The National Federation of the Blind press release:


WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents 30 million Americans who cannot read print due to disabilities; the Authors Guild, with a membership of eight thousand American writers; and the Association of American Publishers, consisting of 300 publishers representing 85 percent of all published materials in the United States, March 9 issued the following statement regarding access to books by Americans with print disabilities:

"The growth in the number of books offered in electronic and audio formats has created tremendous opportunities for the millions of Americans who are blind or have other print disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to read printed books in the same way that other Americans typically do. This large community constitutes a previously-untapped market that is hungry for the educational, inspirational, and recreational opportunities that books can provide, and now offers a significant commercial opportunity to the publishing industry.

“The Reading Rights Coalition, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers believe that the contents of books should be as accessible to individuals with print disabilities as they are to everyone else. To that end, these groups agree to work together and through the communities they represent to ensure that when the marketplace offers alternative formats to print books, such as audio and electronic books, print-disabled consumers can access the contents of these alternative formats to the same extent as all other consumers."

About the Reading Rights Coalition

The Reading Rights Coalition consists of thirty-one organizations that represent the estimated thirty million Americans who can not read print. The member organizations of the Reading Rights Coalition believe that access to the written word is the cornerstone of education and democracy, and new information technologies must SERVE individuals with disabilities rather than acting as barriers.

From The News-Observer:


GREENVILLE, N.C. -- Donors across North Carolina are helping to restore the lives of people injured in Haiti's earthquake by giving, literally, parts of themselves.

Travis Dessoffy (pictured), who runs the Greenville office of Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, will need a U-Haul to deliver all the artificial hands, feet and joints, as well as crutches, canes and walkers, donated so far to help Haiti's amputees. Dessoffy will deliver the items to Physicians for Peace in Norfolk, Va., a nonprofit that will ship them to Haiti.

Hanger is the largest U.S. producer of prosthetic equipment. All the company's 600-plus offices are participating in the limb drive, including those in Raleigh, Cary and Durham.

In addition, members of the N.C. Association for Medical Equipment Services have sent truckloads of goods, including bandages, crutches, wheelchairs and oxygen concentrators to Haiti, according to Beth Bowen, the trade group's spokeswoman in Cary.

An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people have had limbs amputated as a result of crush injuries during the Haiti quake or because of infections that weren't properly tended afterward. Aid groups have planned a new hospital wing for amputees and new production facilities where Haitians will learn to build prosthetics.

It will be weeks or months before the swelling and tenderness have subsided so the injured can be fitted for replacement limbs. Child amputees may have to be fitted many times before they're grown.

In the meantime, Physicians for Peace, working with several other groups, can collect, sort and repair prosthetics that patients in this country no longer want or need. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bars the re-use of prosthetics here, but Haiti has no such rule.

"They'll be happy with anything they get," Dessoffy said.

About 80 percent of the patients he sees in his practice have lost limbs to diabetes, Dessoffy said, and their prostheses range from mechanical, spring-loaded knees to pneumatic, hydraulic hips. Hands and feet may be plain, soft rubber or high-density plastic and carbon graphite. The donor parts vary in skin tone. There are masculine hands, and dainty feet with painted nails.

Dessoffy prefers to fit patients with exactly the prosthetic they need for the activities they perform, whether it's surf fishing or pick-up basketball.

"I'm just making a tool," he said. "If you hand me a nail, I don't want to make a screwdriver."

Specialists working with patients in Haiti will likely lean toward low-tech solutions because those parts will be easier and less costly to maintain.

Even before the earthquake, Physicians for Peace reported that Haiti had 800,000 disabled people, many of whom were treated as outcasts. Physicians for Peace and other agencies are collecting supplies and organizing medical volunteers to set up prosthetic manufacturing operations in Port-au-Prince and at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, 60 miles away. The hospital, undamaged in the quake, will also be the site of a rehabilitation center for amputees.

Ron Sconyers, president and CEO of Physicians for Peace, said a limb replacement gives an amputee two things: hope, and a chance for a normal life.

"The most amazing thing we see is with upper-extremity amputees," Sconyers said. "When they get a prosthetic, the first thing they want to do is hug somebody."

Louis Brown, who runs Hanger's Raleigh office, has so far collected about a half-dozen prosthetic legs to send to Haiti. Brown hopes to get more.

"There's always a change when you put somebody back in a functioning capacity," he said, "and help them to have an independent life."

From IRIN News:

BOSASSO, Somalia -- The number of people seeking mental health treatment has increased in Bosasso, the commercial capital of Somalia's autonomous region of Puntland, despite the existence of only one small health unit, officials said.

"We have only two rooms; one for males and one for females, with five beds each," Abdulkadir Khalif Ali, the nurse who manages the Bosasso general hospital's mental health wing. "The demand is rising; there are days when I have 20 or 30 patients, some requiring hospitalization, but I have to release them because there is no space."

Ali, the only qualified medical employee in the unit, told IRIN there was no psychiatrist. "I do almost everything a doctor would do," he added. "But we could do with one, no question."

The hospital recorded some 844 patients in 2009, despite the lack of mental health facilities and staff.

Francesca Rivelli of the protection sector, psycho-social support and mental health, of the NGO Gruppo per le Relazioni Transculturali (GRT), told IRIN the hospital was far too inadequate for the number of people it served.

"It is too small if we consider the inhabitants of Bosasso and moreover if we consider that the MHD [mental health department] at Bosasso hospital also serves people from all over Puntland and south-central Somalia," she said.

GRT set up the mental illness unit in 2004 and supported it up to 2008 when it stopped the support due to lack of donor funding. "There is support for malaria, TB and HIV/Aids but not so much for mental health," Rivelli.

Cases of post-stress traumatic syndrome have increased in Somalia mainly because there has been an increase in insecurity since the fall of the Siad Barre government in 1991, coupled with sporadic clashes, displacement and the daily uncertainty and violence in an impoverished environment, she said.

"In Somalia we're also talking about a long-standing and unique combination of harsh conditions..." said Rivelli.

