Blind aide raises bar of expectations — The Hill (blindness)

Disabled parking placard use is on the rise — LA Daily News (law)

Report: Disabled voters face difficulty in RI — Boston Globe (voting)

Op-ed: Those with developmental disabilities need help now — Denver Post (law, politics, intellectual disabilities)

Film of Norfolk man’s life added to Library of Congress — The [Norfolk] Virginian-Pilot (Down syndrome)

Aging parents plan for future of children who still need help — Ottawa Citizen (caretakers)

Extreme Makeover: Emotional buildup – New York Times (disabilities, media, chronic illness, entertainment, television)

He’s immobile, but his story has the power to move — Today Show (muscular dystrophy, media, parents, personal stories)

Op-ed: New ADA rules overturn common sense — Miami Herald (ADA)

Disabled band scores film first — BBC News (entertainment)

Man accused of harassing autistic boy faces hate-crime charge — The Seattle Times (autism, hate crime)

Book review: ‘Deaf Sentence’ — New York Times (deafness)

Redskins ordered to provide hearing-impaired fans ‘aural content’ in stadium — ESPN (deaf/hard of hearing, law)

Redskins ordered to continue captions — Washington Post (deaf/hard of hearing, law)

From the [UK] Telegraph, BBC, [UK] Independent:

Sir Ken MacDonald (left), the UK’s highest ranking prosecutor, said this week that disability hate crime is widespread and the criminal justice system is failing to address it. He urged UK police and prosecutors to seek tougher sentences against those who victimize people with disabilities.

“This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice,” he said in a speech. “All institutions involved in criminal justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”

Macdonald said the biggest barrier to effective prosecution is a failure by law enforcement personnel to perceive that people with disabilities are targets of systematic hostility and prejudice. A 2003 law in the UK allows courts to punish offenders more severely if a crime is motivated by a victim’s disability or sexual orientation, but the measure is rarely used.

Research by the charity Mencap says people with learning disabilities in the UK live in fear and face harassment on a regular basis. The UK has seen a number of murders and acts of violence against people with disabilities over the past year.

See also: This hatred is borne out of fear of disability — by Ian Macrae in the [UK] Indendependent. An excerpt:

Disabled people’s impairments frighten people because they show them what they could become. Hate is too easily borne out of that fear. And that is what the judiciary, the police and the criminal justice system – and indeed society at large – have to come to terms with. Disabled people create fear and hatred in just the same way as people from ethnic minorities do for the racist; women do for the rapist, or gay people do for the homophobe.

Earlier posts:

• BBC asks: Does disability hate crime exist?
• UK gang sentenced to life for murder of disabled man
• Columnist: We must protect people from this wave of barbaric and hateful crimes

From the St. Petersburg Times,  Tampa Tribune:

Three civil rights groups have filed a class action complaint with the Florida Department of Education alleging that students with disabilities in the Hillsborough schools were neglected and disciplined instead of being given counseling and support services required by federal law.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities and the NAACP joined forces to file the complaint over the Hillsborough school district’s treatment of students with emotional and behavioral disabilities.

The complaint asks the state to force Hillsborough to transform a “culture of neglect and overly harsh discipline” that puts students with disabilities on a path to jail and prison.

… Punishing students with disabilities instead of providing them with services that promote positive behavior “appears to occur more frequently with students of color,” according to the complaint.

Similar complaints have been filed against Palm Beach County, as well as in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“This problem is not limited to Palm Beach and Hillsborough,” said Brandi Davis, a lawyer from the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “This is a state and national problem.

From [UK] Times: (Editor’s note: Link no longer working as of 3 p.m. Eastern)

In the wake of a court decision that found a mother guilty of murdering her daughter with cerebral palsy, parents of children with disabilities say they face daily battles with schools and social services to be given the help they need. During the trial of Joanne Hill, the court heard testimony that Hill was motivated by shame over her daughter Naomi’s condition. (Photo above.)

Joanne Hill admitted to killing her daughter, but denied murder on the grounds of mental illness, including depression.

Parents of children with disabilities described losing social safety nets, including being abandoned by spouses, being ignored by social services, losing services when relocating, losing jobs, and becoming homeless.

… Hill’s is not an isolated case. While most parents love their disabled children unconditionally, they are also worn out by endless battles for the services they are entitled to.

The controversial debate of terminations in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill returns to Parliament in the coming weeks. Some parents say that if they had known how difficult life was to be with disabled children they might have reconsidered their choice.

(more…)

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: An investigation of Washington state’s troubled $1.8 billion mental health care system. The paper writes that the state leaves thousands of families …

snared in a Kafkaesque system that won’t help people with serious symptoms until they are in imminent danger of harming themselves or others, or gravely disabled — standards so high they exclude many who desperately need help.

But this strategy ends up costing the public more money, and puts citizens at greater risk, a scenario tragically highlighted in this state by a string of high-profile slayings by people who had severe mental illness but could not be treated despite signs that they needed help.

Novelist Ann Bauer (no relation) writes in the New York Times about her son’s journey from autism to schizophrenia. When he stole her car, she decided to press charges. An excerpt:

In his deliberate, troubled way, my son had done it: he had found his way to adulthood. And although I didn’t know it then, he would find his way through this, too. But he needed to go through it, not back, and not around. Maybe that’s what he knew better than any of us.

Andrew gave me a glimmer of a smile before facing the judge and narrating, in clear language, the story of his crime.

Earlier piece by Ann Bauer is here.

From the New York Times:

Pediatrician Melvin D. Levine, author of the bestseller “A Mind at a Time” and other books about children with learning disabilities, has been accused of sexually abusing boys in his care. While there are no criminal charges against Levine, left, five lawsuits have been brought and accusations have been made on behalf of another 43 male patients.

Dr. Levine vehemently denies both the accusations and ever sexually touching a patient. He declined to be interviewed for the Times article, which recounts the chronology of the accusations and interviews an accuser who asks that his name not be published.