Guest guest Posted November 12, 2003 Report Share Posted November 12, 2003 The following articles are forwarded to you by ADA and Accessible IT Center for your information. & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & The Center for an Accessible Society State VR Agencies Expand Self-Employment Opportunities Nov.11, 2003 -- Over the last decade, state vocational rehabilitation agencies' policies and procedures for helping disabled individuals become self-employed have grown tremendously, say researchers. The study " State Self-Employment Policies: A Decade of Change, " released by the Research and Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation at the University of Montana, found that most of the agencies the researchers studied (96 percent) now help clients in developing a busines plan, and most include other assistance as well. " Since the mid-90's Vocational Rehabilitation agencies have become more open to self-employment outcomes, " say researchers Arnold and Ipsen, noting that the 1998 Reauthorization of the federal Rehabilitation Act " specifically included self-employment as an outcome " and " emphasized consumer choice in the rehabilitation process. This empowered people with disabilities to state their preferences for pursuing self-employment outcomes. " As acceptance of self-employment for people with disabilities grew over the past ten years, several VR agencies revised their self-employment policies and procedures. This report describes how policies have changed. " Many agencies have developed self-employment programs and published manuals for counselors, checklists, and consumer resources such as fact sheets and planning guides, " say rsearchers xx and xx with the Rural Institute, " Agencies have developed or use services or programs developed specifically to assist people with disabilities develop successful businesses. " To view a copy of this report on-line go to: http://rtc.ruralinstitute.umt.edu/SelEm/FinalReport/StateSelfEmploymentPolicie s.htm#Table%20of%20Contents (long URL and will appear on more than one line of this message. Copy and paste the entire URL into your browser) Source: http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/economics-employment/rtcrural2003rept. html (Long URL and may appear on more than one line of this message. Copy and paste the entire URL into your browser) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@<A HREF= " http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/safetyregs.html " >Policy Brief Series: Righting the ADA--No. 19, The Supreme Court’s Kirkingburg Decision and the Impact of Federal Safety Regulations in ADA Cases</A> <A HREF= " http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2003/10/21/54712.php?sp1=rgj & sp2=News\ & sp3=Local+News & sp5=RGJ.com & sp6=news & sp7=local_news " >Millennium Scholar alleges discrimination from program</A> (Reno Gazette Journal, NV) A 19-year-old Las Vegas student is challenging Nevada’s Millennium Scholarship program, saying it discriminates against people with disabilities. B. IT Virtual Learning Addresses Varied Needs Online learning is meeting a variety of needs in schools systems across the country. In some places the emphasis is on enrichment. In Florida, a teacher uses an online dissection program to get her fifth grade students excited about biology. The virtual experience engaged students without exposing them to some of the more unpleasant aspects of a real dissection. In rural Oklahoma, videoconferencing allows students to interact with a distant science teacher or take virtual field trips to the penguin exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo and the Baseball Hall of Fame. In other places, online education is helping districts meet very basic needs for qualified teachers and course coverage. In one Texas Regional Service Center encompassing 13 counties and 43 school districts, distance learning is providing math instruction. One-third of the districts in the region have used virtual learning technology to meet a high school requirement. Source: <A HREF= " http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/elearning/articles/03frog.htm " >USNews.com\ </A> C. General Disability <A HREF= " http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/10/21/natio\ nal0222EDT0458.DTL " >Iowa town allows boy to use motorized wheelchair on streets</A> (San Francisco Chronicle) If 14-year-old Bryce Wiley puts a safety light on his motorized wheelchair and stays on the side of the road, police in his hometown of s promise they won't slap him with a fine. <A HREF= " http://story.news./news?tmpl=story & u=/ibsys/20031021/lo_wisc/1840\ 401 " >Doyle Praises Employers For Hiring Disabled Employees</A> (WISC Channel3000.com) Gov. Jim Doyle praised employers for recognizing the great work ethic of citizens with disabilities this morning when he announced the Department of Workforce Development successfully placed almost 3 percent more disabled people in jobs than were placed in 2002. ############################################################## The Center for An Accessible Society National disability groups file brief in support of web access Nov. 4, 2003 -- Ten national disability rights groups are filing a friend-of-the-court brief today in Miami urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to ensure that the World Wide Web is accessible to persons with disabilities. Last October U.S. District Court Judge Seitz in Miami, Florida ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply