NatalyaD

I am a deaf and disabled cis bi woman living in the UK. I am interested in disability rights practice and law, assistive technology, cats (always cats) and I am fuelled by lots of tea.

My profile picture is a red lizard for no reason other than I like it.

Reasonable Access (disability rights in UK charity): Founder/Trustee
Pronouns: she/her

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natalyad_at_disabled.social@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-10-30 00:22:20 UTC

Genuinely saddened by the death of Patrick Stewart who seems to have been an all round decent human.
I was especially taken by him taking his home life experience + using his fame and old white manhood to speak out against violence towards women and children and calling on men to fix it.
I never got to see him in a play but I always liked how he portrayed different characters on the screen and was openly supportive of LGBTQ people.
A role model for positive masculinity.

2026-10-30 00:11:41 UTC

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I also hate when organisations are lazy and just "they/them" everyone.
I see it a lot in my work where I work with disabled students at university. The university does it for 'template documents' and disability student assessments and medical letters often have it. When I was a disability assessor my boss rightly didn't allow it and I won't either!
Drives me nuts. Also means I can't tell if someone is a genuine they/them or the document is just lazily authored.

2026-09-09 11:01:38 UTC

RE: https://mstdn.social/@junesim63/117234999271531401
The far right doxxing of Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) volunteers is gross. RNLI is 90% funded by donations, 10% by financial investment. There is no state funding (and should be). Volunteers give up their time for extensive training to help rescue people in difficulty in sea and rivers etc.
Our government should be clamping down on social media platforms that enable this widespread doxxing and risk to happen to individuals.
I hope the RNLI folk are safe now.
#note1wuz…0z48

2026-08-15 11:57:41 UTC

For those who want UK emergency alerts without the phone-badness, someone on the fediverse has taken the government output and created a fediverse bot at https://social.chatty.monster/@ukgov_emergency_alerts@social.chatty.monster
The profile rightly warns not to rely on this entirely, but may be better than no receipt.
I love people who fix things and make stuff work slightly better.

2026-08-14 18:29:12 UTC

For anyone in the UK who got the wildfires emergency alert but can't find it after hitting OK (to make it STOP etc), the GOV.UK English language version is at https://www.gov.uk/alerts/14-aug-2026-2 and both languages are belatedly at https://www.gov.uk/alerts/current-alerts (that originally only had Welsh for 15+ mins).
Android phone users may have history: Settings > Emergency Alerts > Alerts History. Apple apparently doesn't store them but have a play.
You can get RSS of the Emergency Alerts at https://www.gov.uk/alerts/feed.atom

2026-07-02 20:16:51 UTC

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In the UK the inevitably right-wing politicians who used to do the loud public media saying "you should live on gruel if poor" could never complete a week living on social security level payments as part of an 'experiment' and that test-poverty was before the "social security agency fucks up your money roulette" or "something breaks down". Usually they quit after 2 days when they spent all the money on stupid shit and had a massive tantrum.
And worse, still promote their gruel-media.

2026-04-14 21:11:26 UTC

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I saw that, it can go in my expanding spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U5w4Zgdz-UgTtTSZaRmGSelTMxbnIptKW7ryUMPD5sM/edit?gid=836635307#gid=836635307
I collect examples of discrim so people can compare situations and learn strategies.
I am impressed 1) this young woman hasn't had previous refusals and 2) that she had the idea of showing the Equality Act on her phone - that's brave to do while being hassled.

2026-04-14 16:52:05 UTC

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A major issue, I know several people have where they rely on a person (or 2) to support going to the loo, but would like some sodding privacy.
Optimally there would be a 2 room arrangement and CP toilets should have curtains/screens (often broken/missing).
I gave up on privacy with my temporary period of needing toilet-assistance but not everyone is comfortable with that and shouldn't have to be.

