New York ruling demands better access to voting booths

From Public News Service:

NEW YORK - The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed a decision that advocates for people with disabilities say sends a message for the fall elections: New York City needs to provide improved access to voters who have trouble navigating some polling places.

Stuart Seaborn, senior staff attorney, Disability Rights Advocates, says this latest ruling sends a clear message to the City Board of Elections that it has not been providing equal access to the polls and changes need to be made.

"We're talking about 70 percent to 80 percent of the city's poll sites that are inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs, or to people with vision impairments. The court is going to require the city to fix those barriers," Seaborn says.

This latest decision, by a federal appeals court, upheld a 2012 ruling that found the city failed to provide people with disabilities meaningful access to more than 1,300 polling sites.

Margi Trapani, director of communications and education, Center for Independence of the Disabled-New York (CIDNY), says this ruling goes to key issues, including a person's rights to privacy during the process of voting.

"It's a victory for people who couldn't get to the voting area because of debris in their pathways or dangerous ramps," Trapani says. "And it's a victory for people who wanted to vote privately and independently, like everyone else, and couldn't do that."

Trapani says CIDNY spent more than a decade documenting, and trying to resolve, all the hurdles faced by people with disabilities each year who simply wanted to cast their vote.

"It has taken a lawsuit and an appeal, but we're finally there - to the point where we can concentrate fully on remedying the barriers that we found, and putting New York City in compliance with civil rights law," she adds.

Trapani summed it up as a "good day" for people with disabilities and civil rights.

 

NEW YORK - The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed a decision that advocates for people with disabilities say sends a message for the fall elections: New York City needs to provide improved access to voters who have trouble navigating some polling places.

Stuart Seaborn, senior staff attorney, Disability Rights Advocates, says this latest ruling sends a clear message to the City Board of Elections that it has not been providing equal access to the polls and changes need to be made.

"We're talking about 70 percent to 80 percent of the city's poll sites that are inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs, or to people with vision impairments. The court is going to require the city to fix those barriers," Seaborn says.

This latest decision, by a federal appeals court, upheld a 2012 ruling that found the city failed to provide people with disabilities meaningful access to more than 1,300 polling sites.

Margi Trapani, director of communications and education, Center for Independence of the Disabled-New York (CIDNY), says this ruling goes to key issues, including a person's rights to privacy during the process of voting.

"It's a victory for people who couldn't get to the voting area because of debris in their pathways or dangerous ramps," Trapani says. "And it's a victory for people who wanted to vote privately and independently, like everyone else, and couldn't do that."

Trapani says CIDNY spent more than a decade documenting, and trying to resolve, all the hurdles faced by people with disabilities each year who simply wanted to cast their vote.

"It has taken a lawsuit and an appeal, but we're finally there - to the point where we can concentrate fully on remedying the barriers that we found, and putting New York City in compliance with civil rights law," she adds.

Trapani summed it up as a "good day" for people with disabilities and civil rights.
- See more at: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-05-19/disabilities/ruling-demands-better-access-to-voting-booths/a39445-1#sthash.NUHLXmQC.dpuf

NEW YORK - The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed a decision that advocates for people with disabilities say sends a message for the fall elections: New York City needs to provide improved access to voters who have trouble navigating some polling places.

Stuart Seaborn, senior staff attorney, Disability Rights Advocates, says this latest ruling sends a clear message to the City Board of Elections that it has not been providing equal access to the polls and changes need to be made.

"We're talking about 70 percent to 80 percent of the city's poll sites that are inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs, or to people with vision impairments. The court is going to require the city to fix those barriers," Seaborn says.

This latest decision, by a federal appeals court, upheld a 2012 ruling that found the city failed to provide people with disabilities meaningful access to more than 1,300 polling sites.

Margi Trapani, director of communications and education, Center for Independence of the Disabled-New York (CIDNY), says this ruling goes to key issues, including a person's rights to privacy during the process of voting.

"It's a victory for people who couldn't get to the voting area because of debris in their pathways or dangerous ramps," Trapani says. "And it's a victory for people who wanted to vote privately and independently, like everyone else, and couldn't do that."

Trapani says CIDNY spent more than a decade documenting, and trying to resolve, all the hurdles faced by people with disabilities each year who simply wanted to cast their vote.

"It has taken a lawsuit and an appeal, but we're finally there - to the point where we can concentrate fully on remedying the barriers that we found, and putting New York City in compliance with civil rights law," she adds.

Trapani summed it up as a "good day" for people with disabilities and civil rights.
- See more at: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-05-19/disabilities/ruling-demands-better-access-to-voting-booths/a39445-1#sthash.NUHLXmQC.dpuf

In South Africa, Oscar Pistorius TV channel a massive viewership success for DStv

From Channel 24 in South Africa:

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – MultiChoice's Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel (DStv 199) is a massive viewership success story for DStv – lifting ratings on the South African satellite pay-TV platform to unprecedented levels and making the channel the 4th most watched TV channel on pay-TV in South Africa since the channel launched on 2 March.

The phenomenal viewership feat makes the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel, which has already earned millions, the most successful pay-TV channel launched in South African television history.

That's due to the short amount of time in which the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel has been able to amass thousands of riveted viewers, get them to watch television for longer –  and during timeslots usually suffering from anemic ratings.

The channel has successfully also managed to grow a brand-new social media community and following around a specific topic of interest – people who then also watch the channel and interact with the various TV presenters.

The sensational court trial in the North Gauteng High Court of the paralympic athlete who shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day last year, managed to push news coverage of Nkandlagate and South Africa's general election during March and April off of the front pages of newspapers and lifted viewership of the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel to unprecedented numbers.

The court trial since 2 March received major coverage from global media with print and electronic media who have dedicated journalists covering the proceedings.

It's now likely that the upcoming murder trial of Shrien Dewani, now in South Africa, will likewise be televised in a similar fashion, fueling South African TV viewers' obsession for dramatic, televised court room drama.

A staggering 90% of viewers of the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel said they would want to watch the Shrien Dewani murder trial of his wife Anni.

Channel instantly in top 5 most watched list

During mid-March the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel, produced by Combined Artistic Productions for MultiChoice's DStv platform, lured more viewers than any other pay-TV channel, taking fourth place on the most-watched channels list, only behind the free-to-air channels SABC1, SABC2 and e.tv which remain the perennial front-runners.

The Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel proved more popular than premium pay-TV channels like M-Net, Mzansi Magic and kykNET which are supplied to MultiChoice by M-Net, and instantly shot up to the coveted top 5 list of most watched TV channels on DStv.

