In Korea, disabled lawmaker offers fresh insight on needs of people with disabilities there

From The Korea Herald:

For the needy people, welfare is a right given them, not charity, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday, urging the government to expand welfare for the socially and economically marginalized people with disabilities.

A polio victim himself, Rep. Park Eun-soo of the main opposition Democratic Party said that one out of 10 South Koreans have some degree of disabilities, but many of them do not receive proper treatment and often face discrimination.

“A more active welfare policy should be in place to give them equal opportunities, not isolation from our society,” Park (pictured) said in an interview with the Yonhap news agency.

Park, 55, who became a lawmaker in 2008 on the DP’s proportional representation ticket, says he himself has experienced various forms of discrimination from an early age simply because he is physically challenged.

After graduating the prestigious Seoul National University and passing the rigorous bar exam, Park wanted to become a judge but could not sit on the bench for a long while for no clear reasons.

“It was a wake-up call for me. Before being rejected, I had thought people would recognize me if I study hard and become a judge,” Park said. “Through the experience, I realized that it would be hard for a disable person to achieve something in our society without changing the social system.”

He later became a judge, only after the Supreme Court, under harsh public and media criticism, overturned its earlier decision against him being hired as a judge.

Over the years, Park said, South Korea has made considerable progress in breaking down the high wall of discrimination against disabled people but it still has a long way to go to fully protect them.

As an example, he cited that under the employment promotion act for the disabled, government agencies now should fill at least 6 percent of new job openings with disabled people until the figure reaches 4 percent of the total work force.

“For disabled people, things have changed a lot for the better,” Park said.

Having served as the director of the Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled from 2004-2008, Park said he is proud that he has done something meaningful to help enhance the rights of the disabled people.

According to Park, an anti-disability discrimination law was enacted in 2007 but has yet to be fully implemented due to the lack of public awareness of the issue and shortage of staff in charge of correcting wrong practices.

He also pointed out the problem of low budget for disabled people which currently stands at a mere 0.3 percent of the total budget, the third lowest among 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last year. The corresponding OECD average is 2.5 percent.

Park said politics was not what he had intended to pursue in earnest but he now believes that it can be a useful tool to help promote the right of disabled people in society, especially at workplaces.

“It is important to decide a policy involving representatives from people who are directly affected by the new system or law. It is even better for them to actively participate in the decision-making process,” he said.

The lawmaker still sees many tasks unsolved in the parliament regarding issues on the disabled as well as socially underprivileged. But he is not so optimistic that he will be able to serve a second term as a lawmaker.

“I am not sure whether people will select a person with disability under the current system as they may prefer a representative who can work for his or her electorate,” Park said.

“If a new political system is introduced to pick someone who knows how to craft better policies and handle administrative affairs, I am willing to participate in politics in the future.”

PHAMALy, Denver's disability theatre troupe, opens musical that includes first deaf performer

From John Moore, The Denver Post theater critic:

Actress Nicki Runge (pictured) calls herself not just deaf, but "deaf with a capital D." And that has nothing to do with the completeness of her hearing loss.

"To me, 'Big-D deaf' means I am proud that I am deaf. And I am happy to call myself deaf," Runge said through Lynn Williams, one of the many volunteer interpreters who have made it possible for the veteran actor to perform in the handicapped theater PHAMALy's just-opened musical, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying " at the Denver Center.
Wait . . . musical?

It's OK to snicker. Runge does that — a lot. It's really the only time you can hear any sound come out of her.

"It is interesting, because one thing musical theater requires is singing — and obviously, I can't," she said through Williams, letting out a little infectious squeak.

"I don't have a voice."

She can dance in the numbers by following those around her and counting out the beat in her head. When her character has lines, castmates feed her sign language, and repeat out loud what she says with her hands in return.

Steve Wilson has encountered many challenges in his 12 years directing this celebrated theater group that is made up entirely of actors with some sort of disability (their word).

He's welcomed many hearing-impaired actors before, but never one who is completely deaf. "When you think about having a person in a musical who cannot speak, your first thought is, 'Well, that seems very odd,' " he admits.

"But my first thought is never 'no.' It's, 'How can we make this work?' "

The challenge was great: There was no money in the budget for the unexpected cost of needing interpreters for 10 weeks of rehearsals and three more of performances. But Ronni Gallup, founder of the local sign-language interpreting company Hands On Productions, made it happen.

At first, even Runge, 36, thought it might be impossible. But not Williams. "Oh, no," Runge's interpreter said. "I have been watching PHAMALy for years and years. I know they can do anything."

And they don't do anything halfway. While Runge is a member of the "How to Succeed in Business" chorus, Wilson isn't hiding her in the back of the office break room. He's taking the opportunity to spotlight her disability in a new and innovative way.

Interpreters often line the aisles during PHAMALy performances offering American Sign Language for the benefit of hearing-impaired audiences. But this is the first time ASL is being incorporated into the performance itself.

A fundamental tenet of PHAMALy musicals is that whatever disabilities the actors have, so then do the characters they play. So if several deaf women work in this musical's fictional office setting, Wilson said, it stands to reason that the other people who work there can communicate with them. So choreographer Debbie Stark has one and all demonstrating sign language in the big dance number, "Coffee Break."

But not everyone in the cast got it, at first. At one point, an actor asked Wilson flat-out why everyone needed to learn sign language for the big number, when audiences are not going to understand what's being signed.

"But some of the audience will understand, and that's enough for me," Wilson responded. Runge was blown away. "It meant so much to see how he really supports my deafness," she said.

While Runge could do without labels — "I am not disabled," she says flatly, "I just can't hear, that's all." But she's found that she and PHAMALy "make a really good fit."

It fits, Wilson said, because Runge is a legitimately good actor. He knew it from the moment she performed her audition monologue. Runge used sign language, while an interpreter communicated her words to Wilson and his creative team.

"It was clear early on that we were looking at an accomplished actress," said Wilson.

Just not one who had ever performed in a musical in her life. But that doesn't daunt her.

"It's one more thing I can check off my list," she said.

Runge, who was born deaf, is the surviving twin of her mother's miscarriage. She grew up in Belgium and fell in love with music through feeling drum percussion and heavy bass vibration.

When she was little, Runge's dad would take her to concerts (Christina Aguilera was her favorite). "I would always look for an amp to sit on so I could feel the bass better," she said. "And I really felt it. I just loved it.

"Whenever I am driving now, I like to really turn up the radio so I can feel that bass. It helps me to relax."

Even if that prompts agitated nearby motorists to yell, "You're gonna go deaf!"

