversial cartoon series has made it onto the shortlist of the .

The character, Timmy, has learning difficulties and is a wheelchair user. Pictured here, he's most likely to be seen getting into scrapes with the guys in the school yard and most likely to be heard saying his name very loudly: "Timmmmaaayyyy". His vocabulary is not huge, but his voice is expressive and clearly shows he's very much 'on the ball'.

So. Why is South Park being honoured, you might ask? Many will be surprised to see this apparently foul-mouthed toon in RADAR's nominations. The show has angered many minority and political groups in the past, most notably when it . It caused the voice of Chef, the late Isaac Hayes, to quit the show after 9 years; he felt it unfairly misrepresented his religion.

When it comes to issues around disability, it seems the show is knowledgeable and spot on with its empowering portrayals and subject handling. It has featured Timmy in sophisticated storylines where South Park townsfolk were disgusted that a rock band had made a disabled boy its lead singer - . Challenging a few precious clichés, the cartoon promoted the idea that disabled people should be as out and proud as everyone else.

South Park has another disabled character too: Jimmy. A crutches user, he has a speech impediment, and is the town's most popular schoolboy comedian - a great parody of motivational disabled orators. We often see Timmy and Jimmy together.

In another episode, Krazy Kripples, we see the self-defined 'crips' Timmy and Jimmy accidentally getting involved with the notoriously violent streetgang of the same name ... with all the hilarious consequences you'd expect.

Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone really seem to 'get' disability, and have been involved in the excellent film featuring the team, who we talked to for the Ouch Podcast in May 2008, which we recorded in New York. It's a road trip with learning disabled news interviewers who approach members of the public with a mike and a camera, and ask them questions which seem to phase them in a way that only 'learnies' can do to people who know no better. It's beautiful. And a new series is coming to MTV soon.

Great to see Timmy finally getting recognition in the awards that used to be 'The disabled people of the year'. He appears in the category 'media award for fictional programming' and is up against: fraternal down syndrome drama Coming Down the Mountain (±«Óãtv1), Recovery, starring David Tennant (±«Óãtv1), and Justin Fletcher in Something Special (CBeebies)

Some readers might wonder why Timmy is on the list this year as the character has been around since the year 2000 and is now arguably less well known. RADAR's Communications Officer Aidan Hargitt uninspiringly told us: "I think the main reason he hasn't been nominated before is because nobody has thought about it ... They are old, yes, but as they're still being shown, the effect of their portrayal of Timmy is still relevant".

* The gala award ceremony will be held on Monday 1st December at Battersea Evolution in London.

Back in February this year, the Ouch! Podcast played host to two stars of a comedy movie called , which had debuted at the 8th London Disability Film Festival. The film, in which a neurotic film director "gets a little more than he bargained for" when he's enlisted to teach a class of wheelchair users about movie-making, is due to open in cinemas this Friday (21 November). Check your local listings for details, and all that malarkey.

The thing is, though, that you might want to be careful when you take your place in the stalls with your bucket of popcorn, because the film contains - shock! horror! - "disability themes". That's right. Under the rules of the , Special People has been given a 12A certificate. because it contains "moderate sex references, language and violence" - you can read their full decision , complete with a mention of the word "spaz" - but when it initially went before the censors the film was labelled as also featuring . Audiences obviously need warning about seeing disabled people on screen these days.

After pressure from the film's director, Justin Edgar, and the production company, the label was removed - but not before all the promotional material for Special People had been printed and distributed. The BBFC's ruling now says that "a disability theme runs throughout the film but its treatment is suitable for young teenagers". Justin remains angry that this labelling happened in the first place: "I couldn't understand why a film censor thought it was necessary to make people aware that the film had disabled people in it".

I think when I go to the cinema to see the film, I might offer the venue's manager a strip of masking tape to put over the offending words on the poster. Maybe if all Ouch readers do the same, we can lure unsuspecting audiences to see all these shocking "disability themes" on screen ...

Think you've seen disabled pets with your dog with a dodgy back leg? Think again, as a Channel 4 documentary, on Thursday night promises everything from:

Parrots on anti-depressants, to paralysed rabbits in wheelchairs.

You can catch preview clips on the website, including paralysed rabbit Ethel in action in her wheelchair.

is on Thursday 20th November at 9pm.

...For disabled pets of the fictional variety you might prefer Aussie comedy Summer Heights High, currently being repeated on ±«Óãtv Three. I don't want to give the game away, but keep an eye on pampered pooch Celine during the series.

