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 Big Picture: At Work, Part II, Photo 24

Photo caption: A visually impaired man works at a hi-tech call center in Moscow, Russia on December 18, 2009. Once encouraged to take dreary factory-line jobs making electric plugs and curlers, blind people in Moscow now have a new option: working at a hi-tech call center. The center in northern Moscow employs almost 1,000 blind and visually impaired people, a bold experiment in a nation where people with disabilities can struggle to find interesting jobs – or indeed any job at all.

Photo description: The photo shows a man in profile, wearing large headphones, leaning close to three or four flat screen monitors. He seems to be typing. The monitor displays four words in very large font. The room is dim, so the man is seen in silhouette.

IP at Modus dopens: De-centering non-disability

At my university, certain kinds of reasonable adjustments are considered reasonably “standard” for disabled students. These are things like getting extra time on exams, or having your classes specially timetabled in accessible buildings.

Wait a minute, did I just say “extra time”? “Specially”? Compared to what?

Ricky Buchanan at ATMac: Accessibility and the iPad: First Impressions

So what’s new with the iPad which is relevant to assistive technology and use by people with disabilities?

Size!

The iPad is bigger. I know this is obvious, but the implications are that people motor control problems such as cerebral palsy may be able to use this device more easily than the smaller ones, as less very fine motor control is needed for many tasks.

[Also covered: External keyboard, Speakers, Simple interface, and the existing iPhone accessibility features.]

PortlyDyke at Shakesville: Watch Your Mouth – Part 3: Use Your Big-Kid Thesaurus

[…] — but there is one thing I deeply dislike — [Rachel Maddow’s] continuing use of the words “lame” and “lame-itude” as an idiom for “bad”. I even wrote to her about it (gently, civilly).

At first, I thought my reaction to her use of this term was me “just” being offended by the ablism demonstrated (which would have been enough) — but I realized later that another thing that grated on me was that she seemed to me to be using this ablist term in order to sound cool. There is just something about the emphasis she uses when she says it that rings to me of the 11th-grader who’s trying to get in with the popular kids. It seems out of place in the midst of her usual Rhodes-Scholar presentation, and it jars the hell out of me every single time. I want to say to her: “Rachel, you’re the first out news-lesbian headlining her own show on a major network. You’re cool enough already.”

Access for All: Nothing about us without us: the European parliament drives forward disability rights

On 27 January 2009, the renewed Disability Intergroup of the European Parliament and the European Disability Forum toasted the New Year in Brussels at a very well-attended event. The new President of the Intergroup – for the first time a person with a disability himself, – and the disability movement presented the Disability Pact to a hundred of activists and 20 MEPs from various political groups and nationalities.

stevefromsacto at calitics: How Low We Have Sunk

A homecare provider from San Diego told legislators yesterday how she and her client–a quadriplegic Vietnam veteran–were threatened and harrassed by a fraud investigator from the state.

The Consumerist: Continental Gate Agent Tells Passenger She Thinks Her Mental Illness Is Fake [includes description of anxiety attack]

She gets on the phone with reservations and looks at my papers – and then has the audacity to say that my doctor’s note looks like a fake and, since it was dated in December, it must be an old note and, therefore, not applicable anymore. She asks me what my disability is, since it’s not apparent to her, which, according to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), she can not technically ask. She mentions to the reservations desk, in a low voice that I was not suppose to hear, that she doubts my disability.

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.

Elizabeth Switaj at Gender Across Borders: What does a (disabled) feminist [poet] look like?

For mainstream feminists who are looking to get a piece of the pie rather than to change it into something more nutritious, disability is the last thing they want to be associated with. To put it more generously, women often feel that in order to be treated as fully human let alone to succeed professionally they need to prove that they are more skilled and more generally able than men.

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Want to Participate in Updating “Our Bodies, Ourselves”?

