ENGLISH NEWS

Within this section there are news coming from the international daily and periodical press (e.g. newspapers, magazines; printed and/or digital), concerning:

Disability, Paralysis (especially SCI & MS), Special Consuming needs, Inclusive Education, Employment, Peer Support communities, Civil Rights of people with disablities, Independent Living, relevant News & Stories, Sex & Sexuality under disability conditions, Computers & Internet, and European projects.

In addition, the collection of the following articles aims to cover our anglophone disability community’s informational needs!

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LONDON, England (CNN) — A disabled punk band has launched a campaign to fight for the rights of disabled people to be able to party late.
“Heavy Load,” describe themselves as an “anarcho-garage-punk” band and are made up of five musicians, one of whom has Downs Syndrome and two who have unspecified learning disabilities.

Their campaign, “Stay Up Late,” encourages carers to support disabled people who want to stay out past 10pm.
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Every year, spinal cord injuries force more than 11,000 people into a wheelchair. In the most serious cases, just taking a breath on their own is impossible. Patients often rely on cumbersome mechanical ventilators to stay alive, but a new device may free patients from the ventilators and help them breathe on their own.

A year ago, paramedics rushed Jenny Sorenson to the ER. She thought she was having a heart attack.
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Ivy Larson changed some bad news into good news for all

Getting a diagnosis of MS is harsh enough, but then trying to figure out what to do about it is a struggle.

When Ivy Larson ended up in an emergency room with urine retention, she did not expect her diagnosis to be as harsh as Multiple Sclerosis. At 22, Larson wanted to have children and knew that the MS treatments may make that more difficult.
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Sam Creech looked hard at his computer screen, pursing his lips as he searched for the right words. Smiling, he selected the phrase “Can you write fast?” — using a tiny laser attached to his eyeglasses by moving his head.
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Amirah Culbreath thought she needed a new pair of glasses. “I had a glare, but my optometrist couldn’t find anything and I was sent to doctor after doctor,” she said. “Finally, they did a MRI and a spinal tap, and that’s when they discovered it. That’s when I found out I had MS.”

After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003, the wife and mother of two sons had to change her eating habits and find ways to minimize stress, among other things.
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Disabled parents need more support to ensure their children aren’t forced to become carers, writes Emma Bowler
This weekend, young carers will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the young carers festival, organised by the Children’s Society with the YMCA. . Billed as an opportunity to share experiences and knowledge, it is also said to give these young people a break from responsibilities and the chance to have fun. But why are approximately 175,000 young people shouldering the responsibility of caring for family members, and even friends or neighbours?
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A woman claims clothing firm Abercrombie & Fitch made her work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not fit the shop’s image.

Riam Dean told an employment tribunal she felt “diminished” and “humiliated” by the incident at its Saville Row store in central London.
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Stephen Robinson reached toward the sky, shiny trophy in hand.

It was his smile, however, that made even the summer sun seem a bit dim.

The pure joy that beamed from Robinson on this June morning at El Pomar baseball field No. 2 drew a clamor of cheers from the crowd.

They, too, were smiling after watching the season finale of the Colorado Springs Little League’s Challenger Division for physically and mentally challenged children.
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Thanks to an upgraded wheelchair that scientists have developed, persons with spinal cord injury may be able to use it easily. A novel headset that can precisely control a wheelchair or computer using the tongue is on the anvil for such patients.

The “tongue drive”, being trialled at Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, could also give astronauts a third hand in difficult situations like spacewalks.
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After Jennifer Johannesen’s son Owen was born seven weeks premature and spent three months in intensive care, she knew he would have challenges.

“They told me he might have some of the same issues of other preemies, with developmental delays, that he might need glasses, but that he’d be otherwise okay,” she tells CTV.ca.
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Hate crimes against people with disabilities in Wales are unreported or unrecognised for what they are, campaigners and charities say.

