The ABC News site had drawn more than 700 comments at last count to its Associated Press story about the church in Minnesota that took legal action to prevent Carol and John Race from bringing their 13-year-old son, Adam, to services. Adam has autism.

Here are a few recent ones:

• Which of Adam’s rights is more important here: his ‘right’ to attend a church service in which he may or may not get the ‘message’ over top of the other sensory input; or his right to be in a situation that is not overwhelming to his senses. I am under the impression that this is not so much about Adam’s rights, as this is about Carol Race’s demands to have her own way.
• I don’t see autism as a major problem for those not directly affected. Violent behavior is a major problem for everyone within reach. The fact that young Mr Race is autistic is a secondary or even tertiary consideration. The fact that he is violent is the primary consideration. He is not denied attendance to the church because of his autism. He is being kept out because of violence. He has rights to attend church. Others have a right to attend church without physical pain inflicted by Mr. Race.
• I have experienced discrimination against my son because of behaviors he cannot control. It’s true that some people are very ignorant and do not want to deal with reality. They think children with autism should be locked away. In Minnesota, 1 in 81 children have an ASD diagnosis. So maybe over 1 in 40 families have a child with autism. We will not stand to be treated as second class citizens.

Earlier posts here and here.

From the [UK] Guardian:

The BBC has reached the landmark of having all its shows accessible to the hard of hearing via subtitles.

… The service now offers more than 50,000 hours of subtitled content a year, including all the BBC’s national and regional programming…

From Time magazine:

South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who races on carbon blades, is named to the list of the World’s Most Influential People in Time Magazine’s annual issue. Paralympian Pistorius is challenging the rules in an attempt to compete in the Beijing Olympics. (Earlier post here.) The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled in January that Pistorius could not compete because his blades were said to give him an unfair advantage.

Time’s profile of Pistorius was written by Erik Weihenmayer, the only blind person to have climbed Mount Everest (earlier post here). Weihenmayer says Pistorius is “on the cusp of a paradigm shift in which disability becomes ability, disadvantage becomes advantage.”

Also featured in Time’s annual 100 issue:

• Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher who studied her own stroke and became a powerful voice for brain recovery (video here);
• Cyclist and cancer survivor advocate Lance Armstrong;
• Suzanne and Robert Wright, founders of Autism Speaks

From the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, New York Daily News and elsewhere:

Veteran journalist John Hockenberry and former CNN reporter Adaora Udoji have started co-hosting a new public radio morning news program this week. “The Takeaway” will feature lots of live material, and is designed as a counterpoint to NPR’s staid “Morning Edition.” Listeners will be encouraged to interact, respond, and take part in the development of editorial content.

Hockenberry has used a wheelchair since he was 19, a fact that’s not mentioned in the reporting about his new show. Fair enough, since disability is not a focus of the program and probably wasn’t factored into its boosters’ promises that the show will deliver “an unprecedented diversity of news coverage.”

But to give Hockenberry his due, this is as good a time as any to celebrate his 1995 memoir “Moving Violations,” a brutally straightforward explication of the American disability experience (or, as Hockenberry would say, “crip world.”) Pico Iyer, writing in the New York Times, compared Hockenberry with Ralph Ellison, saying his book “could, in fact, be described as an ‘Invisible Man’ for the disabled.”

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In the second of two columns this week marking the third anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo, columnist Nat Hentoff traces the work of a foundation started by the young woman’s family. (The first column is here.)

Hentoff quotes Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler as saying that the foundation continues to “fight daily to shed light on the fact that having a disability of ay kind does nothing to diminish a person’s inherent value and worth.” But fundraising for the foundation has not been easy. Says Hentoff:

I am surprised that so far there have been no major donors. It’s an indication that disability rights — including denial of life itself — are still of minor interest to much of the public and the far-flung media, including the struggles of those families — families whose loved ones are far from dead, but, who, like Terri, are in imminent danger of disappearing.

As Terri’s father, Bob, has said: “We pay great lip service in this country to disability rights, but as the degree of a person’s disability increases, the level of legal protection that person receives decreases.” This can be changed only by action from those Americans who realize that we are all only temporarily able.

Those who do not want others to decide when they should die should consider helping sustain the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.

Writing on the website of the Poynter Institute, Susan LoTempio analyzes the coverage of the disability angle in the David Paterson story. While some media outlets interviewed activists and citizens with disabilities, she says,

There wasn’t much mention … of what New York’s 3.8 million citizens with disabilities are up against, like inaccessible transportation, high unemployment and inadequate education.

And another thing:

In a political profile, the New York Post hinted at how Paterson views his own disability. According to the Post, Paterson told The New York Times in 2006 that “he disparaged efforts to make him a ‘disability’ case. ‘Every single white political consultant that I ever worked with likes to promote my disabilities. And I suspect it’s to mitigate race — to give me, in their eyes, an honorary white status.’”

Let’s take heed of his words, and avoid labeling him either black or disabled. Just governor will do.

LoTempio is assistant managing editor of the Buffalo News.

Earlier posts here and here.

Erica Thomas, parent advocate from central Ohio, says the story by Columbus Dispatch reporter Rita Price about Ohio’s “autism scholarship” program was badly flawed. Among other things, Thomas says, the story failed to note the relationship between the Cleveland think tank Policy Matters and the teacher unions.

“There are so many faults with the Columbus Dispatch article that I don’t even know where to begin,” she writes. Thomas’ seven-year-old son benefited from the program for three years when he was in preschool.

Here’s the letter she sent the newspaper’s editor.

… The Dispatch article references a study released by Policy Matters, but does not acknowledge that Policy Matters is heavily influenced by unions representing educators in the public school districts which lose students when parents opt for the autism scholarship, and the districts and unions do not want to lose the funding tied to that student. Therefore the credibility of their study is questionable as there is a clear agenda by this organization to save teachers’ jobs at the expense of these children with autism.

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