Because Runge was always raised in mainstream environments, she never felt all that different. She has acted since childhood and came to Colorado in 1994 to study theater at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, which is regarded as one of the top undergraduate theater programs in the country.

UNC professor Tom McNally remembers Runge as a dedicated, hungry, inquisitive student.

"She was really one of the top actresses here," said McNally. "She just went after it, no holds barred, whatever scene she was doing."

Runge is believed to be the only deaf student ever to major in theater at UNC. Even then, she needed an interpreter with her at all times.

"It was always great fun, because if someone said something that was funny, maybe the class might laugh," McNally said. "And then there would be this beat, beat . . . and then I'd see a little smile on Nicki's face."

Runge has remained a serious actress. She's performed Shakespeare in England, with the National Theatre for the Deaf, and for Deaf West Theatre in California. She taught and acted for Disney, and she now teaches and directs theater for the Rocky Mountain Deaf School.

Her next plan is to establish the Rocky Mountain Deaf Theatre, with a targeted Nov. 2 opening. She describes it as a theater company much like PHAMALy — "but for deaf people." She hopes they can work together in tandem.

"Everyone is so just supportive of my dream here," she said.

That dream is to reach audiences far beyond those with an immediate connection to the deaf community. To those living in a hearing world where Runge is fully comfortable. Even when people, without knowing better, blurt potentially awkward cliches that don't bother Runge — they elicit a happy squeak.

"Sometimes people will tell my husband, 'Let's play it by ear,' " she said with a smile.

"And I will joke back, 'You play it by ear . . . we'll play it by eye.' "

Blind film reviewer to be a guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

From The Tampa Tribune: (Media dis&dat note: The story says he is the nation's only blind film critic but Tommy Edison is also a blind movie critic.)

TAMPA -– When film critic Jay Forry (pictured) gives a movie a thumbs up, he jokes that "it's so good blind people will like it."

Thumbs down means he's glad that he couldn't see it.

Forry, who has reviewed hundreds of films that he hasn't seen, is the nation's only blind movie critic. Here's his website.

Often featured on radio stations throughout the country, the Tampa native also posts his critiques on his web site .

Forry, who lost his eyesight to diabetes when he was 28, has been a movie critic since the 1990s. But there's renewed interest in his novel abilities and he's been invited to be a guest on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on Tuesday night.

"This is exciting for me to get on his show and talk about what I do," said Forry, who added that he got the invite thanks to a short video profile posted online in March.

The promotional film, "Using Your Hearing," is just more than a minute long and is actually a demonstration video for a Hollywood production company Snapsound.

It shows Forry and his wife, Dorothy, in an empty movie theater as he explains in a voiceover how important sound is in films. Several other websites have picked up the video. Forry said Kimmel must have seen it.

"I've been reviewing movies for a long time but this little promotional film is getting a lot of attention," Forry said.

Forry's radio reviews are carried on more than 50 stations and are syndicated in the United Kingdom. He was regularly featured on WLFZ (93.3 FM) in Tampa for 11 years but only occasionally is heard there now.

He says Kimmel's producers have contacted him and discussed topics that might be brought up during the segment.

A spokesperson for the show confirmed Forry's scheduled appearance and added that Kyra Sedgwick of "The Closer" also will be on the program. It airs at midnight on ABC (WFTS, Channel 28).

Forry is scheduled to fly to Los Angeles on Monday. He screened the new "Harry Potter" film on Wednesday night and a comedy "Friends With Benefits" on Thursday night.

He says the final Potter film is one of the best. "It is intense, emotional and has a nice amount of action," he says. "It was also very dark, but, of course, they are all dark to me."

Known for joking about his blindness and making wisecracks about the movies he doesn't like, Forry said you don't have to see a film to enjoy a good story.

"I may not be able to hear things better than other people in a film," he said. "But I do pick out particular sounds and intriguing dialogue when other people may be watching the action scenes, gorgeous women or special effects."

Forry previews movies with the assistance of a narrator (usually his wife) who accompanies him to the theater to describe the action on screen. "I do a lot of research on each film before attending a screening," he says. "I know the actors, the plot, the setting – I'm prepared because I don't want to go in blind," he joked.

Dorothy Forry said she does not have to explain much because her husband knows the film. "I just personally don't like horror and silly sex comedies like 'The Hangover,' " she said.

"I know what she means," joked Forry. "The dialogue on some makes me wish I was deaf, too."

When he lost his eyesight, he gave up his job as a construction foreman and returned to community college where he wrote his first movie reviews for the school paper "as a joke." He later graduated from the University of South Florida.

He said he liked going to the movies so much that he decided to make it a career.

Clarins hires Paralympics blade runner to model for provocative ad in effort to challenge fashion industry ideal of beauty

From The NY Times:

The first thing that registers in a glance at the new advertising campaign for Thierry Mugler A★Men fragrance is that the model, shown running across the page, appears to have neon laser beams shooting out of his rump.

The second thing is his physique, his thick slab of a chest and powerful forearms in motion.

The last thing (and here it takes a moment to click) is that in place of feet, his legs end in hooked metal blades.

The model is Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter with Olympic ambitions who is known on the track as the Blade Runner. As a double amputee, he runs on J-shaped prosthetics made of black carbon fiber. In the ad campaign, his blades are stylized to evoke the legs of a superhero, dipped in liquid chrome and wrapped in metallic foil, now resembling something like the shiny body of a motorcycle crossed with a dental pick.

They are a striking addition, certainly, but not what draws you into the picture.

“It boggles your mind a bit,” Mr. Pistorius said of the image, during a recent interview at the Mondrian Hotel in SoHo. His hair was shaved much closer than when he was photographed for the campaign. He wore a pinstripe suit and an open-collar shirt, and his prostheses that day gave the appearance of natural legs. He looked like a model, but not quite.

“When people see something that has a stereotype of not being perfect, or that we think is a bit taboo to discuss, it just catches them off guard,” Mr. Pistorius said, “especially in a context where they are so used to seeing what we as human beings deem as perfection.”

By hiring Mr. Pistorius for its ads, which will begin to appear in magazines in the United States this fall, Clarins, the beauty company that owns the Mugler label, was sending a deliberate message. The company wanted to challenge the often-singular ideal of beauty that is promoted within the fashion industry, said Joël Palix, the president of Clarins Fragrance Group.

“We have come to a time when people must understand that the world is diverse and that there is no such thing as conventional beauty,” Mr. Palix said. “Corporations need to show that diversity is not just an idea, but a reality.”