to the on-line services of Southwest Airlines. http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/drn/10_02.shtml#455 " To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards, " wrote Judge Seitz in her ruling. The groups filing the brief are asking the three-judge appellate panel to overrule the Seitz ruling. Websites can be made accessible with very little expense and without compromising creative design, say the groups in their brief. " Making the Web accessible to people with disabilities is not difficult, and includes such things as designing and generating web pages so that information is available to a wide range of people, including those who may be unable to hear audible content; who may be unable to use a mouse because of a physical impairment; or who access the Web using software that reads the content of a web page out loud to persons who cannot see the screen content. " The case, Access Now v. Southwest Airlines., will be argued in the Court of Appeals on November 6 in Miami. Read the brief online at http://www.icdri.org/legal/swa_amicus_brief.htm The Americans with Disabilities Act does cover the Internet, says the National Council on Disability. Read NCD Report at http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/adainternet.html Fewer than half of federal and state websites meet World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) http://www.w3.org/ standards on web access. Read Taubman Center report at http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt03us.html W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/ Section 508 http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/webaccess/sect508.htm For more background or sources on this topic, contact Deputy Director Stothers at 619-232-2727 X104 (cellphone 619-886-2727) or by email at wstothers@... EXPERTS IN web access: The Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for Assistive Technology & Environmental Access formed the Information Technology Technical Assistance & Training Center to promote the development of accessible electronic & information technology. Reach them at 1-866-948-8282 (Voice/TTY) or by email at webmaster@... or on-line at: http://www.ittatc.org/ Judy Brewer Director of the World Wide Web Consortium http://www.w3.org/ Web Access Initiative 617-253-5884 Brewer's group develops web guidelines, conducts education and outreach on Web-accessibility solutions. Kate Vanderheiden (vanderk@...) Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin/Madison http://trace.wisc.edu/world/ Pam Disabilities Issues Task Force Federal Communications Commission 202/418-2498 or 202/418-1169 (TTY) Email: pgregory@... Source: http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/webaccess/brief1103adawebaccess.html (Long URL and may appear on more than one line in this message. Copy and paste the complete URL into your browser) ############################################################## Disabled advocate facing lawsuit Businesses charging activist with filing numerous frivolous suits By , STAFF WRITER The man who sued more than a dozen Livermore wineries last year is now facing a lawsuit of his own. Louie has been targeting businesses around Northern California, including many wineries in both Napa and Livermore, for several years with lawsuits over disabled access. Now some 26 companies have filed a counterclaim through attorney Coates, accusing Louie of filing frivolous lawsuits. The companies involved in the counterclaims are all small retail businesses and residential hotels, mostly from San Francisco, Coates said. Louie has filed about 90 lawsuits in the last few months, and more than 700 in the last few years, according to Coates. The suits allege that businesses aren't complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Louie has said his only interest is making sure that the disabled have full access. But Coates and his clients argue that Louie and his nonprofit group, Americans With Disabilities Advocates, aren't acting in good faith. They contend that Louie is simply driving by and snapping a photograph of various storefronts to attach to the lawsuit, without ever having attempted to enter the business. If he had, Coates said, he would find that some businesses have portable ramps to help disabled patrons up the front steps, while others are in old buildings that couldn't be modified to comply with ADA requirements, and are therefore exempt. Source: http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10671~1745609,00.html ############################################################## New York Times November 8, 2003 Change in SAT Procedure Echoes in Disability Realm By TAMAR LEWIN Last year, when the College Board announced that as of this fall it would no longer flag the SAT scores of students with disabilities who took the test with extended time, educators expected a flood of requests from savvy parents eager to secure every advantage for their children. But what has happened is more complicated - and unexpected - because of the College Board's increasing efforts to ensure that only students with well-documented disabilities received extra time. >From July 1 to Sept. 30 this year, the board received 17,920 requests for extended time and other accommodations, a 10 percent decline from the 19,970 filed in the same period last year. At the same time, the board has been turning down more requests for accommodations - and the number of appeals from such