Disability Futures

Are you confused about the different kinds of reading accommodations and how to choose the right one?  This protocol provides a repeatable, systematic assessment process that helps you through the process. The protocol guides you in collecting data on a variety of reading accommodations.  It provides reading samples, vocabulary questions, and comprehension quizzes for each grade level 3rd - 10th.  For more information, participate in a live webinar:
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
 — 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM CDT 
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 — 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM CDT
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
 — 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM CDT

<blockquote class='posterous_long_quote'><p>Disability rights advocates in cities across America will be holding vigils this Friday, March 30th to honor the lives of disabled people murdered by their families and caretakers. This nation-wide Day of Mourning is being organized by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network(ASAN) and Not Dead Yet in response to the murder of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man, and the media coverage that the organizations describe as "sympathetic" to his murderer.</p> <p>On March 6, George Hodgins was reportedly murdered by his mother in Sunnyvale, California. Elizabeth Hodgins killed herself after fatally shooting her son. The Santa Cruz Sentinel referred to Ms. Hodgins as “a devoted and loving mother.” The Mercury News coverage appeared focused on the stress Hodgins' mother underwent as a parent of an autistic child. "Some articles asked readers to put themselves in the shoes of the murderer," said Zoe Gross, a member of ASAN, "but no articles called for empathy for the murder victim, who died knowing that his own parent had chosen to kill him."</p></blockquote>

Refugee Media is producing a series of plays with “Breaking Barriers” being their first. They plan on making plays that teach./educate communities on mental illness, disabilities, lessons learned, and hardships. The first set of auditions will be held on Friday, May 25th and Saturday, May 26th from 12:00pm to 4:00pm.

Plot:

Young girl (Sam) dreams and acts out her interests as a child to parents. Parents caught up in own interests and are not very influential in guiding her toward her dreams. Sam ends up listening to several bad influences for the guidance she never received but, continues to achieve although others try to sabotage her efforts. This play highlights divorce, gender issues, sexuality issues, disability, a young single parent, abuse, success through determination & healing in overcoming generational curses and life experiences.

Available Roles: please see role description

Compensation:

This project may or may not involve pay. Please come expecting no pay but, I plan on distributing profits after my cost to produce each play according to your involvement with this play and future plays through grant funding, retail & ticket sales-minus the cost to keep the shows going.

How to Apply:

If you are interested in applying please send your resume and headshot (for talent).

In the wake of the deep austerity facing most governments around the world, leaders are faced with the challenge to “do more with less.” Unfortunately, typical cost reduction exercises inevitably result in a difficult trade-off—between price or performance. Breaking this seemingly unavoidable trade-off will require leaders to look at the public sector in a whole new way.

The key to radically reducing costs, while maintaining or even improving services, is disruptive innovation. Creating the conditions for disruption will require policymakers to view government through a different lens. Instead of seeing only endless programs and bureaucracies, the myriad responsibilities and customers of government can be seen as a series of markets that can be shaped in ways to find and cultivate very different and ultimately more effective, less expensive ways of supplying public services.

Interesting framework...

We are medical research and efficacy application pain relief experts focused and dedicated to one thing; Non-narcotic, Pain Relief Solutions & Pain Relief Products for most painful conditions. This, our main site, and each website based on a specific painful condition is available below as well as listed on the navigation bar on your left:

Can't vouch for the usefulness, but this site has ideas for very specific kinds of pain.

We've collected all the best advice from our expert panel over how housing can help support residents with dementia. Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments section below

The National Federation of the Blind of Michigan, the voice of blind citizens in Michigan, calls upon Governor Rick Snyder and the Michigan Senate and House of Representatives to rescind Executive Order 2012-2 and conduct an open and transparent review of services to blind citizens. In response to legitimate concerns about mismanagement, poor performance, and a high degree of consumer dissatisfaction over the past ten years that reached a crescendo this year, Governor Snyder issued Executive Order 2012-2 abolishing the Michigan Commission for the Blind and transferring its remnants to the Michigan Department of Human Services (the welfare department) and the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget.

braille as keyboard on a smartphone. Very clever!!

This weird-looking gadget is a Strap Stylus for iPad, designed for people who require assistive devices to help them use computers.

The Strap Stylus, along with the Mouthstick and Steady Stylus pictured below, all come with soft-touch capacitive tips. They’re the brainchild of Dutch designer Ivo Beckers, who now sells them worldwide on Etsy under the name ShapeDad. (We previously mentioned his conductive paintbrush socks a couple of years ago.)

A study published today provides surprising new insight into what happens in depressed brains.

In people with depression, brain regions appear to be overly connected to one another, says the study, which is being published by UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. In turn, this excessive connectivity reduces the flexibility the brain needs to function properly.

“Depression is a whole brain disease,” says Dr. Andrew Leuchter, the Semel Institute neuroscientist who led the team that produced the study. “It’s not something that affects just one brain region, but that the entire organ doesn’t appear to be functioning very well.”

Hyperconnectivity may be nothing more than the reality that severe depression tends to be hyper stable. In fact, that is the biggest problem with severe depression. A state of depression can be tolerated; it's the relentless and unending nature of it that has to be managed.