Everything about Diss totally explained
DISS (Disability Information Services) is part of the
Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People (QEF), a
charitable organisation based in
Leatherhead,
Surrey,
England. The organisation has experience in producing
databases 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 power coupled with reducing PC costs enabled this computerisation to take place.
With these two factors in mind, DISS developed its own
database 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 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. These are still the main drivers behind DISS to this day.
DISS Today
With the
Internet and
World Wide Web 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'll also broaden its appeal in other areas, such as
further education and the
private sector. This latter area may well benefit from such a data resource, now that the UK
Disability Discrimination Act has been enshrined in
English Law.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Diss'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://diss.totallyexplained.com">DISS Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