rejections have more than tripled - in part because of a new requirement that students seeking extra time must generally have a diagnosis and a plan for accommodations in school at least four months before taking the SAT. The board also compiled a list of 142 schools - 43 private and 99 public where an unusually high proportion of students use accommodations and asked them for further documentation of the disabilities. While those schools represent less than 1 percent of the nation's high schools, they account for 24 percent of all accommodations nationwide. Faced with such scrutiny, many of the schools that had asked for the most accommodations have pulled back substantially on their requests. Some say the College Board has gone from too lax in approving accommodations to too restrictive. " In 20 years of tutoring, I had never seen a student turned down by the College Board, " said son, the chief executive of Inspirica, a $220-an-hour tutoring business. " But this year, we're hearing about it all the time, including the rejection of extended time for kids with serious learning disabilities that have been documented for years. " About 2 percent of the two million students who take the SAT receive accommodations for their disabilities, the majority of them students with learning disabilities who are allowed extra time. The percentage has more than doubled since 1990, amid a troubling inequity: Affluent students are far more likely than poor ones to have documented disabilities and therefore to receive accommodations. Historically, the College Board has relied largely on the recommendations of individual schools in granting testing accommodations. In most public school districts, the process is well-defined, with evaluations provided by the district, and, if appropriate, placement in special education, with an individualized education plan that may include extended time on all tests. Affluent districts, like those in Unionville, Pa., or Basking Ridge, N.J. both of which were on the list of 142 schools - have a far higher rate of accommodations than large urban districts. " We generally pick up kids who have disabilities and get them tested and into special education, with an academic plan, well before high school, " said Dickens, the principal of Unionville High School, whose district last year was Pennsylvania's most affluent. " We did not have parents coming in this fall and saying they want extra time now that the SAT is unflagged. " The situation is far murkier in private schools, where, typically, parents who believe their child would do better with extra time go to a private evaluator and come back with a report recommending extended time on tests, a report that is usually accepted. " We have high-powered, savvy parents, and if they come in with a $3,000 evaluation, dead set on getting extra time, it's very difficult to turn them down, " said a learning specialist at one selective New York City private school. " I think the College Board's doing the right thing, and helping us not buckle to parental pressure. But right now we're seeing a lot of freaked-out parents. " Many school psychologists and guidance counselors said they were pleased to see the College Board tightening its reins. " I think the College Board is appropriate in looking harder at questionable requests, especially when a child hasn't shown previous need for accommodations, " said Jill Schehr, the school psychologist at Schechter School of Westchester. But Ms. Schehr and others said it was only natural that affluent schools used accommodations at a high rate, since parents in those communities were aware that a child's lagging school performance might be because of a disability and were able to afford extensive private testing. At a College Board forum on accommodations in Manhattan, a California educational consultant said on Monday that parents often had trouble accepting that even if an evaluation concluded that their child could benefit from extra testing time, that was not a diagnosis of a learning disability. " Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and the fact that someone could benefit from extra time does not mean that they need extra time to level the playing field, " said the consultant, Jane McClure. Private schools are reluctant to disclose publicly just how many of their students use accommodations, but guidance counselors, learning specialists, parents, and teachers at the New York's top private schools estimate that in recent years, at least 10 percent of their students have taken the SAT with extended time or other modifications. This year, however, some students who requested accommodations have been turned down by the board. " It's been difficult for a few families this year, " said Dr. Ilene Rothschild, a learning specialist at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. " We are in the process of sending out a letter to parents explaining the College Board's policies on eligibility. " Carnahan, a spokeswoman for the College Board, said it would continue to review disability documentation at schools where an unusually high proportion of students receive accommodations, like the one on this year's list where 46 percent of those taking the SAT took the test under special conditions. Of the 142 schools on the initial list, 62 are not following the board's guidelines. But even those schools are apparently changing their practices. Together, they had filed 414 requests for accommodations at the end of September, fewer