At a time when more attention is being paid to models of different races, shapes and sexuality, the appearance of one who was born without the fibula in his lower legs, which were amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old, in a campaign for a luxury fragrance is still unusual. After L’Oréal, a competitor of Clarins, coincidentally announced that Aimee Mullins, the model and athlete who also wears prosthetic legs, would become one of its global beauty ambassadors, the bloggers at Fashionista responded with a post that asked, “Are Paralympians the New Black in Beauty?”

That was not exactly the reaction the folks at Clarins were going for, but, Mr. Pistorius said, he recognized that the campaign would be provocative. And the overall response has been largely positive.

“I think the ad is just captivating,” said Jane Larkworthy, the beauty director of W. “Oscar just exudes sex appeal. He’s so strong and sexy. There is a kind of mystery about him. At the end of the day, he does have these unfortunate adversities, but he’s hot.”

For years, his efforts and legal battles to compete in able-bodied events, including the Olympic Games and the world championships, have put him at the center of a dispute over whether his prosthetic blades give him an unfair advantage. Scientists have tried to measure, with conflicting results, whether his blades act as springs or are more durable or efficient than a biological human ankle. Although the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in his favor shortly before the 2008 Games in Beijing, he ended up not qualifying for the South African team that year. He is continuing to train in hope of reaching the London Games in 2012.

“I have a strong sense that I have to educate people about disability,” Mr. Pistorius said. “And this campaign kind of gets people talking.”

His story, told in a memoir published in 2008, caught the attention of Clarins executives after the French edition came out last year. Now 24, he started running when he was 16, actually as a result of a rugby accident. His parents had encouraged him to compete, and so he did, fearlessly playing cricket, water polo, wrestling and tennis.

When he injured his knee, running sprints was part of his rehabilitation. He eventually began training on prosthetics known as Cheetahs, which were being manufactured by an Icelandic company called Ossur. And while he was successful in the Paralympics, his sights were set on competing at the Olympics.

Mr. Palix and Christophe de Lataillade, the creative director for Mugler fragrances, recognized his potential for the brand, which has featured futuristic robots and cyborg characters in previous campaigns. “This idea of the bionic man is so Muglerian,” Mr. Palix said.

And it turned out Mr. Pistorius was already a fan of the fragrance, one of those, he said, “that you either love or you hate.” Upon meeting Mr. Mugler, the eccentric designer whose personal body transformation in recent years is the stuff of its own bionic legend, he seemed charmed. Mr. Pistorius has his own idiosyncrasies, including a pair of pet tigers named after gods of the underworld. (Mr. Mugler is still involved in the fragrances produced under his name, but not the fashion, which is headed by Nicola Formichetti.)

“He’s cool,” Mr. Pistorius said of Mr. Mugler. “If I were to ask you to sketch for me what a French fashion designer would look like, and then write down five points on his personality, I can tell you that neither the diagram nor the words would look at all like Thierry or explain what he is like.”

In his book, Mr. Pistorius wrote about his parents’ decision to amputate his legs at an early age to give him the best chance of living a normal life. Whenever a child stares at his legs, he said, he will make up a story to help them understand he is not abnormal. For instance, he said he teases them, “I’ve got these cool legs because I lost mine, because I didn’t eat my vegetables.”

Being portrayed as a superhero in the campaign, then, made him slightly uncomfortable, but he looks at it this way:

“It talks about not conforming to what are believed to be the limits of others, but striving to make the limits of your own,” he said. “That is an analogy I am more comfortable with when it comes to being a superhero.”

In NY city, disabled beachgoers no longer left stranded in sand with city's new water wheelchairs

From the NY Daily News:

Whenever Lucila Rodriguez (pictured) went to Orchard Beach with her family, the 86-year old grandmother had to sit in her wheelchair and watch from the sidelines as the others frolicked in the surf.

She won't have to do that anymore.

The "Bronx Riviera" is now home to two specialized beach wheelchairs that help people with disabilities get into the water.

Orchard Beach is the first city beach to offer them.

"How wonderful!" said a refreshed, smiling Rodriguez on Tuesday after splashing around in the water aboard the colorful floating chair. "I really enjoyed that."

The beach wheelchairs come courtesy of Friends of Pelham Bay Park and the city Parks and Recreation Department, after group members met last winter to discuss ways to increase access to park facilities.

"No one should be left behind while others are having fun," said Lizbeth Gonzalez, the group's president. "Now, for the first time, people can use a city public beach irrespective of whether they walk there or are wheeled there."

The Mobichairs recline like recumbent bicycles and are outfitted with bright orange floats on the arm rests and oversized yellow wheels.

Each costs about $3,500. Gonzalez had asked the local business community for help to pay for one specialized chair.

In a matter of months, the community rallied to raise more than $15,000 for the project.

The Bronx Chamber of Commerce raised $4,000. Schuyler Hill Funeral Home donated $500 for the project.

"I'm a water rat," chuckled owner James McQuade, "so to be able to help a handicapped person enjoy the water, it's worth it."

Officials at Friends of Pelham Bay Park decided to start with two specialized chairs to gauge public interest, and add more later if needed.

On Tuesday, excited onlookers snapped pictures as parks officials wheeled one of the colorful chairs along the boardwalk.

Dirk Hohenkirk's eyes grew wide with excitement when he spotted the chair.

The 42-year old Castle Hill man likes visiting Orchard Beach and would go to the showers to get wet.

"This is fantastic!" he said from his motorized wheelchair. "This caters to people with disabilities for real. It's nice."

Nurys Garcia, of Co-Op City, said the chair would be perfect for her sister, who suffers from severe arthritis.

"Usually when she comes here, she just stays in the picnic area," she said. "But this is great. This will bring the beach to her."

Gamers with disabilities battle indifferent industry

From Wired:

Chuck Bittner (pictured) would love to saddle up and lasso some lawbreakers in Red Dead Redemption. But the videogame’s controls are impossible for him to use.

Bittner has quadriplegia, a type of paralysis that limits the functionality of his arms. His hands can only reach certain buttons on standard Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game controllers — he can’t use two joysticks at once, for example.

It’s not that Bittner, a New Hampshire resident who grew up on Nintendo and Sega, can’t play games at all. The 36-year-old gamer can do battle in Bethesda Softworks’ first-person shooter Brink, for example, which is just as complex as Rockstar Games’ Wild West adventure.

Why? Unlike Red Dead Redemption, Brink allows players to fully remap the game’s control scheme, the layout that determines which button is assigned to a certain action. It’s a common feature of PC games, but not so much on the Xbox.