2026-03-28 21:08:42 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@slowe/116289390757597782
I don't think UKGov should be allowed to require commercial software for the submission of data and information to government.
They should be required to use open standards and allow open source tools. Or provide one.
#note16e8…a0sf

2026-03-14 20:29:59 UTC

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I've been known to go to disability job recruitment fairs and tell the civil service group "I wouldn't work for civil service for Listsreasons" including lack of Access to Work entitlement and stories I've heard of very slow bureaucratic barriers in providing adjustments to employees.
The DWP is the first org I threatened with disability rights law. I'm currently suing their Access to Work division at the moment for poor accessibility.

2026-03-14 18:22:48 UTC

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I seem to recall the DWP had one of the highest employment tribunal rates for disability discrimination specifically from their staff https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-discrimination-employment-tribunals/
As a disabled person who's had significant dealings with the DWP since 2004ish, I can attest to extensive personal experience of egregious and persistent discrimination both in attitudinal terms and in their failure to do even very basic reasonable adjustments.

2026-03-08 21:23:31 UTC

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I'm absolutely certain even before Martha's law that people who have an effective advocate get better care than those who don't.
Rather than displacement, we should be looking at why the Martha's Law type issues occur in the first place and why medical teams are not listening etc and perhaps how they're resourced and where they're wasting time/effort.

2025-12-29 13:48:13 UTC

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I think quite a lot of our courses are doing mini exams or assessments throughout the term as well as big-things at the end. So not so much more coursework as more presentations with an associated 1500 word report/assignment that is linked.
I suspect presenting by video may soon get stopped if AI becomes mainstreamingly good enough to fake that.
The Abrahart ruling does mean any one format may not be 'reasonable' and unis are more awake to that (legal) "risk" now...

2025-12-29 13:46:06 UTC

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I've been watching our uni courses with interest on the whole AI thing because as a disabled students' adviser I'm aware exams are one challenge (and coursework is another).
I think our uni accountancy course were quite exam heavy anyway, and LONG exams to boot which are a nightmare cos you ask for exam length and their exams are weird with "reading time" "exam time" "prooding time" and sometimes I don't get the WHOLE exam length unless I ask the RIGHT question...

2025-12-07 22:36:32 UTC

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As a disabled person I wonder what the legal status of those jobs will be. Will the disabled 25% of "NEETS" be entitled to adjustments (and if so, who is obligated to provide/fund them?). If they are entitled to adjustments, but don't get them, who enforces that and what happens if person is booted off the scheme or unable to engage cos their access needs are not met.
I really need to find a brain to put this into polite words to my MP.
The DWP is clueless about disability.

2025-11-27 00:26:30 UTC

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I don't understand how this is even allowed with habeas corpus. Not even part heard/evidence in secret, but the actual allegation against the defendant. Completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.
I am coincidentally reading Rule of Law by Tom Bingham... Just on Chapter 6. Bingham was already calling the previous Labour government out by all accounts. He'd be appalled at this one.

2025-10-14 20:36:00 UTC

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Disablist as heck too. We already had to backtrack on forcing everyone to pass English and Maths GCSE before they were permitted to stop trying age 18 and leave education cos it just didn't work.
This is another spiteful dogwhistle way of blocking people bringing their families to the UK with them. It's vile.

2025-10-13 21:10:49 UTC

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Everyone on the team wanted colleague to have compassionate leave while his wife/baby were sick. None of us wanted him not-paid or having to work while not able to focus.
He was one of our hardest workers, we'd have to DRAG him out the building cos he worked so much over (and with huge dedication) for our students with mental ill health.
Those managers also gossiped about people's private medical info constantly. You knew they'd blab everything and badmouth you too.

2025-10-13 21:07:38 UTC

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Ironically these ex-NHS managers were the biggest and most blatant skivers (every accusation was absolutely their confession).
1 colleague had his wife new baby both quite sick. After pat-leave ran out, EvilMgrs were insistent it'd be unpaid leave or "come in". Mgrs weren't around weeks. So he popped in 2x a day (we were next to hospital) & we kicked him out after 5 mins and covered.
He kept waiting for pay deduction, never happened but for months he was stressed about that.

