Access All: Disability News and Mental Health

In the second episode of Cabin Fever. As 1.5m people wait to receive letters classing them as High Risk in the fight against coronavirus we find out if Octavia made it safely to Somerset after her care package collapsed in London when it became impossible for her PAs to travel through the city.Bryony Hopkins is in a great place with her Crohn’s disease and raring to go, but the new drugs she’s on which make her feel better, put her squarely in the High Risk category and she must shield for 12 weeks.And screenwriter and mental health first aider John Servante says he and some friends diagnosed with Chronic Anxiety pre-pandemic are feeling distinctly average, as more and more people open up about the impact Covid-19 and isolation are having on their mental health.Presented by Beth Rose, from her kitchen table. Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds or say to your smart speaker "Ask the BBC for Ouch"

‘It is scary, it is lonely, it is hard.’ Join Kate Monaghan as she navigates the emotional and practical struggles of home isolation in Yorkshire, during the coronavirus pandemic. She has Elhers Danlos syndrome whilst her wife Holly is on immunity suppressants due to having had a kidney transplant - they are very anxious that they don't get infected. The pair are also desperately trying to keep their three year old daughter Scout entertained! With brutal honesty Kate shares her most personal and intimate thoughts whilst quarantined from the world. Produced by Amy Elizabeth Subscribe to Ouch's podcast on BBC Sounds or say "Ask the BBC for Ouch" to your smart speaker.

Welcome to this new pop-up podcast to see you through the days of Covid-19. Let's get started. We've all heard the information that coronavirus can be easily managed unless "you are vulnerable and have an underlying health condition" - but what if you ARE one of those people? Among the doom and gloom of the pandemic is BBC Ouch! A bunch of journalists who will keep it real. Turns out you may have one-up on the general population if you're disabled - you might be used to self-isolating, cutting back on social occasions and working from home. Maybe this is really your time to show the world the way. Emma Tracey is in Scotland and has blind-person concerns about relying on touch so much to get around, Octavia Woodward has SMA with only 25% lung capacity and is about to flee to Somerset because her care-package has gone haywire, and fresh from receiving a food delivery is Natasha Lipman who's a-ok and totally used to working from home 99% of the time.Oh and there's Beth Rose, our token non-disabled. The least we can do is humour her worries about a touch of isolation and bring her around to our way of thinking. Subscribe to 'Ouch - The Cabin Fever Podcast' on BBC Sounds or say to your smart speaker "Ask the BBC for Ouch".

Londoner Jite Ugono never expected to find himself playing blackjack in a North Korean casino having run out of cash, but a few life-changing moments had led him there.In his 30s he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), then 10 years later in 2019 he was offered rare stem cell therapy, involving chemotherapy, on the NHS to help stall the progress of the condition.It was “hopeful”, but he didn’t want this complex treatment to become the main topic of conversation for friends and family so he decided to "do something equally rare, but opposite" and booked his trip to North Korea.But would the country be ready to accept a traveller in a wheelchair and would his guides even turn up? Presented by Beth Rose. Subscribe to Ouch Disability Talk podcast on BBC Sounds or say "Ask the BBC for Ouch" to your smart speaker.

When Ellen and Beth posted a TikTok video before they went out for the night, little did they know it would go viral by morning.The students from Northern Ireland happened to leave the blood sugar monitors in shot. They are are fixed to their arms and help them manage their type one diabetes, and the world wanted to know more.Now the two women from Belfast create TikTok videos as the Diabetic Duo - often just a few seconds long - to show what life with type one diabetes is really like, but in a light-hearted and sometime frivolous way - like the weirdest places they’ve injected insulin into themselves (think a cheerleading human pyramid) and what to do if your blood sugar levels drop at exactly the same time. The Diabetic Duo reveal what its like to become social media stars overnight and how unusual it is that two best friends would both be diagnosed as type one diabetics, a predisposed condition not affected by lifestyle, which only affects 8% of all diabetics. If you have diabetes, please consult a health care professional before drinking alcohol.Presented by Kate Monaghan and Simon Minty. Subscribe to Ouch as a podcast on BBC Sounds or ask your smart speaker for BBC Ouch.

