Disability Buzz
Rights in reality or only on paper?
This 19th issue of Disability World delivers a galaxy of news and views, concentrated on two somewhat linked topics: a progress report on movement toward a UN disability convention and the growing attention around the world to disability and development as a critical component of poverty reduction strategies. These two issues are becoming more linked as many advocates for a UN convention believe that its coverage of "the right to development" will spell the difference between rights on paper and rights in reality for the hundreds of millions of disabled children and adults living in poverty.
All the news that's fit to post...
Coverage of disability issues in the press in the last six weeks included some of those whimsical and/or weird items that tend to appear after a long, hot, summer: in Britain, the local advocacy group in Derbyshire gave its outstanding access award to a sex shop which had renovated to make itself more disability-friendly; while in Berkshire, the National Health Service was forced to apologize to a black woman who had been offered a white prosthetic foot because it was cheaper than one that matched her other limbs.
Meanwhile, across the Channel in Paris, Café Signes, an eatery run by an all-deaf staff, has opened to rave reviews. Communication among the staff is mostly by vibrating beepers and the menu features the French sign language alphabet to help hearing customers clarify orders. Similar success is taking place on Broadway, where the first musical featuring deaf performers is being staged. "Big River," based on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," is drawing large crowds that seem to accept the simultaneous presentation of dialogue and songs in voice and sign language. (Reuters, August 19)
The future of mobility?
After much fanfare, iBOT's curb and stair-climbing wheelchair, got through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's road-testing period and was launched this summer. Designed by Dean Kamen, the same inventor who produced the Segway mobility device last year, the iBOT (with a current price tag of around US$30,000) received mixed initial reviews. John Hockenberry, a well-known television commentator who uses a wheelchair, found it liberating, while some of the two-week road-testers couldn't wait to get back into their own power chairs, due mostly to the comparatively unwieldy size of the Ibot.
In late July, progress was announced on development of a wheelchair that would be steered by the human mind, giving freedom of movement to those whose movements are too limited to operate the current generation of power chairs. Research is ongoing at the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence in Martigny, Switzerland; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne; and the Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research in Barcelona, Spain. News of the results of early trials by robots was applauded by Paul Smith, Executive Director of the Spinal Injuries Association in London.
In France, a major international conference on disability and human-computer interaction is taking place September 24-26 at a Euro-Disneyland hotel in Paris. Information available online.
Around the corner...
Some important international events coming up: the U.S. National Council on Disability is launching its latest report to the President and Congress on September 9 in Washington, D.C., recommending the extension of accessibility and inclusion concepts throughout U.S. foreign policy, aid and technical assistance programs (mquigley@ncd.gov); an international conference on "Disability Rights in Europe: from Theory to Practice," is being organized by the University of Leeds disability studies unit with support from the Disability Rights Commission, featuring leading legal activists from the UK, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium; and in Durban, the Rehabilitation International African regional conference is taking place October 1-3, with major sessions on AIDS and disability, disability and conflict, the African disability decade, and disability and development.
|
