News &
Advocacy in Disability Rights
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News &
Advocacy in Disability Rights |
The following reports originate from a variety of sources, including the Associated Press. We're always on the lookout for news of interest. Send us news and if we use it here we'll send you a `Piss on Pity' button. Use the eMail below.
Rule Britannia! Sports notes Jailhouse
access Shell agrees
to modifications Free Our People! Tom's on Top
of the World Paul Hearne Another HUD bud Deaf schooling Hear it now Wal-Mart,
again Good for Howard Shame, shame Speech relay Fessing up Work
disincentives The Book Shelf
The United Kingdom became the first nation in the world to require basic disability access to all new homes.
The British Parliament in March passed legislation mandating that every new home have an entrance without steps, a downstairs bathroom, sufficiently wide halls, doorways passable by wheelchairs and other elements of universal design.
The British homebuilders association opposed the legislation, saying it would raise costs excessively. However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation built more than 400 such houses and in a two-year study found costs to be low and benefits high.
The new standards take effect in April 1999, allowing builders a one-year learning curve. About 150,000 new houses are built annually in the U.K. Public buildings, shops and offices already have to provide level thresholds.
Zan Thornton, a member of Concrete Change, the terrific Atlanta-based activist group pushing "visitability," said "More and more people are going to see through the phony arguments raised by the National Association of Home Builders here in the States."
-- The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) will change policies that have prevented hundreds of students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities from playing college sports and getting a scholarship.
Under an agreement with the Justice Department in settling complaints that its requirements violated the ADA, the NCAA will, among other things, will maintain its academic standards but modify the methods it uses to assess whether students with learning disabilities meet those standards.
The NCAA also will hire an ADA coordinator as a resource for staff and a liaison to students with learning disabilities.
-- They sue, they score. Eastern Paralyzed Veterans and America and Disabled in Action of Pennsylvania and a squad of individual wheelchair users had sued CoreStates Center, home of the Philadelphia Flyers and the 76ers for violating the ADA. Under a settlement, the Comcast Spectacor, owner of the CoreStates Complex, will modify the place so that wheelchair users will be able to see when other spectators stand up in front of them.
The ADA applies to the nation's prisons, the Supreme Court ruled. Despite the contention of Pennsylvania (with the backing of almost all other states) that Congress could not have meant to interfere with the "historic sovereign function of state prison management" when it enacted the ADA, the Court ruled unanimously that the law includes prisons and prisoners.
The decision upheld a ruling on behalf of an inmate whose hypertension cost him a place in a boot camp program that would have led to a speedy parole. The inmate, Ronald Yeskey, sued on grounds that his exclusion violated the ADA. He eventually served 32 months in prison; had he successfully completed the boot camp he would have been paroled after six months.
In a separate case, California challenged the constitutionality of the ADA's applicability to state prisons. Congress, the state argued, lacked the authority to extend the ADA to the states and to breach state immunity from suit in federal court.
The Supremes, without comment, rejected the state's appeal, refusing to kill a lawsuit over a lack of access or services for disabled inmates.
More than 3,000 Shell gas stations nationwide will be made more accessible to people with disabilities as the result of the settlement of a class action lawsuit.
The plaintiffs, represented by the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund, lawyers Lainey Feingold of Berkeley and Andrea Asaro of San Francisco, sued after John Greener, an assistant high school principal in San Francisco, complained about the lack of access at a Shell station.
The settlement affects all stations owned, operated or leased by Shell and those owned by Equilon Enterprises, its recently formed joint venture with Texaco. Texaco was not a party to the settlement.
Modifications may range from making restrooms more accessible to having employees on hand to assist people with disabilities to pump gas.
The settlement process will take several months, DREDF said. A phone line has been set up to answer questions from class members. The number is: (800) 964-9096.
MiCASA, the Medicaid Community Attendant Services Act, won't become law during the current Congress. But the bill, sponsored by Speaker Newt Gingrich and co-sponsored by 70 others, including Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, will be reintroduced in the next Congress.
The bill, which aims to enable people to receive support help to stay in their own homes instead of being sent to nursing homes, has drawn support from independent living, aging and developmental disability groups.
Meanwhile, the head of Medicaid has encouraged all states to move to home and community based services and given them more flexibility in using the Medicaid Personal Care Option.
Underlining the growing support for the aims of MiCASA, Attorney General Janet Reno declared that "We believe that states have an obligation to provide services to people with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs."
With the election looming, we should all make sure anybody running for Congress knows about MiCASA and supports it.
Tom Whittaker, 49, became the first amputee to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Along with American cameraman Jeff Rhodes, 44, of Pocatello, Idaho, and four Sherpa guides, Whittaker touched the highest point on earth on May 27.
