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MoMA Presents 'Create Ability' - March 24th through April 16th!

Create Ability Exhibition

Opening Reception at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC!

Friday, March 23
5:30–7:00 p.m.

Join MoMA in celebrating their participants' creativity and dedication at the opening night reception for an exhibition of artwork produced during the Create Ability program, MoMA's monthly program for individuals with learning or developmental disabilities and their families.
Everyone is welcome. Bring your family, friends, neighbors, and teachers! Comments begin at 6:00 p.m. Refreshments will be provided. Enter through The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, located at 4 West 54th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

The exhibit will be on view during public hours, March 24–April 16.

Be sure to view MoMA's extensive, award-winning array of free programs to make this great museum accessible to persons with many types of disabilities, ranging from hearing and vision loss to Alzheimer's and dementia.   MoMA is wheelchair accessible!

‘Reading For Inclusion’ Gets Kids Talking About Disabilities

Submitted by Karen Moyes Stallings
A unique program at one Burlington, VT school is allowing kids to engage firsthand with adults who have disabilities and talk candidly about how differences can affect a person’s life, all through reading.
The effort, known as Reading for Inclusion, is modeled after the national Reading to End Racism program, which brings individuals from different cultural backgrounds into classrooms to read books and discuss racial prejudice.
For the inclusion program, guest readers with special needs ranging from autism to cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury visited Champlain Elementary School to read to students and discuss what it’s like to have a disability. During the events, students were free to ask questions like, “why are you in a wheelchair?”
The idea behind the program, organizers say, is to help youngsters understand that just because a peer may have differences doesn’t mean that they don't deserve lindness.  It was developed after school officials heard stories from parents who said that their kids with disabilities were often left out when it came time for birthday parties or even recess.
After interacting with 10 guest readers, the message of inclusion appears to be sinking in. “Just because somebody has a disability doesn’t mean they can’t play with you,” one 11-year-old student told the Burlington Free Press. 

Submitted by Karen Moyes Stallings, Rossi Fund Coordinator for the Developmental Disabilities Council of North Carolina.  Karen has long been active in the fight for inclusion for people of all abilities.

Scott Rains in New Mobility Magazine: Accessiblity is Not Inclusion

From a post on http://www.unleashwebaccess.com written by Monica Guy: 
What if the first question we asked was, “What is so unique about this situation that it justifies ex­clusion?” instead of, “How much does it cost to make it accessible?” These aren’t my words, but those of disability rights guru Dr. Scott Rains in a recent excellent article in New Mobility magazine.

 

Scott Rains is one of those open-minded, forward-thinking individuals who are changing the conversation around disability. He has been doing it for years, on his excellent Rolling Rains Report and on frequent whirlwind trips and speaker appointments around the world, but we’re only just starting to listen.

His article is a beautifully phrased and sensitively considered exhortation to reject simple, weary, standards-compliant ‘accessibility for the disabled’ in favor of the more complex yet more fruitful concept of inclusion. He writes: “Accessibility looks backward. It goes halfway toward overcoming outmoded and artificial standards of what – and who – is “normal”. Inclusion looks forward. The word ‘universal’ doesn’t mean ‘one-size-fits-all’." He ends with a ringing entreaty: “Accessibility is doing for – a 20th-century task. Inclusion is doing with – a 21st-century vision. Which approach makes for stronger communities?”

Dr. Rains is right. If you believe, as most of us do, that the language we use affects the way we perceive the world and the decisions we make, then we must fight to replace ‘disability’ and ‘accessibility’ with ‘universality’ and ‘inclusion’.

Download Scott Rains’ article Accessibility is Not Inclusion, published in New Mobility magazine in January 2011.

Monday Jun 14th - Congressional Briefing on Aligning the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

Samuel and brother Isaiah Habib after a baseball game

It's All About Inclusion!

If you will be in the Washington, D.C. area on Monday, June 14, join Dan Habib and Isaiah at 1:00 PM at this important Capitol Hill Congressional Briefing on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act (formerly known as No Child Left Behind).  Please spread the word to your friends and colleagues in D.C.

