From the Chattanooga Times Free Press, with video:

Actress Marlee Matlin challenged an audience at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to face their challenges with courage and humor.

Matlin, the first deaf actress to win an Academy Award, has also appeared on popular TV shows like “Spin City” “Desperate Housewives,” “My Name is Earl,” “Seinfeld” and “The West Wing.” Her appearance was part of the school’s recognition of Disability Awareness Month.

Over the years, she learned that being deaf can only cut you off from relationships and aspirations if you let it.

“I relish the challenges I face every day,” she said. “The real handicap of the deaf lies not in the ear but in the mind.”

From Canwest News Service:

Two women have filed a lawsuit against the province of Manitoba alleging they suffered years of sexual abuse while they were students at the Manitoba School for the Deaf. Their lawyer says the complaints are the latest in what he expects to become a class action suit with plaintiffs from nearly every Canadian province.

The women said they were repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted and harassed by staff and classmates in the 1970s and 1980s. One woman claimed she was raped by two fellow students and molested by a teacher. The other said she and other students were locked in dog cages and deprived of food and sleep.

Lawyer Tony Merchant said “hundreds” of alleged victims have come forward.

From  CNN, USA Today On Politics blog:

A bronze statue of Helen Keller was unveiled today in the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers praised her as an inspiration and a reminder of the value of people with disabilities.

The statue depicts Keller, who lost her sight and hearing to illness as an infant, standing at a water pump as a 7-year-old. It is meant to signify the moment when Keller deciphered meaning in language, when teacher Anne Sullivan spelled “W-A-T-E-R” into one of the child’s hands as she held the other under the pump.

Keller went on to earn a degree from Radcliffe College and the women’s branch of Harvard University, and became a celebrated author and champion of causes including women’s suffrage.

The statue, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, will “always remind us that people must be respected for what they can do rather than judged for what they cannot.”

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said the statue carries the message that “all of us, regardless of any disability, have a mind that can be educated, a hand that can be trained, a life that will have meaning.”

(Photo from USA Today)

From USA Today:

The number of college athletes with hearing impairments has risen steadily since the approval of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which mandates interpreters for students with hearing loss at universities and protects students against disability discrimination.

According to Deaf Digest Magazine, 76 deaf and hard-of-hearing students played NCAA and NAIA sports last year, and 39 played in Division I.

Some of those competitive players include: Towson University football player Ryan Bonheyo; Emily Cressy, a soccer player at the University of Kansas; and Purdue’s Felicia Schroeder, who helped the U.S. women’s soccer team win a gold medal in the Deaflympics in Taiwan.

(Photo of Emily Cressy from University of Kansas website)

From the Mobile [AL] Press-Register:

A disturbing incident involving a deaf and mentally disabled man should prompt Mobile police officials to re-evaluate the department’s policies and training on dealing with people with disabilities.

… Mobile police officials need to thoroughly investigate the incident involving Mr. [Antonio] Love and determine whether he received the required assistance. If he was left in a communications vacuum because of his physical and mental limitations, the department must take steps to ensure that in the future officers do what’s necessary to communicate effectively with the deaf or mentally disabled.

President Obama might call this “a teachable moment.” Often, police officers must be forceful and aggressive in performing their difficult duties, but there are times when sensitivity is required. It’s a reasonable assumption that a little sensitivity would have gone a long way in the Antonio Love incident.

See also:

Taser Victim Writes Letter – WKRG News

Alabama Officer Reassigned Over Tasering of Mentally Disabled Deaf Man – Associated Press/FOX News

From the [Mobile, AL] Press-Register:

Police trying to get a man to come out of the bathroom in a store in Mobile, Alabama, used pepper spray and a taser on him, only to learn that he was deaf and had an intellectual disability.

The officers tried to book 37-year-old Antonio Love for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and failure to obey a police officer, but a judicial magistrate refused to process the charges. Love’s family members said the officers then dropped him off in the parking lot of their apartment building and sped away without explaining why he had been missing for hours.

Love said he was in the bathroom of the Dollar General store because he felt ill. Family members have filed a formal complaint; the incident is under investigation.

From the BBC News and New York Times:

The deaths of noted British conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, Joan, have reopened  an international debate about assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The pair drank a lethal cocktail of barbituates at the Swiss right-to-die clinic, Dignitas.

Friends said that Sir Edward, 85, was not known to be terminally ill but he wanted to die with his wife, who was said to have had terminal cancer. Sir Edward was principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 1980 to 1991, and had led performances at Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London for more than 50 years. He was described by his children as “almost blind and increasingly deaf.”

The House of Lords last week defeated a bill that would have allowed people to travel abroad to help people with terminal illness commit suicide. Attempting suicide has not been a criminal offense in Britain since 1961, but assisting others to kill themselves is.

“With imminent health cuts, growing numbers of elderly people and increasing levels of elder abuse the very last thing we need is to put vulnerable people, many of whom already think they are a financial or emotional burden to relatives, carers and the state, under pressure to end their lives through a change in the law,” said Peter Saunders, an official with the group Care Not Killing.

See also:

‘I’m bossy. I’m ambitious. I love ideas. And I love life’ – Guardian

Baroness Campbell: Believe me, I absolutely love my life – Telegraph

Disabled peer pleads against legalizing assisted suicide – Guardian

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from the New York Times)