Category: Uncategorized

 

Tonight at 8:00 pm on Nickelodeon, a show called “Out of sight: How Blind Kids See The World.”

 

Here’s the synopsis on their website:

 

If you want to make something harder, trying do it with your eyes closed.

Not easy, right?

For most of us, things get much easier when we open our eyes again.

But for some kids, a lack of sight is a challenge they have to face for the rest of their lives.

On Monday, January 28th, at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific), kids across America will talk about living with blindness – and overcoming it.

That’s the focus of the next edition of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee.

It’s called, “Out of Sight:  How Blind Kids See the World.”

“When I lost my sight, I started to feel depressed,” a boy named Santiago says.  “I was bumping into stuff … and I felt like I couldn’t do anything anymore.”

He now knows he was wrong.

“You use your other senses,” he says.

“In middle school, kids would tease me,” says a girl named Brittany.  “They would take my pencils and hide them because they know I couldn’t see them.”

Now, though, she says, “I don’t believe being visually impaired limits me in any way.”

A girl named Xin Ju says she even sees being blind as an advantage.

“I don’t need to see something to believe in it,” she says.  “We use our hearts and our imaginations.”

And a girl named Sophie says she sees her blindness “as a blessing.”

“I can never miss what I’ve never had,” she says.  “(And) my parents have never treated me differently.”

What do all of these kids want you to know about their lives?

And how should you react if you meet a kid who can’t see?

You’ll find out the answers to those questions when you tune into Nick News with Linda Ellerbee on Monday, January 28th, at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific), for the premiere of “Out of Sight:  How Blind Kids See the World.”

(If you live in a different time zone, check your local cable TV listings to find out when the program will be on in your area.)

Get some insight, from kids who’ve learned to live their lives without sight.

Here is the link to the site:

http://news.nick.com/01/2013/25/kids-see-through-the-challenges-of-blindness/

 

 

 

Editor’s note: you probably couldn’t produce this in Belgium…

 

(Jewish Voice NY)
January 28, 2013

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] The 11 cast members of “Not By Bread Alone” are all deaf, blind or visually impaired. And speaking of unconventional, the play begins with the cast members baking bread on stage. Throughout the play, the bread is kneaded, formed and baked, as the extraordinary storytellers convey their memories and dreams.

First, the show began running in Tel Aviv. Then, it traveled to London, where audience members gave a standing ovation to the world’s “only professional deaf-blind ensemble.” Last month, it made its US premiere at the NYU Skirball Center to equally staggering reviews.

When director Adina Tal was originally approached 14 years ago to run a two-month workshop for a deaf-blind social club, she agreed. The traveling workshop evolved into a theater company, and in 2007 the troupe moved to its permanent home, the Nalagaat Center in the old Jaffa port of Tel Aviv. “There was no other deaf-blind theater group,” said Ms. Tal, 59, president and artistic director of Nalagaat. “I always regretted that I’d been born too late to establish the state of Israel. This was a gift — a chance to invent the wheel.”

The cast presents a collection of autobiographical skits and anecdotes, which give captivating insights into their inner worlds. “What I find important is that whoever I meet shakes my hand, because this way, I know he exists,” said cast member Shoshana Segal.

Entire article:
Audiences Flock to See Blind-Deaf Ensemble
http://tinyurl.com/bxxcd8v
Related:
Nalagaat, Israeli Troupe of Deaf-Blind Actors (New York Times)
http://tinyurl.com/ide0128136b

(USA Today)
January 28, 2013

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] What the nation owes each year to veterans who are disabled during service has more than doubled since 2000, rising from $14.8 billion to $39.4 billion in 2011, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The toll of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where troops served repeatedly in combat zones, is a key contributor to escalating costs of individual disability payouts, says Allison Hickey, VA undersecretary for benefits.

“I would point first and foremost to multiple deployments,” says Hickey, a retired Air Force brigadier general. “I would call it unprecedented demand.”

The 3.4 million men and women disabled during their service — some of them having served in World War II — are about 15% of the nation’s 22.2 million veterans.

The disabled veteran population has increased 45% since 2000 and may grow sharply with a new generation who seek compensation for more ailments and are savvier than their elders about their VA rights, say Hickey and veterans advocates.

Entire article:
Veteran disability costs more than doubled since 2000
http://tinyurl.com/ide0128135

Take a look at “Bad Cripple’s” take on the recent story of the waiter who defended a boy with Down Syndrome. (For a link to that story click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/opinion/a-child-with-down-syndrome-keeps-his-place-at-the-table.html?_r=1&)

BC’s piece incorporates his (and my) recent difficulties while dining out. Space, welcoming space is still all too provisional for people with disabilities.