In a phenomenal performance and ratings boost for DStv, the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel managed to pull at certain periods, the same viewership and even slightly surpass it, of a show like for instance Carte Blanche on M-Net – the premium pay-TV broadcaster's number one rated show and which is broadcast during prime time when a bigger possible audience is available.

Even more astounding is that the channel managed this during morning and afternoon timeslots when overall daytime TV viewership in South Africa is usually extremely low.

Lifting the overall available TV audience in SA

It means that the Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel not only brought thousands of viewers more to DStv and during times like mornings and afternoons when they wouldn't have been watching before, but also helped to lift the overall available TV audience in South Africa available to advertisers during those timeslots.

The Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel has also been a spontaneous upsell driver to prompt DStv subscribers to upgrade to higher and more expensive DStv bouquets in order to follow thetelevised court trial.

DStv subscribers like Cherise de Wet – a practising attorney from George, who decided to upgrade their TV household to a higher DStv bouquet for just a month in April in order to follow to murder trial – has remained on a more expensive package solely to get the TV channel and follow the proceedings.

Oscar Pistorius channel exceeded best expectations

"The Oscar Pistorius Trial: A Carte Blanche Channel has exceeded our best expectations having gained a large and dedicated audience in South Africa and around the world," Aletta Alberts, MultiChoice's head of content tells Channel24.

"The channel features consistently as one of the top 5 most viewed TV channels on the DStv platform since its inception in March 2014, unusual for a pop-up channel".

"We are very excited about the groundbreaking broadcast and social media integration and positive educational feedback we've received," says Alberts.

"The Oscar Pistorius Trial TV channel has been performing incredibly well. It has attracted massive audiences," Chris Botha, the group managing director for leading media agency The MediaShop tells Channel24.

"Most importantly for DStv, it has grown their audience share in non-traditional time channels. DStv's daytime audiences are generally quite small, but the Oscar Trial TV channel has changed it all around. Some of the daytime programmes have performed better than some primetime programmes".

"That is one of the reasons DStv introduced the channel – not to make millions of ad revenue, but to grow daytime audiences that will hopefully stay on the bouquet".

"The channel has done well because the trial is so much bigger than any one media type," says Botha.

"The trial has received massive exposure not only on television, but also on social media like Facebook and Twitter. The interest in the trial then drives TV viewership".

"A lot of clients are still sceptical about advertising on the channel. They don't want to be associated with it, as it polarising to some audiences, and also as it is seen as distateful".

"I don't believe it is a missed opportunity for advertisers," says Botha. "I rather believe it is a grasped opportunity for MultiChoice".

"Mad Men" takes on mental illness, PTSD among Holocaust survivors

From CBS News:

Sunday night's episode of "Mad Men" was filled with plenty of surprises both inside and outside the office of Sterling Cooper & Partners. But for many viewers, none quite compared to the shock Peggy Olson received when she opened a gift box from her increasingly erratic colleague, Michael Ginsberg. Inside she found his severed bloody nipple, which the disheveled and talented copywriter had cut off and presented to his boss as a sort of peace offering.

At that moment it becomes astutely clear that Ginsberg has a devastating mental illness. In retrospect, the clues to his unraveling had been accumulating for some time.

Ginsberg's delusions center around the new computer in the office, a loudly humming room-size machine which has displaced him and his creative team and sent them to a tiny claustrophobic work office. He tells Olson the computer's noise is too distracting for him to work and that the "machine makes men do unnatural things" by turning them all into homosexuals. He tells Olson his nipple is the computer's valve and he's removed it to relieve the pressure.

Ginsberg's psychosis reflects a phenomenon detailed last year in an article that appeared in "The New Yorker."

"Shifts in technology have caused the content of delusions to change over the years: in the nineteen-forties, the Japanese controlled American minds with radio waves; in the fifties, the Soviets accomplished this with satellites; in the seventies, the CIA implanted computer chips into people's brains," explained Andrew Marantz in his story.

In Marantz's reporting he found that today's common delusions frequently recreate the concept of the "Truman Show," in which the person believes they are a star of their own reality television show and cannot escape the scrutiny of cameras and an international around-the-clock broadcast of their life.

In Ginsberg's mind, the fear that computers will change, replace and control humans -- worrisome to many at the time -- is the centerpiece of his psychosis.

Actor Ben Feldman (pictured), who plays Ginsberg, says he was stunned when he first learned of the plot line. "(Mad Men's creator) Matt Weiner and I sat down a few weeks before that episode and he told me everything that was gonna happen and my jaw just dropped to the floor," the actor laughed.

A few seasons ago, when a more stable-seeming Ginsberg first entered the fray, he confessed to Olson that he was a child of the Holocaust, born in a concentration camp during World War II. Now in hindsight, this may also explain much about his current state of health. "That machine came for us," he tells Olson.

Many refugees of the war were plagued by debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of mental illness, compounded by the lack of social services provided to survivors who often experienced high levels of paranoia, anxiety and fear of future persecution.

At the end of this week's episode, Ginsberg is wheeled out of the office on a gurney. It's unclear what will become of him. However, it's worth noting the historical context, since the realities for the characters closely reflect the social and political climate in which they live. Ginsberg may be in for an uphill battle, and his copy writing days very well could be over. 

It's currently the year 1969 on "Mad Men." The late 1960s marked a turning point for the rights of mentally-ill people, an extension of the volatile Civil Rights Movement. In 1967, lawmakers in the state of California passed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, essentially the first stab at a bill of rights for the mentally ill, which attempted to enforce some protection within the legal system and communities in the state, both for the patient and society as a whole. The legislation, signed by then-governor and future president Ronald Reagan, would later inform mental health policy in other states and on a federal level. But not for a while.

Serious mental illness was still frequently dealt with by institutionalization, although by the mid-1960s the number of people in psychiatric hospitals had started to decline from a peak in the 1950s.

This is not the first time "Mad Men" has addressed the taboo topic of mental illness. In earlier seasons, Don Draper's ex-wife Betty sought help for her clinical depression and weight gain through psychotherapy and pills -- a reference to the plight of suburban moms in 60s and 70s. It was not uncommon for "happy homemakers" of those eras to try to quell their depression with a few pills, or as the Rolling Stones song called them, "Mother's Little Helper."

'Spectrum,' a new documentary about autism, sensory perception

From the filmmakers at  http://www.spectrumthefilm.com/:

“Spectrum” is a documentary about autism and sensory perception. The goal of the documentary is to combine fascinating interviews with stylized, mixed media footage to simulate visual and auditory experiences described by autistic people. 

