physical disability

How Can Electric Vehicles Help Drivers with Mental and Physical Conditions?

By Alex Channing

Giving people with physical and mental conditions easier access to our roads will go a long way to helping them live with autonomy and independence. There are many common disabilities that can affect driving, such as arthritis, neurological conditions, or impaired hearing or vision. Fortunately, technological advances are continuing to make it easier for disabled people to get behind the wheel. 

Electric vehicles (EVs) are one such innovation which could help to reduce the gulf in driver numbers between non-disabled and disabled people. But how can an EV assist drivers who have pre-existing conditions? Here are three ways people with mental and physical conditions could benefit from making the switch to electric.

Quieter ride

With fewer moving parts and the absence of a combustion engine, EVs offer a far quieter ride than traditional cars. Whilst this alone may not have you rushing out to join the electric revolution, the reduced noise of an EV has actually been found to have many positive effects on the mental health of drivers. 

A study carried out by researchers at the University of York analysed the brain activity of London taxi drivers when driving both diesel and electric black cabs. The study concluded that they were calmer, happier and more focused in the electric model. It was inferred that the quieter working environment contributed towards higher concentration levels in drivers, with fewer distractions allowing them to focus more on the roads. 

Particularly for people who rely on getting into their cars every day for work or other commitments, the more peaceful conditions could go a long way to helping reduce some of the stresses associated with driving.

Convenience 

It’s a common misconception amongst many drivers that petrol-power is always more convenient than electric when it comes to cars. But there are many arguments that dispute this belief. For example, most electric vehicles are automatic, meaning you won’t have to contend with a gear box or often even a traditional handbrake whilst driving. This can make for a safer and far more comfortable driving experience, particularly for people with joint pain. 

What’s more, for people who suffer from physical impairments, but aren’t registered as disabled, an added benefit of EVs could be the designated electric car parking spaces which are often located in priority spots. In car parks with charging points, these bays will often be placed in a more convenient position, meaning less walking is required to and from your vehicle.

Charging 

As it is, for many disabled drivers, ‘filling up’ an EV is far less strenuous than using a traditional petrol or diesel pump. Whereas using a fuel pump requires the strength to pull the trigger and hold it in place, you simply need to plug the charger into your EV to top it up, where it can be left unattended until fully charged. What’s more, having the freedom to fill up your EV from the comfort of home can help put your mind at ease, and means you can avoid busy petrol/charging stations.

NCDJ Board Member Becky Curran Kekula Discusses Facing the Fear of Inclusivity

NCDJ board member Becky Curran Kekula speaks with a TMJ-4 reporter on “The Morning Blend” about inclusive ways to discuss disability.

By “The Morning Blend” show on TMJ-4 Milwaukee

NCDJ board member Becky Curran Kekula appeared on this morning talk show to discuss tips for treating people with disabilities fairly and respectfully. Part of the discussion focused on the fact that since 70% of disabilities are invisible, many people are nervous to either admit they have a disability, or to speak about someone who may have a disability that isn’t immediately apparent.

Also featured are some of Becky’s favorite tips for working remotely — a particularly relevant topic in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch the full segment here: https://www.tmj4.com/shows/the-morning-blend/facing-the-fear-of-inclusivity

These women are making Charlotteans with disabilities a priority

Monique Stamps and Judith Brown are using their personal experiences to advocate for Charlotteans with disabilities.

Judith Brown is executive director of Project 70Forward, a nonprofit working to create an inclusive community for Charlotteans with disabilities. Photo courtesy of Judith Brown
By Bryant Carter, Q City Metro

Among Charlotte’s diverse population, those who are disabled rarely get the attention they deserve. Monique Stamps and Judith Brown want to use their personal experiences to help change that, especially for people of color with disabilities.

At 16, Stamps was involved in a car crash in Rock Hill resulting in injuries that left her reliant on a wheelchair. Following the accident, she found it difficult growing up with a disability. Doctors warned her against having children, friends and family suggested she collect disability insurance instead of going to college, and the agency that was supposed to be a resource wasn’t very helpful.

Under section 14(c) of the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, companies can pay disabled workers below the federal minimum wage. When the local Vocational Rehabilitation office placed Stamps in a job sorting plastic spoons, she fought back.

“They told me I was being arrogant versus trying to get an education and live a full life,” she said. “If that made me arrogant, then so be it.”