Ali said most of his patients displayed an array of mental illnesses such as psychosis, mood disorders, substance abuse, depression, neurosis and epilepsy.

Unfortunately, not many aid organizations in Puntland, he added, were interested in mental health issues. "I think they are more comfortable in other areas, such as FGM/C [female genital mutilation/cutting] and other easier-to-understand diseases."

Rivelli, however, said it should not be too difficult or costly to work in the mental health sector "through fine-tuned support initiatives at secondary health system level, namely strengthening the services provided by the local MHD.

"At the outset of the intervention, it is necessary to rely on motivated and qualified medical staff providing incentives both money-wise and in terms of motivation in coordination with the hospital system, to stop the turnover and brain-drain of the already few human resources," she added.

Secondly, having psychotropic drugs provided by international agencies and donors would boost the quality of treatment offered to the patients.

There was also a need to carry out the clinical and social work side by side with professional workers such as health workers and counsellors.

Ismahan Nur had brought her 30-year-old brother-in-law from the town of Galkayo, 750km south of Bosasso, to the hospital. He had been sick for more than two years and the family tried traditional means to cure him. "We tried everything but he only got worse. He stopped eating, was not sleeping and was suspicious of everybody."

They brought him to the hospital in January and he was put on medication for schizophrenia, according to Ali. "He is much better now. He is lucid, eating and sleeping well."

Ali, however, warned that the hospital was running out of drugs. "We have started telling people to buy the drugs from the town," adding that most of the patients could not afford medicines.

According to Rivelli, in the past three years only the European Union and World Health Organization had allocated funds to some interventions in mental health in Somalia; "thus the overall budget allocated is negligible compared to the needs".

Most of that supported running costs of existing but neglected facilities, drugs, training and education campaigns, such as the initiative to free patients from being chained.

A great deal had to be done to improve mental health in Somalia. "Referral mechanisms to bridge the gap between rural and urban areas; community-based mental health programmes and research on the use of khat, gender and mental health, ex-combatants and mental health," she said.

From The Canadian Press:


A 35-year-old Canadian man who uses a wheelchair is in a Sydney, Australia hospital after being badly beaten by two teenagers.

Police say the man, reportedly from Winnipeg, was waiting for a train late Tuesday when he was approached and verbally abused by the boys.

New South Wales police say the man tried to leave, but was punched in the face and knocked from his wheelchair.

The teens then allegedly stomped on the man and hit him with metal bars before running off with his belongings and wheelchair, only to return later to continue the beating.

The attack was captured on CCTV, click here for a link to the video.

Police say a 16-year-old boy faces assault and robbery charges and media reports in Australia say a second teen has been arrested.

The man, who lives in Mosman and is in Australia on a year-long working visa, was in stable condition in Westmead Hospital.

His girlfriend, Kristin Sharrock, said she was disgusted by the assault.

“He is a wonderful, kind, generous individual,” Ms. Sharrock told the Sydney Morning Herald. “He's been through a lot in his life and he doesn't deserve what's happened.”

The man's mother was in shock today after learning of the attack.

“I can’t believe a human being would do that to someone else,” Shellan Proden said from her home in Winnipeg Beach, 60 kilometres north of Winnipeg. “It’s like a savage.”

Ms. Proden's son, the victim of the attack, does not want to be identified.

“I’ve been told ... that they’ll have to go in and do some draining of the brain. But he’s alert, he’s talking and whatever,” she said.

The Proden family has already experienced its share of tragedy. The son has been in a wheelchair for 10 years following a snowmobile accident. That same year, another snowmobile accident killed his father.

From All Headline News:


COLUMBUS, Ohio -- More immigrants with disabilities work than disabled people who were born in the United States, according to a new study from the Nationwide Children's Hospital.

Lead researcher Dr. Huiyun Xiang said the primary reason for this is that U.S.-born people with disabilities have more access to public assistance and may not depend as much on salary income.

Eligibility to public assistance for immigrants can be complicated by a number of factors such as length of residency, citizenship, refugee status and work history, Xiang said in a statement.

In 2007, there were about 24 million working-age adults with disabilities in the United States. About 8.5 million of these people were employed.

The most common type of employment for immigrants with disabilities is in production and cleaning and maintenance.

For domestic-born Americans, the most common type of work is in sales and office and administrative support, the researchers said.

The median income for a foreign-born person with disabilities was $20,000, which is $2 less a year than U.S.-born people with disabilities.

The study is published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

From The NY Times:


The Senate Finance Committee has opened an investigation into patient deaths and allegations of substandard treatment at long-term care hospitals, small specialty medical centers that treat chronically ill patients.

The investigation focuses on the Select Medical Corporation (pictured), a for-profit corporation that runs 89 long-term care hospitals, more than any other company. In a letter sent on March 8 to Select’s chief executive, Robert Ortenzio, the committee’s top two senators demanded that Select provide records about staffing levels and quality at its hospitals.

The committee has substantial power over long-term care hospitals because it oversees Medicare. The federal program spends almost $5 billion annually on the hospitals, providing about 60 percent of their total revenue.

An article in The New York Times last month detailed poor treatment and patient deaths at long-term care hospitals, which treat 200,000 seriously ill patients a year nationwide, but rarely have full-time physicians on staff. In one incident at a Select hospital in Kansas, a dying patient’s heart alarm sounded for 77 minutes before nurses responded. Select has said that it conducted an appropriate clinical review in the case and terminated a clinician involved in the patient’s care.

The article prompted the investigation, according to the letter, which was sent by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, the committee’s chairman, and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s senior Republican. The letter is not a subpoena, but companies usually respond voluntarily to such requests for information.

Select Medical said that it would cooperate fully with the inquiry. Through a spokeswoman, Carolyn Curnane, the company referred to the Times article as misleading and inaccurate and said it looked forward to providing the committee with accurate facts about the quality of care in its long-term care hospitals.

Mr. Baucus and Mr. Grassley asked Select to disclose its policies for patient monitoring, emergency situations and staffing, including physician involvement at its hospitals and staff turnover. Former employees of Select have said that the company’s hospitals are understaffed and rely heavily on temporary nurses.

