Thread by @StephenThomo

Useful tip for researchers - include an #EasyRead summary to make your research more accessible for people with learning disabilities. You can also re-use the text to summarise your research on twitter. Thread with an e.g. 👇#AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter

Recent report written with @B_Rohwerder & others on the impact of #COVID19 on people with disabilities in #Nepal and #Bangladesh 🇧🇩🇳🇵♿️ids.ac.uk/publications/b…

We asked 35 people with disabilities in Bangladesh (20 people) and Nepal (15 people) to tell us about their lives during the COVID-19 outbreak. They had different disabilities such as deafblindness, intellectual disabilities and psychosocial disabilities.

We wanted to ask them as they are not often asked about their lives. We also asked parents who had children with disabilities.

What we found out:
The COVID-19 outbreak has made life worse for many people with disabilities as well as many other people.

To stay safe from COVID-19 people were told to stay at home, which is called a lockdown. This meant some people with disabilities and their families lost their jobs and did not have enough money for food and medicine and other things. This made them very sad and worried.

They managed by getting money or food from other family members, or by using the money they had saved, or by borrowing money, or by selling things they owned.

Some people also got some help from the government, or organisations of people with disabilities, or charities. But many people did not get any help or not enough.

Information provided about the COVID-19 outbreak was not easy to understand. This made it hard for some people to know what they should be doing to keep safe or why they had to stay at home.

People with visual disabilities use touch to understand the world. But during the COVID-19 outbreak touching things is unsafe as the virus which makes you sick may be on those things.

People did not want to help blind people by touching them. This means it was more difficult for them to get around and be independent.

COVID-19 has changed how everyone lives. This was a shock for many people and made them unsure about what would happen to them and their families. Staying at home all the time was also very boring and made people unhappy. Worries about money caused conflict in families.

People felt scared and hopeless and like there was nothing they could do to make things better. People missed their friends, but some kept in touch with each other by phone.

After a while people were allowed to leave home again. This meant some people could get their jobs back & they felt happier as they now had money to pay for things like food. Other people were happy because of the new COVID19 vaccine, which can help you to avoid getting COVID19.

Some people still did not have work or money to buy food and they were still sad and worried. They did not have any more money and they had to pay back the money they borrowed which was hard for them. The
organisations which helped them before had stopped helping them.

People with different disabilities were affected in different ways. Some said that other people treated them badly, sometimes this was the same as before and sometimes it was worse than before.

It is important that the government and other organisations help people with disabilities during the COVID-19 outbreak. They should ask people with disabilities about what they need and how this help should be given to them.

Also, if you see a thread like this summarising research and you need help to read it more easily you can use @threadreaderapp - reply to the tweet of a thread including this handle and mentioning "unroll" and you'll get a summary link back.