2025-10-13 20:58:35 UTC

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In many ways it's the standard stretched NHS attitude to sickness and sick leave in general. It's verboten and people who are off sick with anything less than CANCER or SURGERY are weaklings who should just work through it for the GREATER GOOD.
I had 2 bosses who came to HE from the NHS who had some truly vile attitudes about sickness or compassionate leave. The uni policy was "manager discretion" and these managers were hardline "annual leave or nowt" "treat everyone IDENTICALLY".

2025-10-13 18:09:44 UTC

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this doctor didn't want to infect her patients who are largely elderly, vulnerable and already ill.
Other NHS staff wouldn't have the 'freedom' my Dr friend did, and would be forced into f2f work with patients while testing positive and likely infectious. I imagine there's not much support for mask wearing either.

2025-10-13 18:08:48 UTC

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The NHS also demands staff come into work while testing positive for C19 and I've heard direct claims from NHS staff online of being bullied to go to work even when feeling unwell.
One consultant doctor was refused permission to WFH despite having work she could do, so she came in, and because she had the power, she locked herself in a room, stuck a note on the door explaining "I haz Covid, phone, don't come in" and sat in an FFP3 mask for x days till she was testing clear.

2025-10-09 21:36:50 UTC

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It's not even so much money management as 'the one crisis' (or multiple).
There's a BBC news article about a guy who had a good job, got into a motorbike accident, missed a council tax payment demand and reminder while in hospital.
He lost his job cos he was off work.
Council suddenly demanded 12 months of council tax upfront even though he explained his situ & was on £90 a week SSP. Council sent bailiffs in, debt ballooned to £6k+. Awful!

2025-09-25 20:12:52 UTC

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Ugh the whole staff-student relationship thing is such an indicator of people's clue on this issue.
I am glad that for all its faults, my current uni 99% banned staff-student relationships a few years back. There's various sensible exemptions for student ambassadors and systems to log a relationship if a staff member's partner becomes a student etc to ensure no conflict of interest. Seems like a BASIC thing to do.

2025-06-25 19:16:32 UTC

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I got a Kindle copy in the UK, so I wonder if it is regional.

2025-06-16 19:24:31 UTC

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Labour is still cutting PIP in really stupid crass and crude ways which will cut even more people's care allowance as well.
More people will end up needing statutory care cos their family won't be able to care for them like now cos the finances just won't allow it. But that's Councils' budgets so Westmonster doesn't care.

2025-05-27 18:16:05 UTC

Mainly for cis folk wanting to support trans people (acts of allyship) a trans lesbian woman Ruth Pearce has made a zine in both a visual and more-texty (accessible and screenreader friendly) layouts linked from her blog at https://ruthpearce.net/2025/05/26/pdf-zine-but-what-can-i-do-how-to-fight-the-trans-panic/
Please share widely and encourage people to consider taking even just 1 of the small steps outlined.
Remember you don't have to do EVERYthing, any 1 thing is better than nothing and overloading.
#TransRights #UK

2025-05-13 16:23:26 UTC

A friend works for a public body that announced that trans folk can't use the correct loos/facilities anymore.
The staff LGBTQ network had been consulted then ignored, so they issued a statement saying so.
There has been SO much kick off in just 2 days by general staff that the organisation is backtracking.
Kicking Off works. Especially if it is done collectively and very loudly!
If your work/service does this, challenge it and get as many people as possible to challenge too.

2025-05-05 12:38:51 UTC

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I work with disabled uni students and they often need to provide medical evidence of their disability. They often tell me x and y are not correct in the letters.
I know my own records have errors. I apparently had a cochlear implant in either 1981 or 2002 at Great Ormond Street Hospital. My 2004-era usually excellent GP got muddled when reviewing my entire record and put the cochlear implant stuff in referral letters to explain "Natalya is deaf".

2025-05-02 21:57:27 UTC

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The BBC seems to say Greens have 80 councillors not 850 Are they lying or just referring only to the newly elected ones, not in total which is misleading in itself...