Our Bodies Ourselves is seeking up to two dozen women to participate in an online discussion on sexual relationships.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town: And still they defend him

Much of the language that anti-vax advocates use about their children with autism is also breathtakingly negative. They are describing their own children, in public and often with the child right there beside them, as “soulless” and emotionally/physically destructive creatures who have ruined their dreams of a normal family life, as children who have had their “real self” kidnapped by autism.

Patrick Alan Coleman at Blogtown (The Portland Mercury): Breaking: Does Whole Foods’ New “No Fatties” Employee Incentive Program

We’ve received a call back from Amy Klare of BOLI who is still concerned, despite Whole Foods promise to look at disabled employees’ participation in the program, suggesting Whole Foods may still open themselves up to liability from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“How are they going to evaluate how a person has a disability?” she asked. “How are they going to do determine that?”

She was also concerned that many of the health indicators, or bio-metrics as Whole Foods calls them, may not be as neutral as they seem to be. “This could also have a disproportionate affect on African Americans or other racial minorities,” she said, noting the prevalence of high blood pressure in African American communities.

Cold Snapdragon: What Disability Teaches

There are other things [disability] taught you as well. In relation to yourself. In relation to your family, your friends, and all those other acquaintances who populate your life.

The Border Watch: Community service recognised [editorial note: Heavily othering language. And how nice to know that PWD don’t have the “worries” of inaccessibility, discrimination, hate, poverty, abuse, rape and murder. Can I live in this world? ~L ]

But on Australia Day, Graham [Bignell] finally gave in and accepted the Australia Day Citizen of the Year Award? […]

Graham, who is also a carer for two people with disabilities, said he would continue to work with people with disabilities.

“It is the friendship. Life is great for them and they don’t have all the worries of life. It rubs off on you and you just feel so good in their company,” he said.

MK News: Oxygen in aeroplanes should be free as air

John Mugford, 58, from Emerson Valley, has enlisted the help of local MP Dr Phyllis Starkey to petition airline companies to stop preventing passengers from bringing their own oxygen cylinders on to planes and charging hundreds of pounds extra for them to use the oxygen that the airline provides. […]

He has added his voice to The British Lung Foundation’s ‘Oxygen on Planes’ campaign, which is encouraging other airlines to follow the example now being set by Thomson, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in ensuring that people with a lung condition do not have to pay extra. […] “To refuse patients the right to carry medical equipment that has been certified as safe, and then to charge large sums for alternative provision, is outrageous.”

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 Big Picture: Fire and Ice

Image caption: “Sled hockey player Nikko Landeros, of Berthoud, Colorado (right), takes part in a scrimmage with Tyler Carron in the Boulder Valley YMCA in Lafayette Colorado on January 2nd, 2010. Three years ago, high school wrestlers Landeros and Carron lost their legs when they were hit by a car while changing a flat tire. It didn’t take long for Landeros to pick up sled hockey, and he’ll be competing in Vancouver in the Paralympics. Carron is on the junior national team.”

Image description: “Two sled hockey players on the ice on low, metal, skateboard-sized sleds. Their gloved hands hold metal poles used to steer and to strike the puck. Both wear helmets. Landeros wears a Colorado Avalanche jersey and Carron a white USA jersey. Both men intently look at and seem to move toward the puck in the ice between them.”

Cat in a Dog’s World: Book Review Series: The Ethics of Autism

But I have to say that I find these kinds of questions incredibly irritating and dehumanizing. Autistic people do not need non-autistic people (using simplistic schematics of autism devised by other non-autistic people) to theorize in order to recognize our humanity or membership to “the moral community” […] Why is our personhood and right to autonomy up for debate?

Even if Barnbaum does have some (peculiar) kind of pro-neurodiversity sentiment, her project seems to be entirely misconceived. She starts with presumptions which treat autistic people and non-autistic people as beings from separate planets, are overly simplistic, and are silencing of autistic voices.