Actor George Robinson reveals what it's like to play Isaac, the first disabled character in Netflix's Sex Education.George became tetraplegic just a few years ago when he broke his neck in a school rugby tackle gone-wrong. The question is, did he watch the show - full of teenage sex, angst and mishaps - with his parents?Professional magician Fergus Flanagan first got into tricks when he was 10-years-old - about the same time he realised he was different to everyone else. He'd started to experience intrusive thoughts relating to hitting or kicking disabled people - something he never acted on and has since gone away.But it would be another 10 years before he told anyone about it and it was given a name - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - something he's now created a magic show around.Presented by Kate Monaghan and Simon Minty. A full transcript will be available here soon.Subscribe to Ouch on BBC Sounds or say "Ask the BBC for Ouch" to your smart speaker.

Liz Carr has just left BBC drama Silent Witness on a high, after eight years playing forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery - So what's next for the disabled actor and activist? Hollywood is the answer.Liz will be hitting the silver screen alongside A-listers including Mark Wahlberg in big budget film, Infinite, set for release this summer. We like to think it was her seven-year stint on the Ouch podcast which set Liz up for the big time, but 80 hours on BBC primetime television might also have given her the necessary experience. During that time, Liz explored storylines close to her heart including caring for, and losing, a terminally ill parent, something she personally went through a year ago with the death of her father. This topic, and the way Liz portrayed it, received a big response from the audience, some of whom said it helped them grieve their own parents.The wheelchair-user also reveals how hard she worked to ensure Clarissa was true to disabled life, "refusing to say lines that were problematic" and making sure the character got decent storylines. Presented by Emma Tracey - once she wins the battle for the microphone. Subscribe to Ouch on BBC Sounds or say "Ask the BBC for Ouch" to your smart speaker.

Sky Sports presenter Dave Clark says he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the most "horrible" way. The journalist, now synonymous with darts, says his doctor had a "God-like complex" and first asked how big his mortgage was and whether he had children before delivering the diagnosis. But it was not Clark's first experience of Parkinson's. His father was also diagnosed with the neurological condition at the same age, 44, but chose not to tell anyone about it for years. He later took his own life. The broadcaster, who's now 53 and twice met Muhammad Ali tells BBC Ouch's Harry Low why he's doing everything differently to his father, when it comes to the condition, and why he's planning to climb to the base camp of Mount Everest in November. Read the full transcript. Listen to Ouch regularly on BBC Sounds or tell your smart speaker: "Ask the BBC for Ouch".

Tom Oakley's dreams came true when he got through to the second round of BBC One talent show The Greatest Dancer after judge Oti Mabuse, who also stars in Strictly Come Dancing, called him a "phenomenal dancer".As well as spending more than 20 hours a week at dance college, the 16-year-old has to manage the chronic illness cystic fibrosis which affects his ability to breathe and digest food. When he first started to dance "my lungs used to burn," he says, but now it's made him healthier than ever.Tom chats to BBC Ouch's Beth Rose after a day in the dance studio.Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds or say to your smart speaker "ask the BBC for Ouch" to play the latest edition.

What happens when you take a forthright disabled American comedian and a sublime disabled folk singer and put them in a studio together? The answer is a lively session of Politics 101 – we promise it’s more fun than it sounds. Hear Tilly Moses's song Social Model played live – an unlikely name, but a beautiful song with lyrics for disabled people everywhere. And she gets quite the shock when we surprise her with one of her heroes.Comedian Maysoon Zayid has cerebral palsy and also now has a Her Abilities award. Find out what that is, plus Maysoon's strong take on why non-disabled people should never play disabled acting roles. With Simon Minty and Kate Monaghan. And just a nudge-warning, Maysoon goes into the Father Christmas question, so if you've got kids about, maybe save this for another time.Subscribe to Ouch on BBC Sounds or say "Ask the BBC for Ouch" to your smart speaker.