Accessibility in the News — 3/27/2020.

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Feature Stories

Our Responses to COVID-19 Must Center Disability Justice

March 21, 2020 | Source: Truthout

Because of COVID-19, many places are putting in place accessibility measures and resources that they have not had before. For instance, many companies have now begun to allow employees to work from home, even if it was not permitted before COVID-19 measures were implemented. As a disabled person, I am both heartened and angry to see the things that I have been asking for a long time finally be implemented. However, many employers’ emergency measures are proving both slapdash and targeted toward abled people. This is not the same as thoughtful and meaningful accessibility measures grounded in disability justice…

Urging States to Continue Educating Students with Disabilities, DeVos Publishes New Resource on Accessibility and Distance Learning Options

March 22, 2019 EIN News Desk

Managing COVID-19 Disruption: Online Accessibility and Anti-Discrimination in Schools

March 18, 2020 | Source: Cooley

Switch to remote learning may leave students with disabilities behind

March 24, 2020 | Source: Tucson Sentinel

The switch to remote learning could leave students with disabilities behind

March 24, 2020 | Source: PBS

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today the Department has released new information clarifying that federal law should not be used to prevent schools from offering distance learning opportunities to all students, including students with disabilities. This new resource from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) explains that as a school district takes necessary steps to address the health, safety, and well-being of all its students and staff, educators can use distance learning opportunities to serve all students…

Justice Department Files Its First Enforcement Action Against COVID-19 Fraud

March 22, 2020 | Source: U.S. Department of Justice

DOJ Announces Charges Against COVID-19 Fraud Website

March 26, 2020 | Source: Law Street Media

The Department of Justice announced today that it has taken its first action in federal court to combat fraud related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The enforcement action filed today in Austin against operators of a fraudulent website follows Attorney General William Barr’s recent direction for the department to prioritize the detection, investigation, and prosecution of illegal conduct related to the pandemic. As detailed in the civil complaint and accompanying court papers filed on Saturday, March 21, 2020, the operators of the website “coronavirusmedicalkit.com” are engaging in a wire fraud scheme…

National News (U.S.)

New Coronavirus Package Could Unravel Protections For Students With Disabilities

March 19, 2020 | Source: Huffington Post & Disability Scoop

Advocates of disabled children are sounding the alarm on Senate Republicans’ proposed “Phase 3” coronavirus stimulus package, saying that it may eventually give the government power to absolve schools of at least some of their legal obligation to educate students with disabilities. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal education law that governs special education, schools are required to provide an equal education for students with disabilities. Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federally funded programs are prohibited from discriminating based on disability…

New Airline Seat Design Will Allow Disabled Passengers to Fly in Their Own Wheelchairs

March 19, 2020 | Source: Aviation Pros

Molon Labe Seating of Denver, Colorado has unveiled a prototype of a new airline seat that will allow Passengers of Restricted Mobility (PRM’s) to fly on airlines in their own wheelchairs. Currently passengers in wheelchairs can’t fly in them. They must transfer from their wheelchair into a Skychair to get down the narrow aisle and then transfer again into their airline seat. Disabled access for air travel is immensely challenging at best and dehumanizing at worst, which is why many people with disabilities avoid air travel completely….

Coronavirus restrictions put extra burden on the blind community: Experts

March 20, 2020 | Source: ABC News

Coronavirus Pandemic Poses Unique Challenges To Members Of DeafBlind Community

March 20, 2020 | Source: CBS Chicago

The novel coronavirus outbreak has forced millions of people around the world to limit what and who they touch and stay in place for the time being — all methods to try to tamp down on the spread of the virus in the absence of a vaccine or treatment. But for the blind community, in particular, these restrictions create additional obstacles that may contribute to their already vulnerable state, experts said. Working and studying from home, shopping and even a recreational walk outside isn’t always easy for blind persons…

For parents trying to replicate school for children with disabilities, a confounding task

March 20, 2020 | Source: The Washington Post

Like lots of other kids, Jocilyn Oyler’s 11-year-old daughter is out of school amid coronavirus fears. But unlike other kids, she can’t just log onto the computer and do her schoolwork at home. At school, she gets adult help in every classroom, plus speech therapy and other services. With her school closed, all that is gone. “She can’t write a paragraph without having a meltdown,” her mother says. In the age of this new and deadly virus, most American school districts have closed their doors, hoping remote learning can serve as a replacement in the coming weeks or even months…

