From the Los Angeles Times:

Harlan Hahn, a longtime USC professor of political science and champion of disability rights who successfully sued the university to improve access for disabled people campuswide, died April 23 at his Santa Monica home. He was 68.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Emily.

Hahn was already in the vanguard of the disability rights movement when he joined the USC faculty to teach political science in 1972. He pushed for the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited discrimination against the disabled, and the more sweeping Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Hahn, who had polio as a child, brought a lawsuit against USC in 1998 to remove physical barriers that limited the mobility of disabled individuals. The suit was settled in 2001 when the university agreed to embark upon a major barrier removal effort.

He also wrote or co-wrote a dozen books, and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 1983 case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a woman who was paralyzed and petitioned the court to let her starve to death. Hahn argued that disabled people needed better support, not help in dying.

“Ultimately, a disability is not an organic deficiency,” Hahn wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1983, “it is the product of a disabling environment. . . . To deprive any member of the disabled population of the mental and emotional strength that he or she can contribute to others would be an unforgivable act.”

See also the press release from USC: In Memoriam: Harlan Hahn, 68; The USC College political scientist was a major force in the disability rights movement

From the [UK] Guardian:

The BBC has reached the landmark of having all its shows accessible to the hard of hearing via subtitles.

… The service now offers more than 50,000 hours of subtitled content a year, including all the BBC’s national and regional programming…

From the Houston Business Journal:

While some recent surveys point to Houston being among the fattest and the dumbest cities in the nation, Mayor Bill White on Friday accepted with pride his city’s designation as the most accessible to handicapped people.

The National Organization on Disability presented a $25,000 check to White … Houston earned the seventh annual Accessible America Contest because of its “focus on disability issues and successful design of programs, services and facilities that are accessible for citizens and visitors who have disabilities,” according to NOD.

But that’s not to say it’s easy

The [Toronto] Globe and Mail offers an extended feature on travel for people with disabilities, including tips and websites with information for prospective travelers.

Quebec’s Kéroul, a non-profit organization dedicated to accessible tourism, says people with disabilities are just as likely to travel as the rest of the population, with more than half of the 4.2 million in Canada taking at least one overnight trip a year.

“It’s a normal thing to do for everybody. People with disabilities are the same as everybody else in the sense that it is important for them to experience what this life and this world have to offer, and travel is a big part of that,” says Ray Cohen, publisher and editor-in-chief of Abilities Magazine.

But although the “world is in transition,” he says, the visually impaired or physically disabled are still encountering problems everywhere from buses to train station washrooms to airplanes. “These are issues that people with disabilities cannot take for granted because it means the difference of being able to go someplace or not.”

From Computerworld.com:

For the 1.3 million Americans who are blind, using computers can be beyond difficult. Screen reader software, which describes the activity on the screen to the user, can be both expensive and ineffective. Inputting data is doubly challenging when people can’t see to use the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts are helpful, but there aren’t enough of them and they keep changing.

And using commercial websites can be “maddening,” said Jay Leventhal, editor of AccessWorld Magazine, produced by the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. Worst of all is security software that requires customers to input a password displayed in a moderately distorted image that screen readers can’t read. A class-action lawsuit is pending against Target Corp.

The story includes tips for making websites accessible.

Computer folk debate the story at slashdot.org.

Volunteers will ticket cars illegally parked in wheelchair accessible spots

From the Oakland [Michigan] Press:

Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel has signed up 14 volunteers for his “Accessibility Compliance Enforcement” team. They will each be provided with a poice radio, ticket book and yellow vest with the word “sheriff” on it.

He says he is “looking for blatant violators of the handicap law.”

The vigilantes — oops, volunteers — will be instructed to back off if a vehicle owner becomes combative. And how will they figure out whether or not a vehicle owner has a disability? That’s anybody’s guess.

• From CBS, Autism Speaks founders Bob and Suzanne Wright call for international awareness of autism. Suzanne says improved diagnosis alone can’t account for the vast rise in the number and percentage of kids with autism. “Something is going on,” she says. (With video)

• From CNN, a day-long package of coverage of autism. Lead item: Sanjay Gupta says autism is a hot issue in the presidential campaign. He says all the candidates have pledged to do something about autism. But that will be tough to do, since autism still lacks a known cause or cure. With video. More stories here. The network will be broadcasting segments throughout the day; schedule here.

• From the UN, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute to the courage of children with autism and their families, who strive every day “to confront the disability with a powerful combination of determination, creativity and hope.”

In his message marking the Day, Mr. Ban stressed the need to build enabling environments for children with disabilities so they can prosper as future members of their communities, citizens of their countries and as fully-fledged members of the global community.

• From Computerworld: There are lots of people with Asperger’s syndrome who work in information technology, contributing editor Tracy Mayor writes. But the social requirements of the workplace pose major hurdles for them. People with Asperger’s hope corporations will find ways to accommodate their needs. One psychologist thinks high tech companies are willing but just don’t know how.