The letter also requests that Select disclose information about its discharge policies. Former employees have also said that the company presses to keep patients for 25 days and then discharge them almost immediately, because patients are most profitable if they stay exactly 25 days under government reimbursement rules. At some Select hospitals, the 25th day is called the “magic day,” ex-employees say.

The company says it has a demonstrated record of providing quality care and that patients are seen daily by doctors, while facilities without doctors have doctors on call for emergencies. It added that it did not discharge or hold patients for financial reasons. In a separate letter, the senators asked that the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative agency, examine federal and state oversight of all long-term care hospitals, saying that they worried the facilities might expose patients “to an unreasonable risk of harm.”

Only a few long-term care hospitals existed in the early 1980s. But more than 400 have opened nationally in the last 25 years. Experts on the treatment of critically ill patients say that growth has been driven mostly by Medicare rules that offer high payments to hospitals that treat patients for an average of 25 days or more.

Unlike other specialized hospitals, including psychiatric or children’s hospitals, long-term care hospitals do not treat specific types of patients or offer services unavailable in regular medical centers. They are defined solely by the fact that they keep patients longer than other hospitals. They are also smaller than a typical hospital, averaging about 60 beds, and do not have emergency rooms.

If their patients need surgery or suffer medical emergencies, they are usually transferred back to general hospitals.

Supporters of the hospitals say that even without staff physicians, they provide quality care and play an important role by treating patients who are too sick for nursing homes but are not improving at traditional hospitals.

The questions about long-term care hospitals center on the for-profit side of the industry, led by Select and Kindred Healthcare, another publicly traded company.

Run by Robert Ortenzio and his father, Rocco, who collectively have made $400 million since founding the company in 1996, Select tells investors that it increases its profits by monitoring staffing levels. At a presentation last week, the company said it had raised profit margins at its hospitals to 19 percent in 2009, from 16 percent in 2008, increasing cash flow by $54 million.

But former employees, state inspection reports and lawsuits paint a disquieting picture of the care that Select provides.

In 2007 and 2008, Select’s hospitals were cited at a rate four times that of regular hospitals for serious violations of Medicare rules, according to an analysis by The Times. Other long-term care hospitals were cited at a rate about twice that of regular hospitals.

Medicare has few levers against long-term care hospitals — or any hospitals. Medicare and Medicaid account for almost half of all hospital spending nationally, but Medicare cannot fine hospitals if it finds low-quality care, or force them to make staff changes. Its only remedy is to bar hospitals from the program entirely, a penalty so draconian the government rarely uses it.

Select has criticized the original article, calling its analysis faulty and noting that it treats many severely ill patients.

Since the article ran, physicians, patients and their families have contacted The Times about other disturbing incidents at Select hospitals.

According to a doctor’s deposition in a lawsuit, nurses at a Select hospital in Tulsa, Okla., injected a relatively healthy 79-year-old woman with 10 times the amount of insulin she was supposed to receive back in January 2009. They then failed to notify her doctor for at least 90 minutes after they discovered that she had fallen into a coma. The woman, Ruth Tanner, died a month later without fully regaining consciousness, according to medical records and the lawsuit.

Select Medical generally does not comment on pending lawsuits, so out of respect for the legal process and the parties involved, it will not do so in the Tanner case, the company spokeswoman, Ms. Curnane, said.

Dan Graves, an attorney for Ms. Tanner’s family, said that family members agonized after the overdose. “Now their grief and loss has been multiplied by the knowledge that other families have suffered similar tragedies because of Select’s practices.”

From the Chicago Tribune:

CHICAGO — Faced with a crushing influx of disability claims from Vietnam War veterans exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, the Department of Veterans Affairs said March 9 it would automate part of the cumbersome system that has left many thousands of veterans waiting many months and sometimes years for payments.

The announcement from the VA is a tacit admission that the 80-year-old department is close to being overwhelmed by the volume of claims not only from Vietnam veterans but from those of more recent wars in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. The backlog of unresolved disability claims has exceeded 1 million, and the department last year cleared the way for at least 200,000 more when it said it would consider claims of Vietnam veterans suffering from Parkinson's disease, hairy cell leukemia and ischemic heart disease, all of which the have been linked to Agent Orange.

The VA has reached a breaking point in terms of its ability to handle the claims of more than 3 million veterans and this plan would be, at best, an initial step aimed at the most time-consuming claims, according to the department. As the Chicago Tribune reported in December, service-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans soared more than 60 percent from 2003 to 2009, reaching $15.4 billion, or 45 percent of the $34 billion the VA paid in veterans' disability claims last year. With other diseases being linked to exposure to Agent Orange, the numbers of veterans and the cost to treat them will continue to increase and the VA will be increasingly hard-pressed to handle the demand.

"Veterans whose health was harmed during their military service are entitled to the best this nation has to offer," said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, a disabled Vietnam veteran who is also a retired Army general. "We are undertaking an unprecedented modernization of our claims process to ensure timely and accurate delivery of that commitment."

The department said it plans to advertise for private sector bids to develop an automated system, with implementation scheduled before the end of summer. The system will cover only a portion of the claims the department handles.

Veterans' organizations applauded the move, but with some skepticism. Why not automate the system for all claims, one official asked. And will claims for some diseases be given preference over other, long-delayed claims, another asked.

"This is so far long overdue it isn't even funny," said John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America. Rowan said the concept of streamlining the claims system is a positive development, but it remains to be seen whether the automation system will work as smoothly as intended.

"Shinseki knows damn well the system's no good, and we really appreciate what he is trying to do," Rowan added. "We'll just have to wait to see the details."

The VA said it plans to shorten the average time it takes to consider claims to 90 days or less; with the current bureaucratic logjam claims can take 200 days, not counting appeals. Paul Sullivan, executive director of the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said that if Shinseki "failed to act...the VA benefit claims processing system may have collapsed."

Sullivan said the "underlying cause" of the problem has been building since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was the "failure of the Bush administration... to beef up the VA" that forced Shinseki to act. Veterans' claims for post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have skyrocketed since the Vietnam War, and Sullivan said PTSD claims are just as worthy to be put on the VA's planned fast track as Agent Orange-related illnesses.

