A new elevator at an above-ground New York City subway station is poised to “open transportation to the city,” according to an official with the advocacy group Disability in Action. The ribbon was cut at the elevator on the Dyckman Street station in Upper Manhattan last week. Edith Prentiss with Disability in Action said the newly accessible stop gives riders in wheelchairs access to “the entire eastern side of Washington Heights and Inwood.” Read more.
With more and more people turning to their computers instead of television to watch video, Congress has acted to require closed captions on Internet videos for the millions of Americans with hearing impairments.
Closed captioning has long been required for feature films and broadcast television, but such laws did not account for the digital revolution. That has meant spotty accessibility on the Web for the estimated 38 million Americans – 12 percent of the population – who are hearing impaired.
The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 requires any video that is closed captioned for television to also be captioned when made available online. The Federal Communications Commission also has issued a series of deadlines for archived TV footage already edited for the Internet to be captioned. The first deadline is March 30, 2014.
To help those companies and individuals seeking to comply with the new FCC rules, the National Center on Disability and Journalism surveyed the various services available and compiled a list of resources on Web video captioning as well as a summary of the rules and deadlines for compliance.
Derrick Coleman, fullback for the Seattle Seahawks and first legally deaf player on the NFL, surprised a couple of his biggest fans with tickets to the Super Bowl. Coleman surprised nine-year-old twins Riley and Erin Kovalcik while the girls were taping a segment for Good Morning America. The girls, who are also hearing impaired, had written Coleman a letter that went viral expressing their admiration of his accomplishments despite having a disability. Read more.
President Obama’s call to hike the federal minimum wage in the State of the Union address this week may not apply to workers with disabilities. According to disability advocates, the executive order would not negate the ability of approved federal contracts to continue paying people with disabilities less than minimum wage. The AbilityOne Program estimated around 50,000 people with disabilities were employed by federal contractors in 2012. Read more.
The Schneider Family Book Awards honoring books that highlight the disability experience were announced this week along with the renowned Caldecott and Newbery awards for children’s literature by the American Library Association. The awards are given to authors and illustrators in three different categories “for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” This year’s winners included stories about an artist wounded while serving in World War I, a princess with a foot deformity who helps chase dragons and a courageous American pilot who is captured by Nazis and sent to a concentration camp.
In a letter to the editor, Les Greene, president-elect of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, wrote a recent article about fraud charges against first responders was “hardly” shocking. The Jan. 7 article “Charges for 106 in Huge Fraud Over Disability,” detailed retired New York City police officers and firefighters accused of faking symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and other psychological injuries. According to Greene, “The tragedy is that compensation doled out by government agencies can be readily taken advantage of…by those who need to identify themselves as victims, and thus entitled to reparations by others.” Read more.
The United States does not need to ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because the U.S. already protects its disabled citizens, according to an opinion piece by Steven Groves in U.S. News & World Report.
According to Groves, U.S. federal laws are more specific than the “ambiguous” codes shaped by international opinion in the CRPD. Moreover, the U.S. legislation, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disability Act, can be expanded and modified.
CRPD activists pushing for ratification claim it will improve accessibility on a global level. Not so, says Groves. Read more.
An expert in psychology on Friday told a commission investigating the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that there is no data linking autism to violent tendencies. Matthew Lerner, a professor at Stony Brook University, was among a group of experts who testified on autism spectrum disorder and programs available to help people with autism.
The commission is considering whether the state of Connecticut’s mental health programs are adequate in treating people with mental disabilities, specifically in regard to Adam Lanza, the gunman who killed 28 people in a December 2012 school shooting rampage, including himself. Lanza, 20, was diagnosed with profound autism spectrum disorder in 2006. Read more.
The Food and Drug Administration cleared a new blood test on Friday that can detect mental disabilities in infants. The laboratory test called CytoScan Dx Assay is not intended for prenatal screening but for helping doctors diagnose some developmental disabilities earlier, such as Down syndrome and DiGeorge syndrome.
Whereas other existing tests are generally only used after a child starts exhibiting signs of a disorder, doctors said the new test should be available to use before any signs occur to help get appropriate care right away. Read more.
Ryan Gabrielson won first prize of the inaugural Katherine Schneider Award for Excellence in Disability Reporting.
Gabrielson was invited to speak about “Broken Shield” at a Must See Monday event at ASU
Steve Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism at ASU, introduces Ryan Gabrielson at the Cronkite School.
Tim McGuire, Frank Russell Chair of Journalism at ASU, introduces Katherine Schneider at awards ceremony
Gabrielson spoke about his process investigating the failures of a California police department to protect the developmentally disabled as part of his award-winning piece “Broken Shield.”
Gabrielson answers questions from journalism students at ASU.
Board members of the National Center on Disability and Journalism pose with award winner Ryan Gabrielson. Clockwise from left: Steve Doig, Gabrielson, Nan Connolly, Jennifer LaFleur, Kristin Gilger, Tim McGuire.
Journalism students at the Walter Cronkite School ask Gabrielson about investigative reporting.
