From the Boston Globe:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino ordered the Boston Fire Department to dig through its records in a hunt for doctors who have diagnosed large numbers of city firefighters with work-related injuries, increasing scrutiny on the role physicians play in awarding questionable disability pensions.

The mayor’s office said Menino is seeking to unearth suspicious patterns in which some physicians may have “disproportionately diagnosed disabilities.”

His call is part of a larger effort by city officials to end claims like that of Firefighter Albert Arroyo (left), who competed in a professional bodybuilding competition two weeks after a Dorchester doctor said he was permanently disabled and deserving of a disability pension.

From ESPN, a feature with video about Team USA, winners of the 2008 Canada Cup International Wheelchair Rugby Tournament and ranked number one in the world.

The sport, once called “murderball,” pits athlete against athlete in often violent and painful combat that relies on skills, coordination and timing. In the video, team members discuss the points they earn for their level of impairment, and bicker over which players are more valuable to the team. One thing is not in dispute: their dedication to winning in the Beijing Paralympics. The video features exciting game footage.

(Above: 18-year-old Joel Wilmoth is the youngest ever member of the U.S. wheelchair rugby team. ESPN photo)

From Thirdsector.org:

Paul McCartney has lent his support to a major fundraising campaign by the UK disability charity ParalympicsGB. The group’s first television advertisement features McCartney’s song “Live and Let Die” accompanying footage of performances by elite athletes with disabilities. (Video here.)

The second ad features McCartney on camera making a direct appeal to the public.

McCartney put his name to the Team Saatchi campaign after meeting paralympic horse rider Sophie Christiansen (with McCartney, at left). “I was completely blown away by her skill, dedication and the fact that she had won a world championship gold medal for Britain,” he said.

ParalympicsGB’s fundraising target is £2m, which will be used to help support athletes heading to the Beijing Games and to invest in disabled sport in the UK.

(Photo from Thirdsector.org)

See also:

• Sir Paul McCartney’s plea — [UK] Telegraph
• Paul McCartney: ‘I’m a sport wimp and proud of it’ — [UK] Guardian

• In the [UK] Times, TV reviewer Andrew Billen says the judges prompted controversy by tossing out a deaf contestant because she didn’t look “disabled enough.” In the end, he said, “one-legged Rebecca was eliminated instead, on the old fashioned grounds that she took a terrible picture.”
• In the UK] Guardian, Helienne Lindvall applauds the effort to expand the public concept of beauty, but doesn’t like all the sensationalism.
  

  Last night’s episode of the BBC3 show featured the girls modeling lingerie in a shop window, and another episode will have them on the catwalk. Though I haven’t seen all of them, I fear that this competition seems to be highlighting what the girls can’t do, rather than all the things they can. Couldn’t they have picked a different profession for them to aspire to than one that has such an aversion to the slightest imperfection?… Sadly, though, if it wasn’t sensationalist, would half as many people tune in?

Writing in Business Week, Rick Wartzman says expanded legal protections are only part of the solution to entrenched unemployment among people with disabilities. Businesses need to find ways to use everyone’s unique talents, he says, which will make businesses more effective even while making disabilities irrelevant and engendering customer loyalty. “Viewed this way, the disabled aren’t a liability; they’re an opportunity,” he says.

Still, many businesses remain obstinate. They say they worry about the possibility of increased costs, safety issues, the specter of legal liability, and how colleagues and customers will react.

But all of these things are simply excuses for shoddy management.

Wartzman is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

(Business Week photo)

By William Lee Adams, Time Magazine:

The series premiere on July 1 drew half a million viewers in the U.K., driving BBC Three ratings up by 25 per cent for the 9 p.m. time slot. That popularity will doubtless spur more debate over the show and its impact.

Liz Carr, a comic who uses a wheelchair and hosts a BBC radio show on disability called Ouch!, applauds the series for presenting disabled women as beautiful and sexual, as opposed to broken and damaged. Still, she questions if reality TV is the proper platform to confront stereotypes. “I’m not sure that seeing disabled women prance around in lingerie and having their bodies objectified is the best way to change representation,” she says.

True to reality TV form, the eight women live together in a crowded London penthouse, and, as the competition heats up, their claws come out. But their conflicts and insecurities, which often revolve around their disabilities, often reflect issues within the disabled community. (more…)

From The New York Times:

Disability advocates in Connecticut are seeking stricter regulation and enforcement for disability parking placards. Advocates of reform say that too many lifetime passes are issued to people who don’t need them, and that the state has no system in place to punish violators.

“We have no effective way of retrieving these placards when someone dies,” said State Senator Donald J. DeFronzo, a New Britain Democrat and co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Transportation Committee. “We hear stories of these things being handed down almost as if they were part of someone’s estate.”

A reform bill died in the 2008 legislative session after motor vehicle officials estimated that oversight would cost $1.1 million annually.