Today, the Wall Street Journal published the article, For Disabled, a Job Hunt Alternative, leading with the story of New Mexico’s David Shunkey, an autistic man who runs a dog-treat business with an $850 state grant. The story does a great job talking about the opportunities as well as the hurdles that face disabled entrepreneurs. While loans are available, they’re harder to get. And in Mr. Shunkey’s case, his difficulty with communicating and running a business has potentially hurt his sales.

A key program that WSJ mentioned is one I’ve written about in the past on my website, abledbody.com, is the Entrepreneur Boot Camp for Veterans. This excellent, week-long workshop is designed to give veterans with disabilities an MBA-style crash course in being an business owner. Six schools are participating, including founder Syracuse University: Here’s how to apply.

Another program that didn’t receive mention — perhaps it was too new to be considered — is the U.S. Business Leadership Network’s Disability Supplier Diversity Program. The program offers businesses that are 51% owned by an individual with a disability, including service disabled veterans, an opportunity to obtain certified disability-owned business status and get access to supplier networks in major corporations and federal agencies. It’s the disability version of being a women- or minority-owned business. My company, abledbody, successfully obtained certified disability-owned status on April 30, and I’m on of 16 other small businesses that hope use this certification to do business with private-sector companies including Ernst & Young, IBM and Walgreen’s.

In fact, many people with disabilities who start businesses go to great lengths to ensure that they’re using their strengths, not their disability, to make an imprint. (Abledbody offers writing and communications services.) Other companies in the program sell products and services that cater to the disability market — such as Braille signage or ADA consulting — and for these enterprises, business can be a windfall. Let’s hope another article shows up in mainstream media that highlights these success stories, too.

- Suzanne Robitaille

On the show, she discussed how journalists can better cover autism –encouraging the media to focus on positive stories about coping with autism, rather than negative controversies.

Very interesting podcast. Check it out here.

The Poynter Institute is talking about braille and literacy, a topic jump-started by a recent New York Times Magazine article, “Listening to Braille,” by Rachel Aviv. The author writes that new technology may be undermining braille literacy as people who are blind are now “reading” via e-books, iPods, telephone news services and other text-to-speech devices.

Note to New York Times headline writers: People who are blind read braille. They don’t listen to it.

Aviv delves into scientific studies that say learning English by “visual” or “feeling” mode is far better than anything audio can provide. With new technologies, she asks, do blind people lose more than they gain?

Probably not. Most blind people would never be able to assimilate into modern society without “talking” books, computers, mp3 players and smart phones — even if they were fluent in braille. One reason is the cost of producing a braille book – about $1,000, due to the cost of labor and materials. Aviv writes:

“Braille books are expensive and cumbersome, requiring reams of thick, oversize paper. The National Braille Press, an 83-year-old publishing house in Boston, printed the Harry Potter series on its Heidelberg cylinder; the final product was 56 volumes, each nearly a foot tall.”

Alternatively, a person who is blind can read Web-braille.  Such a book is translated into digital braille and “read” via braille on a computer or PDA using a “refreshable braille display,” which is like a braille keyboard. Still, these devices cost upwards of $6,000 and one must be fluent in literary braille to use them.

That’s why digital talking books make so much more sense for today’s modern person who is blind. Books can be read aloud on “DAISY readers,” which are like the Kindle — only much more accessible, or on MP3 players like iPods. Costs start from $350 and up. That’s more favorable economics.

The bigger problem is getting the major publishers to allow their books to be translated into audio for those with visual impairments.  The New York Times and BusinessWeek have covered the recent dispute over Kindle 2′s ability to read its books aloud, which was intended for use by the blind. In a Wall Street Journal article, Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild says: “Kindle users don’t have the right to read a book out loud…that’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Technology has caught up with the times, but the marketplace is still mired in old-school thinking. This debate will continue. Meanwhile, people who are blind will try to get their hands on literature any which way they can.

Suzanne Robitaille is the founder and editor-in-chief of Abledbody.com, a consumer Web site that covers disability news and assistive technology. She was the assistive technology columnist for BusinessWeek.com in New York from 2001-2005.

She also worked at The Wall Street Journal Online and continues to write for print and Web publications, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek.com, Disaboom and Media Post. She is the author of the book “The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology & Devices.”