Police recorded 132 such crimes last year, but charities said the true figures were much higher.
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ACCESSIBLE is an EU FP7 project spanning over 36 months.
Started on 1 September 2008, it aims at improving the accessibility of software development products, by introducing a harmonised accessibility methodology into accessible software development processes, using significantly better measurement strategies, methodologies, etc. The envisaged improvement will enable large organisations, SMEs or individuals (developers, designers, etc.) to produce software products of superior accessibility and usability, accompanied with appropriate measures, technologies and tools that improve their overall quality.
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In 2007 he inspired the visitors of the German Disability Event ‘Rolliday’ with his unique ability. Now Aaron Fotheringham will demonstrate for the German public at RehaCare 2008, why he calls his sport “Hardcore Sitting “. The young American is the only wheelchair user who can perform a perfect Wheelchair Backflip. Aaron will perform his spectacular show “Born to Fly” on 15 and 16 October three times daily live in the sport arena (Hall 7a).
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Singapore: In a parliamentary session yesterday, Assoc Prof Kalyani K Mehta brought up the issue of the refusal of wheelchair accessible bus (WAB) drivers to accept wheelchair-bound passengers.
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VANCOUVER – A University of British Columbia researcher has developed a smart wheelchair aimed at helping seniors with cognitive disabilities live independently for a longer time and with a better quality of life.
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The European project MARE aims at working closely with users and experts in carrying out a technology and foresight analysis in the field of Assistive Technologies (AT).
The project MARE is a joint initiative of EBA, an Italian consulting company operating in the sector of ICT and eInclusion and IAE (The Inclusion Alliance for Europe), a Romanian European Economic Interest Group. This 18 month project that was launched on the 1st September 2008, is co-financed through the EU’s 7th Framework Programme.
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HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) – paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.
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Director Antonis Rellas’ short film “Waves of the Aegean” will represent Greece at this year’s ‘The Other Film Festival’, to take place September 3-7 in Melbourne.
The 60-minute film will be screened on Thursday (September 4) at the Melbourne Museum’s The Age Theatre.
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Bionic eyes have been implanted in British patients for the first time offering hope to hundreds of thousands of blind people.

Two blind patients underwent the procedure, which surgeons say ‘is straight out of science fiction’, at Moorfields Eye Hospital in central London last week and are said to be “doing well”.

Surgeons implanted an electronic device into the back of the eye to allow the patients to distinguish objects as pictures made up of spots of light.
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Τhe President of the Road Safety Institute “Panos Mylonas”(RSI) Vassiliki Danelli-Mylona participated in the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay and more specific in the transportation of the Flame through the Rion – Antirion “Harilaos Trikoupis” Bridge on the 24th of March, after having been proposed by GEFYRA S.A., and approved by the Olympic Committee.
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Summary
Background: Regenerative therapy by autologous stem cell implantation may benefit patients with traumatic spinal cord (SCI). Aims: The aim of this study was to analyze the safety and efficacy of autologous stem cell implantation for traumatic SCI and BI in a clinical setting. Patients and Methods: Eighty one patients (74 with SCI), age between 18 and 65 (median 43), were included in the study. Fifteen to 40×106 CD34+ cells per patient were implanted. The implantation of the stem cells followed routine neurosurgery procedures.
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Around 2.5 million people worldwide are wheelchair bound because of spinal injuries. Half of them are quadriplegic, paralysed from the neck down. European researchers are now offering them new hope thanks to groundbreaking technology that uses brain signals alone to control computers, artificial limbs and even wheelchairs.

People left paralysed by spinal injuries or suffering from neurodegenerative diseases could regain a degree of independence thanks to a new type of non-intrusive brain-computer interface, or BCI, developed by the MAIA project.
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The Toyota i-REAL is a personal mobility vehicle that was presented at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show. The Toyota i-REAL was made in human scale and Toyota hints at a future commercialization.
The Toyota i-REAL concept vehicle comes after the development of the PM, i-unit and i-swing.
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“We’ll get her taken care of, but he can’t go through the bar with you,” the hostess at a local restaurant told Matt Rosbrugh pointing to his 5-year-old son, Lucas, sitting on his shoulders.