Settlement highlights accessibility gap for hearing impaired New Yorkers

March 20, 2020 | Source: Queens Daily Eagle

An Astoria resident with low vision and severe hearing loss has won a settlement with a professional licensing agency over the organization’s failure to provide speech to text service at past events. Marc Safman, a professional financial fraud specialist accredited by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, or ACAMS, contacted the New York City Commission of Human Rights after certain ACAMS events did not offer Communication Access Real-time Translation, also known as CART…

How to Make your “At-Home” and Online Presence Accessible for Adaptive Athletes

March 20, 2020 | Source: Morning Chalk Up

We are living through an extraordinary moment and gyms and fitness brands are offering all sorts of online and app-based services for those stuck at home in lockdown, under quarantine or social distancing. It’s vitally important to understand how those products will be received by all users — including those with disabilities. This article explores the concept of “Universal Design” with three-time CrossFit Games team athlete and special education expert Kristen Arnold to give you actionable tips to be able to reach more potential clients, more effectively…

The Move to Online College is Hitting Adjunct Professors the Hardest

March 20, 2020 | Source: VICE

Non-tenure track faculty at community and city colleges across the country told Motherboard they have not received sufficient pay, training, or equipment to teach classes online—and the consequences could be devastating for students. Joan Bevelaqua, an adjunct professor of studio art at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland will begin holding design classes online for the first time in her two decades of teaching at the school on March 30. The transition poses big challenges for her and her students…

Making gardens accessible and inclusive important to Master Gardener

March 21, 2020 | Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

Making gardening more inclusive has been something Stephen Cantu has been thinking about for a while. He’s always enjoyed gardening, and after injuries sustained during an accident on a job site led to his use of a wheelchair 37 years ago, he’s been noticing ways to improve accessibility and inclusiveness for people with mobility issues. As a Master Gardener with the Master Gardeners Association of San Diego County, he works as a volunteer (trained and supervised by the University of California Cooperative Extension) to offer home gardening and pest control information to the public for free…

Helping hands: The theatrical sign language interpreter at the governor’s press conferences is deaf himself

March 22, 2020 | Source: NewportRI

The thing about excellence — you know it when you see it. That’s what I thought as I watched Gov. Gina Raimondo’s sign language interpreter on TV during her daily coronavirus briefings. I would soon learn why — his name is Arkady Belozovsky, and of 12,000 certified U.S. interpreters, he’s among the 130 or so with the highest rating. Then I learned something astonishing. Arkady, 46, is fully deaf himself. And yet somehow, he stands next to the governor doing instantaneous signing translation as she speaks…

Why Netflix’s Crip Camp is a landmark for disability representation on screen

March 22, 2020 | Source: Entertainment Weekly

From Noncompliant Bodies to Civil Disobedience

March 24, 2020 | Source: The Nation

Keah Brown wept uncontrollably when she saw the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution at the Sundance Film Festival in January. “I couldn’t believe that that was the first time I had seen a disability narrative that wasn’t steeped in self-hatred,” explains Brown, a millennial writer and activist who has cerebral palsy. “It was just really refreshing to laugh, and cry, and to get excited about a future where disabled people can tell stories like this one, and not have to hide it under the guise of, ‘How does this make a non-disabled person feel better about themselves?’”…

Academy Express agrees to voluntary settlement of ADA complaint

March 23, 2020 | Source: Bus & Motorcoach News

Academy Express has agreed to settle with the U.S. Department of Justice over a complaint that it failed to provide wheelchair-accessible bus service as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The complaint was filed after organizers of a military reunion requested a wheelchair-accessible bus for an “Honor Flight” of Vietnam veterans from New Jersey to visit historic sites in Washington, D.C., in 2018. The organizers said neither of the two buses assigned to the group were accessible, so a 74-year-old veteran was unable to participate in the first day of activities…

Practice What We Teach: Higher Ed Needs Universal Design For All Students

March 24, 2020 | Source: Thrive Global

As university faculty and administrators across the country are closing schools, scrambling to flip course work to on-line or virtual programing due to COVID-19, many are also finalizing decisions on acceptances for the 2020 fall incoming classes. Hopefully, they give priority to attracting and retaining students with disabilities as part of diversity initiatives. However, although this year is the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act and March is recognized as Disability Awareness month, accessibility concerns of this group of students often go unnoticed with university diversity initiatives…

