Deaf News: Limping Chicken blogger highly commended at UK Blog Awards for blogs on her hearing loss

We’re pleased to report that Angie Aspinall, who has written a number of blogs for us about her experience of hearing loss, has been awarded ‘Highly Commended’ in the UK Blog Awards 2014 for her blogs for The Limping Chicken! Congratulations Angie!  Here, she tells us about the experience:

The UK Blog Awards 2014 are the first of their kind, giving recognition to bloggers who write about their passions and life experiences.

There were 14 categories, each with an ‘individual’ and an ‘organisation’ section.  The first stage after nominations was a public vote, which determined the Finalists who then faced a panel of judges each with skills and experience in the subject areas.

Nine hundred bloggers entered the awards, so to reach the Final alone is a great achievement and I was fortunate enough to make it through to the Finals in three categories: Travel, Media and Communications and Health.  So, you can imagine how excited I was to be attending the Award ceremony!

The ceremony was held at a very swanky London hotel: The Grange St Paul’s.  It was a venue befitting an event which billed itself as ‘The Oscars of the Blogging World’ and there were even huge ‘Oscars’ on the stage.  It wasn’t a ‘Black tie’ do, but it did require evening dress so I bought one especially for the occasion.

My husband and I met up with fellow shortlisted Yorkshire Bloggers from the Yorkshire Pudd (as seen on this Sunday’s BBC Countryfile programme) and we enjoyed canapés and Prosecco followed by some candy floss and popcorn before taking our seats in the packed auditorium.

Unlike the real Oscars ceremony, there were no winners’ speeches which, as there were 28 winners to announce, is something I think we were all grateful for!  The host for the evening listed all the Finalists and then announced the two people receiving ‘Highly Commended’ in that category before the judges announced the winners.

The Yorkshire Pudd was given Highly Commended for their excellent food blog and then it was time for the Individual Health Blog category and, lo and behold my blogs for The Limping Chicken were also given ‘Highly Commended’, coming second to worthy winner Chris’ Cancer Community.  It was a great night for the Yorkshire contingent and we toasted our success with some Gin Fizz.

I hope that by being featured in the UK Blog Awards, more people will have visited The Limping Chicken website and that I may have done some awareness-raising within the ‘hearing community’ for issues relating to hearing loss.  Maybe, it helped us attract some more readers with their own experiences of hearing loss/deafness too.  I do hope so.

Maybe next year, The Limping Chicken can enter in the Organisation Health Blog Category.  How about it Charlie? (we shall! Ed)

You can read Angie’s blogs here: http://limpingchicken.com/category/angie-aspinall/ 

  Angie is co-owner of Aspinall Ink.  She’s a freelance journalist and travel writer and co-founder of Twitter’s top weekly regional business networking event, #Yorkshirehour.  Angie also works part-time for a UK charity.  She is a lipreader and a big fan of Bi CROS hearing aids.  Angie was awarded Highly Commended in the ‘Individual Health Blog’ category in the UK Blog Awards 2014 for her blogs on Limping Chicken.