The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Statistics and Demographics compiled the data, which include statistics from federal sources and surveys on disability prevalence and population size, including breakdowns by state and disability type. The site also includes employment and earnings, education, health and health care coverage, rehabilitation and participation in benefit programs.

This resource is posted in the disability resource page.

A few weeks back I came across a story that really stood out. The story is a profile that was featured on ESPN’s newsmagazine “E:60” about a high school football player who is blind.

I was impressed with both the production values and the storytelling. The majority of the 10-minute story is told by the subject of the profile, Charlie Wilks, who also conducts most of the interviews for the piece. By the end of the story, I felt that I knew and understood who Charlie really was. On the field, his nickname is the beast because he shows no mercy and expects the same from his opponents.

The producers of the story do more “showing” than “telling” about the challenges Wilks faces and how he adapts. For example, they show Wilks using assistive technology, a BrailleNote, for the interviews he conducts. Wilks briefly explains how the technology works, but the storytelling isn’t bogged down with all the particulars. Instead, viewers can see him using it during interviews.

Significantly, it is Wilks – not his mother or grandfather or even a doctor — who explains how a brain tumor led to his blindness. This shows us more about Wilks as a person than about Wilks as a medical condition.

I was inspired by this story, not because I was told to be inspired, but because I was shown.

Decide for yourself. The story is at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/e60/columns/story?id=4637537.

The best example of how the perception of people with disabilities changed over her lifetime can be found in two stories about Shriver published by the Christian Science Monitor: a profile published in 1975 and her obituary published Aug. 11. The two articles reveal a stark difference in the language used to describe those with intellectual disabilities. The 1975 piece used words such as “retarded” and “handicapped,” which would no longer be acceptable, but which is typical of how people with intellectual disabilities were referred to in that era.

The obituary is a good example of the use of accurate language to refer to disabilities, employing the terms “intellectually disabled” instead of mentally retarded. Other news organizations didn’t do quite as well, using the term mentally disabled, which is the standard Associate Press style.

Here are some examples of the coverage of Shriver’s death:

• National Public Radio

• CNN

• The New York Times

• The Connecticut Post

• The Washington Post

I’d like to know how you view the coverage of Schriver’s death. Leave a comment and let me know.

I’ll start things off by sharing my own experiences as the subject of several news stories for newspapers and television.

The first time I was introduced to journalism was when I was 7 years old. It was 1986, and The Boston Globe profiled my family when the missing gene which is responsible for my Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy was discovered by a local researcher. I was portrayed as a victim with a grim future, and that depiction changed how I perceived myself.

Reading the article today, I can saythat it’s informative and talks about the challenges my family and I faced, but it painted a bleak picture just through the use of certain words and phrases, such as “diagnosed a victim of,” “darkens their son’s future” and “victim of muscular dystrophy.”

This is in contrast to another article in The Boston Globe in 1998 about my friend and I coming to ASU. Although it was an overcoming adversity story, which is one of the clichés of articles about people disabilities, the language expressed the actual situation and didn’t focus on pity and impending doom.

I think overall news coverage has evolved and so has the portrayal of people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 has contributed to this change. Just the naming of the act has helped change how disabilities are viewed; it’s not about the disabled, but Americans who happen to have disabilities.

Immediately following the publication of the article, the local NBC station, WHDH-TV, wanted to do the same story for the evening news. A few months later, Extra! was interested in doing a similar story, but on a national level. I was surprised, Extra! did a better job by not sensationalizing the story and giving a fair representation of myself.

The biggest difference, I think, was the fact that the field producer was able to spend several days with me and was able to see what my life was really like as a freshman in college. Unfortunately, this luxury of time and resources was not available to the reporter at the local station who put together the story within a few hours to air on the news that night.

Ultimately, what I learned is how important it is to educate reporters and producers so that they aren’t stuck in stereotypes, that they’re able to see not just what people with disabilities can’t do, but what they can do.
Which brings us back to the National Center on Disability & Journalism. I’d love to hear your reaction to this blog, and I’d love to hear your own stories about media coverage of disability – or the lack of it. Hopefully, we’ll learn from each other and open up a dialogue that will help us all become better journalists.

Let’s get started.