New BBC Disability Series

The BBC World Service radio series on disability "Being Different" can now be heard on line at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/docu2.shtml

Real Player is needed to listen to the program. The first program, that was broadcast Wednesday, is already available for online streaming.

Being Different is a series of four programmes exploring the experience of disability around the world. The presenter, Geoff Adams-Spink, has been physically disabled and visually impaired since birth. A BBC journalist for the past 14 years, Adams-Spink talks to other disabled people and compares their experiences with his own. He asks people in Uganda, India, the USA and his native Britain to share their insights into living with a disability, the prejudice they have to overcome and their recipe for success.

In the first programme, Adams-Spink meets James Mwandha - one of Uganda's five disabled MPs. He'll be asking Mwandha whether Uganda's advances in disabled representation at all levels of society has improved people's daily lives. And he meets Mwandha's family and colleagues discovering what drives this doughty political campaigner and polio survivor, now in his mid-sixties [2nd].

The second programme features Penny Pepper, a writer of erotic and romantic fiction featuring disabled characters. Pepper talks about her journey from institutional care to becoming a radical campaigner for the rights of disabled people in the UK and a singer in a punk rock band [10th].

Adams-Spink then travels to Delhi to meet Indian PR man, Siddharth Sharma. Now in his thirties, Sharma lost his sight in a motorcycle accident 15 years ago. While successful in business, he's found it difficult to overcome people's prejudice when it comes to romance. He talks candidly about his disappointment when his future wife's family refused to let her marry a blind man [17th].

The last part of his journey takes Adams-Spink to New York City to meet motivational speaker, Bonnie St John who, after becoming an amputee at the age of five, went on to win an Olympic silver medal in skiing and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and to become an award-winning sales representative and a White House official. She shows Adams-Spink that being an amputee shouldn't stop you going on dates and living life to the full.

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