DISS is part of the Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People

Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People

Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People is a British charity. It was founded in the 1930s, and works to encourage disabled people to become more independent by fostering life skills and vocational training...

 (QEF), a charitable organisation based in Leatherhead

Leatherhead

Leatherhead is a town in the County of Surrey, England, on the River Mole, part of Mole Valley district. It is thought to be of Saxon origin...

, Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The organisation has experience in producing database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

s of information relevant to the needs of disabled people, their families and carers, and has been successful in this field since the late 1980s.

Founded by QEF in 1989 as Disability Information Services Surrey, DISS was at first a telephone-based information resource for people living in Surrey to contact on an as-needed basis. Soon after its establishment, it became apparent that the vast amount of paper-based information needed to respond to telephone enquiries should ideally be computerised. Moreover, ever increasing Personal Computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

 power coupled with reducing PC costs enabled this computerisation to take place.

With these two factors in mind, DISS developed its own database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

 of disability information for in-house use, which was subsequently named DissBASE. Using DissBASE, DISS workers could respond more quickly, and with a greater degree of accuracy, to inbound telephone enquiries. In these early days however, the majority of enquiries came from within the Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

 county border.

Over time, DissBASE comprised not only Surrey-specific information, but increasing amounts of national data, as well as more regional data from outside the county. In addition, other disability information and advice lines were being formed by local authorities, disability support groups and statutory bodies across the UK. With this in mind, and with DissBASE by this time comprising many thousands of records, DissBASE was made available to these other organisations nationwide. At around this time, and because of the more nationwide spread of the database, the "Surrey" part of the DISS name was dropped, although the second "S" is retained.

Over time, DISS ceased to be a telephone enquiry service in its own right; rather, it chose to specialise in those areas in which it had expertise, namely database systems development and data cleansing

Data cleansing

Data cleansing, data cleaning, or data scrubbing is the process of detecting and correcting corrupt or inaccurate records from a record set, table, or database. Used mainly in databases, the term refers to identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate, irrelevant, etc...

. These are still the main drivers behind DISS to this day.

DISS Today

With the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 and World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 offering unparalleled levels of access to the public and organisations alike, DISS has produced a version of its DissBASE database for use online; unsurprisingly, this new version of the database is called DissBASE Web. Not only will this newer version increase dramatically the number of users of the data, but it will also broaden its appeal in other areas, such as further education

Further education

Further education is a term mainly used in connection with education in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is post-compulsory education , that is distinct from the education offered in universities...

 and the private sector

Private sector

In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...

. This latter area may well benefit from such a data resource, now that the UK Disability Discrimination Act

Disability Discrimination Act 1995

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which has now been repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010 , except in Northern Ireland where the Act still applies...

 has been enshrined in English Law

English law

English law is the legal system of England and Wales, and is the basis of common law legal systems used in most Commonwealth countries and the United States except Louisiana...

.

External links

• www.diss.org.uk - The main DISS website
• www.drc-gb.org - The Disability Rights Commission
  Disability Rights Commission
  The Disability Rights Commission was established by the British Labour government in 1999. At that time, the DRC was the UK's third equality commission alongside the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission....
  
   website, containing full details of the Disability Discrimination Act
  Disability Discrimination Act 1995
  The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which has now been repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010 , except in Northern Ireland where the Act still applies...