In 2000, Stamps earned her bachelor’s degree in social work from Winthrop University. Four years later, she relocated to Charlotte to work at an independent-living facility mentoring others with disabilities. That was her first meeting with Judith Brown, who had come to the center for assistance.

Motivation to change the system

Brown lived in New York City and Baltimore before moving to Charlotte in 2010. She suffered hearing, vision and spinal cord injuries in her late 30s that prevented her from working. Brown also discovered that her two sons were autistic. Doctors misdiagnosed her family, she said, because their symptoms weren’t common in African Americans.

The two women immediately bonded as Black women with disabilities who experienced unfair treatment by social services.

Read the full article here: https://qcitymetro.com/2019/12/20/these-women-are-making-charlotteans-with-disabilities-a-priority/

A new wheelchair will help this University of Florida student journalist do stand-ups — literally

Drew Dees in front of a camera.
University of Florida student journalist Drew Dees works on a video project with UF’s creative services team. (Photo courtesy Drew Dees)

By: , Poynter

Student journalist Drew Dees is kind but firm when he interviews people for his Florida college TV station.

Please stand up, he instructs them. Don’t crouch down in front of me. I’m not a baby.

He understands that people might not be used to seeing a journalist in a wheelchair — he never saw any on TV when he was growing up — but he demands to be treated the same as any other reporter.

“One of the big barriers in this career field is getting people to … take you seriously,” he said.

A 24-year-old junior at the University of Florida, Dees said he’s had overwhelming support from his family and professors as he pursues a degree in broadcast journalism. His dream of being an on-air reporter and anchor feels even more real now that his insurance company has agreed to provide him with a new $50,000 wheelchair. The Permobil F5 Corpus VS chair will allow him to move from a sitting position to standing with the touch of a button.

“It’s just going to make such a world of difference for me,” he said. “Just to be able to stand up and be able to talk to people on eye level and not have to look up at someone; that’s just the most amazing feeling to me.”

The chair will also allow him to do what’s known in TV news as a standup, where a reporter shares information on camera while standing or walking.

“It’s going to allow me to be more creative, to have more of that demonstrative standup that we look for instead of just being a talking head,” he said.

Dees got a test run of the new chair during a recent fitting to make sure it’s properly adjusted to his body. The chair won’t be ready for several months, but Dees was so excited that he posted a picture on social media of him using the chair to stand up. On a whim, he shared that photo and story in a journalism Facebook group that has about 15,000 members.

Read the full article here:https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2019/a-new-wheelchair-will-help-this-university-of-florida-student-journalist-do-stand-ups-literally/

The Physics (and Economics, and Politics) of Wheelchairs on Planes

Flying can be stressful, painful, or simply impossible for wheelchair users. Critics say it doesn’t have to be that way.

 Michael Schulson, Undark

WHEN SHANE BURCAW flies on an airplane, he brings along a customized gel cushion, a car seat, and about 10 pieces of memory foam. The whole arsenal costs around $1,000, but for Burcaw it’s a necessity.

The 27-year-old author and speaker — who, alongside his fiancée, Hannah Aylward, is one half of the YouTube duo Squirmy and Grubs — has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that affects motor neurons and causes muscle wasting and weakness. The disorder contorted his limbs and he has used a wheelchair for mobility since he was 2 years old. Today, he uses a motorized wheelchair custom-fitted to his diminutive, 65-lb. frame, but to board an airplane, he’s required to give it up. Instead, Aylward must carry Burcaw onto the plane, and from there, transfer him into a child’s car seat, which provides limited support and does not fit his body (thus, the foam).

“When you hear about the injuries and the discomfort and the embarrassment that wheelchair users have faced when flying,” Burcaw said, “it becomes pretty obvious that they’re not being treated in a very humane way with these rules.”

Indeed, regulations prohibit passengers from sitting in their own wheelchairs on planes, and, as a result, 29 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which dramatically increased American wheelchair users’ access to buses, trains, and other essential 21st century infrastructure, airplanes remain stubbornly inaccessible. For many wheelchair users, the experience of flying is stressful, painful, and sometimes humiliating. For some, it is simply impossible.

Emily Ladau, a disability rights activist, writer, and public speaker, does deep-breathing exercises to manage her anxiety as airport staff take her wheelchair away. She likens the experience to watching someone walk off with her legs. Things aren’t much better onboard. “Airplane seats are designed for the quote-unquote average person,” Ladau said. “I’m nowhere near the quote-unquote average person.” At 4’6”, she does not fit the seat easily. Her legs dangle. She cannot align her posture. “It’s very uncomfortable,” she said.

