Happy Birthday, ADA :: Disability Rights Protestors Force Bush Admin Meeting..

Another one of those Eleventh Hour kinds of deals where I've been pondering today being the 18th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA.. Beyond that I've noticed I received barely anything about it all week long even as my inbox swelled yet again by several more thousand, no topics off the top of my head seemed to be celebratory enough..... Either..

Ah, but then..

In late this evening comes something from a fellow advocate I've met out on one of our wonderful disability advocacy listservs on the Net.. This piece he forwarded to his own emailing list more than qualifies as speaking out on how strongly we, as a Community, feel about retaining and improving upon the basic Human Rights so many others take for granted each waking moment..

And speaking of incredible Unity, thank you so much to the wonderful disability advocates I know have been sharing still more information regarding the situation revolving around talk show personality Michael Savage taking disabilistic pot shots at children with autism.. I can only hope you all could feel the Love Vibes coming back in your direction from one very tired little Soul.. In the next day or so, I hope to be able to bring your shared information and opinions to the forefront here along with continuing to further connect the dots all across the World Wide Web as everyone strives so hard to preserve Dignity, Rights, and Respect for all persons with disabilities..

Peace, Hope, and Social Justice For Us All..

PRESS RELEASE
For more information:

• Kelly Buckland (208) 869-4135
• Shannon Jones (913) 486-4565
• Brad Williams (518) 424-8121

Disability rights protestors force meeting with Bush Administration
WASHINGTON, DC (July 23, 2008)

Over 200 disability rights advocates from across the country protested outside the U.S. Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) located at Potomac Center Plaza.

The boisterous group chanted until the Assistant Secretary of OSERS [ 1 ], Tracy Justesen, came down and agreed to meet with a delegation from the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL). The NCIL delegation presented the membership's demands to the Assistant Secretary.

Specifically at issue is RSA's recent interpretation of the Rehabilitation Act and the negative impact it will have on the operation of Statewide Independent Living Councils (SILCs). Despite years of accepted operation, RSA has limited the scope of councils so that they function according to minimum statutory duties.

In Kansas, by advocating for public policy issues, we have increased the employment rate for people with disabilities by 20%, stated Shannon Jones of Topeka, Kansas. These types of advocacy efforts are being thwarted by RSA's narrow interpretation of SILCs duties. Once again, people with disabilities will be marginalized because of bureaucratic nonsense.

After meeting for more than an hour, RSA agreed to respond in writing to NCIL's demands. While NCIL looks forward to their response, they are concerned about how these restrictions will continue to impede policy related to people with disabilities.

---

Image Description: This post's image (above) depicts multiple NCIL advocate and self-advocates protesting.. Some are holding signs that say things like "Free Our People Now", "Let Our SILCs Be Free", and "Back Off Our SILCs Or Set Us Free".. Others nearby are visibly in the act of vocalizing.. One gentleman up front is actively using a blowhorn to lead the chants that have been described as occurring during this event earlier this past week..

Related Link(s):

• Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services

Additional contact information for NCIL:

• National Council on Independent Living (NCIL)
  1710 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, 5th Floor
  Washington, DC 20036
  Voice: (202) 207-0334
  TTY: (202) 207-0340
  FAX: (202) 207-0341
  E-mail: ncil@ncil.org
  Website: www.ncil.org..

USF University of Law :: How The ADA Benefits People Without Disabilities..

Found the following while surfing over around the Disability Law 2.0 blog a little bit ago.. As one of my cyber friends over at the ADA-Laws Yahoo! group said, this is something nice for a change:

• Lashing Back at the ADA Backlash: How the Americans with Disabilities Act Benefits Americans Without Disabilities
  TinyURL :: tinyurl.com/4hhb52..

This University of San Francisco - School of Law paper applies Professor Derrick Bell's interest convergence hypothesis to the disability context. It identifies that the ADA benefits nondisabled workers and challenges the notion that advancing equality for individuals with disabilities necessarily comes at the expense of the nondisabled workforce.

The above referenced webpage is "just" the abstract.. It also has a downloadable 65-page 300+ .pdf file that goes with.. The link to the article that immediately begins to download is at the bottom of that same page..

A(nother) new resource for me, the above article's hosting website is called Social Science Resource Network and is found at:

• www.SSRN.com

For those playing over at Digg.com, I've got it dugg in the Business and Finance category..

Yeah....... Something nice.. Something that just feels supportive for a change..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Alrighty Then :: Olmstead Executive Order..

