From the Kansas City Star, Indianapolis Star:

The AMC Theaters in Kansas City have begun a series of special screenings for people with autism-spectrum disorders and their family members (at left). At a recent screening of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” managers turned up the lights, turned down the sound, and didn’t insist that patrons remain quietly in their seats. Children occasionally stood up, clapped, flapped their arms or ran around in circles in the aisles.

A similar event occurred in the Kansas City restaurant T-Rex Cafe, where managers recently reserved a secluded section for people with autism and served a buffet tailored to avoid certain foods at the direction of parents. A Kansas City-area gym opens its facility once a month to children with special needs, turning off the music for the occasion.

AMC Theaters is also exploring what it calls “sensory-friendly” films in nine other cities nationwide.

(Photo from Kansas City Star)

From the New York Times:

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has notified many prominent New York landlords that some of their buildings are not accessible to people who use wheelchairs, which would constitute discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.

Real estate industry officials say landlords may need to spend tens of millions of dollars to avoid federal lawsuits over the more than 100,000 affected apartments.

Developers and city officials say the properties comply with a city law that essentially meets the requirements of the Fair Housing Act. But the letters from the federal prosecutor say that doors, kitchens and bathrooms are not wide enough to allow a person in a wheelchair to maneuver, and that grab bars could not be installed in bathrooms because the walls had not been reinforced.

From the Baltimore Sun:

Dozens of blind students and adults were permitted to skate without restrictions yesterday at a North Baltimore skating rink after meeting with the rink manager who had earlier sought to restrict their access. A group of the students had come the previous evening and said they were turned away because of their disabilities.

Rink manager Jackie Eliasberg denied turning them away, but said she preferred that the group stay in a separate section because of concerns about the safety of other skaters. She said she relented because she had no choice under Maryland’s White Cane law, which provides for equal access to public places.

Parents of some nondisabled skaters were unhappy at the resolution of the dispute and said it put their children at risk.

“It’s very hazardous,” said Kimberly Sachs of Baltimore. “I don’t think you should put civil rights above safety. You want to make a point, and that’s great. But sometimes you can go too far. And what about the civil rights of the other skaters?”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Mary Swift documents problems with the Seattle area ACCESS transportation program, which serves 27,000 people with disabilities. A spokesman for the service says its on-time performance is 92.2 percent, but Swift says that means many people wait a long time for rides that may come late or not at all.

These people, Swift says, don’t have the luxury of being able to make other arrangements for transportation to work or vital medical appointments.

That old adage about walking a mile in somebody’s shoes doesn’t apply here.

A new adage about spending a day in someone’s wheelchair just might.

Columns here and here.

From the Baltimore Sun:

A group of fourteen blind students and five adults complained yesterday that they were not allowed to skate freely at a North Baltimore ice rink because of their disabilities.

Police were called to mediate the dispute, and no arrests were made. The students were participating in a summer residential program sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind.

A spokeswoman for the Northwest Ice Rink denied that the group had been barred from the rink, but said she had proposed that they be separated from other skaters in a section that was cordoned off.

Rosy Carranza, one of the group’s leaders, said the students refused their own section of the rink and want to mingle with other skaters, using canes to alert others of their disability. “Our program is here to teach self-dependency,” Carranza said. “How would they feel if we were roped off in our own area — the blind area?”

From the San Francisco Chronicle, AP/KPIX-TV San Francisco, Reuters:

The California Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that the Mervyns department store chain must find ways to make all merchandise accessible to consumers with disabilities.

The impact of the ruling on Mervyns is not clear because the the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday.

In a 2002 lawsuit, advocates had claimed that Mervyns denied access to people with mobility impairments by placing merchandise displays too close together. A lower court had found that making changes to existing stores would be too costly, and said modifications should be made only at the company’s new stores.

Mervyns maintained that the cost of changing store layouts could cause financial hardships and store closures.

The question is posed in the Exploring Race blog, by Dawn Turner Trice, which was featured on the front page of the newspaper’s opinion section. A reader identified only as “Marcus C.” says he has seen many apparently non-disabled African-American people use the preferential parking while going into the bank.

“Is this racial or just about a group of people who just don’t understand they shouldn’t ever park in the handicapped spot?” he asks.

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