Prof Susurro: Want Ad For Feminist Revolution Pt. I

During that meeting, she disclosed that, like me, she has a hidden disability that in no way impacts her ability to do the job for which she was hired. […]

By the time she reached home, her offer of hire had been rescinded on the basis that she might “put youth in danger” and “serious concerns about her ability to come to work on time.” My friend was dumb-founded and has been silently weighing her options all the while feeling completely dehumanized by an all white, all female, “feminist”, “social justice”, agency who didn’t skip a beat in hiring a white able-bodied female to replace her.

LWN.net: LCA: HackAbility

Bright purple hair seems certain to make Liz Henry distinct from the crowd, but it’s another attribute that she came to linux.conf.au 2010 to talk about: her wheelchair. […]

Disability-friendly software, too, is not an easy hack; accessibility tends to be treated as a last-minute add-on. Web site accessibility, too, is often an afterthought, and tends to be user-focused. This approach tends to lead to sub-standard solutions, but it also fails to lead to a free, do-it-yourself culture. We need good accessibility for developers too. […]

As an example of good and bad ways of doing things, Liz contrasted the Free Wheelchair Mission and Whirlwind Wheelchair International. The former makes dirt-cheap wheelchairs out of lawn chairs and bicycle wheels, then ships them by the container load to poor countries. It seems like a good idea, but dumping all those cheap chairs devastates any local market that may have developed. When the chairs break (which tends to happen soon), there’s nobody left to help keep them going. Whirlwind, instead, is focused on partnering with local industry and sharing information, creating a more hackable solution with more people to hack on it.

Patricia E Bauer: Shriver to Emanuel: Let’s work together to end ‘R-word’

In the wake of a news report that the White House chief of staff used the words “f–g retarded” in a strategy session, Special Olympics chairman Timothy Shriver called on Rahm Emanuel to join his campaign to stamp out the “R-word.”

Shriver’s letter to Emanuel [PDF], released today, said the terms “retard” and “retarded” perpetuate stereotypes and stigma against people with intellectual disabilities, and are “just as painful as any number of racial or ethnic slurs, jokes or taunts that society has committed to eradicating from our lexicon.”

The Irish Times: Half of all adults with a disability have trouble coping with daily tasks – study

More than half of all adults living with a disability say they have experienced difficulties going shopping, getting away for a holiday, taking part in community life and socialising in public venues, according to a new study. […]

While some adults with a disability said they had made improvements to their home to help assist them carry out tasks on their own, 52 per cent of adults in private households said a lack of money meant they were unable to adapt their homes.

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.

Laura Hershey: Women and Disability and Poetry (Not Necessarily in That Order)

For decades, the disability community has squabbled over the extent to which disabilities are experienced as inherent problematic biological conditions, or strictly as a social minority status. We’ve also debated whether to distinguish sharply between disease and disability, resisting their conflation as a symptom of medical colonization of our lives; or to embrace chronic and acute illness as another dimension of the disability experience. […]

For me, this is why we need poetry. Ultimately, dichotomies can’t be resolved by turning up the volume, drowning out disagreements and inconsistencies. To get anywhere near a truthful representation of our lives, we need nuance, texture, color, smell. We need open-ended questions, unexpected answers, unlikely combinations. We need prickly, messy, mundane details, rendered in words as fresh as rainfall. We need the wheeling narrative, the dust-flecked sunlit lyric.

StarNews Online: Social media opens social world to elderly, disabled

Social media is developing into more than a pastime for the elderly and disabled. If implemented properly, it could become their social lifeline. For some residents at Davis Health Care Center and Champions Assisted Living in Porters Neck, this is already the case. […]

Sixty-nine-year-old Edsel Odom suffered two simultaneous strokes on May 2, 2003. He now uses a wheelchair and clicks a mouse with his single functioning thumb. To type, he uses an infrared device mounted on a baseball cap.