Number of U.S. adults at risk for blindness on the rise

March 23, 2020 | Source: New Hampshire Union Leader

The proportion of U.S. adults at high risk for blindness has grown over a 15-year period and so has the share who say they cannot afford eyeglasses, according to a new study. Between 2002 and 2017, the number of people at high risk for vision loss — seniors, people with diabetes and those with eye disorders — rose from 65 million to 93 million, but 40% of adults said they hadn’t been getting yearly eye exams, researchers report in JAMA Ophthalmology. Nearly 1 in 10 also said they couldn’t afford eyeglasses…

As A Disabled Person, I’m Afraid I May Not Be Deemed Worth Saving From The Coronavirus

March 25, 2020 | Source: Huffington Post

The other night, I found myself still wide awake in the early morning hours, trying to slow the rhythm of my breathing. I’d just read yet another article on the ethical dilemma of rationing health care in the face of the ever-growing coronavirus pandemic. I was terrified. I finally drifted off to sleep, only to have a nightmare that I was in a locked ward with hundreds of other disabled people who had all been left to wait out the effects of the illness without any medical intervention. At the very least, this was a sign that I needed to stop scrolling through social media before bed…

CARLOS MELO, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CITY OF SOMERVILLE Case: Disability Discrimination/Essential Functions (1st Cir.)

March 25, 2020 | Source: Bloomberg Law

A former police officer forced to retire after it was determined that his blindness in one eye rendered him unable to carry out car chases may pursue Americans with Disabilities Act claims against the City of Somerville, Mass., because such ability may not have been an essential job function, given its absence from the department’s list of duties and responsibilities of a patrol officer. Even if a jury were to find high-speed pursuits an essential function of his job, the officer might still prevail because a jury could also find that he can perform that function, the court said…

Happy because he’s blind

March 26, 2020 | Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Marietta business executive Chad E. Foster says he’s successful and happy — not despite being blind but because of it. “Most people spend their entire lives trying to figure out how to be happy, something I learned early,” said the now 44-year-old married father of two. “Happiness is not a feeling or emotion. Happiness is a decision each of us makes every single day when we wake up.” Foster was only three when he started having trouble seeing at night. His parents took him to Duke University Hospital, where he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic and degenerative eye disease…

Astronauts going to Mars may be at increased risk of deafness and balance problems as long space missions can cause fluid to build up in the ear, study claims

March 26, 2020 | Source: Daily Mail

Astronauts making the seven-month trip to Mars face an increased risk of going deaf and suffering balance problems, according to the findings of a new study. Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina used MRS scans to discover that long space missions can cause a fluid build-up in the ear. Such build-ups can cause hearing loss and giddiness – a condition called ‘mastoid effusions’ – impacting the bone at the back of the ear…

Jack Fact — About 2 to 3 of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears, according to the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

International News

‘Why do I have to be a superhero or a victim?’: This Dubai disability awareness trainer is hoping to change the way we approach inclusion

March 20, 2020 | Source: The National- UAE

“People with disabilities don’t need help. We need support,” Yahye Siyad says determinedly. He was born blind, into an impoverished community in Somalia and, for the first few years of his life, his prospects seemed bleak, he says. Then things started looking up, when, at age 7, he was offered a place at a school for visually impaired children in Bahrain. With the strength of a good education behind him, at age 17, Siyad moved to the UK, where he spent the next 10 years studying at university, finishing off with a master’s in international HR management…

Accessibility = Inclusion and Belonging for Kids with Physical Disabilities

March 21, 2020 | Source: New Kerala- Canada

Kids with physical disabilities are often left out because a building isn’t accessible, there is no accessible transportation or a program won’t accommodate someone in a wheelchair. Easter Seals Ontario has been an advocate for improving accessibility for children with disabilities in the community for 98 years. Accessibility means more than just ramps, elevators and electric door openers. It is also being able to join a group and play together, enabling a child with a disability to be included and have a sense of belonging…

