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The subject of this week's 13 Questions interview, actor with CP Jamie Beddard, has found himself playing a disabled role in London's West End, alongside a cast of otherwise non-disabled actors including and . Jamie plays Mr. Johnny Gotobed in a brand new stage adaptation of , the much loved book by Nina Bawden, based on her experiences as a child evacuee in the 2nd world war. Following our interview in Jamie's dressing room, I was fortunate enough to stay on and catch the play.

Mr. Johnny is, as Jamie says himself, "an ambiguous character". The play is set in 1939, so no disability language is used as such, but he does have an untypical way of speaking and is described by one of the other characters early on as being, "simpler than most".

However, as the play progresses, we begin to realise that this isn't necessarily true and that he is more likely to have been misunderstood by most. Mr. Johnny gains respect as he stands up for himself when ridiculed for his disability. He comforts Carrie the main character when she is distressed and he is the one who solves an important mystery as the play nears its conclusion.

Jamie Beddard is one of Britain's most acclaimed disabled actors and has played key roles in some of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's top disability related dramas including and The Egg. He was offered the role of Mr. Johnny and afforded the opportunity to make it his own. His other skills include writing and directing, and these certainly came to the fore in his interpretation of a strong and well integrated disabled character.

Whatever you think of the way in which Hollywood movies sometimes show disability on screen - from fantastic through to, well, making you want to throw the popcorn over yourself and hide under your seat until the closing credits roll - there's a new one coming our way, and this time it features a central character with Asperger's syndrome.

Opening in UK cinemas on Friday 7th August, is a quirky romantic comedy starring Hugh Dancy (previously seen in The Jane Austen Book Club and Confessions of a Shopaholic and Rose Byrne (who has starred in Damages and 28 Weeks Later). Adam is a handsome but intriguing young man with Asperger's who has led a sheltered life - but all that changes when he meets his new neighbour, Beth, a beautiful and brainy writer damaged from a past relationship. She finds his awkwardness perplexing (difficulty in social situations being one of the traits of AS), but is undeniably attracted to him ... ah, it's already beginning to sound like heartwarming Sunday afternoon film fare, isn't it? Break out the chocolates.

The movie has already won an award at the influential Sundance Film Festival, and has also been selected as the closing night premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival at the end of June. In the meantime, the rest of us can . Keep an eye on Ouch! too, as closer to the film's release date we're hoping to bring you a review.

No matter how finely tuned your news radar is, it might have slipped your notice that two days ago on Monday 8th June, the UK finally ratified the . Perhaps it's not so surprising that many missed this important story, since it doesn't seem to have been very widely.

The Convention is a landmark agreement that aims to give the world's 650 million disabled people full equality, and ratification means that a country accepts its legal obligations under the treaty and ensures that any necessary laws are passed.

But what rights are guaranteed for disabled people by this Convention? Well, in summary, it's about protecting your rights when it comes to making your own decisions; saying no to being placed in an institution; saying no to medical or psychological treatment; and living in the community. It also seeks to remove barriers to participation in daily life and enable equal opportunities for all.

Getting to this point has been a slow process, though. The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the treaty way back in ; it was opened for signatures by UN member countries in March 2007; and it came into force in when Ecuador, the twentieth of the 139 signatories to the Convention, ratified it.

The UK government, meanwhile, has been in recent months for delaying our ratification - although it was one of the first countries to sign the original treaty - and for to particular parts of the Convention relating to immigration, education and the armed forces. (If you want to read more about these, there are details on the government's website.)

But after all the official discussions and debates, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is finally here. We're interested to know what you think of it, and whether you foresee it bringing about any big changes in the lives of disabled people. Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

• In March 2008, Ouch's own Tom Shakespeare wrote about the UN Convention, saying: "Passing disability civil rights statutes is relatively simple and looks nice. Doing something to improve the situation for disabled people is complicated, costly and difficult. So expect lots of the former and less of the latter in future". Read the full article here.