 

In addition, this Friday, June 11, Dan will be screening Including Samuel at the VSA International Festival, also in Washington, D.C. They will be joined by disability rights leader Victor Pineda for a post-film discussion on how filmmaking and digital media are essential educational and advocacy tools in promoting inclusive education around the world.

 

Also attending will be Drew Goldsmith, a 13-year-old self-advocate, who will premiere a video for an emerging National Youth Inclusion Campaign.

 

Dan Habib, Director and Producer, Including Samuel.
For information on Samuel, Isaiah and the Habibs, go to http://www.includingsamuel.com/support

 

Monday, June 14, 2010

1:00 - 2:30 PM

310 Longworth House Office Building

Light Refreshments Will Be Served

RSVP to Deborah A. Ziegler at [email protected] or 703.264.9406

 

Presented by the Council for Exceptional Children

 

Advocate – Empower – Entertain

Submitted by: Howard Renensland, CEO & President, [with]tv 

This is my take on Tropic Thunder and its own little self-engendered thunderstorm. It all starts with a word. Here the word happened to be “retard” the noun, not the verb. The storm is passing and The Dark Knight is making room, but will not be passed as a bigger Box Office Bonanza. Makes you realize how sentient the creators of Life Goes On really were. Life does go on for each of those with and without a disability. 

I understand the sorrow this word can cause when used as an epithet with an obvious intent to inflict harm on the one it is used against. My daughter had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful community full of opportunity for most but still had “Retard” spray painted across a class project, balloons popped with a pin in her face (knowing she was terrified of this noise) and other indignities too numerous to mention. Life goes on. No, the “R word” is not as crippling as “the N word”. Nor is it as seemingly harmless as Nerd, Geek, Slacker or Jock. It hurts the one called, the one doing the calling and most important to many of us, the one meant to be characterized by the word 

In contemplating this recent public outcry I have thought long and hard. I feel it is about such basic and long lasting issues impacting our community of pwd and truly the larger community of pwod that will be with us long after anyone capable of reading this today will be dead and buried/cremated. I come back to the power of words. What we want to have happen will never happen if we continue to go about attempting to make it happen the way we currently are. I mean, my God isn’t your head beginning to hurt, because that brick wall is sure getting bloodier and bloodier. Tropic Thunder is making money hand over fist, the backlash against our well meaning but impotent protest is much greater, and Spielberg and friends are out creating another entity to make more money in mainstream media and popular culture. Get a sense of where I am going? Here we go.

 

Walgreens is Leading the Way

Buzzing in the Workplace
By: Rob Roy 

Walgreens is Leading the Way
Buzzing in the Workplace
By: Rob Roy

Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain, is leading the way in enhancing hiring of people with disabilities. On June 14, 2007, the company opened a new distribution center in Anderson, North Carolina equipped with technology and management training to facilitate hiring and retaining people with disabilities.  The center has touch screens for the vision-impaired, flexible workstations, wheelchair ramps and elevators. All workers receive disability awareness training, and managers go through a special program run by the University of North Carolina on supporting disabled employees.

For the past year, the distribution center has staffed approximately 400 people, almost 40% of who have a disclosed disability.  The center’s creation is not about empathy and is not subjected to lower performance expectations. Each team member is expected to perform at same level regardless of whether or not he or she has a disability.

In fact, the distribution center has shown the positive contribution people with disabilities can make to companies. The center is Walgreen’s most efficient distribution center in the United States and has been a tremendous success that the company is opening a new center in Windsor, Connecticut later this year.
The following is a  clip about the Anderson, N.C. center featured on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B2akb4v2cUQ

To learn more about the distribution center in Anderson, North Carolina or to consider employment opportunities with the company – visit www.Walgreensoutreach.com.  The website is designed to be accessible by people with sensory, physical and cognitive disabilities

Thanks, Walgreens, for being an example and leading the way.

