Writing in Business Week, Rick Wartzman says expanded legal protections are only part of the solution to entrenched unemployment among people with disabilities. Businesses need to find ways to use everyone’s unique talents, he says, which will make businesses more effective even while making disabilities irrelevant and engendering customer loyalty. “Viewed this way, the disabled aren’t a liability; they’re an opportunity,” he says.

Still, many businesses remain obstinate. They say they worry about the possibility of increased costs, safety issues, the specter of legal liability, and how colleagues and customers will react.

But all of these things are simply excuses for shoddy management.

Wartzman is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

(Business Week photo)

The [UK] Independent:

Visionary British engineer Mike Spindle spent six years working alone, developing a high-performance wheelchair that would also look fabulous. The result is the Trekinetic, an all-terrain vehicle which sports a molded carbon fiber seat, three wheels, drum brakes and a simplified folding mechanism.

In the process of developing his design, Spindle has completely transformed an established, mature product, and, by extension, the market for that product. The Trekinetic is now being sold in in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, and Spindle is pursuing his ambition of being “a major player in the global mobility scene.”

(Photo from the Independent)

From the Washington Post:

Thanks to a “remarkably cooperative effort by businesses and advocates of protections for the disabled,” an effort to expand ADA protections has passed the House and is expected to clear the Senate soon. The measure will recognize civil rights for people with disabilities, and instruct the Supreme Court to interpret the definition of disability more broadly. The changes will provide more opportunities for people with disabilities to seek protection without putting an undue burden on employers.

Although President Bush has expressed concerns that excess litigation may ensue, he is unlikely to veto the bill, nor should he.

As Britain’s Missing Top Model debuts, one of the judges writes on the BBC website about her hopes for the show. Lara Masters is a writer, model and actor who uses an electric wheelchair.

The fact is that fashion is a business and it is us, the consumers, who keep it thriving. Is it any wonder the industry sticks to a winning formula and largely shuns the idea of using bigger, more representational female models, let alone disabled models whose physical forms will be even more difficult to sell as aspirational?

Yet maybe the BBC’s reality show will make a difference. After all, fashionistas are always looking for something new, and disabled models are perfect to create intrigue and attract attention.

With video.

More about Lara Masters on BBC’s Ouch website.

From the Wall Street Journal (registration required):

The U.S. is moving on two fronts this week to expand businesses’ obligations to accommodate disabled people, in a legislative and regulatory push that risks a backlash from millions of businesses worried about costs.

On Wednesday, two House committees will finish crafting a bill that broadens the population entitled to employment rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, reversing Supreme Court decisions narrowing it. The bill could come to a vote before the July 4 recess, if lawmakers reach agreement. Also this week, the Bush administration will begin seeking public comment on 1,000 pages of proposed rules — covering issues from hotel-room doors to theater seating — clarifying existing regulations on physical access for disabled people.

The proposed regulations are expected to cost private and public establishments $22.8 billion, according to a Justice Department analysis …

… some advocates for disability rights are worried that the businesses affected will interpret the two-front push as the government piling on during economic hard times.

From Google Finance: Sequenom stock jumped again by 19.5 percent today, on top of a spike of nearly 22 percent Wednesday. The activity was prompted by the company’s announcement Tuesday that it had developed a prenatal maternal blood screen for Down syndrome with 100 percent accuracy and no false positives.

Brian Orelli on Motley Fool says Sequenom could be “the next big thing,” like Apple’s Ipod was, in that it could both dominate its market and simultaneously expand the market.

(B)ecause [Sequenom's] test appears to have a much lower risk to the patient, we could see it being used on patients who wouldn’t be given any test with what’s currently available. Guess what? That increases the testing market.

Believe me, those two possibilities have not been lost on investors, either …

Like other diagnostic test developers, Sequenom has its roots in developing research tools for scientists, and only recently moved into diagnostic testing. But unlike the other research-supply turned-diagnostic-testers … Sequenom isn’t profitable … yet. That makes any investment a bit more risky, but the rewards are also potentially greater.

Earlier post here.

Company says new test detects Down syndrome correctly without mistakes, using sample of mother’s blood; Rollout seen for next year.

Bloomberg News (updated), Associated Press report in Forbes, CNN, Business Week, Sequenom press release:

Shares of Sequenom Inc. surged Wednesday after the company said its method for detecting Down syndrome before birth worked without giving false-positive results. The company will continue to develop the test and plans to sell it in the U.S. in the first half of next year.

The result “blows expectations away,” Elemer Piros, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw Inc. in New York, wrote in a note today. “Sequenom’s platform could usher in an entirely new paradigm in which a single test could replace the current range of surrogate marker methods that must be employed to obtain reliable results.

Sequenom rose $1.67, or 22 percent, to $9.33 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.

Oppenheimer and Co. analyst Kevin DeGeeter said that if the results are repeated in a larger study planned for later this year, the Sequenom test could become the front-line test in a market valued at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

(more…)