“You’re basically giving disabled people yet another reason to feel like society wants us shut into our homes and doesn’t want us going anywhere.”

Read the full article here: https://undark.org/2019/12/03/making-flying-safe-accessible/?fbclid=IwAR12anC3a_5uwrH1MBh9q4wRUi6txearETo1yedwgZBm4LGfTmO079kf9vA

 

My Fight With a Sidewalk Robot

A life-threatening encounter with AI technology convinced me that the needs of people with disabilities need to be engineered into our autonomous future.

A mid-sized robot on a sidewalk
A Starship Technologies commercial delivery robot navigates a sidewalk. Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
PERSPECTIVE

By EMILY ACKERMAN

One afternoon last month, as I was crossing a busy four-lane street that runs through the University of Pittsburgh campus, I looked up to see a robot blocking my path.

This wasn’t unexpected. Over the summer, several four-wheeled, knee-high robots had been roaming campus, unmarked and usually with a human handler several feet behind. Recently they’d multiplied, and now they were flying solo. They belonged to Starship Technologies, I learned, an autonomous delivery service rolling out on college campuses across America.

As a chemical engineering Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh who uses a power wheelchair, I figured it wouldn’t be long before I met one of these bots in a frustrating face-off on a narrow sidewalk. What I didn’t realize was how dangerous, and dehumanizing, that scenario might be.

The robot was sitting motionless on the curb cut on the other side of Forbes Avenue. It wasn’t crossing with the rest of the pedestrians, and when I reached the curb, it didn’t move as the walk signal was ending. I found myself sitting in the street as the traffic light turned green, blocked by a non-sentient being incapable of understanding the consequences of its actions.

I managed to squeeze myself up on the sidewalk in a panic, climbing the curb outside the curb cut in fear of staying in the street any longer—a move that causes a painful jolt and could leave me stuck halfway up if I’m not careful.

Then I did what a lot of upset people do: I sent off a thread of angry tweets about the experience.

Read the full article here: https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/11/autonomous-technology-ai-robot-delivery-disability-rights/602209/

New law requires airlines to disclose how many wheelchairs they break

wheelchair at airport

Beginning in January 2019, airline passengers can search the U.S. Department of Transportation website to determine an airlines’ track record of handling wheelchairs and other mobility devices. A new law sponsored by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., requires air carriers to be more transparent, obliging them to provide monthly reports that are publicly accessible and which detail the number of wheelchairs, checked bags, and motorized scooters lost, broke, or mishandled during flights.

The law was actually passed two years ago, but the Department of Transportation delayed its implementation until Duckworth–a veteran and wheelchair user herself–urged U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to force airlines to make the data — which they already collect each month — available to the public.

Click here to access the article on the Chicago Tribune’s website.

More Americans Have Disabilities, Survey Finds

One in four Americans is disabled, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released Thursday “At some point in their lives, most people will either have a disability or know someone who has a one,” Coleen Boyle, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, said in a written statement. Read Binghui Huang’s story here.

A Japanese man in a wheelchair in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, Japan. ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, CM - OUTS * NM, PH, VA if sourced by CT, LA or MoD ** (Rich Legg / Getty Images)
A Japanese man in a wheelchair in the Asakusa area of Tokyo, Japan. ** OUTS – ELSENT, FPG, CM – OUTS * NM, PH, VA if sourced by CT, LA or MoD ** (Rich Legg / Getty Images)

Op-ed piece addresses New York Post cover story

A New York Post cover story advances the harmful notion that if someone can walk, they must not have a disability writes Peter Catapano in his op-ed piece “A Front-Page Insult to People With Disabilities”.
Mr. Catapano is the editor of the opinion series Disability at the New York Times.

Image of New York Post cover story "Walk of Shame."
Image of New York Post cover story “Walk of Shame”, by Jeenah Moon for The New York Times”

For Filipinos with disabilities, climate change and natural disasters are a dangerous mix

For almost three decades, Bacita De La Rosa has been unable to walk due to a spinal cord injury she suffered after she was struck by a vehicle. She has since been dependent upon her family for help with many basic needs and cannot leave her home without assistance — all of which has proven to be very difficult when the inevitable tropical storm comes. Credit: Jason Strother/PRI

PRI’s Jason Strother examines how Typhoon Haiyan impacted the disability community in the Philippine city of Tacloban
Read his story on climate change, natural disaster and disability here