Owalai, Uganda – Martha Apolot navigates a dusty path through fields of cassava and millet under the searing hot sun. She carries a hoe on one shoulder, the blade carefully balanced, and over the other, her eight-year-old son, Aaron.
Every day, the 21-year-old mother takes Aaron to the fields where she works.
“Aaron is so weak, so I have to carry him from the house and lay him somewhere so I can work,” Martha says quietly, holding Aaron on her lap as she sits on the bare earth inside their tiny, single-room hut in Owalai, a rural hamlet in eastern Uganda.
They return home when it’s time to feed Aaron or when he has soiled himself, not when the tilling is done.
Aaron has an undiagnosed disability. He cannot walk, talk, eat solid foods or hold up his head without support. The back of his head is balding from lying down and prone to sores. He needs constant care, but Martha has no one else to look after him while she works.
Martha was 13 when a man lured her from her schoolyard and raped her. She did not know the man and never saw him again, she says. Her memories of that day are traumatic, and she goes quiet, breathing deeply and looking skyward.
Her pregnancy created an immediate rift within her family.
“My dad did not want me to come home, but my mother pleaded with my father to [let me] stay,” she explains after a long pause.
The seventh of eight children, Martha ran away, spending months at friends’ homes. Eventually, her older brother Paul, with whom she is close, tracked her down and told her their parents had accepted the situation and she could return home.
Aaron’s birth was long and complicated. After 15 hours of labour, doctors at the hospital in the city of Soroti admitted the teenager for an emergency caesarean section
Martha remembers the love she felt when she first saw her baby. “I felt so good, receiving my child. He was so handsome,” she recalls.
But Aaron was placed on oxygen shortly after birth. When he was taken away, she thought he had died. As he spent the first week of his life on oxygen, doctors warned Martha of future complications.
Harvey Hind from Lancashire stars in EastEnders playing Arlo, a preschool boy who is registered blind, as his mum says she hopes it shows disabled children they can achieve anything
Paige Ingram and Casey Cooper-Fiske Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter
00:29, 19 Mar 2026
Harvey Hind, from Clitheroe, Lancashire, who has made his acting debut on BBC One’s EastEnders(Image: Copyright remains with handout provider)
A mother has expressed her hope that her five year old deafblind son will “break down barriers” for disabled children following his appearance in an episode of EastEnders.
Harvey Hind, from Clitheroe, Lancashire, made his acting debut during Wednesday’s episode of the BBC One soap, portraying Arlo, a preschool boy who is registered blind.
His mother Kimberly said: “I hope Harvey featuring in EastEnders shows other disabled children, especially those who are deafblind, that they can achieve anything.” She added: “Harvey loves being in the spotlight but for us the most important thing will always be raising awareness and breaking down barriers so every disabled child gets the same opportunities as anyone else.
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“Harvey did amazingly at the filming, I’m so proud of him. There were four cameras on him but he took it all in his stride.”
During the episode, Arlo and his mother visit Lauren Branning and Peter Beale’s home, where Arlo plays with her son Jimmy, who was revealed to be blind in a storyline last year, with Arlo’s mother offering Lauren guidance on raising a blind child.
At around four weeks old, Harvey failed his newborn screening hearing test, and his mother spotted a flicker in his eye around the same time. The family arranged a private consultation and he was diagnosed as blind at three months old.
He navigates using a red-and-white striped cane, which is used by deafblind people, and communicates through BSL. He also wears cochlear implants which provide him with access to sound. Kimberly revealed she found his first two years challenging as she battled to connect with her son, and was forced to quit work to look after him as he grew increasingly distressed whilst attending a mainstream nursery.
Disability charity Sense ultimately provided the family with a specialist in supporting deafblind children, which Kimberly described as “lifesaving” for her. She added: “I was so anxious when I found out Harvey was deafblind, so his character’s storyline resonated with me a lot. I didn’t have any experience with disability and I kept imagining the worst-case scenarios.
“Luckily, with the support of organisations like Sense, Harvey is now a really happy child who is eager to learn, loves exploring and has a cheeky personality.”
Harvey has featured in the charity’s 2025 Christmas appeal and in TV news segments highlighting the difficulties encountered by disabled children within education.