"I was overwhelmed ... felt a sense of achievement and was relieved that there was no more mountain in front of me," Whittaker said of his successful ascent on the 8,848 meters (29,028 feet) high mountain.
Born in Britain, he became a U.S. citizen and teaches adventure education at the Prescott College in Arizona. For his climb, he was using a specially designed artificial leg called the Flex Foot. It is light weight and has its own crampons, which mountaineers rely on to grip the icy mountain surface.
Whittaker was on his third attempt on Everest. His two previous attempts in 1989 and 1995 were thwarted by stormy weather on the mountain.
It took the six climbers almost eight hours to reach the summit from the 8,000 meters (26,400 feet) high South Col þ the final base before the summit þ for the final summit bid.
"After reaching the peak, I took shelter over the summit away from the wind and laid on my back like a turtle," he said.
Paul Hearne, president of the Dole Foundation and the American Association of People with Disabilities, died in Washington, DC in May. Hearne, who also was a former director of the National Council on Disability, was praised as a pioneer of equality in employment, the ADA and advocacy.
A Las Vegas developer will cough up $37,500 to settle a housing discrimination complaint involving a 168-unit condo complex that isn't accessible. The money will enable 56 first floor units at the Pueblo at Santa Fe condo complex to be remodeled to make them accessible.
Disabled Rights Action Committee complained to HUD about Frey Development Corp., the developer. "Our message to builders and landlords across the nation is simple: obeying the law isn't optional -- it's mandatory. We are enforcing this law and enforcing it vigorously," said HUD chief Andrew Cuomo.
After a long and expensive court battle, the Wichita school district has agreed to help provide sign language interpretive services for a gifted and deaf eighth-grade student.
The decision could mean thousands of other special education students in Kansas will get specialized services at private schools, paid for with public school money.
Jay and Barbara Fowler spent four years fighting the Wichita school district all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Earlier, the district finally agreed to assist the Fowler's son, Michael, through his senior year at Wichita Collegiate school. The district, however, won't pay all of the expenses, only for what it computes as the average per-student cost of providing such a service in public schools. It is too soon to know whether other special education students will seek such services, and district officials refuse to even guess the potential cost.
But they did say Kansas public schools could be forced to provide millions more to help pay for services for special education students who choose to attend private or parochial schools.
Medicaid should pay for a special computerized device to help a 6-year-old Birmingham, Alabama girl with a speech disorder to communicate, according to a federal class-action lawsuit.
Danielle Brown is not able to articulate sounds that form words, and cannot learn sign language because of developmental disorders, said the lawsuit.
The Alabama Medicaid Agency is in the process of working out an applicable policy. Alabama is among five states that do not provide Medicaid funding for augmentative and alternative communication devices. The others are Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and Rhode Island.
Danielle's doctor and speech pathologist say the $9,000 device is medically necessary, but the Brown family's private insurance won't pay for it.
Danielle's mother, Rebecca Brown, said her daughter started kindergarten in 1997 and enjoyed school for a while. But Danielle's inability to communicate eventually left her feeling isolated, Mrs. Brown said. "She can understand what people are saying to her, but she lacks the ability to articulate what she wants to say in response. This is incredibly frustrating for her," Mrs. Brown said.
"Danielle has no effective way to show others that she is a real person with thoughts and feelings."
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is under fire in yet another equal-opportunity lawsuit, this time by two Tucson, Arizona men who say they weren't hired because they are deaf.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Wal-Mart on behalf of Jeremy Fass, 22, who works now at a group home, and William Darnell, 23, who mixes paint for a car dealership.
They contend they weren't hired for stocking jobs at a Tucson Wal-Mart in July 1995 because managers expressed communication and safety concerns during the application process.
"Wal-Mart employs thousands of people nationwide, yet has consistently failed to overcome outdated stereotypes to recognize the full individual capabilities of disabled Americans to be economically self-sufficient," said David Lopez, a senior trial attorney with the EEOC office in Phoenix.
Lopez said the EEOC has won six discrimination lawsuits against Wal-Mart in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas within the past three years, including three in which juries found the corporation violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has appealed the cases.
Arizonan Howard Bell is standing up for his rights. He's filed 24 lawsuits in Phoenix federal court accusing area restaurants, theaters, retail shops, and even a shopping mall of failing to follow ADA regulations.
He says he plans to file as many as 50 more lawsuits. "We won't ride in the back of the bus anymore," Bell said.