By tweaking the button layout in Brink and other games that allow such customization, he can hold the controller in his hands and push the buttons with his face.

“[Button customization] truly would help many disabled gamers … enjoy games more fully,” said Bittner — who goes by the handles AskACapper and ONLYUSEmeFACE — in an e-mail to Wired.com.

Relatively simple and inexpensive to implement, button-customization functionality is just one of many ways gamemakers can make their products more accessible for players with physical disabilities. And it’s not just people born with medical problems who could potentially benefit from the implementation of accessibility standards: Genetic diseases and injuries can affect anybody at any time.

“We have ticking time bombs in our DNA,” said Mark Barlet, co-founder of AbleGamers, a nonprofit that has been agitating for gamers with disabilities. “A bad day at work or a split-second at a stoplight on the way to the store and your life could change.”

Barlet, who has limited use of his legs because of a spinal cord injury he incurred while on active duty at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., says button remapping is just the tip of the iceberg. As games get more complicated, poor design choices can make them difficult even for gamers without disabilities.

“So many games are using button combinations that make it almost impossible for all but the most practiced able-bodied person to play a game, much less a disabled person,” Barlet said in an e-mail. “Just because you can use all the buttons at once does not mean you should.”

Brink player Bittner is doing his damnedest to raise awareness about the difficulties faced by disabled gamers and has started a petition to get game developers to add accessibility features.

He’s probably the most high-profile gamer calling for increased accessibility. A fellow gamer even wrote a song about him, immortalizing Bittner’s quest in a YouTube video (above). “You see our friend Chuck/He dreams of Kinect/But he suffers from the quadriplegic effect,” sings the songwriter, who goes by Typhoon Boon.

Despite the obvious benefits to disabled gamers, it’s not that easy to get developers to commit to the cause.

“These are not features that nobody has ever done before, or features that need lots of exploration and research,” said game designer Matthew Burns, who has worked on titles in the Call of Duty and Halo series, in an e-mail. The problem, he says, is that accessibility options are often the first thing cut during crunch time, when time and money are at a premium.

Another oft-requested accessibility feature is closed-captioning. Most games include subtitles for spoken dialog, but that’s only half of the auditory experience. In many games, nonverbal sound cues can be essential for success. AbleGamers’ Barlet says text-based representations of a full spectrum of sounds and visual cues would be immensely helpful for the hearing-impaired.

Game designer Reid Kimball, who has worked on titles like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Tony Hawk: Ride, said it’s sad how rare closed captioning is in games.

“It’s cheap to develop compared to other game technology,” Kimball told Wired.com in an e-mail. “The players love having it as an option and there’s tons of opportunity to innovate in this space.”

It can take from two weeks to a month for a full-time, professional development team to create a closed-captioning system, which Kimball says is inexpensive for large studios. Portal 2 creator Valve, for example, adds closed captioning to all of its games.

“The technology can be used in subsequent games across the entire studio and it doesn’t age, unlike expensive graphics-rendering technologies,” Kimball said.

But there are still snags in the process, says Matthew Burns, now the head of Shadegrown Games. The detailed nature of closed captions usually means a game must be completely finished before developers can add them, he said. By that point, there’s often no time left in the schedule.

“Most of the games that I have seen finish with barely enough time to put all of the audio in, let alone [closed captioning] on top of that,” he said.

Advocates for accessible games face a tough battle. Even if they can convince a game studio to consider closed captioning or button remapping, those features will likely be the first things to get scrapped when deadlines loom and developers start working 10- to 12-hour days to finish games.

As the industry matures, developers are becoming more aware of accessibility challenges, but it will take more than awareness to cause an industry sea change.

“It will continue to be piecemeal and slow unless a large, influential company took a stand and made a conscientious effort to be better about this stuff across the board,” said Shadegrown’s Burns. “That would be the turning point.”

'AbleGamers’ Barlet says hardware makers hold the most power. Should Microsoft mandate that all Xbox 360 games ship with certain accessibility options, developers would have no choice but to make them a priority. But he doesn’t see this happening.

“We have high-level contacts at one of the big [hardware makers], and they have shown little interest beyond lip service at pushing content producers to think about accessibility,” he said.

Still, the issue’s not going away.

“What game creators do not truly understand is that as we get older, we are more likely to be disabled,” Barlet said. “We have two wars going on, and our soldiers are not all coming back in the same condition as they left. Those men and women are gamers.”

"Vamps Next Door" casting call for disabled actors

From SAG Affirmative Action & Diversity:

The casting breakdown below for the SAG New Media production “The Vamps Next Door”.

Project: The Vamps Next Door
Director: Phil Ramuno
Producers: Phil Ramuno & Laura Van Scotter
Casting Director: Phil Ramuno & Laura Van Scotter
Audition date: July 25, 2011, 10am – 12, Whitefire Theatre 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks
Pay/Contract: Deferred / SAG New Media
Shooting Location: Los Angeles / San Fernando Valley
Shoot Dates: August and/or September 2011

Please submit headshot, resume and contact info prior to audition to: thevampsnextdoor@gmail.com

Synopsis:
The Vamps Next Door is a sitcom about your average family that just happens to be vampires.

Vampire mom, Beverly Tepes, loves her job in the ER. When a patient dies, it really makes her day and dinner is served. Vampire dad, Walter Tepes, works for the IRS and hypnotizes his co-workers for fun. They're a modern day, tax-paying, SUV driving family with two teenage kids, a batty old grandma and a vampire cat. It's 2011 and they're not killers anymore... they're our next door neighbors. At least they try not to kill anyone.

We are looking for performers with the ability to portray the following characters. Performers with disabilities strongly encouraged to submit.

Lamar: male, 20’s or 30’s, and is Hispanic or African American , and the neighbor from down the block. He is a family guy, upbeat, funny, and a wheelchair user. Definite possibility as a reoccurring character.

Brian: male, 30’s or 40’s is the vampire grandma’s internet date and is blind. He is a serial dater and believes himself to be suave and very attractive to the ladies.

Disabled Nebraska teen wants to participate in disability-friendly cheerleading team

From The Independent in Nebraska:

AURORA, Neb. -- Julia Sullivan (pictured in marching band) wants to be a cheerleader.

She likes to dance. She wants to get people excited for games. She has friends on the cheerleading squad.

"I just think it would be fun," the 16-year-old said.

So she's practiced. Her older sister, a former cheerleader, helped her figure out ways she could cheer from her wheelchair. Julia, who'll be a junior at Aurora High School this fall, was born without legs and with arms that stop short of her elbows.

But for the past three years, she hasn't made the squad.