Sydney Morning Herald: Haiti hospital faces psychiatric surge

The Haitian government’s Mars and Kline Psychiatric Centre was founded in 1958, which might just be when its wards received their last coat of paint, and was in a desperate situation even before the January 12 catastrophe.[…]

“This is a completely exceptional situation,” said Jean-Wihelde, “but our problems began long before the earthquake. “The house was designed for 36 boys and 11 women, but people kept coming, and we had 150 people,” he explained, adding that at any one time 500 outpatients would also visit for consultations and medication.

“Behavioural difficulties, hallucinations, cocaine addiction, people with psychological disorders, things like that,” he said. “They were terrified in the quake. They are mentally unwell, and this made it worse.”

RocNow: Gov. Paterson meets with upstate news organizations

Paterson was greeted by about 75 disability rights protesters chanting, “Don’t cut our freedom,” this afternoon when he arrived at the WXXI studios.

The protesters want the governor to drop a proposed cap on care for a person with disabilities. There currently is no limit on how much time someone can be cared for by a personal care aide, but Paterson wants to limit that to 12 hours a day.

The protesters say that the proposed cap would force more people into costly nursing home care.

Inside Bay Area: CityWise: Oakland settles lawsuit with disability rights group

City officials reached a settlement this week with the Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates over a 2007 lawsuit that said the city was ill-prepared to help disabled people in the event of a disaster such as an earthquake or firestorm.

The agreement requires Oakland to implement programs to specifically address the needs of the city’s disabled residents in its emergency preparedness plans. […] Oakland took stock of what shelter space it had available for those with disabilities after the lawsuit was filed. The city also hired a consultant to evaluate Oakland’s capacity to help disabled residents and to make recommendations on how to improve.

Karla Gilbride, an attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, said that when the lawsuit was filed, Oakland had an array of deficiencies in its emergency plans.

Bad Cripple: Ashley Treatment and the Parental Update

What the parents have done is make some inroads among four men–Allen, Diekema, Fost and Kappy. All their references in medical journals refer to these men alone. No mention is made of a single critic. Hundreds of “supportive” and private emails are referred to on their blog yet not a single critic is identified or worthy of passing reference. One possible explanation for this is the fact the parents accept without question a medical model of disability.

More on the “Ashley Treatment”:

• The “Ashley Treatment” blog
• Mysteries and Questions Surrounding the Ashley X Case
• Planet of the Blind: Body, Body, Who’s Got the Body? Or Another Kind of Modest Proposal
• DREDF: Modify the System, Not the Person
• F.R.I.D.A. Feminist Response In Disability Activism: Ashley X Parents Continue to Advocate for Unnecessary Medical Interventions
• The Martin Treatment

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.

Failblog: Drop Off Spot Fail

jesse_the_k in access_fandom: Making Space for Wheelchairs and Scooters

These guidelines come out of my experience working on WisCon, a 1000-person annual convention in a recently remodeled hotel.

There are many elements to making your event wheelchair-accessible. While U.S. law requires minimal wheelchair access, never rely on a venue’s general assertion of “oh yes, we’re accessible.” Those little wheelchair stickers? Anyone can buy them and post them at will, even at the bottom of a flight of steps.

Anthony A. Jack at Social Science Lite: The Insolence of Understanding: Part II

I ask again, what exactly is being said when we use other people’s situation as teaching moments for privileged individuals. The directors had Artie seem enthusiastic about the fact that his friends will be joining him in being wheelchair bound. I am not sure exactly what his response is supposed to mean. As I argued in part I, “we must realize that we do not become who we pretend to be but also that who we pretend to be are real. It is the mismatch between the show of solidarity and the reality of the life of those individuals that I find most troubling. The insolence of understanding.”

The Guardian: Mother cleared of bedridden daughter’s attempted murder

A mother who helped her daughter end her own life by handing her morphine and administering other drugs has been cleared of attempted murder.