Until now, most visually impaired people and people with coordination issues saw Apple's iPhone as a no go area. It relies solely on touch-screen technology, which requires tiny gestures to manipulate. It also provided no solution for screenreader users or those of us who need magnification. All we could do was sit back and be bitter about the disappearance of buttons you could feel, while our friends chatted gaily about the merits of having their iTunes library on their phone, and how all the downloadable applications just rock their worlds. Apple obviously felt our pain and took it into account when designing the new iPhone 3GS.

Announced at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the iPhone 3GS will be available in the UK and US on the 19th of June. It promises a whole raft of new , including Apple's VoiceOver screen-reading software, a magnification solution called Zoom and a white on black colour contrast option.

Although it has a couple of buttons, the new iPhone 3GS still works primarily using a touch-screen. Apple sees this as a positive thing for the screen-reader user, and has created special gestures to be used in VoiceOver mode. Here's what the Apple website says:

Because VoiceOver works with iPhone's touchscreen, you interact directly with objects on the screen and can naturally understand their location and context. So, when you touch the upper left corner of the screen, you'll hear what's in the upper left corner of a web page, and as you drag your finger around the screen, you'll learn what's nearby, providing an amazing new sense of context and relationship between the items you hear."

So there you have it. Maybe the days of wondering about the iPhone from afar are over. Only time will tell whether the touch screen will become completely accessible, or whether my personal 'Bring Back Buttons' campaign will win out and convince Apple to completely change the iPhone's design.

The central Chinese city of Chenzhou witnessed a last week. The cause? Believe it or not, it was disabled people.

This isn't one of those stories that we're perhaps more familiar with here in the UK, in which a cabbie refuses to carry a passenger with an impairment and comes up with an often spurious reason to justify it. No, in this case the dispute was caused by an illegal, unlicensed trade that's been operating for some time amongst physically disabled people in Chenzhou. An estimated 180 of them have been using their cars to carry fare-paying passengers, without forwarding the necessary fees to taxi companies or seeking approval from the relevant authorities.

Although it was as a on various online news services, this story interested us on Ouch! for a number of reasons.

We love this story - especially in London where the tube drivers are going on strike tonight at 7.00pm. The report just talks about this cab drivers' strike as an oddity but Ouch! wanted to know more ... WHY and HOW is it that 180 disabled people have suddenly decided to become illegal cabbies? What's going on?

We imagined that these physically disabled Chinese people had possibly received some form of state benefit which enabled them to own cars, putting them at a distinct advantage over the rest of the population perhaps, and they were using this opportunity to go into business - albeit illegally. But no, a number of the reports make clear that they were using "vehicles that they bought themselves".

We wondered, too, whether there was some crucial information missing from these mostly China-based news sources about the status of disabled people in the country - had they taken up cab-driving because no other work was available to them and it was the only way to support themselves? Or maybe the story here was that a number of disabled people had set themselves up as taxi drivers, others had seen their success, and it had very quickly become a popular, though unlawful, trade.

If you have any further knowledge on this, we'd love to hear from you. We'll keep looking too.

If you've previously used the on the Directgov website before leaving the house, in order to prepare for your journey in advance by finding everything from parking bays and accessible public toilets to petrol stations with service call facilities, then here's some good news. Like so much else on the web, the service is . Which makes far more sense if you're out and about.

To see it for yourself, you'll need an internet-enabled handset. Text the word BLUE to 83377 for the price of a SMS. You'll receive two messages back from Directgov, both of which are free. One will be a confirmation that your text was received, and the other will have a link to the Blue Badge map service, together with brief instructions on how to use it. The information covers major routes and over 100 towns and cities across the UK.

Oh, and even though we know that all Ouch readers are far too sensible to use their mobile phones while driving, please do make sure that you stop in a safe place and switch off your engine first before turning your attention to that little glowing screen.

"When will we get a disabled character in EastEnders?" had become something of a mantra for disability groups to chant. In a meeting at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Television Centre in London this evening, it was announced that a wheelchair-using actor will join the cast, along with a raft of other initiatives to increase visibility of disabled people in drama and entertainment shows.