One of the most well-known and respected individuals in the autism community, Temple Grandin provides a glimpse into her perceptual world and the science behind autistic perception. She believes that sensory issues are the most important subject to research about autism. 

“Spectrum” also features Tito Mukhopadhyay, an esteemed non-verbal autistic author and poet. Tito has been featured on the BBC and “60 Minutes” for his ability to communicate his incredible intelligence by typing on a computer. Tito shares his experiences living in a world of extreme altered perception. 

What is sensory perception?

Sensory perception refers to the way the human brain processes sensory information. We all have a sensory system for vision, hearing, taste, and smells. How our brain interprets this information creates the reality we engage with in every moment. 

Every person has a unique sensory system. Some people are merely sensitive to certain sights and sounds, like the sound of screeching nails on a chalkboard or images from a 3D movie. 

Autistic people can experience more extreme differences in sensory perception, like extreme over-stimulation or under-stimulation. For some, the sound of a fire alarm can be deafening and scary. Others, like Tito Mukhopadhyay, can experience synesthesia, or cross-sensory perception.
​
The goal of "Spectrum" is to understand and imagine how others can perceive the world. People with different types of brains experience a different perspective that we need to understand, appreciate, and accommodate.

How misunderstanding disability leads to police violence

From The Atlantic:

On April 29, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to discuss law-enforcement responses to disabled Americans. The committee, chaired by democratic Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, met against the backdrop of the death of James Boyd, a homeless man who had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, shot to death by police in Albuquerque, and Ethan Saylor (pictured), a man with Down syndrome who suffocated to death while handcuffed by off-duty deputies working as security guards in a Maryland movie theater. They are just two of many people with psychiatric or intellectual disabilities killed by law enforcement.

In the face of these deaths and many others, the senators and witnesses all argued that something must be done. Suggested solutions included increased funding and support for Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) training and the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Act, which would improve access to mental health services for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system and provide law enforcement officers tools to identify and respond to mental-health issues.

While the hearing focused on troubling, high profile, and tragic cases such as those of Boyd and Saylor, the scope of the problem extends to virtually every kind of disability. Encounters with police have also taken an unnecessarily violent turn for people with disabilities that are not psychiatric or intellectual, including conditions that are physical or sensory:

• In 2008, Ernest Griglen was removed from his car by police who thought he was intoxicated. He was subsequently beaten. Griglen was, in fact, quite sober, but he is diabetic and was in insulin shock. Judging by media reports alone, people who are diabetic are often mistaken as threatening or drunk.
• In 2009, Antonio Love felt sick and went into a Dollar General store to use the bathroom. Time passed and he didn’t come out, so the store manager called the police. The officers knocked on the bathroom door, ordered him to come out, but got no response. They sprayed pepper spray under the door, opened it with a tire iron, then tasered Love repeatedly. Love is deaf.  He couldn’t hear the police. Again, if news reports are any indication, deaf people are too frequently treated as non-compliant and tasered or beaten by police.
• In 2010, Garry Palmer was driving home from visiting his wife’s grave when a dog darted in front of his truck and was hit. Palmer reported the accident as he should have, but because he was slurring his words and shaking, he was arrested for drunk driving. Palmer has cerebral palsy.
• In January 2014, Robert Marzullo filed a lawsuit citing battery, excessive force, false imprisonment, unlawful seizure and supervisory liability against the town of Hamden, Connecticut and its police department. News reports reveal that Marzullo was tasered by two police officers while having an epileptic seizure in his car.

While specific details vary by case, the common threads that link these stories together are often disconcerting. Law enforcement officials expect and demand compliance, but when they don’t recognize a person’s disability in the course of an interaction, the consequences can be tragic. Misconceptions or assumptions can lead to overreactions that culminate in unnecessary arrest, use of pepper spray, or individuals being tasered.

Sadly, while incidences of this sort aren’t necessarily new, for many of us, learning about them is. The Internet, social media, and ubiquitous cell phones have helped catapult stories that were once easily restricted to local police blotters to unprecedented national prominence.

As National Council on Disability (NCD) Executive Director Rebecca Cokley wrote in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, “misunderstandings, fears, and stereotypes about disability have led to tragic outcomes throughout U.S. history. During the American Eugenics movement, pseudo-scientific ‘evidence’ gave way to popular myths linking disability and criminality, and the inheritability of both.” As a result, people with disabilities were devalued, isolated from the rest of society, prevented from attending school, getting married or becoming active and engaged in their communities.

 

Fortunately people with disabilities now enjoy far greater civil rights that have come hard fought in the least 50 years. However, harmful attitudes and assumptions, once established, can be difficult to replace even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

In the latest data released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, Americans with disabilities are victims of violent crimes at nearly three times the rate of their peers without disabilities. In 2012 alone, 1.3 million nonfatal violent crimes were perpetrated against people with disabilities aged 12 or older. Statistics bear out that people with disabilities are far more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators of them, and therefore are arguably in greater need of supportive relationships with and understanding from law enforcement.

Disability is varied and complex. Sometimes disability is visibly apparent, making it easier for law enforcement, to see—if not misinterpret. For others, disability is invisible. Whether it is written in the genetic code and is a companion since birth, or becomes a part of one’s experience later because of age, accident, or public service during the course of our natural lifespan many of us will move in and out of states of disability, whether it is due to breaking a limb, becoming diabetic, or conditions related to aging.

The disabled community relies on law enforcement as the first line of defense and protection in countless situations of varying complexity. Strengthening this important relationship could be a step toward preventing the sort of misunderstandings that can result in tragedy.

As Patti Saylor, Ethan’s mother, testified at Tuesday’s hearing:

“When you know someone with a disability and have a relationship with that person, it changes your whole being and perspective. At the local level, we have a real opportunity to build relationships with our local law enforcement and public sector officials, the ones that are on the frontlines serving our communities... Local disability advocacy organizations and providers should build lasting relationships with their local law enforcement and public sector officials. It doesn’t take an act of Congress, federal or state mandate, or even money to make you realize that relationships are everything.”

The recent hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee is an important first sentence in an ongoing dialogue about how law enforcement officials relate to people with psychiatric, developmental, and physical disabilities. Non-compliance isn’t automatically criminal, and if more police understood that, it could minimize the violence.

At the end of the hearing, Senator Al Franken remarked, “I think we need CIT training for every law enforcement official." CIT training is one component, along with increased community support, public engagement, and funding. These are all steps we can take to try to decrease the likelihood of more mistreatment of those like Saylor and Boyd.