 

 

(Mad in America)

January 25, 2013

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Scapegoating is an ancient human practice that probably dates from the time the first human beings decided to circle their huts — what we fondly term the dawn of civilization. When things got tense in the compound, penalties got handed out to one or more individuals or families, those usually at the low end of the pole, the politically powerless or vulnerable. It beat killing one another and rending the social fabric, that thin veneer of civilization.

Americans, despite our vaunted exceptionalism — or maybe consequent to it — have been aces at the practice and have always had a long list of candidates.

The list has evolved and grown since 9/11, but I’ll stop with the most recent candidates for marginalization, those persons presumed to be mentally ill and excluded from Joe Biden’s list of “. . . law-abiding responsible Americans [who have the right to] bear arms . . .”

How ironic that folks who are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes will now occupy a prominent place in the Federal gun background check data bank.

Entire article:

Scapegoating Persons Labelled Mentally Ill: The Politics of Marginalization

http://tinyurl.com/ide0125136

Last night in tony Mt. Kisco New York I pushed a friend’s manual wheelchair up a snowy and steep sidewalk. In order to push I had to heel my guide dog and steer the chair with one hand, the dog following. Expensive cars whispered past. All the cars in Mt. Kisco are BMWs or Mercedes; the basest rig is a Range Rover.

 

I imagined the drivers who saw us thought we were homeless men, sad war veterans, poor and defeated cripples making our way by means of mutual aid. Probably some of them thought: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Or they shivered. Or they thought nothing at all. But its a good bet they thought something akin to the above.

 

And what they wouldn’t have known is that we are two esteemed scholars, professors at noteworthy colleges, that we’d been talking of bio-ethics, contemporary politics, the changing nature of the human body in an age of astonishing technologies. That we were alive and willfully happy with our careers, our friendship, and the fresh falling snow.

 

Americans still haven’t learned how to read disability. They tend to get the semiotics wrong. We were laughing our asses off.

 

(Associated Press)

January 24, 2013

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options.

Schools would be required to make “reasonable modifications” for students with disabilities or create parallel athletic programs that have comparable standing as mainstream programs.

Federal laws, including the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, require states to provide a free public education to all students and bans schools that receive federal funds from discriminating against students with disabilities. Going further, the new directive from the Education Department’s civil rights division explicitly tells schools and colleges that access to interscholastic, intramural and intercollegiate athletics is a right.

“This is a landmark moment for students with disabilities. This will do for students with disabilities what Title IX did for women,” said Terri Lakowski, who led a coalition pushing for the changes for a decade. “This is a huge victory.”

Entire article:

Education Department: Sports are a civil right for disabled

http://www.courierpostonline.com/viewart/20130125/NEWS05/301250032/

The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of five people who allegedly held victims with mental disabilities captive in subhuman conditions to carry out Social Security fraud. The indictment alleges the defendants used victims with mental disabilities as part of a racketeering enterprise to steal disability payments from the victims and the Social Security system.

 

See full article here: http://www.examiner.com/article/doj-claims-mentally-disabled-adults-were-abused-used-for-social-security-fraud

(Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

January 22, 2013

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Like many people, I was struck by last week’s story about 45 year old deaf twin brothers killed by “legal euthanasia” in Belgium. According to reports, they were both going blind and were frightened of losing their independence and had “nothing to live for”.

An excellent piece by Leah Hobson published on Ramp Up last week makes the case against stacking judgments on brothers Marc and Eddy. However our view on legalising euthanasia here in Australia needs to weigh personal rights, disability rights, financial, emotional and other pressures which we may experience to take our own lives.

It is significant that the focus of articles about euthanasia and end of life planning like this one in The Australian hastily drift into how much it costs the community to keep people with intensive support needs going. How quickly compassion dies and the calculators come out.

In the current world of rationed care and economic rationalism, it is not hard to imagine a situation where the availability of euthanasia becomes seen as a cheaper, easier, ‘rational’ option to providing intensive support, community living and care for those most vulnerable. Instead of having the support to make well-considered choices, the services that make life bearable could fall away and people with disabilities could be levered into taking their lives as the default option.

Entire article:

Euthanasia: let’s look at the bigger picture

http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2013/01/21/3673497.htm

Related:

In pursuit of good lives, and good choices

http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2013/01/16/3670700.htm