The EastEnders episode featuring Harvey will broadcast on BBC One at 7.30pm on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has once again mocked Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia as “disqualifying” for leadership, marking at least the fourth time in a week that the president has targeted the California Democrat for being open about his diagnosis.
In remarks Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said Newsom was “dumb” and should never be allowed to be president because he has “admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia.”
“That’s how crazy it’s gotten with a low-IQ person,” Trump said. “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president. … And I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing.”
But in the course of his needling, Trump mistakenly elevated his political rival to the rank of commander in chief — repeatedly referring to Newsom as “the president of the United States.” Newsom took the opportunity to turn the tables on the president.
“I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, AM OFFICIALLY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (THANK YOU DONALD!)” he wrote on X Monday.
The clash is the latest in a storied contest of chest-beating between Trump and Newsom, who have made sport of bad-mouthing one another across campaign rallies, interviews and social media.
A model stealth bomber sits in front of President Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office Monday.
(Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The president has frequently cast Newsom as a symbol of the liberal governance he opposes, while the governor has leaned into the confrontations, often using them to elevate his national profile and position himself as a leading Democratic counterweight. His sparring with the president appears to be part of an aggressive strategy to amplify his own messaging as he weighs a potential run for president in 2028. This time, Newsom used the spotlight to support young people with dyslexia.
“To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you,” Newsom wrote on X. “Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”
The insults first materialized when a video went viral of Newsom speaking at a book tour appearance with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens during which he discussed his lifelong struggle with the learning disability. Since then, the president has repeatedly poked at the vulnerability.
Trump has brought up the governor’s dyslexia at least four times in the last week. He mentioned it at a political rally in Kentucky last week, where he equated dyslexia with a “mental lack of ability,” and again during a Fox News Radio interview on Friday, in which he reiterated that “presidents can’t have a learning disability.” In a post on Truth Social, Trump labeled Newsom’s admission a “politically suicidal act,” calling him “dumb” and “A Cognitive Mess!”
After the Kentucky rally, Newsom responded to Trump.
“I spoke about my dyslexia, I know that’s hard for a brain-dead moron who bombs children and protects pedophiles to understand,” he said.
Dyslexia affects as much as 20% of the population, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Despite affecting a such a wide portion of the population, the condition is widely misunderstood, according to dyslexia researcher Dr. Helen Taylor of the University of Cambridge.
“In some ways, Trump’s awful comments are just a cruder version of assumptions that already run through our culture,” she said. “If anything, [it’s] the opposite. There is evidence of an overrepresentation of people with dyslexia in business leadership roles.”
According to Taylor, there is a link between dyslexia and “enhanced abilities” in areas such as discovery, invention and creativity.
“The same cognitive trade-offs that can make routine tasks like reading more difficult support strengths in navigating complexity and guiding groups toward better future outcomes,” she said.
Newsom often describes his early experiences with dyslexia as a source of insecurity when he was growing up. In his memoir, the governor writes about his mother, Tessa Newsom, attempting to help him with homework. The lessons ended with him “running out of the room screaming that I didn’t know what was wrong with my brain.”
Back when Newsom was a boy in the 1970s, dyslexia was recognized but still not fully understood. He recalls a day when his mother grew so concerned that she took a deep breath and told him, “It’s OK to be average, Gavin.”
“I understood even back then that this, too, came from her deep reservoir of love for me,” Newsom writes in his book “Young Man in a Hurry.” “But I don’t recall crueler words ever said about me.”
The challenges from his learning disorder persist in his work at the state Capitol. Newsom finds reading off a teleprompter challenging. His aides describe days of painstaking preparation before major addresses to live audiences. Late edits to a speech, and the resulting changes to the words on the screen, threaten to throw off his delivery.
All memos in the governor’s office are written in 12 point Century Gothic font with specific spacing between lines, formatting that his aides say helps him with his disability.
The governor reads his daily briefings a few times in the morning, underlines sentences and writes down notes to retain the information on yellow cards he keeps in his suit pockets.
The ritual, he has said, helps him compensate for his dyslexia and feel confident communicating. But it also adds to the public perception of Newsom as a smooth-talking, and at times rehearsed, politician. His excessive preparation has become a trait he considers a “super power.”