The White House website.. Last place I expected to end up this morning.. In doing so, came across President Bush's Olmstead Executive Order.. Since our tax dollars pay for the website, am taking great Liberties in providing the full press release below.. :grin:

With this juicy little tidbit refreshed in our Minds, how's it going in your neck of the woods these days..?

Housing..?

Transportation..?

Affordable consumables..?

Employment..?

Feel safe, secure, and protected 24/7/365 in your neighborhood..?

High on the hog living the Great American Dream, right..?

Sigh..............

Cyber hugs from the Hills of North Georgia..

---

Executive Order
Community-based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to place qualified individuals with disabilities in community settings whenever appropriate, it is hereby ordered as follows:

• Section 1. Policy. This order is issued consistent with the following findings and principles:

  • The United States is committed to community-based alternatives for individuals with disabilities and recognizes that such services advance the best interests of Americans.

  • The United States seeks to ensure that America's community-based programs effectively foster independence and participation in the community for Americans with disabilities.

  • Unjustified isolation or segregation of qualified individuals with disabilities through institutionalization is a form of disability-based discrimination prohibited by Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et. seq. States must avoid disability-based discrimination unless doing so would fundamentally alter the nature of the service, program, or activity provided by the State.

  • In Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999) (the "Olmstead decision"), the Supreme Court construed Title II of the ADA to require States to place qualified individuals with mental disabilities in community settings, rather than in institutions, whenever treatment professionals determine that such placement is appropriate, the affected persons do not oppose such placement, and the State can reasonably accommodate the placement, taking into account the resources available to the State and the needs of others with disabilities.

  • The Federal Government must assist States and localities to implement swiftly the Olmstead decision, so as to help ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to live close to their families and friends, to live more independently, to engage in productive employment, and to participate in community life.

• Sec. 2. Swift Implementation of the Olmstead Decision: Agency Responsibilities.

  • The Attorney General, the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development, and the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration shall work cooperatively to ensure that the Olmstead decision is implemented in a timely manner. Specifically, the designated agencies should work with States to help them assess their compliance with the Olmstead decision and the ADA in providing services to qualified individuals with disabilities in community-based settings, as long as such services are appropriate to the needs of those individuals. These agencies should provide technical guidance and work cooperatively with States to achieve the goals of Title II of the ADA, particularly where States have chosen to develop comprehensive, effectively working plans to provide services to qualified individuals with disabilities in the most integrated settings. These agencies should also ensure that existing Federal resources are used in the most effective manner to support the goals of the ADA. The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take the lead in coordinating these efforts.

  • The Attorney General, the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development, and the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration shall evaluate the policies, programs, statutes, and regulations of their respective agencies to determine whether any should be revised or modified to improve the availability of community-based services for qualified individuals with disabilities. The review shall focus on identifying affected populations, improving the flow of information about supports in the community, and removing barriers that impede opportunities for community placement. The review should ensure the involvement of consumers, advocacy organizations, providers, and relevant agency representatives. Each agency head should report to the President, through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with the results of their evaluation within 120 days.

  • The Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall fully enforce Title II of the ADA, including investigating and resolving complaints filed on behalf of individuals who allege that they have been the victims of unjustified institutionalization. Whenever possible, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services should work cooperatively with States to resolve these complaints, and should use alternative dispute resolution to bring these complaints to a quick and constructive resolution.

  • The agency actions directed by this order shall be done consistent with this Administration's budget.

• Sec. 3. Judicial Review. Nothing in this order shall affect any otherwise available judicial review of agency action. This order is intended only to improve the internal management of the Federal Government and does not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by a party against the United States, its agencies or instrumentalities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 18, 2001.

Related: Fact Sheet :: President Bush Highlights Commitment to Americans with Disabilities..

Disheartening as H.. :: ADA, on your 17th Anniversary, meet Reality.. Sigh..

Hopefully this comes out right.. My gray cells aren't functioning so well at all again today.. :(

PS, by the way.. Everyone with a Yahoo! group needs to please check your spam buckets.. My copy of this to you all from my desktop never made it to the lists.. Next post: The Conspiracy behind effective advocacy posts regularly finding themselves being thrown down the cyber incinerator.. :wink:

Now, about yesterday's 17th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the real Reality of the human factor behind seeking any kind of accessibility accommodations.....

Don't know why I looked at an email bearing a subject referencing a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IRC chat log yesterday, but I did.. Guess I'm glad I did.. Ran off at the fingertips at first glance, too..