The health effect of Agent Orange, which was used in Vietnam to defoliate trees and jungle hiding places for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, is still evolving. While it is not the primary culprit driving up disability costs, the growing number of illnesses linked to exposure to the chemical- cancers, diabetes and other disabling maladies- has helped push the VA beyond its ability to handle claims.

In recent years the VA has added thousands of workers to process the increasing caseload, but that has done little to un-clog the system. Shinseki called the VA's automation plan a "major step forward."

"With the latest, fastest and most reliable technology, VA hopes to migrate the manual processing of these claims to an automated process that meets the needs of today's veterans in a more timely manner," Shinseki said.

From SFSU:


Anita Silvers, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department and a nationally recognized advocate for disability rights, was awarded the 2010 Quinn Prize from the American Philosophical Association (APA).

Silvers (pictured) is the first scholar from a non-doctoral-awarding university to receive the prize, which honors renowned American philosopher Philip L. Quinn. Conferred by the APA board of officers, the honor includes a symposium dedicated to Silvers’ scholarship in social philosophy at the April 2010 APA Pacific Division meeting and a $2,500 prize, which Silvers plans to donate to the University.

“Many things contributed to the selection of Anita,” said APA Executive Director David E. Schrader. “In addition to her decades of service to the APA she is viewed as a national leader in promoting high-quality philosophical education in non-doctoral institutions. She was a pioneer in advocating and developing critical thinking as a basic subject for undergraduates nationwide and she was at the forefront of welcoming women, underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities into the field of philosophy.”

Disabled by polio as a child, Silvers is a leading advocate for equality for persons with disabilities. Her papers and books have contributed to the legal interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990. Her groundbreaking and acclaimed monograph, “Disability. Difference. Discrimination: Formal Justice” (1998) is widely cited in legal affairs. “Americans with Disabilities” (2000), which she co-edited with Leslie Pickering Francis, anthologizes essays by other leading philosophers, as well as legal theorists, bioethicists and policymakers on the moral foundations of disability law and policy.

On the faculty at SF State since 1967, Silvers worked to make access and disability services available on California college campuses. In 1980, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on the National Council for the Humanities, the governing board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Silvers is regarded as an authority on medical ethics and bioethics, social philosophy and feminism. She is currently completing a book about a social contract theory for “outliers,” establishing inclusiveness as the primary value for justice.

“I am deeply grateful for this recognition,” Silvers said. “I feel fortunate to have been able to develop some new philosophical ideas about equality that also have been useful guides in public policy.”

The Autism Speaks news release:


NEW YORK, N.Y. -– Autism Speaks, North America's largest autism science and advocacy organization, today announced the appointment of autism advocate and author John Elder Robison (pictured) to its Scientific Advisory and Scientific Treatment Boards, which form the core of Autism Speaks' grant review process.

Robison serves as an adjunct professor in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Elms College in Chicopee, Mass. He has also served on the public review board for the National Institutes of Mental Health, and is currently involved in TMS autism research at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is the author of Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. His writing has been translated into 18 languages and is sold in more than 60 countries. Robison's next book, Be Different!, will be published in the spring of 2011.

“It's a great honor to be selected for this role in autism science and advocacy, first by the government and now by Autism Speaks,” said Robison. “I'm aware that my vote is only one among thirty, but the fact that I myself am on the spectrum will make a difference, and I certainly believe in speaking up for whatever I support.”

“It is essential that our grant funding reflects the needs and perspectives of the community we serve, namely, people with autism spectrum disorders,” said Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D., chief science officer at Autism Speaks. “We are very pleased to welcome John to our scientific review boards. His insight and skills will prove invaluable.”

Advisory Board members – who include research professionals as well as representatives with a family member diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder – review the research applications submitted to Autism Speaks, ranging from basic to clinical to treatment research. They are responsible for ensuring each proposal has scientific rigor, innovation and relevance to the mission of the organization. Robison will participate in the grant review meetings and provide insight on the relevance of each grant application to the needs of the autism community.

From The Advocate in Louisiana:


The wheelchair-bound former president of the NAACP’s local chapter and a visually impaired resident told a task force today that the city-parish isn’t doing enough to make government buildings and public facilities accessible to the handicapped.

G. Washington Eames, president emeritus of the NAACP’s Baton Rouge chapter, and Buck Rastegar, who is visually impaired, outlined their complaints at a meeting of a mayoral task force on the American with Disability Act.

Eames talked about the scarcity of handicapped parking for retrofitted vans downtown and the lack of wheelchair accessible porta-potties for downtown festivals.

He also said police are not monitoring to make sure people parking in handicapped spaces are actually handicapped.

“Handicapped spaces should not be used as a convenience,” Eames said.

Rastegar told of almost being run over by a car on Corporate Boulevard because there were no sidewalks to walk on.

Both said their complaints about those and other access issues over the years have not been addressed.

“I give up,” Rastegar said. “I’m afraid to venture out unless I’m in a familiar place.” Eames said he expects the city-parish to take action to deal with some of his complaints within the next few weeks.

He said he will decide within the next 90 days whether to file suit in federal court alleging that the city-parish is in violation of the American Disability Act.

Anita Bookter, the city-parish’s human resources director and chairwoman of the task force, said she plans to set up “sub teams” to look into the complaints of Eames and Rastegar. “We’re going to try to fix it,” Bookter said.

From The Baltimore Sun:


The often-contentious 26-year-old lawsuit that attempted to provide equality for Baltimore's special-education students but ultimately helped to change the course of the public school system is nearing an end after a federal judge agreed March 8 to end his oversight.

U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis accepted an agreement from the school system and the Maryland Disability Law Center, which had filed suit in 1984 on behalf of several special-education students, saying they were not being offered adequate services.

If the city meets the conditions of the agreement, the judge's direct oversight under a consent decree will end in July and the lawsuit will end no later than September 2012.

