From CBC News:

Canada has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Speaking at the UN in New York, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the action underscores the Canadian government’s commitment to “promoting and protecting the rights of persons with disabilities and enabling their full participation in society.”

Advocates say the ratification will require provincial governments to make changes, like requiring schools to provide inclusive education for all students. They say some Canadian students with disabilities are still being restricted to segregated school sites.

Canada is host to this year’s winter Paralympic Games.

See also: Who will fund accessibility compliance?

From the Boston Globe:

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that a Massachusetts school is violating federal civil rights law by using electrical skin shocks to discipline children with disabilities.

The probe follows a 2009 letter of complaint signed by more than 30 disability rights groups alleging that the facility’s use of “painful and dehumanizing behavioral techniques violates all principles of human rights.”

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center of Canton, southwest of Boston, is believed to be the only school in the country that gives children electric shocks as a form of treatment. Its population of 200 students have such conditions as autism, mental retardation and emotional problems. Roughly half wear electrodes attached to their skin, allowing staff members to remotely trigger an electrical shock through a hand-held device.

The school’s methods have stirred controversy for decades, garnering support from parents and opposition from rights advocates and politicians.

Earlier posts here.

Harvard University professor Thomas Hehir, writing in Education Week, calls for action to make sure that students with disabilities have access to charter schools. Presently, he says, students with special needs are conspicuously underrepresented in such schools.

Hehir, who served as director of the U.S. Department of Education’s office of special education programs in the Clinton administration, says officials should develop policies to assure that charters are not discriminating against students with disabilities.

He recommends increased monitoring of charters, enforcement of civil rights protections, financial sanctions against charters which fail to enroll equitable shares of students with disabilities, and support to assist schools in serving students with diverse needs. An excerpt:

The charter school movement shows much promise, and is providing important choice options within the American education system. It’s time to assure that all children benefit from it.

From the Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot:

Michigan’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has accused a local school district of breaking the law by preventing a 5-year-old with cerebral palsy from bringing her service dog to school.

Ehlena Fry’s parents argue that her medically prescribed, certified service dog, Wonder, must accompany her to school in order to help her to become an independent member of the community. Ehlena’s IEP team in the Napoleon Community Schools concluded that the girl’s needs are being met by her full-time classroom aide.

“To force a 5-year-old girl with cerebral palsy to choose between her independence and her education is not only illegal, it is heartless,” said Michael J. Steinberg, ACLU of Michigan legal director.

Community members helped the Frys raise more than $13,000 last year to get the dog from 4 Paws for Ability.

By Joe Shapiro, National Public Radio:

Judi Chamberlin, an outspoken advocate for the rights and dignity of people with mental illness, died of lung disease over the weekend at her home in Arlington, Mass. She was 65.

Shapiro calls her “a civil rights hero from a civil rights movement you may never have heard of.”

Chamberlin’s road to advocacy began when she was hospitalized against her will for depression in 1966, and was shocked by the way she was treated. She wrote a book, On Our Own, that became a manifesto for patients and influenced the mental health establishment.

She called her movement “Mad Pride,” and argued that people with mental illness need to have a say in their own treatment. An excerpt:

Chamberlin told people with mental illness that they were, like everyone else, people with quirks and differences, but with strengths and abilities, too. She wanted people to reclaim the description “mad” as something that was OK.

“She changed it from a word that was a pejorative word,” says [Robert] Whitaker [author of Mad in America, a history of the treatment of people with mental illness in the United States]. “That was saying to the world at large: We are worthy individuals, and our minds our worthy, and they’re to be respected.”

See also:

– Facing death, a plea for the dignity of psychiatric patients — Boston Globe

– Bibliography from the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy

Writing in USA Today, Ben Mattlin says people with disabilities owe a profound debt of gratitude to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his work in the civil rights movement.

Like African Americans, Mattlin says, people with disabilities share a history of being been held back by discrimination and low expectations. An excerpt:

Make no mistake: There is a legacy of shame. Just as blacks were shunted to the margins of society not so long ago, we disabled were housed in attics, basements and institutions.

What’s more, both blacks and the disabled were once considered genetically inferior. There were laws curtailing our reproductive freedom. Even today, unemployment rates for people with disabilities rival those of African Americans.

The historical and current similarities are stirring. Which is why Martin Luther King Day on Monday should have special meaning for people with disabilities. Besides showing us how to organize and agitate for equal rights, King gave voice to the simple yet revolutionary notion that we’re good enough — valuable, even — as we are. And as such we deserve better.

Oakland University violated federal law by excluding him, judge rules

From the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Oakland [MI] Press:

A federal judge has ruled that Michigan’s Oakland University has violated the federal Rehabilitation Act by failing to allow a student with a cognitive impairment to live in a campus dorm. An Oakland spokesman said the university will appeal the ruling, but will allow the young man to live on campus during the process.

U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Duggan ordered Oakland to make a room available to 25-year-old Micah Fialka-Feldman, who has been taking classes in the school’s OPTIONS program. Fialka-Feldman pays a fee equal to full tuition but doesn’t earn grades in the program, which is designed for students with cognitive disabilities who would not otherwise be able to meet the university’s admissions requirements.

The university has maintained that Fialka-Feldman, who takes buses two hours a day to get to class from his parents’ home, is not eligible for a dorm room because he’s not enrolled in a degree-granting program.

Duggan said the university’s assumption that the young man would be unable to follow housing rules “appears to be grounded on prejudice, stereotypes and/or unfounded fear.”

Earlier posts here.

(Detroit News photo)