Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

eruthros: air security and the normal body

This isn’t the first time this has happened; it happens every time there’s a security scare, and suddenly people are being told by airport security that they can’t take their meds on the plane, that they can’t take the things that make flying bearable, that they can’t have a pillow or a blanket.

And it makes me so angry, because it’s completely obvious that there are millions of people who can’t do the things air security tells us to do, and who are willing to tell TSA so at length. But they’re ignored, they’re transformed into suspicious bodies because air security defines “normal” bodies.

Laura Hershey: More about Haiti and Disability…

Americans should continue giving generously, and always respectfully. Let’s not leverage our largess to lecture Haitians on the proper attitude toward disability. Let’s ensure that our aid programs don’t discriminate, or deny access, thus aggravating disabled people’s isolation.

Chronicle Online: LCT cuts strand disabled riders

Carol Dennison and Adrian Linden have been completely dependent on Lorain County Transit to get to work and other places they need to go. Starting this week, the two women, each of whom contends with a disability, have to find alternate means of transportation in the wake of severe cuts in Para-Transit service. […]

For Linden, the news is especially bitter, as she has served as facilitator for a number of Lorain County Multiple Sclerosis Support Groups in Lorain, Amherst, Sheffield and Wellington for the past several years. “I used to get to those meetings on the bus, and now I’m not going to be able to handle them anymore,” she said. “Someone else will have to take over.” […] She was looking forward to starting up an MS support chapter in Elyria “but that’s out now.” […]

Dennison learned Monday her LCT service was ending because her destination — Crestwood Elementary School — was well outside the three-quarter-mile limit. “They must have known about these cuts for a while,” Dennison said. “They didn’t get informed on a holiday with less than 24 hours notice for people who have to get to a job in the morning. I have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow,” Dennison said Monday. […] “The bus is my only means to get to work,” she said.

Bloomberg.com: Haiti’s ’Shunned’ Disabled Kids Cope With Loss of Their School [about how the only school for children with disabilities in Haiti has been destroyed]

Church officials are trying to move the pupils to Montrois, a city north of Port-au-Prince, to house them temporarily in a former Episcopal seminary, Sadoni said. The Rev. Lauren Stanley, Episcopal missionary to Haiti, said by telephone today that Duracin confirmed the information provided by Sadoni. “The urgent now is to feed them,” Sadoni wrote. “And we don’t have any materials (cloths, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap).”

Even then, the struggle is far from over, Nelson said. “Most of the kids there are in wheelchairs, blind or deaf, and much of the staff is handicapped, too,” she said in a telephone interview last week. “But it’s not just the physical problems. Handicapped children are also shunned by society there. It is really very scary.”

Washington Post: Up to 10 percent of Iraqis disabled by war, sanctions

Iraq’s health ministry said it has no specific figures but it estimates the number of physically and mentally disabled people at between 2 million and 3 million.

U.S.-based Mercy Corps considers 2 million conservative. It said a 1977 census put the disabled population at that time at 9 percent of Iraq’s 12 million people, or about 1 million. The government now estimates the population at 30 million. […]

Only a quarter of amputees who need artificial limbs get them because the raw materials are not available, it said.

Media dis & dat: Report on Latinos with disabilities now available for free download

Three years ago, Proyecto Visión released a report that examined the low employment status of disabled Latinos and recommended ways to improve their job and other opportunities. Latinos with Disabilities in the United States: Understanding & Addressing Barriers to Employment presents a snapshot of this growing population, outlining factors affecting the extent of participation, and degree of success, of disabled Latinos in the service delivery system; highlighting innovative research and employment projects that are working to reduce barriers; and presenting profiles of individuals and families who have attained success and others who have fallen between the cracks.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