Press Release re: the ADA Amendments Act

House of Representatives Approves Bill to Protect Americans with Disabilities from Discrimination

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC -- {The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation today to stop discrimination against individuals with disabilities by restoring the original intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

[with]tv needed in China. STAT.

Dr. Mark Mostert, host of the blog Disability Matters, recently wrote:

Well, well, well.

A day or two ago, London’s Times reported that official, but curious, Chinese attitudes towards people with disabilities have surfaced in the run-up to this summer’s Olympics, and, perhaps more unfortunately, for the World Paralympics also scheduled for Beijing in September.

It turns out that the official Olympic guide for both events, “Skills for helping the disabled,” distributed to 100,000 Chinese volunteers, contains a curious mix of plain old prejudice and plain old ignorance.

Read on:  Disability Dust-Up in Beijing

ADA Restoration

ADA Restoration Headed to House Markup on Wednesday 
ADA Restoration Moves Forward in the House 
Disability, civil rights and employer groups are working hard to secure support for the negotiated legislated language that has been circulated on JFA and now has the support of more than 50 national and 60 state and local disability groups, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Society for Human Resource Management, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Human Resource Policy Association, and a growing list of companies, including McDonalds, General Motors and Honeywell. Lobbying on the House side for this negotiated deal began in earnest yesterday, focused on the members of the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee (which also plans to mark up the bill next Wednesday).

To avoid confusion with the bill that was introduced last July, we have begun referring to the negotiated legislation as the ADA Amendments Act. In anticipation of next week's markup, we are working to counter any efforts in either committee to attach an ADA notification requirement to the bill, a cause that was championed in prior Congresses by Representative Mark Foley of Florida and that is strongly opposed by the disability-civil rights employer coalition working to enact the ADA Amendments Act. We are also working hard to secure White House and Senate Republican support for the negotiated bill.

:::TAKE ACTION:::
At this point, it looks like the bill will receive strong bipartisan support in the committee markups in
the House. We have included a list of the members of the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee below. 

·      Contact Members on the House Education & Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee between now and Wednesday morning and urge them to support the bipartisan negotiated language that will become the Chairman's mark in both committees. The names are below.

Locate the Members' contact information online, or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-1904 (V) / (202) 224-3091 (TTY) and ask to be connected to their offices by name. 

·      If you haven't already, consider having your organization "sign on" to the proposed deal language by sending an email to Anne Sommers, JFA Moderator, at [email protected]. Support of the deal language means you not only approve of its language and terms, but that you also agree to defend it against all attempts by Members of Congress to amend it--unless both sides agree to the amendments.

We will continue to share the list of organizational support with Members of Congress as ADA Restoration moves forward in both the House and Senate in coming weeks. 

·      Attend the markup! The House Education and Labor Markup is scheduled for Wednesday, June 18th, at 10:00 in the Rayburn building, Room 2175. Advocates are encouraged to show their support through numbers. The accessible entrance to the building is the main entrance with the horseshoe drive off South Capitol Street.

Creating Penelope

Submitted by: Laurie Rubin

The experiences I've had as a classical singer have been incredibly rich ones thus far.  I've been blessed with wonderful mentors, lucky to get some of the wonderful and fun gigs I've gotten, and so fortunate to collaborate with some very fine composers and to sing with some of the best singers and instrumentalists in the field.

As a singer who is blind, I have done recitals and chamber music more than I have done opera.  This is due mostly to a minor logistical difference between me and my sighted counterparts.  Since opera is a business that needs to be run smoothly like anything else, artistic directors are concerned with productivity and tasks getting done as quickly as possible.  When they see me, they envision a situation where it would take longer for me to learn a stage, they think it would take more people to guide me around the stage, and they often think of lawsuits should I manage to find myself falling into the orchestra pit during a rehearsal.

However, things are slowly changing, and I am finding more and more that directors are wanting to think outside the box.  They can envision a situation where a character in the show would be blind.  Well why not?  It is never mentioned in the libretto that she specifically has sight.