From the Boston Globe:

In the face of complaints about inadequate equipment and ill-prepared medical workers, two of the nation’s leading hospitals have agreed to spend millions of dollars to improve accessibility for patients with disabilities.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hopital, both affiliated with Harvard University, voluntarily agreed to remove barriers, improve equipment and train staff.

For patients such as Pamela Daly, who was paralyzed in a car accident 37 years ago, the agreement is an acknowledgement of the disrespect and discomfort they have endured. As part of the compact, patients will be directly involved in approving consultants and reviewing blueprints for improvements. “We finally get to have a voice,’’ Daly said.

For the hospitals, it is an explicit recognition that they have failed to do enough to accommodate the region’s disabled children and adults, who now account for 15 percent of the state’s population. And it also means they are spared the humiliation and expense of lawsuits that activists elsewhere filed to force improved access to medical care.

An investigation by Los Angeles television station KABC finds widespread evidence that bus drivers are putting the safety of wheelchair riders at risk and violating federal civil rights laws.

• Part 1: Wheelchairs on buses not always secured (with video)
• Part 2: Caught on tape: Wheelchair woes on MTA (with video)
• Part 3: MTA begins using tether straps on buses (with video)

In a two-month investigation, hidden cameras showed bus drivers were not properly securing wheelchairs and passengers. Undercover video showed broken equipment and drivers who said they were not trained, or too busy to help wheelchair riders secure their chairs as required by federal law. KABC found 957 accessibility complaints submitted to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over the past 27 months.

In Part 2, a bus driver was not able to secure a passenger’s wheelchair and told her she would have to “hold on to the chair.” When she replied that she was not able to do so, the driver responded, “Yes, you can.”

“Every single day, they’re supposed to be checking their buses to see that they have that equipment,” said disability rights attorney David Geffen. “Somebody’s not doing their job at the MTA.”

From the Boston Globe, Galveston County [TX] Daily News:

Charles Sabatier, who became a nationally known advocate for disability rights after being wounded in Vietnam, has died of cancer. He was 63.

“My goal is equal citizenship,” he told the Globe in 1988 as he prepared to step down as executive director of Boston’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities. “Nothing less is acceptable. We’re looking for equitable treatment, although not necessarily identical. A disabled person should have the same options as everybody else. I came within an inch of giving my life for this country. The idea of being denied equal opportunity because it might not be cost-effective is utterly reprehensible to me.”

As head of Boston’s disability commission, Sabatier improved access around the city and helped get an elevator installed in Faneuil Hall. A lawyer, Sabatier also challenged degrading treatment on airlines and served as senior policy adviser in the federal Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Los Angeles Times blogger Michael McGough says he can relate to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who was photographed using crutches to navigate the halls of Congress after she broke her ankle yesterday.

It reminded him of the time years ago when he was hurt in a car accident and learned firsthand about the inaccessibility of public places. An excerpt:

When I asked for a wheelchair, the nurse refused, saying, “In my experience, if you give a patient a wheelchair, it just becomes a crutch.”

(Photo from AP video on Washington Post)

From the ABC News “Political Punch” blog, Associated Press/USA Today, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Photo Journal:

U.S. Park Police arrested 91 demonstrators in front of the White House yesterday, including some in wheelchairs who chained themselves to the fence. They were protesting what they said was the Obama administration’s failure to honor its campaign promises to support the Community Choice Act.

The measure would provide people with disabilities and older Americans the option to use federal funding for community-based attendant services instead of just for nursing homes.

(Photo from the Wall Street Journal)

From New York Daily News: The Daily Politics blog, Newsday, and WCBS-TV, with video from the Daily News:

New York Governor David Paterson, who recently criticized Saturday Night Live for making fun of his disability, turned the tables this weekend.

The governor, who is legally blind, appeared in a wheelchair at an Albany charity dinner to satirize a series of commercials in which people with disabilities chided him over proposed health care spending cuts. The skit ended with the governor rising from the wheelchair and doing a cartwheel, landing within inches of the edge of the stage.

The original union-backed ad campaign featured a blind man seated in a wheelchair asking the governor, “Why are you doing this to me?” In his parody, a whiny Paterson as Juan Pietri demands 24-hour media coverage of the governor.

“Governor Paterson, what have you done to me!” Paterson wails, in character. “I can’t pay my bills. I can’t put food on the table . . . and the reason, Governor Paterson, is you haven’t given the state . . . transparency!”

From the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and New Mobility magazine:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has selected veteran disability policy advocate Henry Claypool as director of the HHS Office on Disability.

Claypool has worked on disability issues at the federal, state and local level for 25 years. As a person with a spinal injury who uses a wheelchair, he relied on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) himself during his college years.

New Mobility magazine named Claypool as its ‘Person of the Year’ in 2005, citing his advocacy on behalf of thousands of legitimate consumers who were denied power wheelchairs when allegations of fraud and abuse prompted a government crackdown. In an interview then, he told the magazine he is driven by a vision of civil rights for people with disabilities.

“Having civil rights gives me a framework or a context to work within, and I can see myself as kind of a freedom fighter, and that keeps me going. I have a right to speak out and advocate for these things, and I’m really in touch with them because I live them every day. Who better? Who better to march on Selma than the people that had a reason to march?”

Claypool currently serves as policy director at Independence Care System, a managed long-term care provider in New York City. He has served in the federal government in various advisory posts in recent years, including as senior advisor in the Social Security Administration’s Office of Disability and Income Support Programs in the Bush administration, and senior advisor for disability policy to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the Clinton administration.

(more…)