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The TUC has angered disabled union activists after failing to ensure that its annual conference was accessible to people with hearing and other impairments who tried to watch it online. Many activists were not able to follow this week’s annual TUC […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stopped answering questions from Disability News Service (DNS), and is refusing to explain why it has taken the “totally unacceptable” step. Since early July, DWP’s press office has failed to provide a meaningful […]
A prominent disabled activist is calling for stricter controls on electric scooters after she was subjected to a terrifying ordeal that resulted in a violent physical assault which left her needing hospital treatment. Paula Peters was left with a fractured eye […]
The government is facing criticism over its decision to nominate the “architect” of universal credit to be the next chair of its independent committee of advisers on social security. Dr Stephen Brien wrote Dynamic Benefits (PDF), the report that became the […]
A ground-breaking group of service-users have devised a draft plan for replacing the current working-age benefits system with something that is no longer “guided by stereotypes and myths about disabled people and people in poverty”. The Commission on Social Security, led […]
The equality and human rights watchdog failed to consult its board, or its disabled advisers, before deciding to delay an inquiry into the government’s work capability assessment and its links with the deaths of benefit claimants, new documents have revealed. The […]
Further research showing how many disabled people have died during the later stages of the coronavirus pandemic is not likely to be published until October, according to a government department. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) finally produced figures on 19 […]
The government has been accused of a “totally reprehensible failure” after its new Disability Unit failed to make a single announcement in more than three months, while more than 20,000 disabled people were dying from COVID-19. The unit was set up […]
Disabled activists have called for a re-examination of the social model of disability to produce a “reinvigorated” version that will bring together disabled, Deaf and autistic people to challenge the oppression they face. The call came at an online meeting hosted […]
Disabled campaigners have described the government’s decision to reintroduce benefit sanctions – in the middle of a pandemic – as “barbaric” and “life threatening”. The decision meant an end to the three-month suspension of benefit sanctions and conditionality* in England, Scotland […]