Last month, she and her parents, Mike and Carolyn Sullivan, asked the Aurora school board to correct what they see as "scoring errors" in her tryout evaluations last spring, saying she was given no accommodation for her disability.

Their attorney cited the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal laws, which prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. They also asked the board to adopt policies specifying that such discrimination won't be tolerated and that the district will make accommodations to avoid it.

On Monday, the board declined to take up the matter after meeting in executive session.

Aurora Superintendent Damon McDonald said school administrators and the school board reviewed the district's policies and criteria for the cheerleading program with its legal counsel. They also sought a second legal opinion.

"In both cases, they came back and said the Aurora Public Schools policies and guidelines are appropriate and legitimate for all students," said McDonald, who took his post July 1.

The school district, he said, does not believe there was a violation of the disabilities act and that making accommodations "would fundamentally alter the cheerleading program in the Aurora Public Schools."

Kevin Schneider, a Lincoln attorney representing the Sullivans, said the policy of treating everyone equally is inappropriate when it comes to someone who has a legally recognized disability.

"We would agree that there are some activities such as football where the ability to run and tackle are fundamental to the sport," he said. "Making reasonable accommodations and modifications for cheerleading are not fundamental in that same way."

He also said there is a difference between a legally recognized disability, such as having no legs, and normal differences in human performance, such as coordination.

Amy Miller, an attorney for the ACLU of Nebraska, also argued for the need to accommodate students with disabilities in a July 1 letter to the board.

The state organization has posted a podcast about Julia's case on its website.

Mike Sullivan said the family didn't know in past years how the cheerleading tryouts were scored. After last spring's tryouts, they asked.

Sullivan said the outcome of the school board meeting was frustrating. "For us, it's the basic principle," he said. "Any handicapped child in Nebraska could be kept out of activities."

Schneider, the attorney, said in a statement that the family tried to resolve the matter privately with district administration. The Sullivans, he noted, are "grateful" for the Aurora community and for the school district and "did not want a public dispute."

But Schneider wrote that the family recognizes that the matter "can have far-reaching implications, not just for Julia and their family, but for many others as well."

A decade ago, pro golfer Casey Martin sued the PGA Tour for the right to use a golf cart in competition, a case he won in the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Nebraska, cheerleading is not sanctioned by the state's governing body for high school activities.

For state-sanctioned high school sports, schools don't necessarily have to lower standards, but they do have to make special accommodations under the disabilities act, said Jim Angele, assistant director of the Nebraska School Activities Association.

The state governing body does review prosthetics used by high school athletes to make sure they won't harm other players. Usually, that's not a problem.

Schneider laid out the family's requests in a June 9 letter to the school board. He also detailed the steps they had taken to try to resolve the issue.

The sponsor of the program, he wrote, asked administrators before last spring's tryouts what accommodations should be made for Julia. The sponsor was told Julia was to be judged in the same way as other participants. Three tryout judges were given the same instructions. Seventy-five percent of a participant's score was based on physical activities. Twenty-five percent was based on teacher evaluation.

In the performance portion, Julia received her lowest score in the jumps/kicks category and her highest marks in the communication skills and enthusiasm/spirit categories.

Not that cheerleading is Julia's only interest.

Julia participates in marching band and pep band. She's been practicing for the marching band over the summer. She hangs a cymbal from her chair, drives with one arm and strikes the cymbal with the other. She attaches drum sticks or mallets to her arms.

She took dance for 10 years, sitting on the floor, placing shoes on her arms and tapping out rhythms on the floor. For cheerleading, she sits in her wheelchair to spin and dance.

Her friends and family help her with some things, she said, but she's pretty independent. She's a member of the Nebraska Youth Leadership Council, a group of youths who advocate for people with disabilities.

Mike Sullivan said he doesn't yet know where the family will go from this point.

Julia knows what she wants to happen. She wants people to recognize that she can do it.

"They haven't seen me," she said. "They just have it in their mind that I can't do it."

Comedian Ricky Gervais defends dwarfism sitcom

From AAS:

Ricky Gervais has defended his new sitcom centred around Warwick Davis, insisting he doesn't rely on the dwarf actor's short stature for the show's jokes.

Gervais and his writing partner Stephen Merchant recruited the Harry Potter star, who was born with dwarfism, for upcoming TV comedy Life's Too Short, about a dwarf actor running a struggling showbiz agency.

But The Office funnyman told Britain's Absolute Radio Breakfast Show he doesn't poke fun at Davis' disability in the series.

"This is nothing to do with his height. We're not getting jokes out of him being short all the time, we're getting jokes out of him being militant or ripping off other dwarves. He runs an agency, both in real life and in this one. In this one it's called Dwarves for Hire and of course he's just ripping them off. He's getting all the best jobs for himself and he treats them like commodities and props.

"It's not the real Warwick Davis, he's not really like that. We've created a character here, a little Mussolini (dictator). And it's not all jokes about his height, it's much more about his character."

Gervais previously worked with Davis on a 2005 episode of his TV hit Extras.

After three years of fighting, double amputee in Virginia finally gets ADA-accessible housing

From The Virginian-Pilot:

PORTSMOUTH, Va. -- For three years, double-amputee Margaret McNeil (pictured) lived confined to the first floor of her government-owned townhouse.

A cluster of steps leading to her front and back doors made getting outside difficult. Last month, her family accidentally dropped her trying to carry her outside.

Inside, she felt trapped on her first floor.

When she couldn't get upstairs, a plastic hospital basin served as her shower, and a makeshift sleeping area in the living room took the place of her bedroom.

"I stayed in that living room so long," McNeil, 65, said. "It was terrible."

In 2008, McNeil told her building manager she needed a wheelchair ramp. She told the manager again, records show, in 2009, 2010 and this year. After the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority denied her request, McNeil appealed to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

McNeil alleged that the housing agency denied her reasonable accommodations by refusing to install a wheelchair ramp and by not approving her request for a live-in aide, according to documents from HUD.

In June, the federal housing department and the Portsmouth agency signed an agreement resolving McNeil's fair housing complaint. The housing authority paid McNeil a nearly $22,000 settlement and footed the bill to move her into a new, fully accessible unit.

Kathy Warren, the housing authority's deputy executive director, said upper management was unaware of McNeil's request until the federal housing department called about the formal complaint.

"We didn't know," Warren said, "and it's unacceptable."

Because of the incident, the federal department has required the Portsmouth authority to give all staff additional training in fair housing laws and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The federal Fair Housing Act says it is illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of housing based on, among other criteria, disability. McNeil's property manager should have documented their conversations about a new unit, Warren said.