“I’m sorry, but he will be going with us,” Matt snapped back as he made his way down the ramp and through the barroom to his table. Excuse Matt Rosbrugh for ignoring the request. It’s not that he wanted to take his son through the bar, but since going through the bar was the only way his stepdaughter, Halsey Blocher, could get to her table, he wasn’t about to let her make the journey alone. Having to drive her motorized wheelchair through a barroom is just one of many hurdles Halsey, 10, faces each time she wants to go out to eat.
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An army man’s wife, mother of two, a restaurateur with a social cause, a former beauty queen, an accomplished swimmer on the international platform and now a wannabe biker; 38 year-old Deepa Malik wears a multitude of hats and firmly refuses to let any conversation veer to sympathy that her wheelchair status often attracts. Suffering from Arachnoid cyst, Malik lost the use of her legs after three operations that rendered her a paraplegic in 1999.
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Angela DiRaimo had witnessed more than her share of tragedies involving children during 10 years as a nurse in a pediatric intensive care unit at Rhode Island Hospital.
But tiny Ia Yang touched her heart in a way no other patient ever had. Ia had suffered a broken neck when her family’s car was struck by a drunk driver on a snowy December nightmore than 20 years ago. She’d been standing on the back seat of the car, leaning over into the front, when their car was struck broadside a few blocks from their apartment in South Providence.
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A new robot known as UD1 lets toddlers with such conditions as Down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy explore the world independently, riding aboard the battery-powered vehicle. Invented and being developed and tested at the University of Delaware by Cole Galloway, associate professor of physical therapy, and Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering, UD1 is intended to encourage “embodied development” — the use of touch and movement to define a space, which is key to cognitive and behavioral development.
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LIVINGSTON – The state of Montana discriminated against a paralyzed mother when it threatened to take away her newborn, a hearings officer for the Human Rights Bureau has ruled.

The case involves Geri Glass, who suffered a brain injury in a 1996 car wreck. She is paralyzed from the waist down and has very limited strength and mobility in her upper body. Glass, now 28, gave birth in December 2004 to a son she named Gage.
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New Delhi: Disabled persons comprise six per cent of the population of Delhi.
* A year ago, the Delhi government had announced a social security stipend for disabled persons. To qualify, applicants need to be registered with the Special Employment Exchange, Ministry of Labour, for three years.

* The Persons With Disabilities Act (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) is the country’s first law to protect the rights of disabled persons. It was enacted in 1995. As per the Disabilities Act, “state governments and local bodies are to provide services, facilities and equal opportunities to people with disabilities for participation as productive citizens”.
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Honolulu, HI, MAKAWAO: What began 10 years ago in a family living room training dogs for people with disabilities has become a 2.5-acre statewide canine education center in the wooded ranch lands of Makawao.

The nonprofit Hawaii Canines for Independence opened their new center last week, including a 2,700-square-foot building to house kennels and a place for the disabled to stay during three weeks of intensive education.
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Malaysia, PETALING JAYA: Now that she is wheelchair-bound, Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun understands the difficulties faced by disabled persons.

“I am now temporarily disabled. I came in mobility-transport assistance for the disabled.
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The city’s Board of Elections said on Saturday that it would put devices to allow disabled voters to cast ballots in every polling location by next September’s Congressional and legislative primaries. The promise came two days after a federal judge castigated state election officials for what he described as “paralysis” and “incompetence” in failing to meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, known as HAVA.
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Jessie Kierbow was a strikingly low-maintenance baby. She was so good, in fact, that her parents were occasionally uneasy. “She never cried,” said Jessie’s mom, Lisa Kyler. “We couldn’t tell when she was sick, because she didn’t cry. And she was fascinated with the ceiling fan – she could stare at it for hours.”
When it came time for preschool, experts for the school district where the family then lived examined Jessie and decided she was mentally retarded. That couldn’t be right: Jessie wasn’t like other kids, but she was already scary-smart. Barely out of diapers, she could already read. She hated sudden loud noises – “She clapped her hands over her ears,” Lisa said – and she seemed to prefer her own company to being around other children. Finally, they found out what made Jessie so different: She had Asperger’s syndrome, a neurobiological disorder that most researchers consider a form of autism.
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David Greenhalgh’s life changed with a limp in his mid-forties. After years of redundant therapy and misdiagnoses, a neurologist diagnosed him with Cervical Spondylosis. “I had an operation to stop things from getting worse. They cut away part of my spinal cord c4 to c7. When I came out of the hospital, I was trapped at home for months. After becoming disabled, my first idea was to compile a general database of disability resources but my hobbies were films and books. Eventually, I made the decision to compile a list of films that involved disabilities.
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Scientists believe they are close to a significant breakthrough in the treatment of spinal injuries.

The University of Cambridge team is developing a treatment which could potentially allow damaged nerve fibres to regenerate within the spinal cord.

It may also encourage the remaining undamaged nerve fibres to work more effectively.

Spinal injuries are difficult to treat because the body cannot repair damage to the brain or spinal cord.
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Doctors hope to use the body’s own nerves to bridge the gap in the spinal cord left by paralysing injuries.
Marie Filbin, from the City University of New York, took a nerve leaving the spine just above an injury, and reattached it below.