2025-04-24 23:20:53 UTC

UK #TransRights org Trans_Lucent has created a carry card with likely input from trans barrister Robin Moira White which they shared on Twitter.
I am sharing it here (see ALTed image) and transcription at https://pastebin.com/raw/1VvEzNtd
This seems like it might be useful for trans folk to carry as a legal citation if you want.
I wrote https://www.reasonableaccess.org.uk/resources/asserting-yourself-during-discrimination/ about challenging disability discrimination and access refusals - similar things apply to trans folk challenging discrim.
Please share.
https://assets.disabled.social/media_attachments/files/114/395/527/288/576/215/original/4dc44706d231bce0.jpeg

2025-03-19 20:51:33 UTC

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Yep, and while £amount is up, the proportion of disabled people in population terms is not... Cunning misrepresentation with numbers there.
I'd like to see accessible housing, transport, health and social care and indeed decent employment rights for disabled people and anyone who becomes ill short or long term. We need the right to WFH and part-time without such a fight.
And yes, more customised support to find work would be nice, cos DWP sucks.

2025-03-19 20:06:14 UTC

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They won't save money cos it'll cost a lot and people will fight back (and others will get distressed, be expensive in other systems or die)...
I also wish they'd stop conflating PIP with out of workness, many of us can manage a bit of work COS we have PIP to cover costs of living and stuff. The 4 points on one activity is just such an arbitrary spiteful cut I can't articulate how wrong it is (I think they'll get sued and have to drop that and other stuff).

2025-03-12 17:40:56 UTC

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I need to carve out some time to give some scathing feedback to the "listening exercises" which I'm sure will be ignored but they can't then say "we didn't know" "we weren't told". I've been collecting off-site receipts all the way down.
I think they forget how much good will they're losing rapidly.

2025-03-12 17:39:35 UTC

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Sounds familiar.
Our place just accused us of talking about students in a deficit manner. We were v cross about this as we're often the ones (prof services and tutors) challenging hostile student support systems that tell students "you didn't do bureaucracy properly, computer says no" when they are living precarious challenging lives that don't fit neat boxes.
We've had epic timetable nonsense for 2yrs + uni blames tutors who get the bad feedback in 5-7pm or badroom class slots.

2025-03-12 14:57:15 UTC

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I've worked for 3 unis now and I'm increasingly cynical (esp re HR) while recognising my skills are annoyingly uni-specific.
My current uni is the King of Restructures - my prof services division is having a review of 2023's restructure AND the uni wide one at same time! The restructure comms are amazingly menacing "Either you're with us on unpublished 2030 strategy (teaching first, we want research but won't give time for it) or kindly take redundancy & fuck off". Much snarking!

2025-03-12 14:32:29 UTC

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it was actually universities who I sued a lot of. My expertise is in student disability advice so it was uni HR/student-disability depts who were discriminating against me (ironic much?).
All Universities Are Bastards (in the ACAB mould) until proven otherwise. As with student-disability-access, within a uni/faculty individual people/depts can be good to amazing but there's pockets of shite/toxicity and as staff you usually want to keep HR's beak out of anything where possible.

2025-03-12 13:43:00 UTC

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And we disabled claimants are the problem? Not the structures and systems that surround us.
Healthcare. Social care. Transport (buses and trains still deny wheelchair users access almost daily as one example). Housing is a MAJOR issue, try finding wheelchair accessible housing (nevermind affording ANY of it).
I could easily get jobs in London, but the crowds broke me and I couldn't afford it in 2008 nevermind now!
I need to go and visit my MP and HaveWords with CITED EVIDENCE!

2025-03-12 13:41:07 UTC

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I sued 2 employers for recruitment discrim and should have sued 3 more.
The DWP are hopeless, inflexible and rightly not trusted. Jobcentre Disability Employment Adviser told me age 24 I was unemployable cos I am deaf AND have physical impairments.
DWP is still phone-obsessed and now this deafie is actually mid-litigation against Access to Work (disability employment support entity) for disability discrim.
Cutting PIP may reduce capacity for people like me to stay employed.

2025-03-12 13:35:32 UTC

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I struggled to get work as a teen, which then was the 'excuse' used to not give me jobs as a graduate "no experience" & no willingness to make even TINY adjustments. I got into a disability exploitment scheme which got my foot in employment's door.
Then 8 years later, employer moved us to an inaccessible office (ignoring access advice they sought). I sued them good and hard, but was still unemployed for 18 months afterwards. Discrim in recruitment is RIFE and often blatant.

