From the Ottawa [Canada] Citizen:

Suspensions of students with special needs in the Ottawa public schools have risen by more than 56 percent over the past year, while suspensions for all students dropped almost 30 percent over the same time period. In all, some 16 percent of students with special needs had been suspended over the past year.

The figures were included in a report to be discussed by the board of education’s Special Education Advisory Committee Wednesday. The “special needs” category covered students with behavioral issues, learning disabilities, autism and mild intellectual disabilities, as well as kids who had been identified as gifted.

“The kids who need help the most are the ones getting suspended,” said a former special education teacher who now serves as an advocate for students who had been suspended.

From the [UK] Independent,  BBC, [UK] Guardian, [UK] Times, [UK] Telegraph:

An official report says the British government should “radically overhaul” the system for educating kids with disabilities, finding broad evidence that parents must battle to get appropriate support for their children.

Among other findings, the inquiry said children with disabilities are eight times more likely to be excluded from school, and many are removed illegally. For example, the report found that some children were routinely excluded when there were staffing shortages or if support staff were absent.

The report said the school system was still living with the legacy of old expectations that children with disabilities could not be educated.

“My inquiry has concluded that there needs to be a major reform of the current system,” said Brian Lamb, the report’s author and chairman of the Special Education Consortium. “There needs to be a radical recasting of the relationship between parents, schools and local authorities, to ensure a clearer focus on the outcomes and life chances for children with special needs and disability.”

The government-commissioned inquiry called for the creation of a new national helpline to provide parents with information and advice, as well as funding for a government ombudsman’s office to help parents with complaints about special education.

Students with disabilities make up 20 percent of the school-age population in the UK.

From Associated Press:

American businesses are increasingly working to make their websites more accessible, concluding that it is good business to welcome a growing population of potential online customers with disabilities.

Experts say the threat of civil rights lawsuits has also motivated some companies. Target Corp. last year agreed to pay $6 million in damages to plaintiffs with disabilities who could not access its website, and Apple. Inc. reached an agreement with the state of Massachusetts to make its iTunes software more accessible.

Most federal government websites are required by law to be accessible, but those operated by business are not.

By David Kravets on Wired magazine‘s ‘Threat Level’ blog:

The Obama administration has announced its support for a proposed international treaty that would loosen copyright restrictions to make accessible reading material available across borders.

The administration’s position, announced at a subcommittee of the World Intellectual Properties Organization in Geneva, places it squarely in opposition to  American business interests, including software makers, book publishers, and motion picture and music companies.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has argued that the plan could promote internet book piracy.

Advocates for people who are blind or have other reading disabilities have promoted the proposed treaty, which would allow the cross-border sharing of digitized books without payment to the publisher.

Many nations have copyright exemptions that allow nonprofit companies to market copyrighted works in accessible formats without permission, but not across international borders. The formats make it possible for tens of thousands of people with print disabilities to access books with the help of devices that convert text to speech or Braille.

See also:

Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind – Wired

Earlier posts here.

From the [UK] Independent:

Proloquo2Go, a speech-generating program that gives a voice to people who have difficulty speaking, is among Apple’s 30 top-selling applications for the year 2009. The program comes in at number 23 — ahead of ESPN, CNN and Family Guy.

The program retails at $189.99, making it an affordable alternative to conventional speech-generating systems that can cost thousands of dollars, and is used by people with autism, cerebral palsy, Lou Gehrig’s disease and many other conditions. The technology turns an iPhone into a voice-output communication device, and allows children to integrate more seamlessly with their peers.

Medicare and private insurers have resisted paying for the system, limiting coverage to bulky, expensive proprietary equipment.

Here’s a list of other text-to-speech products that are on the market.

From the [Wichita Falls, TX] Times Record News:

A mother in Texas says text messaging via cellphone has allowed her 15-year-old son with autism to communicate effectively for the first time.

Vera Word said she and her son, Jonathon, had tried all the conventional therapies and devices used to facilitate communication. She said he is now texting with a Verizon Blitz phone, which works better than anything else he has tried and helps him fit in with other teenage boys with cellphones.

Time Magazine’s end-of-the-year issue names autism research as number 7 in the list of “Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2009.” An excerpt:

… Researchers this year identified one possible genetic clue [to the origins of autism]: Variations on a region of chromosome 5, which appear to play a crucial role in about 15% of cases of autism. Working with the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange – a DNA database of more than 2,000 families affected by autism, and the largest genetic study of the disorder ever attempted – researchers zeroed in on variations in genes that code for proteins involved in forming connections in the brain.

Among other top breakthroughs: An effective AIDS vaccine (number 2) and the discovery of genetic links to Alzheimer’s disease (number 9).