The email was a cross-post to several W3C-associated working (wg) or interest group (ig) listservs.. It was about the most recent realtime talk some members had very literally regarding rewriting how we all design our web page coding so that the Internet is accessible for absolutely everyone..

The email I responded to was by a "Joshue O'Connor" who caught what my mind just completely did not grasp on the first run through of the IRC archive.. What caught my eye most from Joshue's now archived post (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) was the following:

This section is frankly kind of amazing. In several fell swoops the entire efforts of the accessibility people on the list are dismissed as almost Pavlovian responses and then an absurd dialogue about smell-o-vision ensues. This is trivializing the efforts of people here who are concerned about the needs of people with disabilities.

He was commenting on the following block from the log:

# # [15:01] This is orthogonal to fallback/alt content for images, though

# # [15:05] oh well, the legal stick of accessibility has been waived again :-/

# # [15:05] why is it that when accessibility advocates can't come up with a rational argument, they always fall back to the legal stick?

# # [15:08] Well, maybe they realize there are no carrots available?

# # [15:25] If the Web had smell-o-vision, would accessibility advocates fight for longdescs of odors on behalf of those with no sense of smell?

# # [15:27] A perfume site that made use of smell-o-vision would probably provide a description of the smell anyway for all users, so they can know what it's like before sampling.

To put it into some kind of perspective, these are the folks, among others, who are re-creating THE Internet for the rest of us'ns.. My no-regrets and also now archived (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) response was:

More amazing to these fingertips is that this became publicly disclosed, surfaced today, July 26, 2007, the 17th Anniversary of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act..

Obviously a long, long way to go before those who seek universal access for *ALL* are not publicly ridiculed by others..

Peace and best wishes..

Cindy Sue

If you've a mind to, please have at it.. These sentiments were left literally for the World Wide Web to meander regarding the acceptance of universal accessibility, let alone the actual implementation of the same..

Ever.........

To those who participated to this level in that chat, do you all honestly think this is what Tim Berners-Lee wants associated with his vision of Reinventing HTML towards a New Net..?

Very personal to Tim.. Please tell me from the bottom of your most visionist of visionary Hearts this isn't..

Cyber hugs..

NCD :: DOJ Issues New Installment of ADA Technical Assistance Materials..

Quickly forwarding along as this type of change has a snowball effect on whom it ultimately touches.. When you hear mention of key phrases such as "accessible design" and "universal design", this is one of the places to turn for insight..

PS.. This early arriving email is a sign your NCD has hit the ground off and running this morning.. Don't forget they are a public entity to whom you may email your concerns and suggestions for their considerations: NCD@NCD.gov..

Tool Kit For State and Local Governments (new chapters 05/07/07): "On December 5, 2006, February 27, 2007, and May 7, 2007, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued installments of a new technical assistance document designed to assist state and local officials to improve compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in their programs, services, activities, and facilities. The new technical assistance document, which will be released in several installments over the next ten months, is entitled 'The ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments'. The Tool Kit is designed to teach state and local government officials how to identify and fix problems that prevent people with disabilities from gaining equal access to state and local government programs, services, and activities. It will also teach state and local officials how to conduct accessibility surveys of their buildings and facilities to identify and remove architectural barriers to access."

So a funny thing happens on the way to the BBB Online website..

Still trying to resolve the issue where my former web hosting provider, iPowerWeb (BBB Online reliability report), refuses to quit abusing my various hard-earned virtual identities and instead continues to use my web positioning to sublimally redirect traffic to itself under the identity, VDeck..

Have now given iPowerWeb more than a week to comply with my, what had been to this date, anyway, "request" that they cease and desist abusing my very public self-identifying disability self-advocacy virtual identity for their own financial gain.. I play with a personal server such as it is (Windows 98, Cygwin, Apache, Perl, PHP).. I know how many flicks of a switch it takes to shut down a virtual domain..

Sooo, as promised privately to iPowerWeb, AND, again, after allowing ample time for human intervention, just took a trip over to Phoenix's BBB (Better Business Bureau website) as the first of several intended steps should this continue any further..

Four QUICK questions later and where do I find myself, at the Department of Justice's ADA website of all places.. Guess it was the "yes" answer to the "Did I feel this was violating my civil rights..?" question that unexpectedly flipped that particular switch on..

Oy, goodness.. Wanna come with..?