New Scientist magazine reports that rats used in the experiment showed some signs of renewed movement.
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Edmonton, Canada- Punches in the boxing ring likely contributed to Albert Liaw’s spontaneous stroke and brain injury that left him in a wheelchair with little movement in his left arm and slowed speech.

Now, virtual boxing with Nintendo’s popular Wii video game is helping him regain his left hook, right jab and nimble feet.
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More than 70 people have been killed by two bombs in Baghdad, attached to two mentally disabled women and detonated remotely, says a security official.
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A Conference, Community Forum, and Performance Event

National Queer Arts Festival, June 2008, San Francisco

Event Description:
What does it mean to encounter the Other within one’s own body?
How do illness and disability destabilize our fixed notions of the body, and how does this impact queer sexuality?
Given that queerness is already a marginal way of being, how do illness and disability frame other forms of marginality across lines of race, class, and gender?
How can we define health outside of medical discourse?
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David is not a dunce. In fact, according to the evaluations of several professionals he is rather intelligent. Yet he certainly has a problem, and shares his problem with millions of other children and adults.
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EUROPEAN NETWORK ON INDEPENDENT LIVING (ENIL)
JOB DESCRIPTION 1

Position Title: Regional Delegate

Reports To: ENIL Coordinator

General Description: Person dedicated to lobby for ENIL (supporting the task developed by ENIL Board and Regional Delegates) within EU institutions.
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DESIGN FOR ALL From school to practice

1. Main objectives of the project

This project is to promote “Accessibility for all» within the framework of the built-up areas and of the public infrastructures.
It works on the principle that the persons in charge of ” Accessibility for all ” are in very first place the decision makers, local councillors for public spaces and promoters for built spaces, and Designers, town planners and architects, who apply the programs wanted by their decision makers.
The decision makers like the originators, in spite of a real goodwill, only have a very insufficient knowledge of the daily needs of the people in situation of handicap. Very often, they limit their interventions to the only respect of the national law and normative minima.
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A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine — and US drug policy — that we still need “proof” of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found smoked marijuana to be effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy. It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.
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Bedsores are also called pressure ulcers or pressure sores; due to the damage of skin area that caused by cut off the circulation of the body parts such as hips, buttocks, and heels. Majority of the people living of paralysis that stay one position on a bed or wheelchair for a long time start developed bedsore.

Although completely treatable if found early, without medical attention, bedsores can become life-threatening.
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COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
Situation of disabled people in the European Union: the European Action Plan 2008-2009
Brussels, 26.11.2007
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A few of disabled persons were asked what Independent Living meant to them and these were the varied responses received:

• Independence to some meant a wheelchair to move around with ease and dignity as the respondents were forced to drag themselves on the ground to get around;
• Some said it meant the ability to communicate easily through sign language or communication boards;
• Responses also included a gainful employment that would ensure that the disabled person could gain status within his/her family as those who are unable to provide for themselves or their family were viewed as a burden;
• Asha [name changed] has bowel control problem and cannot leave or move out to work or participate in any social events since 30 years. Independence to her meant just being able to get out of the house.

There can be numerable such examples cutting across class, religion and different kinds of disabilities. However, the crux of the issue as each example highlights that the disabled person is denied choice, control, freedom, and equality.
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CANADA: Much conversation about the people or families with lower incomes is about “them.” In faith communities as well as in discussions about citizenship, every human is a person with equal rights and responsibilities. Every one has gifts that are needed by the community. Unfortunately, many people encounter trauma and tragedy.

Since governments have severely torn the health and social safety net, many more people could end up living on low incomes or needing social assistance.
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Disability Network/Lakeshore in Holland will get a $204,574 check for its Christmas gift this year.
The nonprofit group, which helps residents with disabilities enter the workforce, recently learned about the annual grant it receives from the Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Growth.

It’s part of a more than $5 million package of federal and state money awarded to 17 groups throughout the state that promote independent living.
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A pressure ulcer is an area of skin that breaks down when you stay in one position for too long without shifting your weight. This often happens if you use a wheelchair or you are bedridden, even for a short period of time (for example, after surgery or an injury). The constant pressure against the skin reduces the blood supply to that area, and the affected tissue dies.

A pressure ulcer starts as reddened skin but gets progressively worse, forming a blister, then an open sore, and finally a crater. The most common places for pressure ulcers are over bony prominences (bones close to the skin) like the elbow, heels, hips, ankles, shoulders, back, and the back of the head.
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