For years, Bell says, he's been frustrated in his efforts to persuade businesses to follow the law and eliminate barriers that make life difficult for the disabled. "I kept writing letters and talking to people about the problems," said the 25-year-old Bell, who at one year of age was diagnosed with infantile spinal muscular atrophy. "They kept telling me they were sorry, but nothing seemed to get done."
That all changed after he met New Jersey lawyer Charles Shaw just over a year ago. Lawyers for some of the businesses say their clients are not trying to avoid ADA compliance, nor are they unwilling to assist Bell with problems he identifies.
A hospital worker in Hartford, Connecticut will be spared a prison sentence in the sexual assault of a paralyzed, mute patient whose only way of communicating had been to blink her eyes.
Prosecutors said they struck a plea bargain with James Duke, 42, of East Windsor, because the victim has become too ill to help bring the case to trial.
"She's dying. They have done what they can with the situation," the woman's personal attorney, Owen Eagan, said. Duke pleaded no contest in Superior Court to two felony counts of third-degree sexual assault in the 1996 molestation of the woman, who relies on machines to live.
He will receive 10 years' probation. Duke, a respiratory therapist, has been on paid leave from New Britain's Hospital for Special Care since his arrest in May 1996.
The woman, known in court papers as Jane Doe, has ALS.
She had given her original statement by blinking and nodding at letters on an alphabet board. When police showed the woman a series of photographs, she blinked "yes" at Duke's picture, authorities said.
It was the difficulty the state had questioning the woman that prompted the plea bargain, reducing the original charges of second-degree sexual assault to third-degree assault, a lesser felony, said prosecutor Mary Rose Flaherty.
The Federal Communications Commission proposed that all phone companies þ both wired and wireless þ make speech-to-speech relay service available within two years of adoption of final rules.
FCC officials did not know when final rules would be adopted. The proposed rules would be subject to public and industry comment and possible revisions before the FCC moves to a final vote on them. The FCC said 2.5 million Americans have speech disabilities. The FCC has the authority to propose such rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. (See MAINSTREAM's cover story on this topic in the December `97/January `98 issue.)
The government of the Canadian Province of Alberta said it will compensate nearly 500 people who were sterilized without their consent under a now-discredited policy targeted at residents of mental institutions.
The settlement, negotiated on behalf of nearly two-thirds of the surviving victims, will cost the province close to $48 million ($33 million U.S.), or roughly $100,000 ($69,000 U.S.) per person. Most of those covered by the settlement remain in provincial care.
The deal was negotiated between Alberta's Justice Department and a provincially appointed trustee. Justice Minister Jon Havelock also established a panel that will try to settle the remaining 250 to 300 claims not covered by the agreement. More than 2,000 Albertans were sterilized between 1928 and 1972 under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was intended to prevent people with mental disabilities from passing on potentially defective genes to offspring.
The House of Representatives approved legislation giving Americans with disabilities new opportunities to develop job skills without fear of losing medical benefits. The measure, passed 410-1, would allow people receiving disability benefits to obtain Social Security vouchers that they could use at rehabilitation, job-training or job-placement centers. It offers disabled people who return to the work force an additional two years of Medicare coverage beyond the four already provided.
Rep. Barbara Kennelly, D-Conn., who sponsored the legislation with Republican Rep. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, said the Social Security system could save $3 billion if the bill succeeds in increasing the number of people leaving the disability rolls by only 1 percent.
Currently some 10 million Americans with disabilities receive disability benefits and Supplemental Security Income payments. Cash benefits to adults and children with disabilities amount to $61 billion annually, and less than 1 percent of disabled beneficiaries leave the rolls because of successful rehabilitation.
The legislation also sets up a demonstration project to study the effects of replacing the current system where cash benefits end for those reaching an income level of $500 a month with a system in which Social Security disability benefits are reduced $1 for every $2 in earnings over a determined level.
The legislation, which has the support of the Clinton administration, must still be considered by the Senate.
-- Forced Exit - The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. By Wesley J. Smith. Times Books, 1997. This is an important book. Read it.
-- False Hopes - Why America's Quest for Perfect Health is a Recipe for Failure. By Daniel Callahan. Simon & Schuster, 1998. This book by a leading bio-ethicist tackles health care issues with enormous implications for people with disabilities.
-- Beyond Ramps - Disability at the End of the Social Contract. By Marta Russell. Common Courage Press, 1998. You might not agree with everything in this analysis, but you cannot ignore its provocative reasoning. Read it.
-- Staring Back - The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. Edited by Kenny Fries. Plume, 1997. Fiction, poetry and reportage from more than 30 writers, including Andre Dubus, Anne Finger, Nancy Mairs, Leonard Kriegel, John Hockenberry. Good reading.
Associated Press reports were used compiling this column.
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