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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