BBC: New transport law to protect disabled passengers in NI

A new law making it illegal for transport operators to discriminate against disabled customers comes into force in Northern Ireland on Monday.

The “Disability Transport Regulations” cover trains, buses, coaches, taxis, vehicle rental and breakdown services. It is now unlawful to treat a disabled person less favourably than able-bodied customers by offering a lower standard of service, for example.

Seattle News: Take an Ax to It

But the Association of Washington Business is backing a bill, with support from both parties, that would tighten constraints on who qualifies for workers’ comp and give businesses the option to settle out of expensive ongoing claims with lump-sum payments.

Herring-Puz says these bills are “blatant attempts to cut benefits, and that’s all they are.”

The Record.com: Cedar Hill bylaw violates rights of poor and disabled, municipal board says

The bylaw in question banned new social housing and social services and some forms of rental housing from a 10-block area called Cedar Hill, which is adjacent to the downtown.[…] The 2005 [City of Kitchener] bylaw banned lodging houses, social service establishments that provide crisis care or onsite counselling, residential care facilities, small houses, or single detached houses with more than two bedrooms. Owners have to live on the premises of new rental housing. […]

The [Ontario Municipal Board] said the city failed to consider the need to improve accessibility to housing and services for people with disabilities. The city bylaw also failed to take into account the importance of housing for people with low incomes, physical or mental challenges or other health issues.

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.

Cripchick: wanting to live a disability justice lifestyle

i am thinking constantly about the contradiction and the space between wanting to live a disability justice lifestyle — desperately wanting to dismantle capitalist rules of productivity that leave out many of us and force us to give up our bodies and our labor for nothing that frees our communities— but also finding my life very rooted in a disability rights assimilationist model— i can do anything this other person can do, just need the right accomodations, just need more opportunities/laws/connections, just need to work harder…

WHEELIE cATHOLIC: It has nothing to do with disability

So-called solutions that keep the experience of being disabled segregated and “special” often fail. They don’t take into account that the ultimate solution is for the experience of being disabled to be recognized as a valid and equal state of being with the same rights and privileges as being nondisabled. Moreover, as we are seeing in the current economy, programs that are considered “special” are often the first to be cut in a budget crisis. Solutions that are grounded in charity also fail since relying on the kindness of strangers tends to keep people stuck with unpredictable results for what are very real needs.

Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction: Tools of the trade [NSFW warning] – on viewing various things used to relieve sexual dysfunction as assistive devices.

lisa at Sociological Images: Lady Gaga’s Disability Project

So, what do you think? Do you think Gaga is trying to make some kind of statement? Or is she just trying to be edgy and doesn’t really care about the issue? (As seems to be common in fashion.)

Racialicious: Quoted: The RZA on Metaphors for the Black Man in America, and its comment thread. [***WARNING: ableism in post and this pull-quote]

When I first saw Night of the Living Dead, I was scared to death. But when I watched it again at age sixteen (when they were up to Day of the Dead), I’d gotten knowledge of myself, and could relate to what it was saying about America. The dead were alive, but they were blind, deaf, and dumb. So to me, they were symbolic of black men in America.

The dead in those movies are alive – that’s just a description of physical matter, it’s active – but they don’t have life. Life comes when you have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, when you can see for real, touch and feel for real, know for real. Then you are truly living.

Lois Watson at stuff.co.nz: Disabled TV heroine dies

In 1996 more than 600,000 people tuned in to watch the documentary Shelly has a Baby, which showed how [Michelle] Belesarius, who weighed just 27.5kg, fought against the odds and medical advice to have a healthy baby girl, Michela.

China Daily: Disabled court reeks of unethical laziness

I went to a court hearing last week in Beijing to hear the case of a person with disabilities.

The 32-year-old man with speaking and hearing impairments was from a village in Hebei province. He was accused of stealing two pairs of trousers and some cash from a mall. However, I realized that this case was unbalanced.

First was the unprofessional interpreter.

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.