Another new model of yellow cabs could hit city streets before the much ballyhooed “Taxi of the Future” arrives.

Hundreds of mentally ill people who have been confined to nursing homes, sometimes in prisonlike conditions, would move to apartments or other housing within three years under a legal settlement with New York State.

Emergency evacuation decisions are tougher for people with disabilities because they need to be sure they are fleeing to shelters that they can get in and out of and use. In the wake of Hurricane Irene, there are allegations today that the City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) fell short on promises that people being ordered out of “Zone A” would be evacuated to “accessible shelters.”

Starbucks Coffee Company has agreed to pay $75,000 and provide other significant relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC had charged Starbucks Coffee Company with unlawfully denying a reasonable accommodation to a barista with dwarfism at one of its El Paso stores and firing her because of her disability.

With a white cane in hand and a guitar slung over his shoulder, Frank Strong Jr. is touring Iowa in support of local bus service.

Zoltan Hirsch, a double amputee in a wheelchair, says he’s trying to make New York City more handicapped accessible one lawsuit at a time. But some wonder whether Hirsch — who has filed 87 federal claims in the last year seeking damages and legal fees — is crusader or con man.

Health-care providers on Wednesday lambasted state changes to a Medicaid program that make it harder for patients, particularly the elderly, to get in-home care for such everyday activities as eating, bathing and going to the bathroom.

Advocates for people with disabilities have filed a federal class-action lawsuit seeking to block the state from cutting in-home care services to 4,000 low-income individuals who need extensive assistance to remain at home and out of an institution.

The senior citizen in Deerfield Beach’s Century Village is so incensed over her condo’s refusal to honor her doctor’s “prescription’’ that she live with her dog, Sweetie, for emotional support, and the retaliation she says she suffered over her request, she’s made a federal case out of it, literally. Broward County government has taken her cause to the courthouse, and the public is paying for it.

For Karen Foran Dempsey, efforts to provide equal opportunities for people with disabilities have not slowed since last year’s 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.