The Baltimore Sun: Young, gifted and disabled

This was the summer of 2003, and she had recently graduated from college, was studying for the LSAT and browsing the store’s magazine selections. There were magazines for bikers and hikers, runners, travelers, eaters, golfers — just about every category of person one could think of, except disabled people, a group to which Roberson has belonged since she was born with a rare condition that contracts joints throughout the body, dislocates hips, locks the jaw. […]

She took it on. She saw the need for a magazine and decided she’d produce one. She called it “i.d.e.a.l.,” an acronym for “Individuals with Disabilities Express About Life,” and put the emphasis on young disabled people.[…]

Along with reported stories, Roberson contributed a first-person piece about how her disability and her bisexuality complicate her personal life. It’s the sort of frank treatment of the lives of disabled people that she feels has been missing from available publications, and was missing even from the first two issues of “i.d.e.a.l.”

“I’m my own worst critic,” she said. “I don’t think it was as relatable to me” in her life as a disabled person. Her hope is that disabled people reading the new magazine will find their lives reflected in it, “so people will disabilities can say ‘Oh my God, I’m not the only one going through this.’ “

Su Sayer at The Guardian: Politicians must recognise that people with learning disabilities have a right to vote too

Yet when it comes to democratic rights, the overwhelming majority of adults with learning disabilities still find themselves largely excluded by the complexity of the system and low awareness of their right to vote. Our research found that while 80% of people supported by United Response in England were registered to vote in the 2005 election, only 16% used their vote. This compares with a turnout of 61% in the general population.

As regular users of social services, public transport, health services and much more, people with learning disabilities are affected by political decisions in the same way as everyone else. The majority of adults with learning disabilities do have the capacity, as well as the legal right, to vote, and would like to do so if given the opportunity.

Ethan Ellis at NJ Voices Public Blog: Disability: the hidden horror of Haiti

Those of us with disabilities who know the island also know that after the last body is buried, the last hospital is rebuilt and the country begins to come alive again as its rescuers move on to the next disaster and the eyes of the watching world move with them, that people like us, now multiplied by the earthquake’s crush will be buried under the crushing weight of the country’s other unmet priories.

CNW Group: Women with heart disease are more likely to be poor than men

“Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death and a leading cause of disability among Canadian women,” said Dr. Arlene Bierman, a physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and principal investigator of the study. “In fact, eight times as many Canadian women die from heart disease and stroke every year as from breast cancer. If we’re going to change this we need prevention programs that reach out to low income women and that focus on the effects of poverty and the factors that lead to poverty among women.”

The Telegraph (UK): Hi-tech prosthetics are getting our injured back on their feet

Historically, war has provided a great spur to technological development in prosthetics. Before the First World War, amputations were comparatively rare in Britain and most artificial limbs were primitive objects made by saddlers. […] The sudden influx of 41,300 young military amputees, many hoping to return to some sort of employment after the war, generated a new prosthetics industry and encouraged co-operation between limb-fitters and surgeons for the first time.

[Jerome Church said]: “But the warfare of the past eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan has produced a paradigm shift in the way we consider prosthetic possibilities.”

[Ian Jones, prosthetics manager said] “With a BK [below knee] injury there is no reason why a soldier should not return to front-line infantry. Some will be as fit as anyone else.

The Michigan Daily: Silently Disabled: The everyday struggles of those with invisible disabilities

It wasn’t until a week before the end of the academic year that [Leslie Rott] was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus — a chronic inflammatory disease that attacks the body’s tissues and organs. Rott said she was unsure of what accommodations she would be entitled to going into her second year. Unlike those who have lived most of their lives with disabilities, she had no previous experience as a disabled individual and didn’t even know how to go about asking for accommodations. […]

Felder, who is fairly upfront about her Crohn’s disease, says that despite her attempts to inform her classmates about her disability, she has received less-then-ideal reactions as sometimes, students “literally scoot their chairs away” when she talks about the disease in class.

There is also, at times, the issue of other students thinking accommodations means disabled students are getting “special treatment.” For example, LSA sophomore Sarah Rabinowe, who was diagnosed with two learning disabilities in the beginning of elementary school, said her classmates often judge her for getting accommodations because they don’t understand how difficult it is to live with her disability.