But as long as disability is misunderstood and criminalized, even unintentionally, nearly everyone will be at increased risk.

More American students are learning sign language than Chinese

From Vox. In the picture, sign language interpreter Barbie Parker of LotuSIGN performs during Lollapalooza 2013 at Grant Park.

The fastest-growing foreign language class in the past 20 years isn't foreign at all. Nor is it spoken. It's American Sign Language.

More college students are now studying American Sign Language than Chinese and Russian combined. In 2009, ASL was the fourth-most popular language for college students to study, falling behind only Spanish, French, and German.

That's a huge change in the past three decades. So few college students studied sign language in 1986 that it didn't even register on the US Education Department's periodic surveys. By 1990, it was showing up — way, way at the bottom.

After 1990, many more colleges began accepting American Sign Language to fulfill foreign language requirements amid a growing recognition that deaf Americans have their own culture and customs. ASL is now accepted by nearly all flagship state universities for foreign language credits, according to a list maintained by Sherman Wilcox, a University of New Mexico linguistics professor who studies sign languages.

Wilcox, a forceful advocate for the acceptance of American Sign Language as a separate language worthy of study, argues that it has just as much economic value and cultural validity as a foreign language. (ASL isn't widely used outside the United States and Canada, even in other English-speaking countries; the United Kingdom and Australia both have their own sign languages.)

Deaf people have their own culture and folkways, just as French or Spanish speakers do, Wilcox says. Sign language interpreters are in demand in business, education and government. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the demand for those workers will grow rapidly in the next decade.

"One of the educational benefits of foreign language study is that it gives students a fresh perspective on their own language and culture," Wilcox writes. "This is especially true of ASL."

If anything, the growth of ASL has slowed somewhat in recent years. It grew a mere 50 percent between 2002 and 2009; Korean, Arabic, and Chinese all grew faster.

The relative popularity of language classes also offers a window into the changes in US foreign and economic policy and the relative global importance of other nations and economies. Here's how enrollments in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian have changed since 1965.

Note the waning of the Cold War (and the fading interest in Russian), the sharp increase in Japanese in the late 1980s, and the spike in Arabic after 2001.

Maryland's Towson University gets patent for technology to help blind Internet users

From The Baltimore Sun. In the picture, Anne Taylor, director of Access Technology, Jerrigan Institute, National Federation of the Blind, uses braille and QWERTY keyboards in the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. Dr. Jonathan Lazar, professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University, is working with her on a technology that makes CAPTCHA, a website security feature, accessible to blind people.

While blind people can browse the Internet through a variety of means, there is often one thing that stops them cold — a security feature known as a CAPTCHA that's designed to distinguish human users from robots.

CAPTCHAs, in which a user must identify the letters in a distorted image, are commonly used to block automated bots from grabbing up all the tickets for an event, signing up for thousands of email addresses in a short period of time or unfairly swaying the results of an online poll. They have drawn criticism from advocacy organizations for the blind for being too difficult to use, but last month, Towson University secured a U.S. patent for a new kind of CAPTCHA that's intended to be easier for those with limited or no eyesight.

With Towson's SoundsRight CAPTCHA, users listen to a series of 10 random sounds and are asked to press the computer's space bar each time they hear a certain noise — a dog barking, a horse neighing — among the other sounds. The developers say it is superior to Google's current audio alternative CAPTCHA, citing studies showing that version's failure rate of 50 percent for blind users.

"Blind people are capable of doing everything that a visual person can on the Internet," said Jonathan Lazar (pictured), a Towson professor who has led a group of graduate and outside researchers on the project. "We just try to come up with some equivalent features that make it easier."

"Some people are unaware that blind people can use the Internet," Lazar added.

The SoundsRight CAPTCHA is still in a "beta" version, Lazar said, and the developers are hoping a real-world rollout will help identify any necessary tweaks.

The Towson researchers worked closely on testing with the National Federation of the Blind, which is headquartered in the Riverside neighborhood of Baltimore. Anne Taylor, the federation's director of access technology, said there are several types of software available for blind users to read the text on a Web page aloud. Taylor, who is blind, said not being able to use visual CAPTCHAs could impede a blind person's ability to enjoy the benefits of the Internet and hurt their ability to hold a job.

A sighted person could help a blind user with the visual CAPTCHAs, she said, but the blind want to be independent on the Internet. Further, since many CAPTCHAs are on web pages that ask for personal financial information, she has concerns about privacy.

"The Internet is such an important and integral part of our daily lives now," Taylor said. "Just think of how many hours you spend on the web as a sighted individual. Would you really want to have someone with you all that time?"

CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, was introduced as a concept by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. The term was coined in 2000 by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who developed an early Web page test program for Yahoo.
The CAPTCHAs protect from automated hacking programs that can also leave spam comments on blogs, attack protected passwords and send junk email.

Tim Brooks, the chief software developer on the SoundsRight project since 2010, said the audio CAPTCHA can be embedded into any Web page and customized by the webmaster. Brooks said its script could be tweaked to be used in any number of different languages or have users identify any number of sounds. An organization for train enthusiasts, he said, could potentially have users identify the sounds of different types of trains.

The SoundsRight CAPTCHA is just as secure as the traditional visual CAPTCHAs, he said. Sighted users can use the audio CAPTCHA as well, or a Web page could give the option of either a visual CAPTCHA or the SoundsRight CAPTCHA, he said. The only potential downside to the technology is that it takes about 30 to 40 seconds to complete, versus less than 10 seconds for a visual CAPTCHA, Brooks said.

"A lot of people don't have that kind of patience," he said.

The Towson CAPTCHA project was the brainchild of then-undergraduate student Jon Holman in 2007 as a class project, Lazar said. In a 2007 focus group, blind users identified visual CAPTCHAs as the biggest impediment to their using the Internet independently. Several other students, faculty members and outside researchers have assisted in developing the technology since the project began.

"We've always done the evaluation with blind users at every step," Lazar said. "This was research that was done because blind users were telling us this was important."

The project was partially supported with a $50,000 grant from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., Lazar said. The researchers went through several different prototypes, rejecting those that weren't found to be secure enough.

The SoundsRight CAPTCHA is in use on the National Federation of the Blind's website, and the organization is working to encourage various groups and businesses to adopt it.

"We are all one step away from a sudden disability, so why not make the Internet an inclusive place for everybody?" Taylor said.