2025-03-12 13:33:56 UTC

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There is also a healthcare success factor. People like myself born with conditions that we wouldn't have survived with 5/10/20 years earlier. Think also premature babies, surviving earlier and earlier but can be left with life long impairments which need support/care.
I agree more of us could work, but we'd need Actually (enforceable) Employment Rights, proper social model of disability awareness/training of employers, and decent employment support.

2025-01-20 23:51:33 UTC

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Isn't this just likely to push house prices EVEN higher as well as cause scary debt issues...

2025-01-20 23:48:06 UTC

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Sounds familiar. I struggled with the vast number of different people in/out of the room. I didn't know who anyone was, what their role was and the uniforms were neither consistent or decoded anywhere (I remember 80s wards where staff uniforms were really clear).
Some HCAs were great, but a few were clearly not trained on the tech and broke several things during my stay (most of the kit was broken and left broken).
I really struggled with v poor deaf awareness.
@npub1spp…56fc

2025-01-20 18:14:24 UTC

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I think what used to be auxilliary nurses are now Healthcare Assistants but they also do a lot of jobs that used to be nurse only and now nurses won't do those cos HCA's job and nurses are run off their feet.
During my last few hospital stays there were hardly any nurses (2 or 3 per ward max) but loads of HCAs who varied from fab to hopeless (often agency hires) who couldn't sort drips/meds/pain-relief so I'd be waiting ages for nurses, esp for 2x needed for opiates.

2025-01-18 22:55:04 UTC

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the hard way, I lost my job but did make them pay...
And the next two I was more prepared for the nasty games... So I ran my claims like a metronome, ignoring the bullshit and making them belatedly cough up... Doesn't help the career tho when university disability depts blatantly discriminate against disabled applicants and can't get the very basics right... Esp one offered a job in part for "legal knowledge"...

2025-01-18 20:08:58 UTC

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I have also pointed at a lot of the #MeToo stuff for NDAs when challenging them saying this applies very similarly and that it isn't me being "legally unreasonable" (lawyers rarely grok it) but knowing I won't keep to it, so shouldn't sign up to it.
Universities were cited as specifically nasty litigants in a review of disability discrimination cases in about 2007 before DRC became the useless EHRC.

2025-01-18 20:07:45 UTC

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I'd ban them for discrimination too, cos universities widely use it to shut people down and the power imbalance stinks.
I have 1 NDA I've not 100% kept cos it was really breaking my sanity and I'm past caring.
I have since refused 2 NDAs in discrim cases against 2 other universities. NDA is a hard no for me, it's too psychologically damaging and yes I did hurl citations at the relevant entities. They did not like it, but I got some degree of compromise both times.

2024-12-22 00:09:08 UTC

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I keep hoping some lawyers will take a sex discrimination claim against the MoJ and their agents who do the tagging for this.
Lord Timpson has also been a huge disappointment. Even if he can't intervene, he could be saying he would encourage the tagging company to FIND smaller tags ASAP.

2024-12-09 21:48:23 UTC

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I notice no attempts to increase Covid-safety in hospitals by improving ventilation and going back to masking for some staff/patients where possible... Nah, just let them catch Covid while admitted...
They need to make everyone eligible for Covid/RSV/Covid jabs (or at least more people if there's a shortage) and promote them and explain what RSV is and who is at risk etc.

2024-12-08 16:53:02 UTC

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Same, my vision issues aren't fully explained but I haven't been able to read significant print since 2015ish, so e-books are amazing and non-DRM ones I can view in a reader with full colour, font, size, spacing controls has enabled me to read voraciously again.
@npub1huw…c5x7

2024-11-19 20:52:40 UTC

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Yep, was talking to my mum about this cos she's got too many rich Tory friends who sneer at "benefit scroungers" with no clue about insecure gig economy work. My mum's first Q was "but how do you do childcare?" and remembering a case of 2 policewomen who got sacked/punished for swapping childcare cos it counted as a child-minder arrangement in law but they had no other choice for flexi-childcare...
Trapping people between a rock and a hard place.