“I’ve had a little bit here of ‘she gets special treatment, she gets this,’ the sort of jealousy, almost, because they don’t understand how hard it is to live with this,” Rabinowe said.[…]

Though some members of the disabled community would like the University to take a larger role in advocating for and raising awareness of disabilities on campus, SSWD “acts under a philosophy of self-advocacy,” Segal said. “In other words, part of what we’re trying to do is turn people into young, responsible, independent adults, and part of the way of doing that is making people advocate for themselves,” Segal said.

Part of this notion of self-advocacy includes changing the campus’s perception of the disabled community without the University’s help. For example, if individuals want peer mentors or support groups, it’s their responsibility to make that happen. Likewise, if individuals sense a stigma associated with disabilities on campus, the disabled community must find a voice within itself to raise awareness of disability issues rather than rely on the University to make this change for them.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

A brief obituary at Life as a Hospice Patient, the blog of Judi Chamberlin, psychiatric survivor and rights activist. The comments include tributes from friends, readers, and fellow activists. [via Disability Studies, Temple U]

With deep sadness we want to let you know that Judi died late last night [Saturday]. […]

If you want to mark Judi’s memory in some tangible way, it was her wish that contributions be made to either:

* The National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations
Checks can be made out to: NEC [National Empowerment Center]. Note on the check that it is “for NCMHCSO in honor of Judi Chamberlin. Checks can be mailed to: National Empowerment Center, 599 Canal Street, Lawrence, MA 01840
or
* Visiting Nurse and Community Health
[Checks can be made out to VNCH. Note on the check that it is for “Hospice in honor of Judi Chamberlin”] and can be mailed to:
Visiting Nurse and Community Health, Donations, 37 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Arlington, MA 02474
Or on line.

More about Judi Chamberlin at NPR: Advocate For People With Mental Illnesses Dies

Judi Chamberlin, who died this weekend at age 65, was a civil rights hero from a civil rights movement you may have never heard of. […] Chamberlin’s book [On Our Own] became a manifesto for other patients. But it influenced lots of people in the mental health establishment, too. Today, notes Oaks, it’s common for people with mental illness to have a say. “Most U.S. states now have an office of mental health consumer affairs or something to hear the voice of mental health clients,” says Oaks. “And it certainly is people like Judi that did that.”

Smart Bitches Trashy Books: GS vs. STA: Handicapped Heroines

Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid is a recommendation thread devoted to books in a specific genre that feature a type of heroine, hero, plot, or locale that is often difficult to find, particularly when that feature is done right. Today, Heather, the awesome, from The Galaxy Express, is looking for handicapped heroines:

“When you have a chance, I’m hoping you can assist me with information about a particular type of romance heroine. I’m thinking my question might be eligible for your HaBO feature. A friend of mine and I were discussing how we’d like to read romances involving a handicapped heroine—one where the heroine gets the hero without any serious cop-outs.”

Delirious Hem: A Preview: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum #2: This is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife. by Jennifer Bartlett

Sometimes, I feel like the community has forgotten us! Despite wonderful strides toward inclusion in many areas of feminism, disability is often the overlooked element. The issues of women with disabilities are among the most extreme cases of female abuse in the United States. So, it is shocking to that the pages of MS. Magazine are not full of issues such as forced sterilization or the fact that some women with disabilities have their children forcefully taken away at birth. Many people do still do not know about abusive institutions, such as Willowbrook, which were the norm as late as the 1980’s. The unemployment rate for women with disabilities remains at a steady 70% or more. […]

On a more mundane note, women with disabilities are consistently absent from women-only poetry conferences, journals, and anthologies that champion diversity. When popular feminist journals do write about people with disabilities, they often use outdated, offensive language; confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound, and, my personal favorite, ‘the disabled.’