Special measures for persons with disabilities demanded

March 21, 2020 | Source: The News International- Pakistan

On behalf of 2.8 million persons with disabilities all over the country, the disability rights organisations and activists have demanded the government to ensure disability rights and inclusion in the response to COVID-19. Talking to ‘The News’, Director Special Talent Exchange Programme Atif Sheikh and CEO National Forum of Women with Disabilities Abia Akram said that little has been done to provide people with disabilities with the guidance and support needed to protect them during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, even though many of them are part of the high-risk group…

Nation-wide innovation challenge launched to develop technology for differently-abled, winners get Rs 10 lakh grant each

March 21 | Source: India Today

A nation-wide innovation challenge was launched jointly by Microsoft India and Nasscom Foundation on March 17 to create technology that can empower and provide equal opportunities to the differently-abled. The Innovate for Accessible India campaign aims to address gaps faced by people with disabilities, especially in acquiring services and support in education, skill building, employment, mobility, rehabilitation and other government services, by creating working technological solutions using Microsoft Cloud, Artificial Intelligence etc…

Consider UN suggestions for protecting disabled community during coronavirus, urge experts

March 22, 2020 | Source: NewzHook- India

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities has raised specific concerns about the poor lack of support and protection to the disabled community during the coronavirus or COVID-19 epidemic. Disability rights experts in India have forwarded the letter to health authorities urging them to pay heed. “People with disabilities feel they have been left behind. Containment measures, such as social distancing and self-isolation, may be impossible for those who rely on the support of others…

Translation for the deaf important to understanding COVID-19 pandemic

March 22, 2020 | Source: rdnewsNOW- Canada

The City of Red Deer is doing its very best to provide accessible information when it conducts its nightly COVID-19 press conferences, the city’s Public Information Officer says. Nationally and provincially, viewers have become accustomed to not only seeing politicians and health and emergency officials, but also the American Sign Language (ASL) translators by their side. Those translators are a lifeline for members of the deaf community, who have varying levels of ability to read the English language, and even that only matters when closed captioning is available…

Visual Impairment. How Should you Prevent Blindness?

March 22, 2020 | Source: MENAFN- Costa Rica

Visual impairment. It could be defined as the lack, decrease or defects of vision and includes pathologies ranging from cataracts to total blindness. The objective is to sensitize the public around the world about the importance of preventing vision loss and avoiding blindness. World Vision Day seeks to raise awareness about the prevention and treatment of vision loss. About 80 percent of blindness cases are preventable, either because they can be treated to regain visual ability or preventable…

Centre directs states to provide COVID-19 info to disabled persons in accessible format

March 23, 2020 | Source: Deccan Herald- India & The Hindu- India

The Social Justice and Empowerment (SJEM) Ministry on Monday directed the state governments and union territories to immediately make arrangements to provide details in an accessible format to disabled persons about the preventive steps to be taken to contain COVID-19. Secretary of Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) Shakuntala Gamlin told PTI here that she wrote a letter to the chief secretaries of all the states/UTs to immediately direct their health and publicity departments to disseminate all the information relating to COVID-19 in an accessible format to the disabled persons…

State govts asked to make available COVID 19 information for disabled persons

March 24, 2020 | Source: Devdiscourse—India

The Department of Disabilities under the M/o Social Justice and Empowerment has asked state governments to make available information related to COVID 19 in accessible formats for persons with that disabilities. In a communication sent to states, it is stated that the Central Government has enacted the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 that envisages the dissemination of all information in an accessible format both print and electronically…

Parents of Special children expect compassion, not ridicule

March 25, 2020 | Source: The Express Tribune- Pakistan

I would normally refrain from discussing individuals, but this event should not go unnoticed as it has serious consequences for the moral and social values of our society and the image of the country. Showing arrogant disregard for basic norms of ethics, Minister for Information in Punjab Fayyazul Hassan Chohan made an unforgivable scathing remark that parents of disabled children should repent and seek the forgiveness of Allah for their sins. It is unbelievable that these comments are coming from a responsible and important minister of the largest province of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan…

A look back on sign language in Newfoundland and Labrador

March 23, 2020 | Source: Cape Breton Post- Canada

In the weekend edition of The Telegram on March 21, there was an article about interpreting services for the Deaf. It was a great article and I’m very proud that Newfoundland and Labrador was the first province to include American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters in the weekly news briefs about COVID-19. I’m also very pleased that these services are finally being handled by the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of the Deaf (NLAD). In my opinion, ASL interpretation should be under the auspices of the very people who need and use this service…

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