Disability Buzz
Disability World readers may be interested to learn that in November we reached an all time high of 40,000 hits from all around the planet.
This issue of Disability World turns its lens on
Japan: the featured cutting-edge artist Ohta, main outcomes of the major international conferences held in Sapporo and Osaka in October, articles detailing efforts of Japanese students to gain access to higher education, and an introduction to a Japanese cancer rehabilitation facility that is experimenting with client-driven services and information. The Disability World staff congratulates Venus
Ilagan
of the Philippines, who was elected Chairperson of Disabled People's International by the Sapporo meeting, attended by 3000 participants from more than 100 countries.
Taking stock
Other leading stories this issue by UN Disability Rapporteur Bengt Lindqvist of Sweden and by international disability rights advocate Lex Frieden recommend global strategies to achieve a
UN disability convention. Lindqvist, with 9 years as the UN pointsperson on disability issues, and Frieden, with his experience in the multifaceted constituency that achieved the Americans with Disabilities Act, have similar observations on the complexities of propelling the convention process. The timely report on
European attitudes
towards and support for their disabled populations reveals substantial differences of perception and motivation across the continent.
Finally, this issue of Disability World features
four provocative interviews: with a survivor of the recent Korean demonstration and hunger strike to achieve accessible public transport, with a disabled doctor from New Zealand, with an African disability activist and with a visually impaired Japanese college student attending university in the U.S. Taken together, they comprise a "snapshot" of the remarkable diversity and increasing richness of today's international disability movement. Their brands of advocacy range from the public sphere to rehabilitation and academic realms to learning self-advocacy to obtain an equal education.
10 best of 2002
As we post this issue, everyone is publishing their "10 best" lists and so, here's ours:
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Most entertaining new disability website:
www.bbc.co.uk/ouch. Out of many new sites launched this year, this one has to have the most chutzpah. Where else can you find columnists called "Crippled Monkey" and "Disability Bitch" and who else would dare deem Heather Mills insufferably patronizing?
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Most welcome development of the Year:
Since the disability community has been knocking at the doors of the World Bank for over a decade and finding no one at home, it has to be the Washington Post opinion piece by President James D. Wolfensohn:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1160-2002Dec2.html. In the article, Wolfensohn commits the Bank to inclusion of disability concerns within its poverty alleviation strategies, an approach he officially launched at the Bank's well-attended international disability conference on December 3.
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Most pleased not to be in jail:
Besides Winona Ryder, it might be Ian Stillman, a deaf British charity worker, finally released from prison in India in December after 91,000 people signed a petition, backed by 240 Members of Parliament. Stillman, who also has diabetes and an artificial leg, spent the last few decades in India raising funds for deaf groups. He was jailed two years ago on suspicion of being involved in drug dealing, but was denied an interpreter at his trial.
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Best disability drama on film:
At the mainstream cinemas, "The Way Home," a South Korean exploration of communication between the generations, selects a mute and bowed elderly woman as its all-knowing earth mother figure. Her spoiled streetwise grandson from Seoul wants nothing to do with her or rural life. Any description of this film by Lee Jeong-hyang makes it sound preachy and predictable, but it's neither.
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Best disability documentary:
"Just a Wedding" by Canadian filmmaker Beverly Shaffer, produced by the National Film Board, earned several prizes during 2002. This is a rare film that manages to be both historic and contemporary, by starting with a young physically disabled girl's trials with public school (integration was a new idea), and concluding with her marriage. Nadia, the subject, makes it clear to Beverly, the director, that she intends to have an equal voice on how the film is shot and the resulting collaboration is humorous, poignant and insightful.
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Best books we haven't reviewed yet:
the books have been piling up quickly this year and here are some of the more intriguing 2002 releases we will have reviewed in coming issues: "Human Rights and Disability: the current use and future potential of UN human rights instruments in the context of disability," by Gerard Quinn and Theresia Degener; "Spinal Network: the total wheelchair resource book," (third edition), an amazing compilation of well-written reports, essays and reflections on topics ranging from research to relationships; "Rehabilitation: a life's work," by Sir Harry Fang Sinyang, as much a memoir of Hong Kong's coming of age as it is a story of the man who has led the development of much of Asia's rehabilitation and disability services; and "Loud, Proud and Passionate: including women with disabilities in international development programs," (second edition), published by Mobility International USA and reporting on an upsurge of action by disabled women's groups in even the poorest countries.
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Best headline we didn't see:
Christopher Reeve feels ball drop on New Year's Eve in Times Square.
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Most encouraging disability stories in mainstream media:
from a historical point of view, two stories tied. On November 28 the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, went public with his acknowledgement that Russians with disabilities experience serious barriers and still feel marginalized although the government has recently increased spending on this population. A draft law on disability benefits was to be submitted by the end of the year. On December 9, dozens of disabled Afghans staged a demonstration in Kabul, demanding that President Hamid Karzai increase their social benefits. (Both stories can be found on Yahoo's disability news pages.)
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Best international volume in Braille:
that would have to be the "Best of Disability World 2002," just produced in Braille and available in limited supply from the World Institute on Disability (www.wid.org).
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Best revival of the Year:
Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA) roared back into publication this year both in print and on the web:
www.wwda.org.au. The June issue of its magazine was its usual (and much missed) collection of first rate research, articles and reviews of conferences and resources.
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