Mariel Hemingway's documentary about the mental illness in her family premieres April 27 on OWN network

The Washington Post review:

Barbara Kopple’s engrossing documentary “Running From Crazy,” co-produced by Oprah Winfrey and airing Sunday night on OWN, is ostensibly a film about occurrences of mental illness and suicide within the same family.

But because the family is that of Ernest Hemingway’s descendents, “Running From Crazy” can’t help but be drawn to the ways life is lived in the darkest shadows of celebrity, even in the middle of what appears to be a glorious, sun-drenched Idaho summer circa 2011.

The burdens of fame are as important to this film as the burdens of shame — the shame associated with mental illness, suicide, alcoholism, unhappy marriages and memories of sexual abuse, as viewed through the thoughts and recollections of Mariel Hemingway, the ingenue actress who was only 16 when Woody Allen cast her as his girlfriend in “Manhattan.”
 
Now 52, Hemingway has, like so many other women of her age and means, found some solace on the yoga mat. Amicably divorced from her husband of 23 years (with whom she raised two daughters), Hemingway spends much of her time seeking balance and remaining alert to any signs of psychological collapse in herself and those she loves. With her boyfriend Bobby Williams, a stuntman and fitness fanatic, she runs a lifestyle/nutrition venture called the WillingWay, and not very far into “Running From Crazy” you begin to fear that you’ve run smack into an infomercial for the actress’s specially concocted macro-nutrient “blisscuit” bars.

But Kopple, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose documentaries include “Harlan County USA,” “American Dream” and “Wild Man Blues,” isn’t here for a dose of the woo-woo. Patiently and often elliptically, Kopple’s camera watches as Hemingway scours deep for memories of her parents’ and older sisters’ emotional and mental troubles.

Hemingway gets that her present-day life, to an outsider or even to the viewers of “Running From Crazy” will look somewhat less than afflicted. “I know what [people] think of me. Tall, blond — what does she have to say to me? I would think the same thing,” she says. “Guess what? A bunch of funky s--- happened in my family. I’m scared, too.”

She’s not doing this only for sport or self-promotion; in recent years, Hemingway has spent a fair amount of her time speaking out about mental illness and suicide issues and lending her name to related causes. It’s her thing. On just about every level, “Running From Crazy” is about the ways all celebrities have a thing, whether they want that thing or not. Hemingway can name several relatives, including her grandfather and sister, who committed suicide.

Born four months after Ernest (“Papa”) Hemingway shot himself in 1961, Mariel grew up with two older sisters, Joan (who was called “Muffet”) and Margot.

The girls’ father, Jack, was Ernest’s oldest son — an outdoorsman and writer who helped finish his father’s memoir, “A Moveable Feast,” for a posthumous publication, but largely shunned publishing ambitions for the fishing stream and the quiet of Ketchum, Idaho, rarely speaking of Papa.

Mariel’s chief memory of her father and mother, Byra (who went by the nickname “Puck”), is that of a seethingly and verbally abusive marriage, brought about each evening by “wine time,” when her parents would uncork the booze.

When Mariel was still young, the adventuresome yet manic Muffet ran off to travel the world and party, eventually returning in a deflated mental state that left her dependent on their parents.

The middle sister, Margot, as anyone who was pop-culture literate in the 1970s will recall, left Idaho for New York, changed the spelling of her name to Margaux, and became a supermodel of the Studio 54 era, thanks in no small part to her famous surname and a plucky, girlish allure that seemed to presage ’80s preppy-punk fashion. (Time magazine put Margaux on its cover in 1975 under the headline “The New Beauties.”)

In a peculiar twist of fate that she soon regretted, Margaux invited her kid sister Mariel to take a supporting role in her 1976 film “Lipstick,” a grisly rape/revenge drama starring Margaux as a fashion model. Critics panned Margaux’s performance while praising Mariel’s. As Margaux’s career meandered, Mariel got the Woody Allen movie and an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, which led to more roles. The sisters never got over the envy and ill will it caused.

Whittled down somewhat, “Running From Crazy” might have been an even better film solely about the fraught subject of siblings. Kopple’s work here is indebted to reels of footage from a documentary Margaux attempted to make in the mid-1980s about her family and her grandfather’s literary fame. (Pieced together, that film was eventually released in 1998.) Margaux made a show of jetting home to Ketchum with a camera crew, fixed on the concept of rediscovering Papa’s legacy. She also filmed a pilgrimage to Spain to watch her grandfather’s beloved bullfights; one gets the sense that the film was just a desperate bid to cash in once more.

But Margaux also captured moments that have an awkward, uncomfortable air of familial hurt and personal desperation. These form essential (and frankly fascinating) evidence for Kopple’s film about Mariel’s attempt to let in some light several decades later. It all makes for a harrowing glimpse within a family that is unable to address its demons. Margaux continued to struggle and died of a drug overdose in 1996, when she was 42. It was years before the family accepted that death as a suicide, exercising the same denial that followed Papa’s “shooting accident.”

Mariel is both alert and oblivious to the recurring themes from one generation to the next. “Running From Crazy” opens with Mariel and her daughter, Langley, posing for a lavishly styled cover shoot for Town & Country magazine. Her other daughter, Dree, in a curious replay of the family’s other affliction, celebrityhood, went off to New York to become a model and actress, opting to use her great-grandfather’s famous surname. Hemingway seems convinced that her daughters won’t be haunted by the family’s so-called curse, while the daughters appear only nominally interested in the past she’s trying to share with them.

What “Running From Crazy” ultimately discovers is a beautiful, middle-aged woman — Mariel — who talks frequently about personal courage and yet is still understandably intimidated by the contradictory elephants in so many rooms. A visit to Papa’s enshrined Ketchum home includes a tentative walk to the rear hallway where he shot himself, a space his granddaughter always equated with haunted basements and other dangerous places. “It’s like something kept me away,” she says.

Hemingway’s mother died in 1988; her father died in 2000; Margaux’s death occurred in between — all of it freeing Hemingway to dig as deeply as she needs to. She is convinced, from incidents she witnessed as a little girl, that her father sexually abused both Muffet and Margaux when he was drunk and that her mother protected her from the same abuse by insisting that little Mariel sleep with her most nights, away from Jack.

Hemingway also tries to talk through her feelings about Margaux. In “Running From Crazy’s” most raw moment, Mariel reveals that she thought Margaux was stupid. “I couldn’t see her as beautiful,” she recalls with real regret.

Late in the film comes the almost surprising news that Mariel’s older sister Muffet — who seems to always be referred to in the past-tense — is, in fact, alive, managing her illness and making abstract paintings of Papa and Jack, while residing in a group home close enough for Hemingway to visit.

