‘They Worry They will Never get Better’: A day in Bolton’s Long COVID Clinic
Sarah Davidson* woke up on the Covid ward at Bolton Royal hospital in March to find she had been turned on to her belly. She had watched enough news reports to know what that meant. “The nurse from the critical care team turned up and said: ‘It’s for your lungs, your breathing stopped’. They proned me for days and days. I was like a
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ICP Works to Place Communication Disability on the Record
At this year’s United Nations Conference of State Parties on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the ICP arranged for statements about communication disability to be made for the record. The following statement was made by Abed Ahmed, who is both a teacher and person with lived experience of communication disability. Abed has a stammer. “I’m both a teacher and a
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Device Allows Paralyzed Man to Communicate with Words
Conditions such as stroke and neurodegenerative disease can cause anarthria—the loss of the ability to articulate speech. Anarthria hinders communication and reduces quality of life. Researchers have been working to create brain-computer interfaces that help people with anarthria communicate. With a typical interface, the user must spell out messages one letter at a time. An interface that lets the user generate whole words at
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Speech Language Therapy for the People of Vietnam
In 2008 Trinh Foundation Australia (TFA) began collaborating with the University of Medicine Pham Ngoc Thach (UPNT) in Ho Chi Minh City to educate Vietnam’s first ever speech therapists through a two-year training program. With a population of over 97 million, a legacy of defoliants from the Vietnam War, poor maternal and child health and nutrition, and an ageing population, about 7 per cent
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ICP Highlights the Impact of Communication Disabilities on Work and Employment
Raising the profile of communication disabilities at the United Nations (UN) is an important goal of the International Communication Project (ICP). The ICP recently provided a submission to the 24th session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to highlight the impact of communication disabilities on work and employment ahead of the general discussion in March 2021 on the right of
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How Lockdown has Affected Children’s Speech – and What Parents can do to Help
Yvonne Wren, University of Bristol The pandemic means many children will have spent the best part of a year interacting much less than normal with teachers, friends and family. One of the big questions is how this will have changed the way they have learned to speak. Have lockdown and other COVID-19 measures affected how children acquire the speech and language skills so vital
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Voice Banking with an International Twist
Voice banking has been a core part of my work with people with progressive neurological conditions for the last few years. The benefits of both voice and message banking are coming through loud and clear from our patients and their families—maintenance of identity and sense of self by ‘keeping’ your own voice for later use on a communication aid are key messages, as well
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ICP Submits Comments to UN Committee
This past March, the International Communication Project (ICP) submitted comments about the impact of communication disabilities on employment to a United Nations (UN) committee that monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The committee had invited submissions as part of its preparation for issuing a statement concerning Article 27 of the UN Convention, the right to work
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U.S. President Biden Champions People With Communication Disorders
As someone who stutters, Joseph R. Biden, the 46th President of the United States, is an inspirational figure for reasons apart from politics. In rising to high office, he has set a global example that people with communication disorders can become strong communicators and rise above the teasing and stigmatization that often occur. Historically, though several U.S. presidents have had disabilities, none in modern
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ICP Raises Communication Disabilities at United Nations Conference
With members of the global disabilities community lending their voices, the International Communication Project (ICP) hosted a breakthrough event at the headquarters of the United Nations (UN) this past June. The setting was the most recent Conference of State Parties to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (COSP), an annual gathering of disabilities officials, advocates, and experts from around the
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