Under the new agreement, the city must continue to provide special-needs students with services, give them support they need to obtain a regular education, and work to reduce the numbers that are suspended each year. The state will continue to actively monitor the school system's progress until the lawsuit ends.

At a joint news conference Monday, the parties who had battled vociferously for many years said they believe great strides have been made since Chief Executive Officer Andrés Alonso took over the schools in July 2007. The state's role in putting key administrators into the schools beginning in 2005 also helped straighten out some of the failures, they said.

"This is something we should all be extraordinarily proud of," Alonso said. "At the same time there is no such thing as an end. There are areas of the work where we need to continue to improve."

The parties to the lawsuit were not always civil. Garbis, frustrated by inaction over the years, twice threatened to find city school superintendents in contempt of court and send them to jail, and at least twice appeared on the verge of putting the school system into receivership.

On other occasions, he gave large swaths of control of the system to outside administrators who reported to a court-appointed special master. At one point, a Catholic nun was put in charge of much of the system.

The most lasting influence on the school district, however, has been the influence the lawsuit had on the decision by Baltimore's then-Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to cede some control of the schools to state leaders in return for a significant boost in funding.

The governor now jointly appoints city school board members with the mayor.

Details of the agreement were still not easily negotiated. Lawyers thrashed out the wording over the weekend, and the document was signed inside the courthouse just moments before the news conference began.

On the steps of the federal courthouse in downtown Baltimore about noon was a crowd that included many prominent citizens and leaders who had played a key role in the city schools in the past two decades: Alonso, Gov. Martin O'Malley, state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, whose father had been involved, attorneys for the special-education students, school board members, teacher union leaders, education advocates and educators who had worked behind the scenes to resolve the issues.

Notably absent was Vaughn Garris, the boy whose name the lawsuit has carried and who helped propel the case forward.

Now nearly 40 years old, Garris was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July 2008 after being found guilty of killing his next-door neighbor in Woodlawn. In 1998, he told The Baltimore Sun, "I don't know if the lawsuit helped anyone. ... It didn't help me. Look where I am." He was in prison at that time for a different crime.

But the lawsuit did eventually help students in the system. Leslie Margolis, who represented the students for most of the 26 years, said that since Alonso had arrived nearly three years ago, that the school system had agreed "to work hard, to work well and to work in partnership."

But the animosity between the law center and the school system was at times palpable over the years. "I never quite imagined," Margolis said, "that I would be standing here today."

For more than two decades, the court and plaintiffs were frustrated by the school system's failure to improve services to those students who represented 18 percent of the school population and were achieving at much lower rates than their peers.

"The court found there to be a significant breakdown in everything from evaluating children, providing educational programs, to transportation for these students," Grasmick said.

Over the years, Garbis ordered a series of more and more wide-ranging controls, including detailed reporting, to attempt to make the school system help special-education children. Not all of them were effective, many observers thought at the time.

In 1996, with three lawsuits against the city schools hanging over their heads, city leaders feared that Garbis might take control of the system away from the city and put it into receivership. Then-Mayor Schmoke agreed to give up some control of the schools to the state in return for an infusion of cash. A new school board was appointed and a new superintendent hired. But the change in leadership didn't help.

By 1998, the parties in the case were locked in battle. Spending on special-education students had risen quickly and was draining funds for the rest of the system. Baltimore was spending $3,100 per pupil for regular education and $9,700 per pupil in special education.

In addition, under the eye of the federal court, the school system gave away $2 million in merchandise, trips, gift certificates and tuition in 1997. In lieu of an education, special-education students were compensated with goods such as computers, VCRs, fax machines and other electronics.

Still, nothing seemed to be improving in the system. The plaintiffs documented hundreds of students who still weren't getting services in a timely manner. And the school system teachers and administrators were required to file thousands of pages of documents to prove what they were doing.

O'Malley recalled walking through the city schools as mayor and having teachers peek from around a corner to whisper in his ear that he had to do something to help them. They were always special-education teachers, he said, asking him to help them get out from under the paperwork requirements of the lawsuit.

In 2000, the parties compromised and made a small step forward by simplifying the tasks of accounting and giving the school system a series of goals to meet in order to satisfy the judge and plaintiffs.

But by 2002, Garbis threatened to hold schools CEO Carmen Russo in contempt and jail her, as he had threatened to do with earlier CEO Walter G. Amprey. Then in 2004, in a chilly hearing before the judge, Grasmick made headlines by suggesting that the school system, in the throes of a budget deficit, might be better run by a trustee, a suggestion that was not heeded.

The state also put key managers in place in 2005 that worked alongside the school system leaders.

The changes seem to be working.

Over the past several years, the city's special-education students have posted some of the largest gains in test scores. The percentage of special-education students passing the Maryland assessments is rising at twice the rate of general education students and is now at 52 percent, up from 22 percent five years ago.

From The Irish Times:

When Stuart Lawlor was growing up in Ireland, he had few expectations about the type of career that he would choose. Being totally blind from birth meant that it was pretty likely that he would work as either a piano tuner or a telephonist as these were two of the very few work options open to him as a blind person.

Today, thanks to the arrival of new technology, he is not only a computer whiz but works training others at the National Council for the Blind (NCBI) on how to use the technology of the sighted world and compete on equal terms.

“Without assistive technology a blind person simply wouldn’t have access to the world of work today. Such technology brings access to e-mail, the web and the mobile phone. It allows us to operate in a sighted world on equal terms. We can read an e-mail or text and reply to it.”

Lawlor says the fact that software can be loaded onto standard mobile phones means that becoming connected has never been easier or more affordable for those without sight.

“The technology has broadened the range of work a disabled person can do and it has also broken down barriers. Someone with low vision for instance has access to CCTV magnifying options onto a computer screen. It also means greater access to education as well.”

Lawlor says that he is waiting for the arrival of a truly great GPS system which will allow him to navigate and travel to new places independently. He also says that there is still room for improvement in terms of access to websites that are not designed with those with a disability in mind.

“Technology makes things easier for everyone but it makes things possible for those with a disability.” This is how Niamh O’Donovan (pictured), a speech and language therapist at the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dún Laoghaire, sums it up.

