Disability Futures

The loss of his mobility made Da Silva acutely aware of the difference between accessible and inaccessible spaces. Routines like taking the subway became impossible and favorite spots to meet with friends became unreachable. Da Silva made a documentary, When I Walk (available on Netflix), about his battle with MS and his gradual loss of mobility.

Wanting to do more than document the challenges he faced, Da Silva set out to take concrete action that would make it easier to get around with a disability. Together he and his wife, Alice Cook, created AXSmap, a crowdsourced map to rate businesses based on how accessible they are.

According to the Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., the intent of universal design is to simplify life by making products and buildings usable by as many people as possible. The center has outlined seven principles of universal design:

1. Equitable Use: The design does not disadvantage or stigmatize any group of users.
2. Flexibility in Use: The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
3. Simple, Intuitive Use: Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills or current concentration level.
4. Perceptible Information: The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities.
5. Tolerance for Error: The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
6. Low Physical Effort: The design can be used efficiently and comfortably, and with a minimum of fatigue.
7. Size and Space for Approach and Use: Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use, regardless of the user's body size, posture, or mobility.

Diane Coleman of Chicago, Illinois, speaks about the euthanasia issue in the disability community, universal design, and Ed Roberts.
Diane Coleman has been disabled since birth and has used a wheelchair since the age of eleven. She has served on the boards of independent living organizations in both California and Tennessee. She is currently employed as the Executive Director of the Progress Center for Independent Living in Oak Park, Illinois, and is a national organizer for ADAPT.

This week, a Mississippi grand jury indicted Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger for felony assault on a vulnerable adult after he allegedly struck a mentally disabled black man and yelled, "Run, nigger, run."

According to WAPT, multiple witnesses report seeing the judge attack 20-year-old Eric Rivers while screaming racial slurs at a flea market in Canton, Mississippi last May. Weisenberger claims Rivers made "negative comments to his mother."

Since then, the judge has faced additional accusations of misconduct. From The Clarion-Ledger:

Weisenberger also had a lawsuit filed against both him and the county in November. The attorney for Charles Plumpp said Weisenberger arrested and jailed her client, who is African American, on the nonexistence charge of "roaming livestock."

While the judge voluntarily stepped down from his position last June, the Ledger reports that Weisenberger is currently seeking re-election.

Connecticut public schools are far too quick to restrain or isolate unruly children against their will, leaving hundreds with injuries and many others with unmet educational needs, a state report released last week found.

The report cited "significant concern" that schools are overusing restraints and so-called seclusion, particularly on kids with emotional or intellectual disabilities. Over the past three years, Connecticut has recorded more than 90,000 instances of restraint and seclusion in public schools and more than 1,300 injuries – at least two dozen of them serious.

The report found one child was restrained more than 700 times over the course of a year.

 "The numbers are staggering," Mickey Kramer, the Associate Child Advocate for Connecticut and one of the authors of the report, told ProPublica. "We realize that this is a pervasive, widespread problem."

The report, which explored the cases of 70 students, described a 9-year-old student with autism who was placed in seclusion after refusing to say "hello" to a visitor and a 4-year-old boy with a developmental delay who was restrained after throwing puzzle pieces on the floor and across the room. The younger boy's school plan said he could be shackled to an orthopedic chair that is not supposed to be used for restraints.

For more info on Declarative memory, see http://goo.gl/9yWaH 

The proposed compensation allows individuals with autism to learn scripts for navigating social situations; helps people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette syndrome to control tics and compulsions; and provides strategies to overcome reading and language difficulties in those diagnosed with dyslexia, autism, or SLI, a developmental disorder of language.

Like most people with autism spectrum disorders, he finds relationships challenging. In the past, he has been quick to anger and has had what he calls “meltdowns.” Those who don’t know he has autism can easily misinterpret his actions. “People think that when I do misbehave I’m somehow intentionally trying to be a jerk,” Moore says. “That’s just not the case.”

His difficulty managing emotions has gotten him into some trouble, and he’s had a hard time holding onto jobs — an outcome he might have avoided, he says, if his coworkers and bosses had better understood his intentions.

Over time, things have gotten better. Moore has held the same job for five years, vacuuming commercial buildings on a night cleaning crew. He attributes his success to getting the right amount of medication and therapy, to time maturing him and to the fact that he now works mostly alone.

Part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) became law on July 30, 2008. The NHTF is a federal program for collecting and distributing dedicated funds as a block grant to the states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. territories.The purpose of the NHTF is to increase and preserve the supply of housing, principally rental housing for extremely low income households.

The NHTF was to receive .042% of its start up funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. However, funding was suspended when the 2008 banking crisis hit and was not lifted until January 1, 2015. On December 11, 2014, FHFA Director Mel Watt sent letters to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac informing them he was terminating the temporary suspension of the allocation the companies are to make to the NHTF. The companies were directed to begin setting aside the required funds in FY2015 and each year thereafter.

In accordance with the NHTF formula, funds will be distributed to states based on the following:

• Shortage of rental properties affordable and available to extremely low income (ELI) and very low income (VLI) households
  • ELI is considered to be less than 30% of area median income
  • VLI is considered to be between 30% and 50% of area median income
• Number of ELI and VLI renter households paying more than 50% of their income for rent and utilities
• Priority is given to ELI households

Kelly Mack uses Metro every day to commute to work and asked the News4 I-Team to go along with her to look at the entrance to the safety walkway at the end of the Farragut North Metro Station.

“No way,” she said. “There’s absolutely no way my chair would fit on this.”

She parked her motorized wheelchair in front of the evacuation path. She said she looked at it after last month’s incident when one woman died and many passengers self-evacuated after being trapped in smoke-filled cars.

Mack said she’s now realized the evacuation path isn’t wide enough for her standard-sized chair and the platform is cut-off by a set of stairs.

The time has finally come to end the separation of special education and general education students, researchers at the University of Kansas argue in a new publication. Not only does research show that all students have higher achievement in fully integrated environments, but support and public policy for schools to make such a switch are coming into place as well. 

Wayne Sailor, professor of special education and director of the Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation Center and Amy McCart, associate research professor in KU’s Life Span Institute and co-director of the SWIFT Center, authored an article in the journal Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities arguing the “stars are coming into alignment” for full inclusion in schools. Such a change would reverse a trend in the United States since Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Amendments in 1975 to separate students based on perceived disability and re-examine the idea of special education.