But Mariel admits that she rarely goes to see Muffet. “It makes me so uncomfortable,” she says. “I always say I’m going to come by and I don’t.” When she goes this time, proffering kombucha tea and coconut water, it’s a friendly afternoon of small talk, seemingly to benefit the documentary.

“Running From Crazy,” with its Oprah imprimatur, wants very much to be a story of a woman who has triumphed. Hemingway may deservedly feel that she’s reached a mountaintop of healing and inner truths and all that; but, as the film subtly reveals, she is still often staring at the summit from a valley far below.


Running From Crazy (two hours) airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on OWN.

United Nations panel urges nations to respect the decision-making capabilities of people with disabilities

From the United Nations:

People with disabilities have the same rights as everyone to make decisions about their lives, including the right to take risks and make mistakes, a United Nations committee has stressed in new guidelines.

“Respect for the freedom to make choices should be accorded to all persons with disabilities, no matter how much support they need,” said Theresia Degener from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

“People with disabilities, including those with psychosocial or cognitive impairments, must be supported in making decisions, and not have decisions made for them, even when it is thought to be in their ‘best interests’,” she stated in a UN news release.

The Committee noted that while Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities enshrines equal recognition before the law, many such persons are denied legal capacity, often on the basis of mental capacity assessments, and are deprived of fundamental rights such as the right to vote and the right to marry and found a family.

There is a general misunderstanding of States’ obligations under the Convention and a failure to recognize the importance of “supported decision-making,” said the Committee. Instead, “substituted decision-making,” where others make choices on the person’s behalf, remains common – for example under guardianship regimes or through the use of mental health laws that permit forced treatment.

The Committee has issued a detailed reading of Article 12 to clarify States’ obligations, in which it underscores the position that States are obliged to provide persons with disabilities with the broad range of support they may need to make decisions that have legal effect.

“Support in the exercise of legal capacity must respect the rights, will and preferences of persons with disabilities,” stated the 18-member body, which monitors States’ implementation of the Convention.

The panel recognizes that it is not always possible to determine exactly what an individual wants, but in these cases decisions should be made on the “best interpretation of their will and preference,” rather than basing choices on what they regard as the “best interests” of the person.

The Committee also noted that “supported decision-making” is closely tied to accessibility of services, information and communication, set out under Article 9 of the Convention.

In this regard, the Committee details the importance of accessibility in allowing persons with disabilities to enjoy and realise their human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with others.

Persons with disabilities face many barriers, and so “it is important that accessibility is addressed in all its complexity, encompassing the physical environment, transportation, information and communication, and services,” it noted.

Goods, products and services provided to the public, the Committee stressed, must be accessible to all, regardless of whether they are owned and/or provided by a public authority or by a private enterprise.

All new goods, products, facilities, infrastructure, technology and services should be designed to be fully accessible by persons with disabilities. States should also set definite timeframes for and allocate adequate resources towards removing existing barriers. Austerity measures are no excuse for failing to ensure gradual accessibility for persons with disabilities, the Committee added.

Viki, Marlee Matlin team to promote online captioning worldwide

From Broadcasting & Cable:

TV streaming site Viki is teaming with actress Marlee Matlin on a new campaign, the Billion Words March to advocate for closed captioning of online video here and abroad, according to a representative of the company.

The campaign is tied to the FCC's request for comments on its Feb. 20 vote to require broadcasters and cable operators to make their best efforts to improve the quality of closed captions and whether qualitative standards are needed. Comments are due April 28.

Viki streams TV shows in more than 150 languages and has content deals with NBCU, A&E, TBS and BBC among others, according to Viki.

Matlin, who is deaf, won an Oscar as best actress for Children of a Lesser God and has had numerous TV roles including a continuing role on The West Wing.

The goal of the campaign is to insure "complete and accurate" online captions. “It’s not just a few people who need this. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people around the world who are deaf and hard of hearing but who deserve access to entertainment, no matter what language they speak,” said Matlin in a statement.

Viki wants to collect supporters as well as encourage online programmers to do more captioning.

The FCC is requiring captioning of full-length online video re-aired from broadcast or cable, but so far not to web-original video or video clips.

TV streaming site Viki is teaming with actress Marlee Matlin on a new campaign, the Billion Words March to advocate for closed captioning of online video here and abroad, according to a representative of the company.



The campaign is tied to the FCC's request for comments on its Feb. 20 vote to require broadcasters and cable operators to make their best efforts improve the quality and of closed captions and whether qualitative standards are needed. Comments are due April 28.


Viki streams TV shows in more than 150 languages and has content deals with NBCU, A&E, TBS and BBC among others, according to Viki.


Matlin, who is deaf, won an Oscar as best actress For Children of a Lesser God, and has had numerous TV roles, including  a continuing role on West Wing.


The goal of the campaign is to insure "complete and accurate" online captions. “It’s not just a few people who need this. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people around the world who are deaf and hard of hearing but who deserve access to entertainment, no matter what language they speak,” said Matlin in a statement.


Viki wants to collect supporters as well as encourage online programmers to do more captioning.


The FCC is requiring captioning of full-length online video re-aired from broadcast or cable, but so far not to web=original video or video clips.

- See more at: http://www.multichannel.com/viki-marlee-team-promote-online-captioning/374076#sthash.PhTBvK1w.dpuf

Toronto's Accessibility Arcade to help disabled video game lovers level up

From The Globe & Mail in Toronto, Canada. In the picture, Mark Barlet, President of the AbleGamers Foundation, right, started the foundation in 2005 after seeing how difficult, expensive and frustrating it can be to experience the pleasures that many gamers take for granted. “These are real-life things for us.”

Disabled Canadians gamers are finally getting a chance to try-before-they-buy with the opening of the Accessibility Arcade at the University of Toronto starting April 26.

Housed in the Semaphore Research Cluster at the university’s Robarts Library, the Arcade will showcase the latest technology and controllers that allow people with disabilities to play popular console and PC games such as Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed. After this weekend’s public open house, the permanent installation will be accessible by appointment.

“This is a testament to the university’s commitment to people with disabilities in Canada,” says Mark Barlet, founder of the AbleGamers Foundation, the West Virginia-based charity behind the Arcade.

Custom-made controllers for gamers with such disabilities as cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis are expensive, often running between $400 and $900. Mr. Barlet says he has received many e-mails from people who have bought the controllers, only to find that they don’t fit their specific needs.

