From the BBC, [UK] Guardian:

Lady Nicky Chapman, the first person with a congenital disability to be appointed to the British House of Lords, has died. She was 48.

Baroness Chapman was born with brittle bone disease and elected to the House of Lords as a “people’s peer” in 2004. She was known as a fierce advocate whose complaints about a taxi driver who would not transport her led to broad enforcement of the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act.

Chapman said she was written off by doctors at birth as someone who would be blind, deaf, and unable to communicate, and would have “no noticeable mental function.” She used this personal story to powerful effect in debates on such issues as the right to die, “reminding peers and the wider world of how often doctors are wrong, and how stout the human spirit can be.”

From Mike Donnelly in the [UK] Guardian:

She had the special power to make people grow and be the best of themselves. She made us stretch towards a higher understanding of what it means to be different. In a profound way she shook people’s perception of normality and what it means to be human.

John Horn writes in the Los Angeles Times that an international comic convention in San Diego is attracting many attendees with disabilities. People with disabilities say they appreciate Comic-Con’s efforts to reach out to them, and say they have a special connection with comics, fantasy fiction and video gaming.

So what’s the appeal?

“Each hero or villain in a comic is different in some way that makes them stand out in society. Their differences may be anything from the powers that Clark Kent tries to hide from the general public to the blindness that Matt Murdock embraces as a part of his life,” said Megan Drummond, a journalist who [had] a brainstem stroke at age 7 and now writes about disabilities.

“Each one is trying to make the best of a sometimes difficult situation, which is something that people with disabilities do on a daily basis. Some people with disabilities may draw inspiration from that, some may feel that the situation of a certain characters mirrors their own life, and others may just find entertainment in it,” Drummond said.

Fans with disabilities say fantasy and gaming enable them to explore other identities and lessen isolation by building connections with people via the Internet.

Event-goers previewed footage from James Cameron’s film, “Avatar,” a futuristic sci-fi thriller in which a paralyzed soldier takes over the body of an able-bodied alien.

Earlier posts here.

(Melissa Eckardt, Los Angeles Times photo)

From the New York Times editorial board:

Home care aides, who typically assist elderly and disabled clients, are among the most underpaid and overworked people in the work force, say the editors. Most make less than $10 an hour and are routinely denied overtime pay. As a result, those who rely on caregivers are plagued by low quality care and high turnover, while the public gets the bill for food stamps and other forms of public assistance.

The editors call on the Labor Department to issue a rule that would require home care employers to pay such workers the federal minimum wage or time and a half for overtime. The process of issuing a new rule includes a comment period, generally three months. An excerpt:

Home care aides should not have to wait any longer than that for the fair pay they have been denied for so long.

Over at the New York Times Motherlode blog, commenters are hotly debating the motives of a Texas woman who plans to adopt a six-year-old Chinese girl with scoliosis. The comments were prompted by the first in a series of guest posts by Jenny Staff Johnson about her adoption journey.

Johnson, who has two sons with her husband Mark, says she always wanted a daughter named Rosemary. She and her husband embarked upon a Chinese adoption, and found the wait was shorter for children who are older or have disabilities. Authorities sent her photos and information about dozens of children. Among them was an unsmiling girl who “appeared to have no physical or developmental problems other than a severe curvature of the spine.” An excerpt

We could handle this? Couldn’t we? Could we?

The stress was far worse on me than on my husband, who is a miracle of certainty in his own decisions. While I thought, read, fretted and cried, he quietly advocated for this to be our little girl. I took a hard look at our lives and wondered whether it might be better[to] minimize risk, to abandon the daughter-dream altogether and throw myself back into work as a writer. I could get a nanny, rent an office, and make a proper go of it as I hadn’t done in almost a decade. This fantasy held sway for about 24 hours, and Rosemary began to recede. But I just couldn’t make the call telling the adoption agency we wanted to return her file. Instead, at the end of the 30-day period and on election day 2008, we made a different call. Bring her home we would.

… Why have we chosen all this? Mostly because we want a little girl in our lives to complement our beautiful, rambunctious boys. And, I now realize, I must have inherited something of an adventure gene from my daughter’s namesake.

Johnson and her family have left for China to bring the girl home, and she will post updates as their journey continues.

See also: Gaithersburg woman helps kids with Down syndrome find homes — [MD] Gazette

Writing in the [White Plains, NY] Journal News, Esther Gueft says people with disabilities constitute one of the nation’s largest minority groups, yet their needs are consistently overlooked.

This is the year of the “minority.” An African-American is president, and there could be a Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The list goes on. Color barriers are falling. But what about the minority that cuts across all racial, religious and cultural barriers? Where are they?

…They live in your house, next door, down the street and across town. Because of their differences, they are only now emerging thanks to laws that were enacted just under 20 years ago.

… What can we do to integrate this special minority, which we will join as we age through illness, accident or injury? Access to appropriate housing and support services is key to permitting disabled adults [to] gain the independence they need.

Writing in the Contra Costa Times, columnist Kate Scannell says Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut services to people with disabilities will only create bigger and more costly problems.

Clearly, any state budget cut is going to hurt some cause or group of people. But it must be recognized that some of the most vulnerable and defenseless Californians – those with mental and physical impairments – are being pushed to the front line, closest to the state’s swinging machete.

Still the proverbial “bottom line” remains – cuts to these cost-saving programs make no fiscal sense.

From Agencia Brasil (Brazil’s government news agency). In Portuguese. Translation here.

A national study among Brazil’s public schools has found widespread evidence of prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, place of origin, or socio-economic status.

Among the study’s findings: 98.9 percent of those surveyed said they want to keep their distance from people with intellectual disabilities, while 96.2 percent said they were wary of people with physical disabilities. Gay people got the same response from 98.9 percent of those surveyed, and 90.9 percent said they wanted to keep their distance from black people.

Jose Afonso Mazzon, study coordinator and professor of economics, administration and accounting at the University of Sao Paolo, said the research demonstrated that prejudice is disseminated by all sectors of the school community. “The fact that every individual has prejudice is generalized and alarming,” he said.

Researchers surveyed 18,500 students, parents, principals, teachers and school staff at 501 public schools across the country.