As user ‘sophieg’ pointed out over at the forums, it is the annual Blind Week appeal coming up towards the end of the month – October 23 – 29, to be exact! Not knowing much about what the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind do, a quick squizz around their official site reveals a huge list of awesome stuff the Foundation does on a day-to-day basis to assist blind, deafblind, and vision-impaired people. Their services include things such as:

Touch Compass are 10 years old! And to celebrate it, their unique integrated style of dance, featuring both those with impairments and those without, is winding its way through the North Island for a 4-stop tour. From the official site: Renowned New Zealand integrated dance company Touch Compass celebrates its 10th anniversary with a four centre North Island tour. Auckland 17- 20th Oct, Maidment theatre Bookings: (09) 308 2383 or www.maidment.auckland.ac.nz Whangarei 31 Oct, Forum North Bookings: (09) 430 4244

Because I’ve only recently started this blog, I’ve been running a fair few Google searches recently, (seeing where my site pops up upon entering different keywords and all that), and I’ve come to quite an unsettling conclusion. There is very little – if any – proof of an online community for people with disabilities here in NZ. In fact, from the first page of results of a “disability nz” Google search, here’s what I found: 6 / 10 of the

After gushing about how fantastic the disabled toilet at Starbucks in Ponsonby is, I feel it’s time for a degree of clarification. Because after careful analysis of my most oft-frequented Starbucks, next to Aotea Square on Queen Street, I’ve decided that as wheelchair-friendly as the Ponsonby Road store is, the Queen Street one certainly brings things down a notch. Previously a Planet Hollywood outlet, and this is the reason for its bizarrely futuristic architecture, I like this Starbucks because a)

It’s good to see the NZ Herald getting behind disabled athletes and publishing stories like this one about 14-year old swimmer Sophie Pascoe, who recently won five gold medals at the world wheelchair and amputee championships in Taiwan. Sophie, who is an amputee, also won gold in the 100m backstroke at the recent Paralympics World Cup in Manchester, England, and in fact was NZ’s sole representative at the event. Her main goal is to score a few medals in Beijing

It’s the kind of place you drive past thinking “Gosh that looks cosy, I must try it out sometime”, a sort of incessantly busy hubbub of italiano tucked away on Symonds St. And if you’re looking for busy, Gina’s doesn’t disappoint, teeming with people even on the Monday night my family and I went. We rang earlier in the day to book, and also let them know about my wheelchair, they reassured us that it’d be “no problem”. No problem

You’d think it was a fairly easy concept to grasp, that wheelchair users might want to, oh I dunno, fit into the disabled bathroom provided for them, so it kinda defeats the purpose when places decide their new accessible bathroom would look great as a storage room. Perhaps it is the size, that puts them off? The sudden realisation that gosh, this is so much larger than our regular toilet, perhaps we can do something with all the extra space..

I know I’m running on a bit of an Australian angle today, but I gotta admit, they’re leading the way… In Sydney over the weekend, a new political party – “The Carers Alliance Party” – was established by parents of children with a disability. They’re aiming to increase awareness within government about the struggles that carers, and in particular carers who are family members, face in looking after those they love. They’re campaigning for better support services (or in some

Then this is the place for you! The linked article describes a bushwalk set in the 35-hectare World Heritage-listed Lamington National Park, and features a special bush walk designed for those with vision impairments called ‘Senses Trail’. The 500m-long trail was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It has 13 stopping places with signs in braille. A rope guides walkers along the trail, and small rope tails hanging from it warn there’s a step coming: one tail

Here’s one way to raise disability awareness: clobber your prospective girlfriend around the head with your armrest. To be fair to the guy, it’s a new one, the bend-down-so-you-can-hear-me-then-I’ll-whack-you manoeuvre, so I’ll give him points for originality, but gosh, I’m sure she’s well and truly ‘aware’ of his disability now. The guy has been sentenced to 21 months imprisonment for a history of using his wheelchair as a weapon, and I’m pleased to hear it. I actually think it’s good,