From CNN:

A community in the Atlanta area raised funds to create a ballpark with a rubberized field so that nearly 300 children with special needs, including those in wheelchairs, can play in a baseball league more easily.

Parents say the children look forward to the games and enjoy sharing their success with friends at school.

“It’s actually fun because we get to be kids and we can play like regular people,” said 14-year-old Morgan Lawless, who has cerebral palsy.

From the New York Times:

New York City residents with disabilities say inaccessible housing presents overwhelming daily challenges to people with mobility impairments, even in buildings that comply with the city’s accessibility law. They say the city law doesn’t comply with the federal Fair Housing Act.

The status of these residents was spotlighted last week with the news that the United States attorney’s office is threatening to prosecute prominent New York City landlords and architects if they don’t bring buildings into compliance with federal standards. The cost of the renovations could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

“A legislative judgment has been made at the federal and local level that full access for people with disabilities is a fundamental civil right,” said Craig Gurian, the executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, a nonprofit organization that challenges housing discrimination. “But for far too long, enforcement has lagged. For anyone who can even imagine being a prisoner in one’s own apartment, that is just an intolerable situation.”

Advocates say some people with disabilities end up in nursing homes or shelters unnecessarily because they can’t find accessible housing.

(New York Times photo)

From the New York Times:

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has notified many prominent New York landlords that some of their buildings are not accessible to people who use wheelchairs, which would constitute discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.

Real estate industry officials say landlords may need to spend tens of millions of dollars to avoid federal lawsuits over the more than 100,000 affected apartments.

Developers and city officials say the properties comply with a city law that essentially meets the requirements of the Fair Housing Act. But the letters from the federal prosecutor say that doors, kitchens and bathrooms are not wide enough to allow a person in a wheelchair to maneuver, and that grab bars could not be installed in bathrooms because the walls had not been reinforced.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Mary Swift documents problems with the Seattle area ACCESS transportation program, which serves 27,000 people with disabilities. A spokesman for the service says its on-time performance is 92.2 percent, but Swift says that means many people wait a long time for rides that may come late or not at all.

These people, Swift says, don’t have the luxury of being able to make other arrangements for transportation to work or vital medical appointments.

That old adage about walking a mile in somebody’s shoes doesn’t apply here.

A new adage about spending a day in someone’s wheelchair just might.

Columns here and here.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Michelle Colvard, the reigning Ms. Wheelchair America, is touring the nation to challenge stereotypes about women with disabilities. The 32-year-old Colvard also serves as executive director of the mayor’s office for people with disabilities in Houston.

In a Q&A, Colvard says she wants the public to stop seeing women with disabilities as victims or heroes, and just relate to them as people like everybody else. She’d also like to see improvements in employment, housing and transportation. An excerpt:

Q: What is one of your most heartwarming moments as Ms. Wheelchair America?

A: I got to go on the ice for the Houston Aeros game as Ms. Wheelchair Texas. I had a little table during intermission to sign autographs. At one point, I went through this line of little girls, and they’re like, “Ms. Wheelchair, I need your autograph.” All of a sudden, I was mobbed.

I grew up with my peers treating me a certain way. Back then, if those kids would have been exposed to this kind of figure — an image that portrayed a strong, confident, attractive woman who just happened to have a disability — I don’t think they would have treated someone who is in a wheelchair differently.

When I realized that, I started getting choked up.

From the Boston Globe, a profile of 51-year-old Michael Pelletier, a man from a small town in northern Maine.

Pelletier lost the use of his legs in a tractor accident as a boy, but “did not settle for the life provided by a government disability check.” Instead, he used his “entrepreneurial mind and zeal for risk-taking” to mastermind an international drug ring, paying swimmers to carry thousands of pounds of marijuana across the St. John River from Canada into the United States.

He has been convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and Social Security fraud, and has been sentenced to life in prison.

From the [UK] Times: ‘I don’t see myself as having a disability; This is just my life’

Helene Raynsford, 28, is training full-time for the Beijing Paralympics, where she will compete as a single sculls arms-only rower. A former student at the Royal Ballet School, Raynsford had an accident and no longer has the use of her legs. She likes proving that she can do things herself.

“I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t happened, but as a result I know I’ve learned so much about what life has to offer. I think that’s something for me to celebrate.”

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