Your quick, once-a-day look at disability rights,
self-determination
and the movement toward full community inclusion around
the world.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Year IV, Edition 129
This front page features 8 news and information items,
each preceded by a number (#) symbol.
Click on the"Below the Fold"
link at the bottom of this page for the rest of today's news.
QUOTES OF THE DAY:
"I never realized before how many messages a
building sends."
--Elizabeth Wheeler, whose son has cerebral palsy,
commenting on plans to build a federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon that do not
include a wheelchair ramp (Fifth story)
"I want this to be like the Amber Alert. I want this to be
national."
--Helen Childs, who is advocating for "Paul's Law", named for
her 15-year-old son who was shot to death by a Denver police officer last
month. The law would require all law enforcement officers and dispatchers in
Colorado to go through crisis-intervention training and special instruction on
how to deal with people who have mental illnesses or developmental disabilities
(Second story)
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# TECHNOLOGY / ACCESSIBILITY
iBot Climbing Wheelchair Finally
Gets FDA Approval
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August
13, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC--More than four years after the iBot Mobility
System was introduced, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday
approved the wheelchair it for use and sale in the United States.
The iBot is considered revolutionary because it can safely climb stairs and curbs, and can bring the user to a full standing position to be eye-to-eye with people who do not use wheelchairs. The iBot also shifts into 4-wheel drive to roll over grassy fields, sandy beaches or just about anywhere the user wants to go.
The iBot, designed by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, balances the user on two sets of rear wheels that lock while lifting the person to an upright position. A system of gyroscopes make it relatively simple for the user to guide the iBot by leaning forward or backward. Still, the system is complex enough that the FDA is requiring the iBot be sold only through prescription and that users be trained in its operation.
Independence Technology, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, plans to begin selling the iBot later this year with a $29,000 price tag. The company is negotiating with Medicare and other insurers to see if they will cover the iBot as a "medically necessary" expense.
Since the iBot was first introduced in 1999, disability rights advocates have cautioned that the introduction of a stair-climbing wheelchair does not mean that wheelchair ramps, curb cuts and other accessibility features are no longer needed. In fact, the iBot itself has several limitations beyond its sticker price. For example, the device will only be available to people who weigh under 250 pounds, can grab a hand-rail to assist themselves up and down stairs, can lean forward or backward, and can operate a touch pad controller.
Related article:
"Stair-Climbing Wheelchair Gets FDA's OK"
(Associated Press)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/03/red/0813a.htm
iBot
Mobility System (Independence Technology)
http://www.independencenow.com/ibot/index.html
Past articles with video and audio clips:
"A revolutionary
new wheelchair" by John Hockenberry (Dateline NBC -- June 30, 1999)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/285231.asp
"Super
wheelchair tackles stairs (BBC News - June 2, 2000)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_774000/774296.stm
RealVideo
clip (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/770000/video/_774296_wheelchair_vi.ram
RealAudio
interview (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/770000/audio/_774296_coates_and_crozier.ram
---
# CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM / ADVOCACY
Teen's Death Prompts "Paul's Law"
By Dave
Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August 13, 2003
DENVER,
COLORADO--This coming January, State Representatives Terrance Carroll and
Rosemary Marshall plan to introduce into the state House "Paul's Law", named
for 15-year-old Paul Childs III who was shot to death by a Denver police
officer last month.
The measure would require all law enforcement officers and dispatchers in Colorado to undergo crisis-intervention training along with special instruction on how to deal with suspects who have mental illness and developmental disabilities.
Childs, who had epilepsy seizures and mental retardation, was shot in his home on July 5 when he failed to follow police instructions to drop a kitchen knife he was clutching to his chest. The family had called the police in the hope that they would have calmed him down. A neurologist later suggested that his behavior prior to the shooting may have been caused by the after-effects of a massive seizure he experienced a few days earlier.
The Rocky Mountain News reported that Rep. Carroll met with the Childs family and local advocates on Tuesday to discuss the proposed bill.
"I want this to be like the Amber Alert," Paul's mother, Helen Childs, told Carroll. "I want this to be national."
Carroll told the group he is also considering a measure that would require outside investigators for all shootings involving law enforcement officers.
Carroll plans to meet with Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar and other lawmakers to discuss using part of a new 25-cent vehicle registration fee to help pay for the training.
---
# CRIME
Councilor Nailed For Deception In Parking Badge
Case
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August 13,
2003
LONDON, ENGLAND--On May 16, Barnet Council member Alan Sloam wrote
a letter on council letterhead asking Camden Council to drop four parking
tickets and related fines that had recently been charged to a car owned by his
old friend, Jack Davis. The charges, totaling about £260 ($415 US), were
causing a great deal of distress to Mr. Davis, who is partially blind, Sloam
wrote.
The truth, however, is that Mr. Davis knew nothing about the tickets. He hasn't even been in the area.
What the 66-year-old Sloam neglected to mention in his letter was that Davis had given the car to Sloam's son two years ago.
It turns out that Sloam's son had been parking the car in a bay reserved for people with disabilities for several months. The car had an orange disabled parking badge from when Davis had owned it, but that expired in 1998.
Last Thursday, Sloam admitted in Hendon Magistrates' Court that he tried to deceive authorities in order to save his son from paying the fines.
Eleanor Bard, chairwoman of the magistrate's bench, fined Sloam £225 for deception and ordered him to pay £60 in court costs.
"Because you were in a position of trust as a councilor and you, in fact, helped to put the laws into place, it does make it more serious," Bard told Sloam.
After the case, Sloam said: "It has been a very sad day for me."
According to the Henden Times, Mr. Sloam has been known as a local campaigner for disability issues.