O’Donovan regularly deals with patients who have lost their ability to communicate through accident, injury or stroke. She says that while it is liberating for the patient to be able to communicate again, often the family may be traumatised to think that this is only possible to do by using assistive technology.

“If you can’t communicate, you are isolated. The technology which turns text into speech enables the patient to communicate at all different levels. And there is new, more sophisticated technology coming down the line all the time. Both iPhone and Nintendo DS now have applications available to those with speech difficulties.”

O’Donovan says the tech companies are very interested in providing solutions for those with disability because such applications also appeal to the average able-bodied person as well. Apple’s new touch screen iPad launched recently is very much a case in point. There is no keyboard so it is accessible to all.

Vincent Ryan, managing director of Compuspeak which supplies Dragon Naturally Speaking software in Ireland, says he has successfully trained many people with severe physical disabilities to run their business using voice commands only. “While voice-recognition technology is hugely popular with able-bodied professionals, it offers a lifeline for many who could not manually operate a computer.”

However, while new technology solutions are coming on stream all the time, the cost of them is often prohibitive, according to O’Donovan.

The results of the National Disability Survey published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) recently indicates that half of all Irish adults with a disability in Ireland have difficulty coping with daily tasks. Michele Verdonck, an occupational therapist who is currently completing a PhD on assistive technology for the disabled, says we have a long way to go to compete with countries like Canada.

“I recently inspected a house in Canada which is fully adapted for a person with severe disabilities. The truth is that the technology already exists. What we need now is the will and the financial commitment to make it happen here.”

From ABC News in Australia:

The Family Court has granted a Queensland couple permission to have a hysterectomy performed on their 11-year-old disabled daughter.

The girl, known only as Angela, has the neurological disorder Rett Syndrome, which causes epileptic fits when she menstruates.

Family Court judge Paul Cronin found that the performance of a hysterectomy was "in the child's best interests".

Angela's disorder makes her profoundly disabled and unable to talk or use sign language.

The court, sitting in Brisbane, heard Angela acted in a similar way to a three-month-old baby.

She has to be fed and cared for and has no bladder control. She has a special walking frame she has to be strapped into, and has a person to help her.

Since she was born, Angela - whose parents married in South America and came to Australia in 1991 - has had epileptic seizures, but they are now under control through medication.

However, while the epilepsy is controlled, seizures can occur when she has a heavy menstrual period, which have been happening since she was nine years old.

The family was told by experts in March 2009 that the recommended treatment would be a hysterectomy, the court heard.

But Queensland Health - acting on legal advice - said because of the irreversible nature of the procedure it could not be conducted without a court order.

The ruling has sparked renewed debate on the rights of children with disabilities.

Mark Patterson from the National Council of Intellectual Disability says it is a difficult case.

"Sometimes people get the idea that families just do this as a matter of convenience and it's all done within five minutes," he said.

"It's not done like that at all.

"I think we need to think about the process and have some care and respect for the families and the judges involved."

The decision has outraged some ethicists including Leanne Dowse from the University of New South Wales.

"Australia became a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in July 2008," Dr Dowse said.

"That convention says that individuals with a disability have a right to respect for his or her physical integrity.

"That sort of idea means that the first position is to protect an individual from these sorts of things."

Justice Cronin said in his judgement, publicly released on Tuesday, that the procedure was "urgent and necessary".

"Angela is never going to have the benefits of a normal teenage and adult life," the judgement read.

"A fundamental consideration is ... the risks to Angela's life as well as her general health."

From WABC-TV in NY:


NEW YORK -- Having a child with autism can be challenging for families. But it can also be inspiring.

Dealing with autism can be an emotional roller coaster, as many parents and siblings of autistic children know. But the problem can create challenges that can bring joy and pride and hope. One father put all that emotion into poetry, and now it's music.

The lyrics were written by John O'Neil (pictured), father of 14-year-old James, who was diagnosed with autism at age 3.

John, a newspaper man, has written many songs, all moving, emotional lyrics about the experiences his family has shared dealing with autism.

"Some of them are pretty hard, like the experience of getting a diagnosis for your child," he said. "But some are unexpectedly wonderful."

The experiences are now music, recorded on a CD. It was put together with the help of musician friends Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, neighbors from from just down the road.

"Together, we wrote the music and got other artists to perform them," Shoshkes said.

"Found people that were very willing to help, because everybody knows somebody affected by autism," Fried said.

The CD, called "Songs of the Spectrum," is now their tool to raise funds, broaden awareness about autism and...

"To try to get people who understand what autism is and what people with autism are like, because just because somebody is different doesn't mean they should be shoved to the edge of society," O'Neil said.

A case made very well by 14-year-old James, now mainstreamed in middle school and pursuing interests in film, music and art.

"I made it," he said. "I survived."

James also reads one of his own poems on the CD.

"You always have me hearing on your side, but I don't think you can hear mine," he reads. "my side has to be heard."

James's side has to be heard, and this CD, also, should be heard. The songs were recorded by artists Jackson Browne, Valerie Carter, Marshall Crenshaw, Teddy Geiger and many others.

It also comes with an educational packet about autism, and 90 percent of proceeds go to autism organizations.

Variations of the term "Asperger's syndrome" topped Google searches Wednesday, following the second episode of NBC's "Parenthood" which features a character with the disorder.

The Justice Department is asking a federal court to prevent children from being admitted to an Arkansas institution, alleging mistreatment and unnecessary segregation at the facility.

From CNN:


NEW YORK -- People come up to Aimee Mullins (pictured) all the time and say, "you know, I have to tell you, you just don't look disabled."

The record-setting athlete, actress and model says, "And it's sweet because I know that they're confused, and they're telling me this because they know I'm missing both legs from the shin down, but they're presented with this package of a highly capable young woman. This has happened all over the world. I tell them it's interesting because I don't feel disabled."

She believes that people are not born disabled. "It's society that disables an individual by not investing in enough creativity to allow for someone to show us the quality that makes them rare and valuable and capable."

Mullins was born without fibula bones and was expected to use a wheelchair to get around. Her legs were amputated below the knees when she was a year old. She learned to walk, bike, swim and play sports using prosthetics.

