2011 – Page 59 – Planet of the Blind

Ed Roberts Day

The following article comes to us via Inclusion Daily Express:

Celebrate Ed Roberts Day On January 23
(The Californian)
January 10, 2011

SALINAS, CALIFORNIA– [Excerpt] For a person with a disability, it can be difficult to find role models or leaders to look up to. I think that’s why having some understanding of disability history is so important. People look up to other people whom they know have had similar experiences — people they can relate to; people who have transcended their situation in life and taught society lessons that it needed to learn.

One such person from the disability community was Ed Roberts. Roberts contracted polio as a teenager and relied on a respirator to breathe. He is known as the “Father of Independent Living” because he founded the first Independent Living Center in Berkeley in the 1970s. He was the first student with significant disabilities to attend the University of California at Berkeley and later founded the Physically Disabled Students Program on campus.

In 1975, he was named the director of the California Department of Rehabilitation and was instrumental in the implementation of regulations that established civil rights for people with disabilities. Roberts died in 1995.

On Jan. 23, we will celebrate our first “Ed Roberts Day” in California. Recently, U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, introduced House Resolution 1759 to declare the support of Congress for a national “Ed Roberts Day.” The resolution was co-sponsored by Central Coast Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who has been a strong supporter of people with disabilities in our community.

Entire article:
Denika Boardman: Salute trailblazer Roberts on Jan. 23
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2011/red/0110b.htm

Record Discrimination Rates for People With Disabilities

Disability Related Employment Discrimination At Record Levels

A spike in disability related job bias claims led to an all time high in the number of federal job discrimination charges filed last year.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, handled 25,165 claims of workplace discrimination based on disability in fiscal year 2010, up 17 percent from 21,451 the previous year. Those claims were among nearly 100,000 the EEOC received last year for job bias, marking the largest number of charges handled in a single year by the federal agency.

http://eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/1-11-11.cfm

Employment – Labor Department Report Shows Employment Rate for People with Disabilities Falls to 21%

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has released disability employment statistics for December showing that the percentage of people with disabilities in the labor force was 21.0. By comparison, the percentage of persons with no disability in the labor force was 69.6. The unemployment rate for those with disabilities was 14.3 percent, compared with 8.9 percent for persons with no disability, not seasonally adjusted. The apparent discrepancy between the 21 percent employment rate and 14.3 percent unemployment has to do with how unemployment is defined. Not being in the labor force is not the same thing as being “unemployed”. People are classified as unemployed if they had no employment during the reference week; they were available for work at that time; and they made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t06.htm

Scholarships for Blind and Visually Impaired Students

This has crossed our desk and we want to pass along the announcements:

Please Distribute these two scholarship announcements

On behalf of the American Council of the Blind

2011-2012 Academic Year Scholarship Announcement

The American Council of the Blind (ACB) annually awards approximately twenty scholarships ranging in amounts from $1,000 to $2,500 to vocational, entering freshmen, undergraduate and graduate college students who are legally blind, maintain a 3.3 GPA and are involved in their school/local community. Applications may be submitted beginning December 1^st and all materials must be received by 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time on March 1^st.

To read the scholarship guidelines and complete an on-line application, please visit:

www.acb.org/scholarship

For more information, please contact the ACB National Office at: (202) 467-5081 or (800) 424-8666.

On behalf of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International, we announce our CCLVI Fred Scheigert Scholarship Program. Three scholarships in the amount of $3,000 each will be awarded for the 2011 – 2012 academic year. Please share with others the following scholarship announcement. If there are questions or additional information is required, please e-mail to scholarship@cclvi.org. Thank you!

CCLVI Scholarship Announcement:

The Council of Citizens with Low Vision International (CCLVI) will award three scholarships in the amount of $3,000 each to one full-time student in each category; entering freshmen, undergraduate and graduate. College students who are low vision, maintain a strong GPA and are involved in their school and/or local community are encouraged to apply.

Applications may be submitted beginning January 1^st and all materials must be received by March 1^st. Scholarship monies will be awarded for the 2011 – 2012 academic year.

To read the scholarship guidelines and complete an on-line application, please visit:

www.cclvi.org and click on the “Scholarship’ link

Applications will be available to submit on-line until March 1^st at 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time. Please plan ahead so that documents mailed will be received by March 1^st. Please note, no faxed materials will be accepted. Questions may be directed to CCLVI at (800) 733-2258.

S.K.

Bus Again

In ten minutes I will catch a bus. I will thereby join 7 billion human beings who hope for peace in our new year. There are more than 7 billion people who wish for peace but public transit riders are reasonably enough rather prayerful. I also hope that there will continue to be public transit in this new era of Tea Party exceptionalism. Gotta go!