Rewriting the Rules

The Scottish Parliament is considering a bill to legalise assisted suicide.

Bill's author: "It only covers people with terminal illnesses, not disability"

Hidden in the small print: 

"For the purposes of this Act, a person is terminally ill if they have an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death."

A huge percentage of disabilities come with a reduced life-expectancy for one reason for another, so the bill that supposedly doesn't include people with disability covers:

Anyone with an intellectual disability

Anyone with a spinal injury

Anyone with epilepsy

Anyone with continence issues

Anyone with swallowing issues

Anyone whose disability, or medication, results in weight gain.

And for a really disturbing twist, it's potentially going to be affected by socio-economic status, both individually and regionally. 

We Can Erase It For You Wholesale

 A company that does school photographs offered two versions of the class pictures taken for a primary class in Aberdeenshire, one with the disabled kids included, one without. Including splitting a pair of twins.
 

Aberdeenshire pupils with complex needs* ‘erased’ from school photo

The council's apology and claim the school didn't know two sets of photos had been taken doesn't ring true, the only way that could have happened would have been for the staff to leave the kids alone with the photographer. Much more likely is they didn't think it through. Two different versions of what happened are in the reports across various TV and newspaper sources, one saying the set without the disabled kids was taken first, before they arrived, and the second saying afterwards. In either case the staff would have known.

The company's tweeted media response - "one of our photographers took additional images of the class group which omitted some members of the class photograph" - is a good example of how to turn a crisis into a disaster, being unable to bring itself to admit it was the disabled kids excluded, and also being an inaccessible gif of text, without, as far as I can see, any alt text. And while the apology is also on their website, the only way to get to it there is via a link in the tweet.

The Daily Mail's version of the story is particularly 'special', making the story about the company's owner, not the kids.

* C'mon Guardian, you can say the damned d-word!