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mathowie (2)

"Them and Them." "Rockland County, New York's East Ramapo school district is a taxpayer-funded system fighting financial insolvency. It is also bitterly divided between the mostly black and Hispanic children and families who use the schools and the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish majority who run the Board of Education and send their children to private, religious schools." Also see: A District Divided. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 24, 2013 - 168 comments

Team Hoyt has been honored with a bronze statue! Team Hoyt is a fixture of the Boston Marathon. For 30 years, Dick has pushed his son Rick the entire 26.2 miles. Rick has Cerebral Palsy and decided in 1977 that he wanted to participate in marathons and other sporting events around the country. And thus, Team Hoyt was born! [more inside]
posted by zizzle on Apr 9, 2013 - 16 comments

The Hathi Trust, a partnership between 66 universities and 3 higher education consortia, is breathing a little easier now that Judge Harold Baer, Jr. of New York's Southern District has found that the Trust was within its fair use rights to allow Google to scan member library holdings, and then making the resulting files available for the reading impaired, and for use in search indexing and data mining. While this is excellent news for the educational institutions involved, it doesn't completely exonerate Google's role in the scanning project. It's notable that just last week Google abandoned it's own fair use claim in settling a different case involving the same book scanning project. Of the four factors used when considering fair use cases, Judge Baer ruled on the side of the Hathi Trust on all four.
posted by Toekneesan on Oct 11, 2012 - 6 comments

The Moral Significance of Sex Workers and People With Disabilities [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Sep 12, 2012 - 57 comments

Dana Nieder explains how an ACC patent fight may substantially delay her daughter learning to speak. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Mar 26, 2012 - 125 comments

12 years ago, a Japanese doujin artist drew a sketch of five handicapped girls as an extra page, musing that it would make an interesting dating sim game. 5 years ago, a group of 4channers discussed making that game. Today, the free visual novel Katawa Shoujo was released for Windows, Mac and Linux. (previous discussion about demo) [more inside]
posted by dragoon on Jan 4, 2012 - 61 comments

Ramen Noodle, the two legged poodle, has a kitten. (youtube) [more inside]
posted by zamboni on Aug 5, 2011 - 27 comments

Romance Game Monday: Katawa Shoujo is a free dating game that is in progress, but the first act is available for download on all major OSes and in several languages. Why is this on MetaFilter, when there are other free visual novels? Well, this one is made by a Western team that originated on 4chan's /b/ after Dojinshi artist Raita made a sketch of disabled school girls. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim on Aug 9, 2010 - 23 comments

The Deal with Disability "Hey, I’m Eva. I’m 26 and a recent college graduate. I like to write, to take digital photographs, and just chill. But this blog is not about what I like. This blog is about how people treat me. You see, I am physically disabled. Actually “severely” physically disabled. I have Cerebral Palsy, which for me means I can’t walk, speak, or use muscles in traditional ways. I use a power wheelchair to get around and spell out what I want to say on a letterboard. This blog will be videos of people treating me bizarrely." [more inside]
posted by heatherann on Sep 3, 2009 - 107 comments

"Elke Wisbey, 6, was born with brain damage and cannot walk or speak. After her community raised funds to purchase a state of the art communication device for Elke, the little girl was able to use tiny eye movements to speak her first words through the machine: 'I love you.'"
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys on Oct 31, 2008 - 17 comments

Sophie Can Walk , a documentary that chronicles "the prejudice faced by baby-Americans born without the ability to walk" (Via BoingBoing)
posted by Del Far on Sep 18, 2008 - 11 comments

On inspiration, and more from Ragged Edge, the disability rights rag. See also: The Bancroft Disability Rights Collection, ADAPT, and Disabled in Action.
posted by serazin on Jan 29, 2007 - 4 comments

Information for Disabled Travelers Travel may be a basic human right, but it's one that some find harder to exercise; from getting past clueless immigration officials to dealing with a constipated service dog on a cruise ship, tourism presents special challenges to the physically disabled. Fortunately, there's a wealth of information online, including accessibility info for Eurostar trains and specific airlines (the latter courtesy of The Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality), and first-hand accessibility reports from Global Access, Access-Able Travel Source, Rebecca's Travels, The World On Wheels and The Gimp On The Go.
posted by yankeefog on Mar 8, 2005 - 2 comments

This seems quite a positive thing. Weird what some people have to say about it though.
posted by ed\26h on Mar 18, 2004 - 37 comments

Face blind: Imagine living in a world in which you are surrounded by blank faces. You see people all around you, but you can't recognize them by their faces, only by context, clothing, and hair. You don't recognize your neighbors when you see them in the grocery store, and you couldn't pick your co-workers' faces out of a line-up. You have to learn special coping methods to get through your daily social activities. This is what it is like to have prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
posted by litlnemo on Nov 10, 2003 - 7 comments

Deaf Gamers is a terrific resource containing electronic game reviews with the hearing-impaired in mind. Digging a little deeper, I found a still-in-work but promising Gamers With Disabilites FAQ hosted by Gone Gold. We all love to play games and the resources contained herein will hopefully help us all play better. Any other resources out there that you'd like to share?
posted by WolfDaddy on Apr 29, 2003 - 6 comments

BookShare is a napster-like service that relies on volunteers to share e-books with as many people as possible, and it's completely legal. The reason? Thanks to a special carve-out in copyright law which states "if such copies ... are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities."
posted by mathowie on Apr 23, 2003 - 15 comments

A Sobering Message to Drunk Drivers. "Not everyone who gets hit by a drunk driver dies."
posted by uftheory on Oct 17, 2002 - 39 comments

Education and prevention are responsibilities of businesses also. The private sector can help take part in HIV/AIDS education and prevention, and should institute workplace policies. Has your workplace instituted a training program for managers and supervisors, implemented an aids policy, performed education on prevention, and reviewed the requirements that it needs to follow under disabilities acts and leave policies?
posted by bragadocchio on Dec 1, 2001 - 0 comments

Supreme Court gives golfer Casey Martin the keys to the cart. Can a private organization be forced to allow something it says is against the spirit of the rules of it's competitions? Will we see Casey play anytime soon? Who else will benefit from this ruling in golf and other sports?
posted by msacheson on May 29, 2001 - 65 comments

North Dakota Blind man gets weapons permit : FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Carey McWilliams has a concealed weapons permit from the state of North Dakota and isn't afraid to use a gun - even though he's blind...
posted by crunchland on Jan 13, 2001 - 14 comments

Now this is something you don't see everyday. There's this small Canadian airline that has an interesting legal disclaimer you see right before you start ordering a ticket. Scroll down to the paragraph that starts 'PERSONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS' which includes some compassionate nuggets like 'The WestJet® Web Site is not designed for use by persons with special needs.' What a warm, caring bunch of folks, eh?
posted by mathowie on Jan 8, 2000 - 0 comments