---
# INSTITUTIONS
Lawmaker Says Governor Should Just Admit
Institutions Will Stay Closed
August 13, 2003
PEORIA,
ILLINOIS--The following four paragraphs are excerpts from a brief item in
Wednesday's Peoria Journal Star:
Peoria Congressman Ray LaHood believes Gov. Rod Blagojevich will break his campaign pledges to reopen Zeller Mental Health Center in Peoria and Lincoln Developmental Center.
"He's made promises to people in Peoria and Lincoln that he's going to open up facilities, and I think it's wrong to hold out promises to people when you know you're not going to do these things," LaHood said Tuesday.
LaHood, a Republican whose 18th Congressional District includes Peoria, Lincoln and part of Springfield, said he believes officials in the Democratic governor's administration know the two facilities will remain shuttered.
"I think they just ought to come out and say it, so people can move on," LaHood said. "You've got people living in Lincoln and in Peoria, holding out hope that these facilities are going to reopen, that their jobs are going to be back there again."
Entire article:
"LaHood: Governor should come clean on Zeller and
LDC" (Peoria Journal Star)
http://www.pjstar.com/news/topnews/g127705a.html
---
# ADVOCACY / ACCESSIBILITY
Courthouse Access Is About
Democracy
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August 13,
2003
EUGENE, OREGON--On Tuesday, August 26, officials with the General
Services Administration will hold a public meeting to discuss access to a new
federal courthouse.
GSA officials say they plan to make the $70 million courthouse accessible to people with disabilities by providing an outside elevator and a ground-level door for wheelchair users when the elevator is not working.
Local advocates have said the building needs a ramp so that people with disabilities can enter the building through the same front doors as everybody else.
Federal judges in the Oregon district say the courthouse designers should "maximize" the building's accessibility. They note, however, that they can only make requests to GSA.
Past meetings with local advocates and building planners have resulted in design changes.
Wednesday's Register Guard included a wonderful guest opinion article by Elizabeth Wheeler, whose 3-year-old son has cerebral palsy.
"I never realized before how many messages a building sends," Wheeler wrote. "Buildings often presume that there are the 'main people,' who enter on two feet, and then there are the 'other people', who enter on wheels."
"At the new courthouse, we have the chance to symbolize equal access before the law in concrete physical terms, through the kind of disability access we choose. All the citizens should get to come before the law in the same way."
"I am not interested in a streamlined and beautiful order that doesn't welcome my son, that tells my son, 'Don't work too hard at the extremely strenuous and inconvenient task of learning to walk in that walker because this federal courthouse, because this blessed Constitution and Bill of Rights, because this system of democracy, is kind of for you and kind of isn't, because fully including you is impractical and takes up too much room.'
"My son might grow up to be an attorney and might plead cases in that courthouse. It would be more dignified and professional for him to enter the court along the same route as his client, the judge and the opposing counsel in the case - but beyond this, it would be just and right."
Related articles:
"Advocates for disabled get their day about
court" (Register-Guard)
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2003/08/13/a1.ramp.0813.html
"Guest Viewpoint: Courthouse should offer 'open door' to everyone" by
Elizabeth Wheeler (Register-Guard)
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/03/red/0813b.htm
---
# TODAY'S FEATURED HOUSING WEBSITE
Center for Neighborhood
Technology
The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a unique mission: To invent and implement new tools and methods that create livable urban communities for everyone.
Urban communities and metropolitan regions are growing rapidly. At the Center for Neighborhood Technology, we believe that this combination of economic growth and accelerating urbanization holds the promise of a better life for the world's population, because cities are the key to equitable wealth creation, efficient resource use and livable communities.
We believe that urban communities can only fulfill this promise and achieve fundamental change based on a new sense of collaborative advantage. Positive change requires that communities realize their chances of succeeding are greater when they act together, rather than on their own.
---
# EXPRESS EXTRA!!! From the Inclusion Daily Express Archives (One year ago)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM / LAWS
Banks Cleared Of Killing Baby
That Never Lived
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
August 13,
2002
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA -- Ruling that "a manifest injustice has
occurred in this case", a state appeals court Friday threw out the guilty plea
of Mendell Banks, who had confessed to killing a baby that apparently was never
born.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals also expressed concern over the fact that Banks had been interrogated by police for three days -- without a lawyer present -- before giving his guilty plea.
Banks' attorney argued that Mendell Banks, his wife Victoria Banks, and her sister, Diane Tucker, all of whom reportedly have mental retardation, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter only to avoid a possible death penalty for killing Victoria Banks' newborn baby in 1999.
A fertility expert recently determined, however, that Victoria Banks could not have been pregnant at the time because she had a tubal ligation in 1995.
Victoria's defenders say she pretended to be pregnant so she could get out of jail while awaiting trial on a separate court case. The local sheriff noticed later that she no longer appeared pregnant. When she could not present the baby, Victoria told the sheriff that it had been killed and buried. No body was ever found. Neither was any evidence of a murder or of a birth.
The attorneys for all three say that they made up different stories to cover up for Victoria's lies. Then, when faced with the possibility of murder convictions and the death penalty, they chose to plead guilty to the reduced manslaughter charges.
Diane Tucker was released last month after a judge changed her sentence from 15 years to the one year served plus one day probation.
Mendell Banks was offered the same deal but he turned it down, wanting instead to be completely cleared of the crime.
Victoria Banks is serving a 15-year sentence for a separate conviction. She must first serve at least five years of that sentence before being considered for any release.
Related resource:
"Where's The Baby? The Bizarre Case of The Banks
Baby Murder" (Inclusion Daily Express)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/laws/banks.htm
---
# DISCUSSION BOARD
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readers:
http://members5.boardhost.com/InclusionDaily
---
# BELOW THE FOLD
Click here for the rest of today's
disability-related news:
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/03/btf/081303_44.htm
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Reynolds, Editor