“Our biggest fear as an organization was that someone would see a video on the web, drop all that money and then get it in their house and not be able to use it,” he says. “Being disabled is kind of expensive and many people are on fixed incomes, so these are luxury goods.”

At the Arcade, specially trained staff will assess individual gamers’ needs and advise them on the best equipment to buy, which can also include special software for sensory issues.

Mr. Barlet’s backgound fuels his mission: He is an avid gamer, a disabled war vet and has a sister with MS. He started AbleGamers in 2005 after seeing how difficult, expensive and frustrating it can be to experience the pleasures that many gamers take for granted. “These are real-life things for us.”

The first Accessibility Arcade opened in 2012 at the Martin Luther King Jr. public library in Washington, D.C., with the new Toronto installation the first one outside the United States.

AbleGamers estimates about one in five American gamers, or about 65 million, have some sort of disability, with a similar ratio likely in Canada.

The organization favours Xbox and PC games because those platforms tend to work better with accessibility technology.

“PlayStation had a tendency in the past to break accessible controllers through software upgrades,” Mr. Barlet says. “Until we can get some sort of agreement from PlayStation to stop doing that, we don’t recommend bringing them into a more public space because you’re just asking for frustration, unfortunately.”

In new documentary, 'Too Sane for this World,' 12 autistic adults share their stories about life on the spectrum

Cinema Libre Studio press release: Watch the trailer here.

LOS ANGELES --  In Too Sane for this World, director William Davenport allows 12 adults with different types of autism (PDD-NOS) to let their voices be heard.  The film, shot and edited with a mostly autistic crew, became available on DVD on April 8 with On Demand options to follow in May.

The film features twelve people, some with Aspergers Syndrome and others considered “high-functioning” autistic, such as Temple Grandin (author and professor), Robyn Steward (a musician and trainer/mentor for others on the spectrum), Greg Yates (who studied biophysics  and psychology at U.C. Berkeley and MIT respectively) and Rudy Simone, who has written four best-selling books on Asperger's. 

The film, which was an official selection at the Hawaii International Film Festival and was an honorable mention that the SAMHSA Voice Awards in 2012, also features other adults who are perhaps less high-functioning but are still working hard to find a meaningful place in our society.

In the film, Steward suggests, “No matter what somebody’s disability is, they have a great number of things to offer to the world. And it’s just a matter of being able to see those things and work around them. Because even the most able-bodied person has difficulties if you think about it.”

The Autcast says: “This film does not minimize the problems of autistic adults by pretending that autism has not made life difficult and painful for most of us.  But it does not over-dramatize our problems to try to get you to feel sorry for us or to give somebody money.  Too Sane for This World does not present us as a tragic puzzle or a sophisticated freak show.It shows us as people.” 

Davenport (Citizen Autistic) has worked in commercial film production for years and developed educational courses on digital filmmaking for U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State and the Art Institute of San Francisco before.  He also has earned a Masters in Special Education with a certificate in autism studies.  He became the Executive Director of the Autism Social Connection in Northern California, where he created a unique filmmaking program to teach skills to children, teens and adults on the spectrum.  He recently relocated to Washington, DC and currently teaches filmmaking at the Ivymount School.

“This film is about breaking the myths of how we view people on the autism spectrum. It is about giving a voice, where a voice has been silenced by society," Davenport says. "The general public needs essential information about autism, and the true nature of living on the spectrum.”

“Too Sane for This World, tells the heartfelt story of adults living on the autism spectrum. Davenport’s insightful interviews and arresting camerawork take us into the lives of these extraordinary and yet often misunderstood individuals. The film is a must-see for teachers, professionals and parents who work with Asperger’s and AS,” says Camilla Bixler, Co-Director AASCEND (Autism, Asperger Syndrome Coalition for Education, Networking and Development). A percentage of Davenport’s profits will be donated to AASCEND.

SYNOPSIS: Too Sane for This World explores the challenges, gifts, and distinct perspectives of 12 adults on the autism spectrum. Featuring an introduction by bestselling author, Dr. Temple Grandin, and interviews designed by adults with high-functioning autism, the film discusses many of the problems facing the autism community – from bullying to marginalization and discrimination.  A unique collaboration between neurotypical and atypical individuals, men and women living on the spectrum speak candidly about defining and coming to terms with their autism, difficulties they’ve faced, and the experiences that have shaped their lives, illustrating the neurodiversity of the mind and its limitless potential.

The 63 minute documentary will become available in North America on April 8 on DVD (at traditional DVD retails outlets) and streaming platforms to follow on month later (May 8, 2014). Content includes discussion on signs and symptoms of  autism and aspergers; autism testing and self-identification, career paths and more.  Bonus features include: “Space Cadet” Music Video, by Array, featuring Robyn Steward and Mark Tinley (formerly of Duran Duran), Trailer and Interactive menus.
 

TECHNICAL DETAILS: USA | Documentary | Unrated | 63 minutes | Directed by William Davenport

DVD DETAILS: CLS 1191| 881394119123 | SRP: $ 19.95

Movie available at CinemaLibreStore.com, Amazon and other retail outlets.

COMING TO  STREAMING ONLINE  & ‘ON DEMAND’ (Amazon Instant, Hulu, Cinema Libre On Demand)– May 8, 2014.

Boston Marathon bombing survivors spur advances in prosthetics

From Discovery News. In the picture, Roseann Sdoia, a Boston Marathon bombing survivor, tries out a new leg at Next Step Bionics, Inc. in Newton, Mass.

When bombs rocked the Boston Marathon last year, emotional reverberations were felt throughout the country: Communities held memorial races and sported Boston Strong ribbons and shirts, created makeshift memorials out of running shoes and American flags, donated money to families of injured runners. Engineers, meanwhile, got down to the nitty-gritty: Building better prosthetics for the 16 survivors who lost limbs that day.

"I think Boston raised awareness and is kind of inspiring for promoting recovery instead of focusing on the injuries," said Levi Hargrove, Director of the Neural Engineering for Prosthetics and Orthotics Laboratory at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Even though his lab hasn't worked directly with survivors, everyone in the field has felt the impact, he said.

"The survivors are getting back to their lives, working with scientists and therapists, because they're going to be living with this condition for a long time," Hargrove said.

For a month, Pierpaolo Petruzziello's amputated arm was connected to a robotic limb, allowing him to feel sensations and control the arm with his thoughts. 

 

Last month, one of those survivors took the stage at TED2014 and showed off her first-of-its-kind bionic leg that allows the professional ballroom dancer to rumba again. After Adrianne Haslet-Davis danced, she tearfully thanked Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at The MIT Media Lab and creator of the leg.

