Posted on: , Nic Lindh
U.K. newspaper The Guardian debuted a series today called “Disability Diaries” which follows a month in the life of 7 readers with disabilities. The personal stories include accounts of dating, discrimination and riding public transit.
Posted on: , Nic Lindh
The primetime ABC drama “The Good Doctor” follows the career and personal life of a young surgeon with autism. The title character, Dr. Shaun Murphy, is played by Freddie Highmore who does not have autism. However, Monday night’s episode (Nov 13th) was unique in that a guest role featuring a character with autism was played by Coby Bird, an experienced actor with autism. This article on The Mighty by Elizabeth Cassidy describes Bird’s work and perspective on his character.
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An Australian rental property company has created a business model that caters to young adults with intellectual disabilities and their family caregivers helping them learn independence. ” An article on Australian news outlet ABC.net.au explores why the arrangement appeals to certain tenants. “The Kemira model is so new it’s not easy to categorise. It straddles three categories: aged care, independent living, and disability accommodation,” writes journalist Norman Hermant.
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In a column for the Phoenix New Times NCDJ Advisory Board member Amy Silverman advocates for the creation of a Disability Studies major at Arizona universities. A sub-committee of The Arizona Board of Regents accepted requests for new majors last week and approved all the proposed majors except for Disability Studies. Silverman argues that there is a market demand for expertise related to disability issues. Click here to read Silverman’s full column.
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Navy veteran Scott Beaty hosts an art workshop every Friday night and Saturday morning at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri. Many of the veterans who attend experience symptoms of PTSD and appreciate the opportunity to express their feelings in a creative medium. The class is sponsored by Vision for Vets and the coordinators are hoping to expand to more locations. “Everybody here has some kind of disability, but we don’t give a damn,” Beaty said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re family. We’re all in this together. We help each other with our issues.”
Check out this article in the local Illinois paper Belleville News-Democrat to learn more.
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Last Friday the student newspaper Iowa State Daily featured an excellent profile of two college women who share the same invisible disability – postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Laura Wiederholt had been living with the condition for several years and recognized the symptoms described by her friend Taylor Schumacher. With Wiederholt’s encouragement, Schumacher received an official diagnosis and was able to adapt her lifestyle to her new condition. Apparently POTS is more common than people realize but it is underdiagnosed due to symptoms like fatigue and nausea that resemble other illnesses. Check out the article here to learn more about POTS and the students adapting to it.
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Every week The New York Times features an opinion column written by a person with a disability. This week’s essay by Rachel Kolb describes her mixed reactions to music after receiving a cochlear implant. Kolb’s column also includes a virtual reality video and animations to illustrate her sensations of seeing music and feeling vibrations. Click here to enjoy the full column.
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A new essay by the Ford Foundation’s Program Officer, Noorain F. Khan, outlines their expanding philanthropic initiatives to support disability rights. Below is an excerpt from the essay. Click on the heading to read the full essay and learn more about all the excellent disability-related organizations they’re sponsoring, including the NCDJ.
Last fall, Darren Walker wrote an essay urging all of us to acknowledge our personal biases, and to understand how those biases can fuel injustice and inequality. Darren’s call grew out of his own awakening: the realization, brought to light by friends and activists, that for all the foundation’s attention to challenging inequality, we hadn’t accounted for the huge community of people living with disabilities. It was a humbling moment, he wrote.
As the past year has shown, it has also proven to be a consequential one. It quickly became clear that our focus on inequality demands that we think seriously about disability issues. It became equally clear that across all our programs, the specific outcomes and goals we’re working to achieve simply cannot be accomplished without addressing the needs, concerns, and priorities of people with disabilities. And so, guided by the disability movement’s mantra, “nothing about us without us,” we’ve been working to confront ableism and expand participation and inclusion on both the institutional and individual levels. It turned out we had a lot to learn.
As the program officer in the office of the president, I steward some of the foundation’s exploratory grant making under Darren’s direction, assessing and investing in new ideas that don’t yet have a home elsewhere in the foundation. Among those efforts, I lead our exploration of how inequality impacts the more than one billion people with disabilities around the world. Over the past year, I’ve met with more than 80 activists, leaders, self-advocates, and funders who focus on people with disabilities. It has been a profound privilege to spend time with and learn from them, and the result has been what I believe is some of the most urgent and meaningful work of my professional life. (Click here to continue reading…)
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Several recent films produced by Hollywood studios and starring celebrity actors are frustrating disability advocates for their lack of diversity and authenticity. Examples include Todd Haynes’s film Wonderstruck starring Julianne Moore as a deaf woman, David Gordon Green’s Stronger starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a double-amputee, and Andy Serkis’s Breathe starring Andrew Garfield as a polio patient who becomes a quadriplegic. A recent article in USA Today explains why disability advocates are raising awareness about the lack of casting diversity and how filmmakers are responding.
Article excerpt: So what can Hollywood do to give more visibility? Lauren Appelbaum, communications director for RespectAbility, a non-profit organization working to fight stigmas and create opportunities for people with disabilities, urges studios to look to TV, where actors such as Stranger Things‘ Gaten Matarazzo (who has cleidocranial dysplasia, a rare growth disorder) and NCIS: New Orleans‘ Daryl Mitchell (who is paralyzed from the chest down) play roles that don’t hinge on them being disabled.
“Actors with disabilities could easily play roles that neither hide nor emphasize their disability,” Appelbaum says. “For example: a doctor who uses a wheelchair or a scientist with cerebral palsy. By including characters with obvious and hidden disabilities in scripts and story lines, films can create more authenticity within entertainment.”
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Today, October 31st, is the last day of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The goal of NDEAM is to promote resources for employees with disabilities and their employers. Ted Simmons of Arizona PBS recently interviewed Pv Jantz about resources offered by the Arizona Commission of the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing. Jantz, who is deaf, says employers shouldn’t assume what type of accommodation a new co-worker needs. The best approach is to ask the employee what they prefer as an individual. Workers with disabilities tend to be experts on which accommodations best fit their individual needs. Jantz also recommends the website www.AskJAN.org (the Job Accommodation Network) as a resource for employers and employees with disabilities.