BarbManning.net: Nevermind Healthcare – Should Visitability be a Federal Law?

What is Visitability?

“It defies logic to build new homes that block people out when it’s so easy and cheap to build new homes that let people in.” — Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D. -IL)

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires access for people with disabilities for all new multi-family dwellings and a small percentage (5%) of single-family homes constructed using public funds. This law obviously does not address the vast majority of single-family housing in the United States. Visitability seeks to make new housing accessible by having it meet three basic conditions: one zero-step entrance with a wheelchair approachable route, hallways and doorways wide enough for safe navigation by wheelchairs, and one wheelchair-accessible bathroom on the main floor. […]

In March 2009, Representative Jan Schakowsky re-introduced the Inclusive Home Design Act (HR 1408) to Congress. For new homes built with federal assistance, this bill supplements the existing 5% requirement of fully accessible units by mandating visitability in all of the other units. If this bill becomes law, it will make subtle, but substantial changes in how America constructs new homes.

L.A. Times: Families of autistic kids sue over therapy’s elimination

Families of autistic children in eastern Los Angeles County filed a class-action lawsuit today against the nonprofit agency that provides them with state-funded services, alleging that it had illegally discontinued their therapy for the disorder.

The agency, the Eastern Los Angeles County Regional Center, informed more than 100 families late last summer that the therapy — known as the DIR model, or “developmental, individual difference, relationship-based” — was being eliminated for their children because of state budget cuts.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

sqbr at poking at thorns (with gloves on): The Na’vi attitude to disability in Avatar

But watching the movie I started wondering about whether or not the Na’vi were actually any better about disability than the military. Sure, Jake is treated a lot better by them, but his avatar is able-bodied. How would they have treated him if he was paraplegic in his Na’vi form too?

Washington Post: Justice suit accuses Johnson & Johnson of paying kickbacks

Medical giant Johnson & Johnson paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to boost sales of its drugs in nursing homes, including an antipsychotic that can be used as a chemical restraint, the Justice Department alleged in a lawsuit Friday.

The payments, sometimes disguised as grants or educational funding, were funneled to Omnicare, a pharmacy company that dispenses drugs in nursing homes and used its influence with doctors to get prescriptions switched, the government said. Johnson & Johnson came to regard Omnicare pharmacists as an extension of its sales force, the government said, citing a company document.

ABC News (USA): Health Overhaul Leaves Gap for Disabled Workers

Disabled by chronic back pain and unable to afford medical insurance, Lea Walker hoped President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul would close a coverage gap that has trapped her and millions of other workers.

It won’t. […]

At any given time, an estimated 1.8 million disabled workers languish in the Medicare coverage gap, a cost saver instituted nearly 40 years ago. Many, like Walker, are uninsured. Lawmakers had hoped to eliminate the gap as part of health care overhaul, but concluded it would be too expensive.

Nilesh Singit at Disability News Worldwide: My ‘Raid de Himalaya’ experience: Deepa Malik

This inspired me, and I set out on a mission called ‘ability beyond disability’ in my own little way. I had no clue what I had to do. But I felt that I had to contribute in some way or the other. Promoting outdoor sports I felt was the best possible way. And then to my horror, I found out, that I was the first paraplegic woman to join the world of sports in the Indian scenario! […]

More than the trophy, what made me happy was the declaration by H.M.A. official, Manjeev Bhalla that henceforth disabled persons will also be eligible to compete in the rally. I was thrilled that my efforts opened doors for people with disabilities to the world of motor sports.

Los Angeles Times: New suicide at California mental hospital is eighth since federal investigation began

A 50-year-old patient at the state mental hospital in San Bernardino has died after hanging himself in his bedroom, officials say, bringing the number of suicides at Patton State Hospital to eight since the U.S. Department of Justice began investigating violations of patients’ civil rights at California’s mental hospitals in 2002.

