Portable plate raiser used by Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds

Portable plate raiser used by Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds, who lives with impairments caused by thalidomide, designed by Stephen Simmonds consisting of a placemat and Tupperware box, 2005-2010.

Rosaleen is a businesswoman, artist, campaigner, and adviser in the field of disability rights and equality. Rosaleen uses adapted devices in her every-day life from her electrically powered wheelchair to her smartphone holder. Rosaleen and her husband Stephen developed low-tech solutions to make her meals higher including balancing a Tupperware box on a placemat.

Rosaleen is one of over 450 adults in the United Kingdom living with thalidomide impairments. While pregnant, Rosaleen’s mother took a drug containing thalidomide on medical advice. Thalidomide was a compound found in drugs prescribed to people in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although today it is associated primarily as a treatment for pregnancy related nausea, it was also prescribed to anyone experiencing symptoms of colds, flu, headaches, anxiety, and insomnia. Thalidomide causes nerve damage in the hands and feet of adults, but when taken in early pregnancy it causes impairments such as limb difference, sight loss, hearing loss, facial paralysis, and impact to internal organs. One tablet is enough to cause significant impairments. UK distributors withdrew the drug in 1961 and a government warning was issued in May 1962.