While a student at Georgetown University, she competed in the NCAA Division I, using pioneering carbon-fiber prosthetic devices designed to imitate the hind legs of a cheetah. At the Paralympics in 1996, she set world records in several track events, drawing attention that landed her on magazine covers and in one media "best of" list after another.

Mullins was featured in a 1999 show by the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen and has gone on to a career as an actress. In an interview with CNN.com, she said she's beginning work on a screenplay about the life of scientist Rosalind Franklin, whose discoveries helped lead to the unlocking of the structure of DNA.

In a talk at last year's TED MED conference in San Diego, Mullins explored the concept of disability and talked about how overcoming adversity is something everyone must confront, in one way or another. [TED is a nonprofit that distributes talks on a wide variety of subjects at http://www.ted.com/; TED MED is a separate organization that licenses the TED logo and focuses on medical and health care related issues.]

Mullins spoke to CNN March 8. Here's an edited transcript:

CNN: You spoke at the TED MED conference about the negative connotations of the term "disabled." How important is it that we get the language right?

Aimee Mullins: It's not so much the word itself. The idea of being politically correct is not the goal here. It's how we use the word very casually as a label to try to encompass somebody's value to our community and the worth of their contribution to our community. That's what we need to get right.

I've had so many letters from parents or medical professionals who will say, I didn't even think about how casually I'll tell someone oh, I have a disabled child. It never even occurred to them that if they really stop to think about it, their child may have a specific medical condition that can be defined as paralysis or autism or being an amputee. ...it's how we use words and how they shape what we think about difference and other people in our community.

CNN: In your own life, how significant have these kinds of words been?

Mullins: Well for me I never ever felt the ownership or any identity with any community of disabilities. I didn't grow up being told that I was a disabled child. After the '96 games, and I was competing in Division I track at Georgetown and I was starting to get mainstream press ... where I'd be on the cover of a magazine that was heralding my speed and athletic prowess and it would say, "Disabled athlete Aimee Mullins runs faster than most people on the planet with flesh and bone legs." And I thought how does a journalist miss that, and just casually write "disabled athlete."

I've had journalists asking me what do we call you -- is it handicapped , are you disabled, physically challenged? I said well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I'm a bilateral below the knee amputee.

Ten years later, watching Oscar Pistorius go through many of the same issues I had 10-12 years ago, I realized that our language just hasn't caught up with the opportunities technology is providing for people...

I feel like today there's a different sense, so much more widespread, of people feeling like they don't want to be negated, they don't want to be marginalized, they want to make their own definitions of their identity. They want to identify themselves.

CNN: You have said that there's a stigma relating to differences between people. Do you think, just setting the word aside, is there still a stigma relating to physical limitations such as being an amputee?

Mullins: There's much, much less of a stigma here. It's my own personal experience that parents of children today who are amputees have an entirely different view. I think a lot of this is because of the Internet. They have so much more access to information and to learn about what prosthetics are out there. And a sense of sheer numbers, to learn that you're not alone. ...

I've been in developing countries where being an amputee and indeed having any kind of physical or intellectual or emotional disability is highly stigmatized. I was in Kibera [in Nairobi, Kenya], one of the largest slums in the world, last fall, and mothers of babies born with club feet are encouraged to abandon these children. If the babies are born with Down Syndrome, they're encouraged to abandon them.

If the mother doesn't actually abandon the child, the child is kept in a backroom in a shack and literally does not see the light of day. And the child is not even counted. When I asked a mother how many children she had, she told me she had three, but there were four. I was sitting in their living room and her three year old had been born with his head enlarged and the rest of his body wasn't developing at the same rate.

I had a really disturbing message from a doctor who was at TED MED and heard me speak and went to Haiti immediately after the earthquake -- he's an anesthesiologist. And he said, we have to talk because I have so many patients down here who are choosing death over amputation.

And so I'm sure that part of the social stigma in a developing country when employment and work are already scarce, it's hard for people to imagine how they could support their family financially with a different body.

CNN: How does technology play into this and how is it changing the lives of amputees?

Mullins: Technology's a huge factor. There had been a real dearth of technological advancement since the last world war. ...

I grew up as a teenager having this wonderful naivete about, well I can go see something that James Cameron dreamt up and [Oscar-winning visual effects designer] Stan Winston built it. Why can't I have that for my body? Or I would go into Madame Tussaud's wax museum and see the kind of artistry was done there for a leg. Why can't I combine that with Stan Winston's doing?

Watch James Cameron's talk at TED2010

It was a very lonely voice echoing in the wilderness... And I really think because of the two wars we are in right now and because of the fact that we have so many young men and women in this situation, it's unthinkable that we're willing to make a 19-year old irrelevant by not giving them their capabilities. And that's why you're seeing so many leaps in progress.

Again with the growth of the Internet, so many more people are saying I found some designer in Silicon Valley who's using a 3-D printer to create a model of a prosthetic leg and customize it and print it out. There is that sense of possibility that's been so expanded because of technology and because so many more people have accepted this invitation to come into the conversation. I've had fashion designers, graphic designers, and communication designers, people who don't have engineering backgrounds, who don't have medical backgrounds, who are very intrigued by the idea of creating prosthetics for assistive devices...

The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people's cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home, you feel impacted by not having it. It's an important part of your daily function and what you can do in a day.

CNN: How much of your own time do you devote to raising awareness about these issues?

Mullins: I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can't possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.

I don't speak for such huge and diverse groups. What I've tried to do, what I've been fortunate to do, is to live my live and create my life as I've wanted to create it. To be able to live with such an autonomy has itself raised awareness.

By Guest Blogger Suzanne Robitaille for Business Week's Tech Beat. Robitaille is the founder and publisher of abledbody.com, a Web site covering assistive technology issues. She is the author of The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology.



Ah, video and search. Frank Sinatra said it best: Try, try, try to separate them – it’s an illusion. Here’s proof of that: Speech Technology. This week, Google sealed the deal on video search capabilities for its YouTube portal, saying it would provide auto-captions (pictured) for all of its uploaded videos using proprietary Google’s Speech Technology.

