October is not just Mental Health Month. October is also Life Esidimeni Month. Let us hope it is Accountability Month, as well. It is now three months since Judge Teffo’s ruling that criminal charges be brought against, among others, Qedani Mahlangu, the former Gauteng Health MEC, and Dr Makgabo Manamela. The Timeline In October 2015 the former Gauteng MEC Qedani Mahlangu announced the termination of its contract with Life Esidimeni, a private healthcare provider caring READ MORE
Category: Disability Rights
Understanding the Trajectory of Visual Impairment in the Workplace
In this webinar, Jeremy dialogues with long-time friend and colleague, Dr Michelle Botha, about the complexities of incremental vision loss while being employed. Since both Jeremy and Michelle have significant visual-impairment, they dialogue in an entertaining and anecdotal style, providing insight into challenges and opportunities for both the employee and the employer, and highlight many hidden aspects of this mostly overlooked area of Disability management.
The Travel-Chain for Visually Impaired Persons
In this webinar, Jeremy discusses an example of the travel chain for a person with a visual impairment. Using his guide dog, and following the route from his home to the local railway station, Jeremy covers in detail the various obstacles and good access features of the journey. Using his considerable technical knowledge of access issues and blind mobility, Jeremy succeeds in highlighting the importance of recognising the significance of NMT (non-motorised transport).
Perspectives on employing Persons with Disabilities (3/4)
The business case view Jeremy continues on his theme that if employers wish to take disability employment seriously then a perspective view is necessary. In this third of four podcasts produced by Lois Strachan, Jeremy Opperman explores the business case for disability inclusion as the third part of his trinocular view model. Moving away from the other two views or lenses , the legislative compliance view and the human rights view, Jeremy states that the READ MORE
Perspectives on employing Persons with Disabilities (2/4)
The Human Rights view In this podcast, produced by Lois Strachan and the second of four episodes, Jeremy Opperman continues on his trinocular theme of needing to look at the employment of persons with disabilities with perspective. Taking into account not just the legislative requirement to employ people with disability but for employers to look through two other lenses as well – the human rights lens and the business case lens – if they wish READ MORE
Perspectives on employing Persons with Disabilities (1/4)
The Legislative View The importance of perspective in understanding the employment of persons with disabilities. In this podcast, the first in a series of four episodes, produced by Lois Strachan, Jeremy Opperman discusses the complexity of employing people with disabilities in the South African context. With his characteristic frankness and drawing on his 24 years of disability inclusion experience, he unpacks the fundamental pro’s and con’s and challenges of fixating on legislative compliance rather than READ MORE
Podcast: The Challenges of Disability Advocacy
In Season 1, Episode 1, hosts Jeremy Opperman and Jeremy Warriner of the Rotary Disability Advisers Group have a lively discussion on the challenges of disability advocacy and the need to encourage not only changes in approaches to disability rights but also to thinking. Both are members of Rotary International and they share a vision of that organisation being more inclusive for people with disabilities, Each host comes from a different perspective on the READ MORE
A Short Story: I am Disabled so I have the Right to use it
“How cool is that?”, said Jim, as he was told about the new computers in the public library in his suburb. In particular, Jim was delighted that one of the six available PCs was equipped to cater for blind and visually impaired users by providing both screen-reading and magnification software. This meant something to Jim as he himself was visually impaired and used special magnification software on PC’s when he had a chance to do READ MORE