Actor David Proud - who previously appeared in C³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's wheelchair basketball drama Desperadoes and ITV2's Secret Diary of a Call Girl - is set to join the long-running soap later this year.

He will play confident yet snobby Oxford University student Adam Best, son of Manda (Josie Lawrence). He turns up in Walford during holidays away from uni, where he takes an immediate disliking to his mum's boyfriend Minty as well as the Queen Vic. The only thing Adam does like, by all accounts, is Libby Fox, another prospective Oxford student and, more importantly, Darren Miller's girlfriend.

He's not the first disabled character on the Square though, as exec Diederick Santer was keen to point out.

"In recent years, we've had a number of regular and guest characters with disabilities - some of them children, like Janet Mitchell, and more recently Syd's son Noah. We've also told the story of Jean Slater, who suffers from bipolar disorder. But this is the first time we've had a regular adult character with a visible disability played by an actor with a disability. It's about time."

Director of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Vision, Jana Bennett, also announced the launch of an online directory of disabled actors, comedians and performers with disabilities. Created with support and collaboration from many talent agencies such as Spotlight and Equity, it will be available to both in-house and independent production teams as an accessible research tool.

A disabled talent search was also announced this evening. Talent Alert focuses on four cities, starting with Manchester on 8th June, and followed by Glasgow, London, and Cardiff. Casting directors from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ will be hosting two day workshops in each city.

Bennett said: "It's critical that to connect with all of our audiences, we want to authentically reflect the lives of disabled people on screen. The Talent Alert workshops kick off our nationwide search for the best disabled actors and performers from around the UK, which will help us attract more disabled actors to a career in the arts, online and on screen ..."

Keep coming back to Ouch! for more news.

The gaming world is full of talk about Microsoft's new gaming add-on for the Xbox 360. Codenamed , it uses a special optical camera and 3D sensor to read your body movements so that you can play games without even touching a controller. Imagine a football game where you kick at the screen to take a shot.

But, as ever, the disability world has been one step ahead in using this kind of technology ... one example is the SoundBeam, a device that uses a series of ultrasonic sensors to translate free movements into music. It's an instrument popular with people with learning disabilities and limited movement (), whose fans include electro outfit , a band we recently featured on the Ouch Talk Show podcast.

So whilst it seems we're already ahead of the game, building this kind of technology into a cheap and widely available gaming accessory should lead to many more cool and widespread applications. Just look at to get an idea of what's to come ...

Do you remember the ? No? It's not a distant cousin of R2D2 and C-3PO, but a revolutionary 'stair-climbing wheelchair' that caused when it was unveiled by its American inventor, He's the man who was previously the brains behind the infamous , the two-wheeled, self-balancing electric vehicle on which - or rather off which - George W. Bush so famously .

Well, there's sad news to report, because . The company behind it has just sold the last few models, bringing an end to a relative commercial failure that saw the technologically advanced wheelchair racking up only a few hundred sales figures each year.

There's no denying that the iBOT could do a lot. Its six onboard gyroscopes allowed the machine to remain stable and balanced - and keep the user level on their seat - even while it was moving around on two wheels in order to climb stairs or easily negotiate kerbs. It could traverse rough and bumpy ground, and could also lift up, thus allowing the user to grab items from high shelves.

But the price was prohibitive: at $22,000 dollars, it cost more than a family car. There was also the problem that the hi-tech chair required the use of at least one arm and certain upper body control, meaning that it was only suitable for a small fraction of people affected by paralysis. The third nail in the iBOT's coffin came at the end of 2006, when the US government's health insurance program, Medicare, ruled that the iBOT's stair-climbing technology and other features weren't necessary for at-home care, and that it would only cover the cost of a basic electric wheelchair. If you wanted an iBOT, Medicare would reimburse only $6,000 of that steep $22,000 price tag.

Users who still depend on the futuristic mobility aid have been given a promise by the manufacturers that a repair service will remain in place until 2013, but otherwise it's a case of iBOT: 2003 - 2009. May it rust in peace. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.)