2024-10-27 16:56:36 UTC

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Well done and thanks for sharing the journey with us all.
Hate things that have a billionty different sized screws so you have to mark them all separately.

2024-10-26 19:04:59 UTC

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Sounds good. There has been a definite improvement in the last 2 or 3 years for sure. In 2017 everything was doing my head in. Now I need to wait for the older stuff to be replaced

2024-10-26 18:49:22 UTC

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Lots of people can't use FB cos of the real name policy or it making you visible to stalkers/harassers or similar.
I have an FB but I hardly ever use it, if an event only organises via FB I won't be going. It's a social justice issue to put event info somewhere properly publicly accessible that doesn't track users.

2024-10-26 18:44:17 UTC

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I wonder what they're like for flicker which most people can't see but kills me (I have flicker detection superpowers which is a rubbish superpower).

2024-10-23 20:18:26 UTC

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Either our banks are joined up or they're not... Just feels like mere mortals have great difficulties getting an account yet scammers continue.
Should we be educating people NOT to let others use their account and maybe holding some of them liable for their part in very obvious fraud. Also the hosts of those adverts "make money quick".
Banks can still claim the victim was reckless tho; even tho the scammers get sneakier all the time. Maybe liability will make banks care... Maybe.

2024-10-23 18:11:32 UTC

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But surely it's possible to trace that web of accounts back to the scammers and we should have some kind of international scheme to deal with offshoring...
Cash withdrawals would have CCTV at ATM or in the bank surely? It often feels like police don't even try, give up before they start so there's no culture or disincentive to scam.
Just feels like our police systems don't understand tech and are decades behind in dealing with it at all.

2024-10-23 17:53:24 UTC

I don't understand how scammers get away with it? Surely the banks can trace the accounts the scammed money went to? And can flag those to police for 1) freezing, 2) tracing payments to other linked accounts and 3) who the scammers are.
It's a NIGHTMARE opening a bank account, loads of "ID" and "anti-money-laundering" bullshit, yet the scammers seem to do it and get away with it.
I don't understand. It feels like we don't even try to trace the criminals in these cases.

2024-09-25 22:20:17 UTC

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Yep, my view is we need something like the Food Standards Agency for disability discrimination, who can demand evidence and rule if discrim has happened and more importantly remedies that have to be implemented within a set time or it goes to a court order.

2024-09-25 17:18:24 UTC

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I've had it before when I've complained about phone-centricity and refusal to treat email/SMS with equivalence for me as a deaf person. Not always successful on their parts, but it's very common.
I hate that successive governments have promised to improve the DWP and they just get worse and worse at all levels. They're only 2nd in my distrust list and that's cos HMRC is actually worse if you hit an access-gap with them (HMRC were my first ever litigation cos they were so bad).

2024-09-25 17:05:12 UTC

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Yeah, I think wheelchair users get some of the worst everyday discrim in the 'everyday' environment, pointless barriers like steps and no ramps, and bad attitudes "what are you doing out".
Thanks for luck with case, its the DWP and I know the only language they understand is a hard smack. There's no being nice, polite, patient; you just have to clobber them & escalate. I might lose cos they'll say "we treat everyone badly"......

2024-09-25 16:17:58 UTC

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Couldn't agree more. Labour's constant anti-welfare rhetoric is why I've never been able to vote for them since eligible in the early 2000s. I am disabled and I experience frequent discrimination in recruitment (and from the DWP). Access to Work the government disability-funding support scheme is now taking 6 months to process new applications and is not known for its inclusive and accessible behaviour towards disabled people (I'm about to sue them for disability discrim).

2024-07-31 00:39:26 UTC

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I managed to visit at their Camden venue in late 2019 I think before Covid happened and legs gave up on me. I really liked it, lovely vibe and people.
If I can reboot my legs, I'm gonna take my mum, a former midwife who also ensured we had excellent body/biology/sex-ed from a young age.