PS.. Beyond that they have the same person doing their billing and they exhibit the same physical address location, anyone have any idea of iPowerWeb's relationship to Startlogic, Inc (reliability report)..? Startlogic was the only thing I could initially get to come up is how it even came to mind to ask..

Tried using the search engine to see if there were any others listed at that same location and bearing same-named employees and/or contractos through BBB's site, but it kept coming back empty, completely empty even though other ways yielded the initial two companies.. Gotta love technology..

Notable is that it is easier to read into that these are not completely the same or immediately related as Startlogic's showing no unresolved issues while iPowerWeb, well, not so much.. Oh, and not to mention that Startlogic and its no unresolveds showing record ARE a BBB member, while, well, you guessed it.. Surprise, not.. :\

PPS.. Gotta give iPowerWeb that, as of last contact, they were trying to resolve this.. They keep saying, "Now that we've shafted you and your websites' visitors by shutting down your domain and thus subdomains, give us money, and we'll power it right on back up.."

I don't think so, and I've politely told them so.. No, ma'am, no way, not ever..

They had 100% go-ahead, they had payment in hand as the email that started all of this states explicitly.. The subject line says something along the lines of, "Your payment has been approved", and the body says something like, "We look forward to the next two years with you".. SOMETHING like that..

Still a little bit more to how this came about (next time), but, yup, it was THEIR Choice, not mine, to shut down my suicide survival tip website after explicitly stating payment had been received in full..

My traffic might have been a miniscule guppy in the big fish sea of sites, but those some 13,000 page turns meant something to someone out there.. I know they meant the World to me as they indicated Value and constantly encouraged digging deeper for more leads, more answers to mental health and disability advocacy out there on the World Wide Web.. That's why it feels so incredibly quite convenient they won't let it go so my identity belongs to me and me alone, not serving as a blatant potential direct lead into their bank account..

Huge cyber hugs to those who did come by to visit.. Whoever you all were, you always made my day.. Gave horrendous Life-garnered experiences some sense of explanation for their existence at the end of Day.. :)

SteveGoldADA: 2005 Census Data Regarding People With Disabilities..

Not many national newsletter lists I know of that are worthy of very excitedly saying, "You really need to receive this one firsthand." Steve Gold's Nuggets is definitely one of those few.. For those interested, subscribe information is included at the bottom of this latest forwarded piece of his..

SteveGoldADA Information Bulletin # 186 (12/06).

Many disability advocates need up to date statistics by State or county for people with disabilities. The 2005 American Community Survey which can be found on the web factfinder.census.gov provides a lot of useful current data. Here is a national summary of the data:

Nearly 15% of the population 5 years and over (i.e., 40 million people) have one or more disabilities.

For the population 16-64 years, 12% of that population (i.e., nearly 23 million people) have one or more disabilities. Of all people 16-64 years, nearly 3% have a sensory disability, more than 7% have a physical disability, and 4.5% have a mental disability. [Remember people can have more than one type of disability and show up in two categories.]

For the population 16-64 years, only 37.5% of the people with a disability are employed. That is, more than 14 million people with disabilities who are unemployed.

For the population 65 years and over, 40.5% of that population (i.e., more than 14 million people) have one or more disabilities. Of all people over 65 years, 16% have a sensory disability, 31% have physical disability, 11.5% have a mental disability, nearly 10% have a self-care disability, and 16.6% have a "go-outside-home disability."

For the population 5 years and over who have one or more disabilities, 21.1% are below the poverty level (which is about $9,200 for a single person). That is, more than 8 million persons have a disability and are below the poverty level. Of all people 5 years and over who are below the poverty level, 18.7% have a sensory disability, 21% have a physical disability, and 26.4% have a mental disability.

As a comparison, for the population 5 years and over with no disability, 11.3% are below the poverty level, while for the same age group with one or more disabilities, 21.1% are below the poverty level.

This data is available by State and county at the above Census Bureau's web site.

Advocates should use this data to hold accountable public officials with respect to "Annual Plans" [for public housing and vouchers] and "Consolidated Plans" [for HOME and CDBG funds]. Make sure the public officials note the correct percentage of persons with disabilities who are below the poverty level. That information informs (or should inform) their planning processes. Without the correct data, people will disabilities will be shortchanged.

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at www.stevegoldada.com with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects.

To contact Steve Gold directly: stevegoldada@cs.com or 215-627-7100.

To Subscribe to Steve's mailing list: Address a new email to majordomo@stevegoldada.com. In the body of the message include ONLY: subscribe stevegoldada