Our fine, upstanding members of Parliament are about to receive something saucy in their postboxes. Photos of strippers!

Ahem. Calm down at the back there. It's not another one of those stories of MPs doing things they shouldn't, I promise. No, instead it's those cheeky wags at , who are stepping up their campaign to get ministers to ratify the without, crucially, watering down its contents.

The Convention is the first international treaty to create a specific legal framework to protect the human rights of disabled people across the globe - you can find out more about it at Scope's site (where you can also see the postcard in question!) or read what our very own Tom Shakespeare had to say on the subject a few months back.

But what sort of picture will MPs be, erm, feasting their eyes upon? Well, for those of you who can't be doing with seeing all that naked flesh - albeit with, um, various bits tastefully covered up by the Time To Get Equal logo - you might like to know that the postcard features two members of the disabled male stripper troupe , posing underneath a caption which reads: "The Crippendales have NO reservations ... neither should the government when it comes to disabled people's human rights".

So will it work? Will it sway some (and hopefully most) MPs? Or will some of the more nervous ones simply faint? I guess we'll just have to wait and see ...

Oh, and just to stop any queries before they happen: absolutely no one in the Ouch! team is going to pose naked, no matter how much we're offered or how good the cause. It's very cold in west London, and goosepimples don't suit us.

If you have passed any bus stops or opened any magazines recently, you can't have missed the adverts for touch screen phones that seem to be everywhere. This is subject I have blogged about before describing how these devices are inaccessible for many disabled people, now AbilityNet are sharing their take on the subject.
Over on the they are 'talking' about real alternatives. By that I mean, voice control and screenreaders which are now beginning to be available on the go, the talking iPod Nano being just one example. They are also keeping track of new control systems with a cool video carousel, perfect for getting a gadget fix. So well worth a read on the .

Well, now might be the time to think about it, especially if you're a disabled person (or female, or from an ethnic minority).

According to reports from both and , a special committee of MPs, known as a 'Speaker's Conference', is going to examine ways of making the Commons more representative of the UK as a whole. Or, as The Guardian puts it, to try and improve the public perception that MPs are "a narrow, self-serving elite who bear no relation to the population as a whole". (Their words, not mine. I didn't say nuffink, awlroight?)

So what could it mean in real terms? Well, the idea of all-black and all-women shortlists for political parties looking for parliamentary candidates is one possibility. No mention of all-disabled shortlists, though. Hmm. However, such shortlists have proved controversial in the past, and there's a commonly held belief that a better way to increase the representation of minorities is to encourage and make it easier for them to get selected in the first place.

One of the subjects this conference is likely to debate, which is of course particularly important to potential candidates with disabilities, is access to Parliament itself. The Palace of Westminster - like many old buildings - isn't particularly well adapted to those of us who wheel, wobble or go about our business with the use of various mobility aids.

So, if you've ever thought of going into politics, there might just be a chance that it'll soon be a little easier to stick on a rosette (of whichever colour you fancy) and get out there on people's doorsteps asking them how they're going to vote.

The question is: would you want to be an MP?

We wanted to draw your attention to a 30 minute Radio 4 documentary, investigating incapacity benefit.

Incapacitated sees Dr Ben Goldacre explore "the parlous state of the incapacity benefits system, an eight billion pound legacy created by party politics and unthinking medics."

In the light of a tough new benefits system for sick and disabled people, "Ben discovers that, after being on incapacity benefit for more than two years, you are statistically more likely to die or retire than ever find work again. He asks how this can have been allowed to happen and considers whether the new government plans will help."

Incapacitated will be available on Iplayer after it has been broadcast on 10 November at 8 PM..

Let us know your views on the programme using the comments below.

Ouch reader and artist Michelle Herman got in touch to tell us she'd been awarded a prize by the VSA Green Light art competition. What makes these awards stand out is that they showcase the talents of young disabled artists aged 16-25.
Michelle's entry is a grainy video showing her mother wrapping a bandage round and round her hand, as she has to do ritualistically for her daughter. All the artists on show reflects on their disabilities in different ways.
I really liked April Dill's intricate oil paintings which she describes as a form of nonverbal communication (she has a speech deferment.) Whilst Alexander Appell's hugely detailed work benefits from his ADHD, which he says is a source of "random additional creative details."
You can see pictures and videos on the . If you live stateside, you can see the real thing, As the award winners work is being exhibited at the Smithsonian Gallery in Washington DC until 4th January 2009.