"All this emotion poured out," Herr said. "The very first time she [tried the new leg], she was ecstatic. She was so joyful about being on that dance floor and feeling that freedom again."

Herr, whose lab partnered on a fund to support the development of specialized prostheses for runners after the Boston attack, based Haslet-Davis's leg on data he gathered from dancers of a similar build and body type to Haslet-Davis's. He invited the dancers to his lab, which was tricked out with sensors to track exactly how they moved and how their forces impacted the dance floor.

The idea, he said, was to extract those principles of dance and imbed them into chips on the bionic limb.
"It's responsive in a way that's appropriate biomechanically," he said. "It doesn't simply output a traditional trajectory that she would have to keep up with like a wind-up toy. It's more like she is the lead and the limb is the partner."

The leg also has to be able to move like flesh and bone, so the lab uses a "smart" material that can flop and stiffen depending on the voltage being applied from the body.

David Sengeh, a graduate students who also works in Herr's lab, recently won the Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize Competition for his work on improving the sockets used in prosthetics.

Conventional molding methods often result in prostheses that don't fit precisely, and often cause pain. Sengeh uses MRI and a 3D printer to create a design interface based on individual data.

"The goal is to make a model where you can enter someone's data, press play and get a comfortable socket," said Sengeh, who tested the method on one of the Boston survivors.

The end result? Without the short skirt she wore at her TED performance to show off the leg, it may have been impossible to tell she wasn't born with that leg.

In California, BART passengers with disabilities to protest new less accessible BART trains

From The SF Weekly:

Not everyone is excited about the brand new fleet of BART cars that's supposed to make your commute quieter, more comfortable, and less smelly.

BART riders with disabilities say the new fleet -- expected to roll out in the next two years -- actually offers less access for them. Specifically, the new design has added handhold poles in the middle of the entry ways, giving standing passengers something to hang onto while the train is moving.

But that pole is blocking the ability for wheelchair users and other riders with disabilities to access handicap seating, says Jessie Lorenz, executive director of Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco, which serves 5,000 people in San Francisco.

The issue has motivated passengers with disabilities and activists to protest the grand opening of the new BART fleet tomorrow afternoon.

"Our message is simple: they need to remove the damn poles," Lorenz tells SF Weekly.

Lorenz, who is blind, says she got a call from one of BART's managers today who asked her to cancel the protest. But Lorenz says her community isn't backing down from their request. "They're trying to give us this song and dance that they're getting so much flak from the bike community because they don't accommodate bikes to which I say: this is a Civil Rights issue," Lorenz says.

"[The BART manager] straight up said 'yes this is going to cause more problems for people who board trains with mobility problems and strollers, but how much sacrifice for the few do we make for the ability of many to stand -- and stand safely?'"

BART Spokeswoman Alicia Trost says that BART has tweaked its pole design after hearing various complaints from passengers. While they have no plans to ditch the handhold poles, the transit agency has moved it several inches away from the wheelchair area, increasing the width of the path to 49 inches.

In addition, BART has also raised the point where the three tripod branches meet the pole by 3 to 4 inches to eliminate "pinch points" for wheelchair users.

"We also plan to actively remind customers to step aside to make room for wheelchair users to more easily enter and exit the train, especially when conditions are crowded," BART states on its website.

But that's not really going to solve the accessibility issue for wheelchair users and passengers using scooters, Lorenz says. She points to Washington, D.C. which is currently being sued for the very same thing.

Tomorrow at 11 a.m., Lorenz and fellow activists plan to attend BART's grand opening of its new fleet at the Justin Herman Plaza. But they won't be there to celebrate.

"We know we have less political pull than the Bike Coalition, and it's playing out," Lorenz says. "Our folks have had a hard time accessing BART since they allowed bikes on trains at all times so this has culminated and everyone is ready to take it to the streets."

Malawian blind voters push for tactile ballots

From Voice of America:

BLANTYRE, MALAWI — Malawians who are blind are pushing the Malawi Electoral Commission to make available tactile ballot guides (TBG) for them to cast their votes independently.  In previous elections, they have been relying on guides who do the marking for them. They argue that such an arrangement violates their right to choose because they were not sure if their guides had really marked on the candidate of their choice.

An advocacy group for the rights of people who are deaf and blind, the Visual Hearing Impairment Membership Association, said that tactile ballots will help ensure the full participation of the disabled in the elections.

“The issue is that these people seem not to be assisted in the past elections. Yes, there might have been some problems [on the part on the commission] in the past, but this time we are saying ‘no, no, no.'  These people by nature have a right to vote as human beings and children of this country,” said Hockings Munyenyembe,  program manager for the association.

Munyenyembe said people who are deaf and blind have long been cheated by the electoral procedure, which allows them to use guides during voting. He believes this is a violation of their right to privacy.

“In most cases it had been discovered that these people [guides] had the opportunity to manipulate the system because, yes, the blind person could choose the person by naming, but when it comes to physical ticking, the person guiding the deaf blind person had a chance to change the other side," explained Munyenyembe.

Research by the association in 2010 showed that Malawi had more than 6,000 people are visually and hearing impaired. However, Munyenyembe says the association boasts about 2,800 registered members. And about 300 of them are expected to cast their ballots.

Sangwani Mwafulirwa, spokesperson for the Malawi Electoral Commission, told VOA that although the electoral law allows a visually impaired person to bring someone from home to assist in voting, the commission will make sure that this time around they vote independently.

“As the Malawi Electoral Commission, we have made it clear that we are going to provide tactile ballots in each and every center, so that if someone comes and needs to use a tactile ballot, they can use it,” said Mwafulirwa.

But Munyenyembe says with few weeks remaining to the election, they are worried about the slow pace the commission is taking to produce the tactile ballot. He says the association would need the sample ballots to pre-test them as well as to educate qualified voters on their use.

The Federation of Disability Organizations in Malawi, or FEDOMA, said it is seeking legal redress that would compel the commission to meet the demands of the people with disabilities for the elections.

Action Amos is executive director of the organization. He told a news conference last week in Blantyre that, among other things, the commission has failed to come up with an action plan and budget allocation for issues of accessibility for people with different disabilities.

“As an organization which represents persons with disabilities, we think that we need legal redress so that these people with disabilities are also able to cast their votes,” said Amos.

Mwafulirwa told a local radio, Capital FM, that the commission is making efforts to address all concerns raised by FEDOMA. But he said the commission cannot stop anybody from taking it to court.