From the San Jose Mercury News:

The owner of a controversial California doughnut shop, “Psycho Donuts,” will square off against the head of a leading state mental health organization in a half hour televised debate to be aired on KTVU -TV later this month.

The shop in Campbell, CA, features doughnuts dubbed “Bipolar” and “Massive Head Trauma,” and offers a straitjacket and padded cell for camera-wielding customers. Oscar Wright, CEO of United Advocates for Children and Families, says the shop’s theme stigmatizes families of people with mental disorders, but shop owner Kipp Berdiansky says it’s all in fun.

Earlier post here.

From the StoryCorps oral history project on National Public Radio:

Ricky Boone, a magician and owner of a magic shop in Asheville, NC, tells his friend Patty Barber about the teacher who transformed his life.

Boone was born with a rare bone disorder that stunted his growth and limited his mobility. He says he spent his childhood in a rural area where “people were ashamed that the next door neighbor was a disabled child.” Then one day, everything changed: a new teacher showed up at school on a Harley motorcycle. He was wearing a black leather jacket.

That teacher, Grovner Wood, became the principal and embarked upon teaching Boone magic tricks, frequently paging him over the loudspeaker to come down to the principal’s office.

Today, Boone says he owes everything to his former principal. He’s been a professional magician for 36 years and owns his own magic shop, Magic Central.

He says that people “see me as someone to pity. It takes a lot to get past that initial shock. But if I can make that person laugh their butt off, then they have no time to feel sorry for me, and they forget that I’m in a chair.”

By Rachel Dornhelm on NPR’s Morning Edition

People with developmental disabilities like autism and Down syndrome always have a hard time finding work. It’s estimated that two-thirds of them are unemployed.

These days things are only getting worse, advocates say, as almost every state is considering deep cuts in funding for programs that help people with disabilities find and keep jobs. John Kemp of the U.S. Business Leadership Network says negative stereotypes also pose a major obstacle to employment.

Michael Medina, who has developmental disabilities, struggled to find another job after the closing of the store where he’d been working as a janitor. But he was one of the lucky ones. With the help of The Arc, he was hired as a bagger at Trader Joe’s.

From Reuters:

Sequenom Inc. has announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has initiated an investigation related to the company’s prenatal test for Down Syndrome. The company said it will cooperate fully with the probe.

The launch of the test was postponed indefinitely in April, when the company revealed that employees had mishandled test data.

Clerk says she was banished to the stockroom because prosthetic arm didn’t fit retailer’s image

From the [UK] Daily Mail:

A law student and part-time clerk is suing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination, saying representatives of the firm’s London store banished her to the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t comport with the company’s image.

Riam Dean, 22, says she was told she had broken the company’s “Look Policy,” that lists in minute detail the requirements for staff appearance.

She said she had been given permission to wear a long-sleeved cardigan to cover the join between her arm and her artificial limb, but that a member of the retailer’s “visual team” objected.

Dean is seeking damages of £25,000. Four years ago, Abercrombie settled a £25million lawsuit, in which nine former employees alleged that they were forced to work in stockrooms or take night shifts cause they did not fit the “Abercrombie look.” All the litigants were from ethnic minority groups.

In the New York Times, a profile of Ariel Z. Emanuel, head of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment and one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent players. His brother Rahm is the White House chief of staff.

Speaking at charity benefit for the Lab School of Washington and Baltimore two years ago, Ari Emanuel said his business style has its origins in his struggle with dyslexia. An excerpt:

Captured in a video now posted on YouTube, a nervous Mr. Emanuel said that dyslexics, if they overcome their disability at all, do so by inventing a path of their own. The effort “actually provides them with insight to find inventive solutions to life and in business that others when they’re in those situations probably never find,” Mr. Emanuel said.

(Photo from New York Times)

From the [UK] Independent:

A pioneering dad has created a company in Denmark that helps people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome find employment in the computer tech industry. Founder Thorkil Sonne says many of these people, who share a diagnosis with his son, possess extraordinary recall, focus and numerical skills that are much prized in the workplace. His company, called Specialisterne,  …

is a shining model of how to turn a highly skilled yet misunderstood and underexploited element of the population … into productive and integrated members of the workforce.