McNeil said that when she first moved into the three-bedroom townhouse with her two grandchildren in March 2006, accessibility wasn't an issue. She was a walker, she said, and had been her whole life.

Her home was part of the Westbury development, at the time a new 278-unit neighborhood built in part from a $24.8 million federal grant.

Less than two years after she moved in, doctors told McNeil they'd have to remove her right leg because of diabetes. "It sounded like the end of the world," she said.

Not long after, she lost her left leg to the disease, too.

At annual meetings with her property manager in 2008 and 2009, according to the housing agency, McNeil checked a box indicating she needed an accessible unit.

Then, in September 2009, she put in a written request for a ramp and a live-in aide.

At one point, Warren said the Portsmouth agency offered McNeil an accessible apartment in an older, barrack-style public housing development. She turned down the offer, citing safety concerns.

One month after submitting her first letter, a Portsmouth agency document shows, McNeil sent the Westbury manager another request for a ramp.

This time the Portsmouth agency consulted a contractor and engineers, who determined that a ramp meeting federal standards could not be built at her townhouse. They notified McNeil of their decision in a letter a month later.

For the next two years, McNeil continued to check the box indicating that she needed an accessible unit, according to the Portsmouth agency.

In February, Portsmouth authority officials learned that McNeil had filed a complaint with the federal department.

Warren said Westbury's two-story floor plans presented new challenges for staff. Older public housing developments had larger bedrooms and were mostly one-story, she said, making accessibility less of an issue. As a result, Westbury staff members were not prepared to handle cases such as McNeil's.

"We fell short," Warren said.

The federal department's regional administrator, Jane C.W. Vincent, said Portsmouth housing officials acted quickly once the problem was brought to their attention. Still, she said, the situation was avoidable.

"In Portsmouth, there were other units available," Vincent said. "There was a quick fix without HUD getting involved."

Warren said she thinks the mishandling of McNeil's request was a one-time problem. The federal housing department receives few complaints about the authority, she said. HUD records show only one other complaint against the Portsmouth agency in the past 10 years.

In addition to the settlement, the housing agency moved McNeil into a fully accessible three-bedroom unit on a new property last month.

McNeil says she doesn't want to dwell on the past. She's happy with what she has now: a bed she can sleep in, a ramp that lets her get outside and a shower she can soak in.

"I'm just glad I got something now," McNeil said. "I didn't want to be uncomfortable all my life."

Canadian dancer with Down syndrome shares his passion through teaching

From The Times-Colonist in Canada:

Brad Magnus (pictured) has danced with prima donnas and performed for royalty, but today he faces a new challenge.

The 38-year-old dancer, born with Down syndrome, is teaching his first class.

He begins simply and without words. He closes his eyes in meditation for a moment, then raises his chin and marches forward with confidence. He points his toes, landing each step softly. He crosses one foot over the other, sways his hips, feels the music with soft, curved arms. One by one, his students follow.

It's a free workshop at Pearkes Recreation Centre and a modest number of students, with and without disabilities, have come to try it out. If Magnus finds enough interest — and funding — he hopes to be teaching a regular class by fall.

"I think it went good," Magnus said after the workshop on Tuesday. He practised three times in advance, and then just tried to be himself, he said.

Magnus moves with the fluidity of an accomplished dancer, but with spontaneity that reveals his own sense of rhythm.

What does he feel when he dances? He took a few moments to respond.

"Joy." Pause. "Love." Pause. "Happiness."

He has been dancing for more than 20 years and was excited to take on new responsibility as a teacher, said Magnus's dance teacher Anna Haltrecht.

"It has been his passion and his way of interpreting life and what he feels," she said. "Now he wants to give that to other people."

His mother, Ethel, said it was a proud day for her. "It's been a dream that he's had for so long."

Magnus began dancing in his final year of high school, after seeing a poster for modern and ballet classes.

Ethel said Brad gave her a sneak peek of the dance he had been learning, ahead of the performance.

"He started doing these beautiful movements in our living room to Anne Murray's song, You Needed Me. And the lovely part of it was, he got the message through loud and clear that, not only do I need you, Mom, but you need me," she says.

That's how she knew this was really something Brad wanted to do. "Brad seems to have been able to relay messages through songs and dance. He finds a song that says something important to him, then develops his movement and expression."

Since then, Brad has travelled the world, touching international audiences with his emotional performances — including onlookers at the closing ceremonies of the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria and the opening ceremonies of the 1997 Special Olympics World Games in Toronto.

In Japan, Prince Tomohito, who is considered a deity, crossed a sacred line after one of Brad's performances to embrace him in a hug.

"I did not cross over the line, he did," Brad said. "It felt amazing, to tell you the truth."

The response over the years has been very positive.

"In our travels with Brad, we've been really moved and impressed by how helpful it's been to other people — to understand and see for themselves what someone with Down syndrome, with a disability, can do," Ethel said. "A lot of what he can do has to do with being treated with respect at home and being part of a community."

When Brad was born, Ethel said, attitudes toward people with disabilities were very different than they are now.

She had to fight to take him home, ignoring advice from doctors to institutionalize him, she said.

After many people had told them all the things Brad wouldn't able to do, the family focused on all the things he can do.

NPR: A prenatal surgery for spina bifida comes of age

Intro to the story at NPR:

When she was 19 weeks pregnant, Sarah White went for a routine ultrasound and got a shock.

"I could tell that something was wrong because the ultrasound tech got real quiet," White says.

White's male fetus had spina bifida — a hole in his lower back that exposed the vulnerable spinal cord.

"When they said, 'Your baby has spina bifida,' I knew it wasn't good," says Joe Hensley, White's husband. "But I didn't have a sense of what was involved."

Often it involves lower-body paralysis requiring a wheelchair or, at best, leg braces. Lack of control over bowel and bladder. Possible brain damage. Surgery at birth and periodically throughout childhood to correct the defect and install shunts, tubes to drain excess fluid that can build up in the brain.

White and Hensley discovered an alternative to standard management of spina bifida. An operation before birth offered a chance to avoid paralysis, brain damage, the need for shunts — in short, the chance for a more normal life.

But the decision was no slam-dunk. "This has been the hardest thing we've been through," Hensley says. The surgery is risky. They could lose the fetus. And White could die — although so far, no mother has died from prenatal surgery for spina bifida.

And, Hensley says, "It's not a guaranteed fix."

So the couple, who live in North Carolina, went to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, one of just three U.S. hospitals with extensive experience in fetal surgery for spina bifida.