New York Times: A Woman’s Desire to Work Is Thwarted by a Body That Strains to Keep Up

Ms. Gbalajobi’s predicament highlights the obstacles permanent residents face when seeking social services, obstacles that American citizens do not. Medicaid restricts her to a limited number of doctors’ visits. She does not qualify for residence in any shelter other than Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven beneficiary agencies of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, and the wait for a place there is eight years.

Like many needy American citizens, she goes to the hospital when she is sick instead of seeing a primary care doctor. And she has been run ragged by the social services merry-go-round: Her public assistance is often cut off without warning or explanation, requiring a trip to Downtown Brooklyn weighed down with paperwork attesting to her residency status and lack of income.

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

Philippa Willitts at The F-Word: Let Go [also at incurable hippie]

It was pretty precarious. The city centre pavements were worse than I’d anticipated, but I did most of what I had to do, then waited for my bus home.

It was when the bus arrived that the presumably well-meaning man grabbed me. From behind. By the shoulders. The jumping-out-of-my-skin which resulted was far more likely to make me lose my balance than any amount of ice, and his holding onto my shoulders was hardly going to help with that.

It was only when he said, “Here, let me help you on the bus” that I knew I wasn’t being mugged.

jonquil at Rosemary for Remembrance – Doctor, doctor, tell me the news

Photophobia has been a diagnostic marker of migraine at least since the second century, when Galen described it. Yet it isn’t real until somebody finds the associated brain anatomy; until then, you might just be making it up. Chronic pain isn’t real until the doctor can see it.

Pfeh.

10Connects.com: Haitian doctor takes 100 patients into his home

Somehow, the house wasn’t damaged in Tuesday’s quake, which leveled nearly all the other houses in the hillside neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Soon after the shaking stopped, neighbors started showing up at Claude Surena’s doorstep.

Now, he’s running a triage center, treating patients on his shaded patio with food and supplies salvaged from ruined homes.

The Seattle Times: ORCA transit-card renewal for elderly, disabled not so simple

For most people, the switch to an ORCA transit card is simple. They either apply online, get a subsidized card at work or tap the screen at any ticket-vending machine at any Sound Transit rail station.

But far more effort is demanded from people who are elderly or disabled.

Since December, thousands have had to find their way to a King County Metro customer-service counter downtown. Earlier this month, they waited in lines up to an hour or more to prove to the next available customer-service representative that they qualified for a discounted fare pass.

Ajith C. S. Perera at the Sunday Times (Sri Lanka): ‘Enabling elections’ for disabled persons: Accessible polling booths

The way a country treats its ‘dis-abled’ population and the extent to which they are fully-fledged respected citizens in attending to day-to-day normal life, is a realistic, internationally recognized, true measure of a country’s good governance and a far more telling indicator of society’s development than GDP. […]

Of the estimated 14.5 million eligible voters, around 2 million are physically dis-abled persons.

However, I am personally aware of many people and, that includes persons with debilitating ailments or conditions that often go unnoticed, persons with restricted mobility and/or visually impaired on the basis of short term or long term physical/sensory disability, elderly and even the pregnant, who although very much desired to go and cast their valuable votes have been reluctantly compelled to refrain from exercising this right, due to potential safety hazards and/or physical barriers either in approaching their polling stations and / or accessing their polling booths – i.e. the right to access, another vital public facility.

Time: The 50 Best Inventions of 2009: The $20 Knee

Now a team of Stanford engineering students has designed a knee that’s not only dirt cheap — just $20 — but also mimics the natural joint’s movements. Developed with the Jaipur Foot group, the JaipurKnee is made of self-lubricating, oil-filled nylon and is both flexible and stable, even on irregular terrain. The device is being tested in India; more than 300 people have been fitted so far.

The JaipurKnee comprises five pieces of plastic and four nuts and bolts. It requires no special tools and takes just a few hours to manufacture

More information in the Stanford University News: $20 artificial knee for patients in the developing world