His effort to thoroughly absorb reading material and desire to understand issues before he speaks about them means he’s often well-prepared. In his perception, the learning disorder has brought out his grit and resilience, and helped him hone other skills, such as quickly reading a crowd.
Without missing a beat, Newsom directed the journalist to the exact page in his 246-page budget that touched on the issue.
“While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities,” according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.
The governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, discussed the president’s attacks Tuesday in a video on X in which she emphasized that “learning differences do not determine someone’s potential.” She listed a number of qualities she considered disqualifying for the presidency, including being a convicted felon, bankrupting businesses, having numerous associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sending “masked extremists to terrorize Black and brown communities and rip kids away from their families.”
“Everything that Donald Trump represents is frankly beyond disqualifying,” she said. “Day in and day out, Trump says things that make him unfit for office. He degrades our vulnerable communities, our institutions, even the Constitution itself.”
Two of the Newsoms’ four children have also been diagnosed with dyslexia.
Quinton reported from Washington, D.C., and Luna from Sacramento.
Seven extra groups now qualify for a Disabled Person’s Railcard including blue badge holders
The eligibility criteria for a Disabled Persons Railcard have been expanded(Image: Getty)
More people will now qualify for reduced-price rail journeys across the UK. Seven additional categories are now eligible for a Disabled Person’s Railcard after the scheme was broadened on March 1.
This railcard grants the holder and an accompanying adult a one-third discount on most train tickets throughout England, Scotland and Wales. It presently costs £20 for one year or £54 for three. Until this month, the Disabled Person’s Railcard had exclusively been available to those claiming particular benefits or living with certain medical conditions. From March 1, it continues to be available to those individuals, but the criteria has been widened.
It now encompasses a wider spectrum of visible and non-visible disabilities. Individuals who now qualify include those who:
Have a blue badge
Have a disabled person’s bus pass (England, Scotland and Wales)
Have a disabled person’s Freedom Pass (London only)
Can’t drive on medical grounds
Receive Armed Forces Compensation Scheme benefits
Receive Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit for 20 per cent degree of disablement or higher
Are without speech
Other people who still qualify
The existing qualifying criteria for a Disabled Person’s Railcard remains valid, which means you can hold a railcard if you:
Receive Personal Independence Payments or Adult Disability Payment
Receive Disability Living Allowance or Child Disability Payment at either the higher or lower rate for the mobility component, or the higher or middle rate for the care component
Have a visual impairment
Are registered as deaf or use a hearing aid
Have epilepsy and receive drug treatment for it
Receive Attendance Allowance, Severe Disablement Allowance or Pension Age Disability Payment
Receive war pensioner’s mobility supplement
Receive war or service disablement pension for 80 per cent or more disability
Buy or lease a vehicle through the Motability scheme
From September 2026 it is intended that the scheme will broaden further allowing even more people to apply for a card. On the Disabled Persons Railcard website, it states: “Phase 2, launching in September 2026, will further extend eligibility to disabilities and conditions that require professional health evidence and more detailed assessment, including some long-term or degenerative medical conditions, and neurodiversity where it has a substantial impact on a person’s ability to travel by train.
“More detailed evidentiary requirements will be made available for this phase closer to implementation in September 2026.”
It is worth noting that if you already hold one of these railcards, the changes won’t affect you. The website states: “These upcoming changes to the eligibility criteria won’t affect your current Railcard or your eligibility. You can continue using your Railcard as usual without any disruption.”
How to apply
You can submit an application online here. You can select a digital card accessible via your mobile, which becomes available within five working days.
Alternatively, you can choose a physical card, which may take up to 15 days to reach you by post. The application process should require no longer than 10 minutes to finish.
Before starting, you must ensure you have the following prepared:
A valid debit or credit card
Documentary evidence of the Railcard holder’s disability that can be scanned and uploaded as a file
A passport-style photograph (it can even be captured with your phone)
You cannot submit an application in person at a railway station but you can apply by post. To do this, you can download a Disabled Persons Railcard application form online or obtain an application form from any staffed station ticket office.
You will then need to fill in and return this application, together with the required evidence of disability and payment to:
National Railcards
PO box 8626
SWADLINCOTE
DE11 1JA
A complete list of what is recognised as documentary evidence of the disability can be located online here.