Google’s initiative, piloted in November, began with a handful of partner channels including PBS, Stanford University and National Geographic. It has now expanded to all uploaded English-speaking videos, with more languages to be added later this year.

With this news, Google establishes itself as a frontrunner in the Internet programming space. As a company built on search, search, and more search, Google is now able to capitalize on its investment in speech-to-text technology to index videos, target advertising and create an actual profit margin for YouTube. In fact, video search is likely why Google acquired YouTube in the first place.

The bigger news is that auto-captions will have clear benefits for the deaf and hearing-impaired population, who now will be able to better understand dialogue on uploaded videos. Up to now, this group had to rely on the goodwill of YouTube users to manually add captions to their videos. A time-consuming process, most users didn’t bother to do so.

At a press conference on Thursday, YouTube says accessibility is a key goal for the years to come. Even as Google touts a serious business purpose for auto-captions – search — it’s not hard to also believe in their commitment to making their products and services more usable for more of their customers.

Furthermore, Google is now removed from any ill will associated with Internet programming issues – such as the ones plaguing network and cable broadcasters. On March 17, the Federal Communications Commission will unveil a proposed broadband plan that is designed to ensure, or at least improve, equal access to Web TV and movie programming for people with disabilities, which could including requiring captions.

Meanwhile, a House congressional committee is mulling the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 that would make captions for the deaf and audio descriptions for the blind into law for Internet broadcasters. The bill is backed by nearly 240 disability organizations known as the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology.

TV broadcasters – unlike Google – already have transcripts available to them – either on paper or in the form of regular TV closed captions, which have been required for almost all programming since 1990. And ABC has publicly committed to captioning all long-form content – so the heat is on everyone else.

While YouTube videos are technically outside of the FCC’s realm, consumers don’t see it that way – and they shouldn’t. That makes Google’s auto-captioning move financially savvy, and buys them consumer altruism at a time when broadcasters are facing down a potentially ugly battle over access issues.

From Daily Nation in Kenya:


Two decades ago, her father walked out on the family because of her disability; today she is independent and takes care of her grandparents, proving him wrong against all odds. She devotedly performs house chores, prepares meals, does laundry and later catches a bus to town from Kawangware for a wheelchair basketball game.

Ms Carol Wanjira (pictured), 20, was born with spina bifida, a condition that involves incomplete development of the spinal cord or its coverings. On Monday, she joined hundreds of thousands in celebrating women’s achievements during the International Women’s Day celebrations.

This year’s theme, ‘Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities, Progress for All,’ echoes the kind of society she is grateful Kenya is warming up to. The day was first celebrated in 1975 during the International Women’s Year by the United Nations and has since been commemorated annually worldwide to appreciate past struggles and accomplishments and to encourage women to be the best in their fields of endeavour.

Spina bifida, occurs at the end of the first month of pregnancy when the two sides of the embryo’s spine fail to join and in some cases, the spinal cord or other membranes may push through this opening in the embryo’s back. The term means “split” or “open” spine, though it is closed immediately after birth.

The disease has not watered down her passion for wheelchair basketball and she has religiously attended training sessions every Tuesday for the past three years at Nyayo National Stadium. The former Joytown Secondary School student, who cleared in 2008, says that despite her condition, she lives a normal life and believes she will soon represent Kenya in international matches.

She is also a member of a support group, Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus Association of Kenya, Shak, which comprises members whose siblings, relatives of friends have the condition. “Spina bifida comes with its complications especially because most people cannot control their bowels,’’ Ms Wanjira said in an interview at her grandmother’s house in Kawangware.

She has to drain urine very three hours, a routine she has mastered to ensure she remains dry all the time. The causes of spina bifida are largely unknown. Some evidence suggests that genes may be involved, but in most cases there is no family connection. A high fever during pregnancy may increase a woman’s chances of having a baby with spina bifida.

Ms Wanjira, who attended Dagoretti Special School, disputes the misconception that a person with disability, particularly if it is a woman, cannot soar to great heights in their field of interest. “I have travelled to South Africa to represent Kenya in basketball, a venture that would have been impossible if I did not believe in myself,” she says giving accolades to her Langata Basketball team mates who also play in wheelchairs.

She also received recognition in school for excelling in other games like sitting volleyball and javelin. She also represented the country in 2006 in India where she participated in shot-put. “I need to exercise myself regularly and believe I am more fit than some able-bodied people,” she said heartily.

Her mother died, and Wanjira now lives with her grandparents, who she hopes to relieve of their responsibility as breadwinners once she sets up her own business from the recently introduced disability fund. Her uncle, Mr Patrick King’ara, says Ms Wanjira is a source of inspiration to all family members especially when they are discouraged.

“She wears a permanent smile and believes that all is achievable to anyone that believes in herself,” Mr King’ara said. Ms Wanjira welcomed the 2003 Act of Parliament that came into effect this year that requires owners of buildings to adjust their premises to suit disabled persons.

From The NY Times:


Most parents believe that vaccines protect their children against disease, but one in four think some vaccines cause autism in healthy children, and nearly one in eight have refused at least one recommended vaccine, a new study has found.

The vaccine most likely to have been rejected by parents was for human papillomavirus, or HPV, to protect against cervical cancer, according to the report. It was based on questions asked of more than 1,500 parents of children 17 and younger. Many parents also rejected the chickenpox vaccine, the meningococcal conjugate vaccine against bacterial meningitis and, to a lesser extent, the MMR, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

Just last month, the British medical journal The Lancet retracted the 1998 study that first linked the MMR vaccine to autism and set off widespread fears about vaccine safety.

“We were sobered to find that one in four parents erroneously believe that vaccines can cause autism in an otherwise healthy child,” said Dr. Gary L. Freed, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan and the lead author of the paper, published online on March 1 by the journal Pediatrics. “Fortunately, they are still overwhelmingly vaccinating their children.”

Nine of 10 parents agreed that vaccines protected children from disease, but more than half said they were concerned about serious adverse effects.