Lee Sutton, a pediatric neurosurgeon on the staff there, says doctors now realize that most of the damage from spina bifida occurs late in pregnancy.

"We were seeing all these kids that were coming in here unborn — you know, little fetuses 18 to19 weeks — and they were moving their legs beautifully on the ultrasounds," Sutton says. "And then when they would get delivered at 38 weeks ... they had club feet and were paralyzed."

Ultrasound tests showed that White's fetus was still kicking. So there was a chance that if they decided to operate during pregnancy, their son wouldn't be paralyzed.

The couple decided they'd never forgive themselves if they didn't give their child the chance to walk. "We would probably look back and say, 'Wow, why didn't we do it? Why didn't we try?' " Hensley says.

So after a whirlwind of tests and consultations to determine her eligibility, White found herself on an operating room table in Philadelphia one Friday morning this summer. She was feeling apprehensive.

"I've never had surgery before, so it's pretty terrifying," she said.

The surgical team was led by Scott Adzick, chief of surgery at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, known as CHOP. He began the operation with Mark Johnson and Michael Bebbington, who are specialists in obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine.

Through skin, fat and muscle, the surgeons cut through Sarah's abdomen until they got to her uterus. At nearly six months of pregnancy, it was the size of a child's soccer ball.

"We're actually going to tip the uterus out of the abdomen," Adzick said. That's possible because the organ, shaped like an upside-down Grecian urn, is attached only at the bottom, at the neck of the "urn."

Once White's uterus was almost entirely outside her body, Adzick took a marker and outlined where the placenta was — the thick, pancake-shaped organ that exchanges oxygen and nutrients between mother and fetus. If the surgeons were to cut into the placenta by mistake, the fetus could have died and White could have bled to death.

Next, one of the surgeons took a special stapling device that cuts through the uterine wall, which is especially rich in blood vessels. The device pinches off blood vessels as it cuts and tacks the membrane enclosing the fetus to the uterine wall.

A few more staples and they had opened a small window, about 3 inches across, in the uterus.

"And here's the fetal bottom," Adzick said.

It was an amazing sight — the 6-inch-long fetus, its back facing up into the glare of the surgical lights.

Tactile pixels in display allows blind users to "feel" touch screens

From Mobiledia:

New display technology is allowing users to "feel" touch screens, giving the blind a way to interact with mobile devices.

Senseg's E-Sense technology, being developed in Sweden, recreates the sensation of different textures on touch screen devices. It uses "tixels," or "tactile pixels," to generate an electric field a few millimeters above the device's surface, enabling skin to feel finely tuned sensations replicating different textures.

The technology is similar to the concept of haptic feedback, which vibrates to confirm that a finger touch has been accepted, but has even farther-reaching implications.

Braille reading would be one immediate application for the technology. The blind and visually-impaired would be able to take advantage of the tactile-pixel technology, assisting them in reading messages on touch screen devices like smartphones. Down the road, the technology may even allow people to, for example, touch the face of a newborn baby or hold the hand of the long-lost friend.

Senseg said the technology may also create knobs, buttons and other tactile elements for the increasingly-popular mobile gaming market. Handset makers, currently struggle for placement of controls on the limited space of smartphones, may also find a use for tactile displays.

The emerging technology follows the larger trend of integrating human senses into electronic gadgetry. Earlier this year, Apple reportedly started developing a voice interface, after its purchase of Nuance, maker of the popular Dragon dictation software.

Senseg's E-Sense technology is reportedly inexpensive and relatively easy to implement, with Toshiba the first company to sign up to explore ways the feature in its products.

As other companies partner with the Swedish company, the discovery that the touch screen doesn't have to be flat may revolutionize the digital device market in much the same way Columbus' similar conclusion about the shape of the earth affected mapmaking centuries ago.

Disabled boy at the center of grandparents custody battle with Kentucky

From The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.:

Steve and Robin Ritter (pictured) say they never wanted to relinquish custody of his severely disabled grandson, whom they had cared for in their Shelby County home since he was a toddler.

But late last year, at the urging of state child-welfare officials, they agreed to what they thought was a temporary arrangement in which Dustin, 11, would be placed in a special foster home for “medically fragile” children, according to the Ritters and records of the case they provided.

They say they expected that after a period of care from foster parents specially trained to handle such children, Dustin would come back home.

Instead, the now outraged couple says, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services reneged on that agreement and placed Dustin in three consecutive foster homes that didn't work out.

That was followed by a week at Kosair Children's Hospital before the cabinet moved Dustin to Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital, where he has remained for the past three months.

“It's been horrible,” said Robin Ritter, 46, who is Dustin's step-grandmother. “They cannot provide an appropriate home for him, and they refuse to let him come home to us.”

The Ritters obtained custody of Dustin in 2003 after his parents were deemed unable to care for the boy, who has severe mental retardation, cerebral palsy, seizures and other health problems.

Steve Ritter, 52, who works at a farm equipment business, said their battle with the cabinet has been frustrating.

“Social services think they are God and can play with people's lives and children's lives,” he said. “They've just made our lives a living hell.”
Cabinet officials declined to comment, saying the confidentiality of child-welfare cases prevents them from even acknowledging that a case exists.

But stacks of court records and other documents that Robin Ritter has accumulated detail a long, complicated history of state involvement in the case, dating to when a judge first awarded them custody of Dustin.

Now cabinet officials oppose returning him to the Ritters, with social workers citing suspected abuse and neglect, allegations that the Ritters say aren't true.

Meanwhile, an outside advocacy organization has become involved in support of the Ritters because of what its director says are troubling questions about state officials' handling of the case.

“This kid has been on a roller coaster for the past six months,” said April DuVal, executive director of the Council on Developmental Disabilities in Louisville, who argues that Dustin would be better off with the Ritters. “I cannot, for the life of me, figure it out.

A motion filed by the Ritters' lawyer, Fielding E. Ballard III, requesting that the boy allowed to return to the Ritters' home, has been pending since April 21, three weeks after he was placed at Our Lady of Peace.

Shelby Family Court Judge John David Myles has scheduled a July 28 hearing in the case.

DuVal, who accompanied the Ritters on a recent visit with Dustin, said the child appears to love the couple and ran to them with hugs and kisses when they arrived.

When the visit ended, he clung to them in tears, repeating “home, home,” DuVal said.

The case has taken some unusual twists, including the revelation that a court-appointed advocate for Dustin was posting confidential information about the case on Facebook and allegations by Robin Ritter that a social worker threatened her.