than half as many as the previous year. While the inequities in the system are obvious, most experts in the field agree that the problem is not too many rich students being classified as disabled but far too few poor students getting the diagnosis or help they need. Ms. McClure, the consultant, said that when she did a workshop on the issue in Arizona, some of the guidance counselors were unfamiliar with the process, did not have the needed forms or had no students receiving accommodations. There is increasing buzz in the education world that the whole system of obtaining accommodations has become so expensive, cumbersome and inequitable that the College Board should scrap it, and either make all tests untimed or give students the choice of taking them in three hours, four hours or more. Wayne Camara, the College Board's vice president for testing, said that while practical obstacles to such changes would be enormous, the issue was far from settled. " I do increasingly hear complaints about the burden on the school, the paperwork requirements and the equity issues, " he said, " and we will have to look at it more seriously. " Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/education/08SAT.html?th (must register (free) to view this article on-line) ############################################################## NEW WEB-BASED RESOURCE LAUNCHED TO ADDRESS DISCRIMINATION AND STIGMA ASSOCIATED WITH MENTAL ILLNESS A new Web site has been launched to serve as a centralized resource in collecting and providing information for addressing discrimination and stigma associated with mental illnesses : www.adscenter.org The recent President's New Freedom Commission Report, Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America, identifies stigma as a pervasive barrier to understanding mental illnesses and the importance of mental health. It points out the need to reduce stigma by increasing public understanding about mental health and mental illnesses with multi-faceted approaches, such as public education activities, factual information, dialogues, and interpersonal contact with people with mental illnesses. The new Web site serves as a comprehensive resource of useful information to address this need. The Web site offers a wealth of useful information related to stigma and discrimination. Descriptions of innovative international, national and local anti-stigma/anti-discrimination initiatives and programs can assist people to build understanding and knowledge related to people with mental illnesses. Also, this information can be used to identify and implement specific activities to counter discrimination and stigma in communities, schools, and workplaces. Information on resources such as articles, fact sheets, brochures, books, data bases, and research are provided on issue areas such as employment, housing, healthcare, the media and many more. Numerous resource organizations are listed to help landlords, employers, insurers, healthcare providers, educators, and others better understand mental illnesses and the people who have them. Also available on the Web site is a periodic memorandum, with information on new and/or innovative resources and campaigns, research, and columns by people involved in countering stigma and discrimination. The Web site is associated with the Resource Center to Address Discrimination and Stigma (ADS Center). The goal of the ADS Center is to help States, local communities, providers, managed care organizations, advocates, family members, and consumers of mental health services to design and implement programs to reduce stigma and the discrimination and prejudice it engenders. The Center provides useful resources and information about effective approaches to counter stigma and discrimination. It offers information about available publications, events and relevant issues, provides technical assistance and trainings through on-site assistance and teleconferences, and brokers speakers to make presentations. The ADS Center's toll-free number is 1-800-540-0320 and the Center is open Monday-Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (ET) with bilingual (English/Spanish) staff available. The ADS Center is a program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, and operated by a contract with The Gallup Organization and the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ The US Department of Justice has released new publications related to the Americans with Disabilities Act under their Business Connection portion of their web site. These materials are: ADA Business BRIEF: Communicating with People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Hospital Settings It is available on-line at: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hospcombr.htm (HTML Version) http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hospcombrscr.pdf (PDF Screen Version) http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hospcombrprt.pdf (PDF Print Version) Communicating with Guests who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Hotels, Motels, and Other Places of Transient Lodging It is available on-line at: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hotelcombr.htm (HTML Version) http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hotelcombrscr.pdf (PDF Screen Version) http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/hotelcombrprt.pdf (PDF Print Version) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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