Beverly Hilger, manager of the Court Appointed Special Advocates program in Shelby County, acknowledged the Facebook postings last year but declined to discuss them, saying they were an internal issue.

“The volunteer was removed from the case and reprimanded,” Hilger said. “It has been handled properly.”

CASA, a private nonprofit organization, provides trained volunteers who are appointed by a judge as neutral parties to safeguard the interests of children and make periodic reports to the court. State law requires that CASA volunteers take an oath of confidentiality.

Robin Ritter also has alleged that a state social worker involved in Dustin's case threatened her by saying, “I could ruin you,” according to a copy of a report on an outside review of Dustin's status in foster care. Such periodic reviews are required by state law and are conducted by the Administrative Office of the Courts.

The report recommends that the cabinet investigate the alleged threat and suggests mediation might help resolve differences between cabinet officials and the Ritters.

DuVal, who has reviewed Dustin's files and medical records and interviewed social workers, therapists and others involved in his care, said state officials have provided no explanation as to why Dustin can't go back to the Ritters.

“It is like hitting your head against a stone wall,” DuVal said.
Dee Maynard, a council volunteer and former top cabinet official, believes Dustin's well-being is no longer the central issue and that he's become “a pawn of the system.”

“It's all focused on the battles of the organizations and not what's best for this little boy,' said Maynard, a former cabinet personnel director who lives in Shelby County and has offered to serve as an advocate for Dustin.

Kelli Marvin, director of Forensic Mental Health Services for the University of Louisville Pediatrics Department, was retained last year by the court as an outside expert to evaluate Robin Ritter, Dustin's main caregiver.

Marvin, in her Dec. 13 report, deemed Robin Ritter to be a capable parent and said a review of medical records found bonds between her and Dustin to be “normative and strong.”

Marvin's report said a pediatrician who evaluated Dustin in 2010 described Robin Ritter as a “wonderful, nurturing individual toward Dustin” and that “Dustin seems to respond in kind to her affection and this seems like such a positive relationship overall.”

DuVal said she has written letters to the judge twice, offering proposals to assist with services and oversight for the boy if he returns to the Ritter home. She noted that the child's therapist of four years has strongly recommended he be reunited with the Ritters.

“In all the years I have worked in the field of disabilities, I have never encountered a situation quite like this,” DuVal wrote in her most recent letter June 10.

It's especially troubling, she said, that a child with mental retardation and multiple disabilities is essentially living at a psychiatric hospital — designed for short-term treatment to stabilize children with mental illness — while the court fight drags on.

Allegations investigatedRobin Ritter said Dustin first came to their home in 2001, when his mother, then living in Frankfort, brought the 14-month-old for a visit. Dustin's father — Steve Ritter's son — has been incarcerated most of Dustin's life, according to state corrections records. Dustin's parents were never married, Robin Ritter said.

By mid-2001, state social service officials in Frankfort had become involved in the case and soon recommended that Dustin be placed with the Ritters, according to records of the case that Robin Ritter provided. A Frankfort judge gave the Ritters custody of Dustin two years later.

But in 2006, cabinet social workers in Shelby County began investigating periodic allegations of abuse or neglect — most stemming from bruises or scrapes on Dustin, who wears leg braces and is prone to stumbling or falling, according to medical records.

The Ritters said some of the abuse allegations came from another relative who had sought custody of the Dustin, according to Marvin's report.

The report says that in 2008, social workers substantiated abuse of Dustin — who had sustained bruises — by an “unknown perpetrator” and that in 2010, they twice substantiated abuse or neglect by Robin Ritter in connection with bruises and scrapes he suffered. But none of those allegations has been substantiated by a court finding, according to records in the case. And a physician who reviewed the case found “no indications of medical abuse or neglect,” Marvin's report said.

Robin Ritter said she didn't cause any of the injuries. She said some occurred while Dustin was at school, while others occurred at home — when he was playing outside or climbing on toys — or visiting relatives.
But in late 2010, she said, she and her husband agreed to accept the cabinet's offer to place him in a special foster home for children with medical problems, even though it meant giving up custody.

Robin Ritter said she believed if Dustin continued to get scrapes and bruises in foster care it would prove to state social workers that the injuries resulted from accidents, not abuse. Also, social workers assured her that Dustin would be placed in a home with foster parents specially trained to handle his medical needs, she said.

But now Robin Ritter said she and her husband just want Dustin to come home, where he has his own bedroom, toys, clothes and a pet donkey named Perky.

“We're the only home and family this child has ever known,” she said.

UCLA eyes adding more American Sign Language course offerings

From The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA:

Unlike most kids, Valerie Rose (pictured) did not mumble “mommy” or “daddy” as her first words.

Instead, at six months old, she began to sign with her hands.

Rose, a fourth-year geography and environmental studies student, comes from a family of deaf parents and two adopted deaf siblings. Rose herself has been deaf in her right ear since birth.

As her first language, American Sign Language is independent of English, Rose said. Signs are applied in different ways, often depending on the emotional state of the signer.

“(American Sign Language) is very distinct and has its own structural properties,” Rose said. “There is a deaf culture that goes hand in hand (with the language).”

In recent years, momentum has been gathering at UCLA for an expansion in American Sign Language course offerings. Students interested in learning more about the culture and language were able to enroll in a new course through the linguistics department.

The Session A class, Linguistics 3, is titled “American Sign Language: Structure and Culture.” It is an introduction to the study of linguistics, but instead of focusing on spoken language, Linguistics 3 emphasizes the cultural component of the deaf community, said Natasha Abner, the teaching assistant for the class.

In addition, administrators have begun to plan for sign language classes to be offered in the future.

“Three parties within academic leadership have set aside funding for American Sign Language classes,” said Reem Hanna-Harwell, assistant dean of humanities.

The proposed classes would fulfill foreign language requirements, Hanna-Harwell added.

Student interest brought about the initiative, said Lucy Blackmar, assistant vice provost of undergraduate education initiatives.

Rose said such steps have been a long time coming.

“I have been waiting to see this happen since I started UCLA,” she said.

Students have also taken initiative to meet the deaf world in part through a new club, Humans Establishing Awareness Regarding Deafness.

The club is intended to help students interested in learning or practicing sign language, said HEARD founder Moses Sumney, a fourth-year English student and Daily Bruin copy editor.

Before formal classes can be created, a proposal outlining the curriculum must first be designed and approved by the Faculty Executive Committee of the College of Letters and Sciences, Hanna-Harwell said.

If the classes prove to be sustainable and effective, then the university will continue to offer them, Hanna-Harwell said.