Group items tagged

What: Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance through Dear Colleague Letters to elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education along with a Frequently Asked Questions document on the legal obligation to provide students with disabilities an equal opportunity to enjoy the benefits of technology. This guidance is a critical step in the Department’s ongoing efforts to ensure that students with disabilities receive equal access to the educational benefits and services provided by their schools, colleges and universities. All students, including those with disabilities, must have the tools needed to obtain a world-class education that prepares them for success in college and careers. Today’s guidance provides information to schools about their responsibilities under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The guidance supplements a June 2010 letter issued jointly by OCR and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The June letter explains that technological devices must be accessible to students with disabilities, including students who are blind or have low vision, unless the benefits of the technology are provided equally through other means. Today’s guidance highlights what educational institutions need to know and take into consideration in order to ensure that students with disabilities enjoy equal access when information and resources are provided through technology. “Technology can be a critical investment in enhancing educational opportunities for all students,” said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights. “The Department is firmly committed to ensuring that schools provide students with disabilities equal access to the benefits of technological advances.” Today’s guidance is part of a larger effort by the Department and Obama administration to better serve the needs of people with disabilities. Last month, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined Kareem Dale, associate director for the White House Office of Public Engagement and special assistant to the President for disability policy, for a conference call with stakeholders to talk about some of the Department’s efforts. During the call, Duncan discussed the Department’s commitment to maintaining accountability in No Child Left Behind for all subgroups, including students with disabilities, and highlighted the Department’s proposal to increase funding for students with disabilities in the fiscal year 2012 budget. Ali will also join Dale for a stakeholder conference call where she will discuss today’s guidance and address the Department’s work to ensure that all schools are fulfilling their responsibilities under the federal disability laws that OCR enforces.

Today, about 50 million Americans, or 1 in 5 people, are living with at least one disability, and most Americans will experience a disability some time during the course of their lives. Anyone can have a disability. Some people are born with a disability, get hurt or sick and have disability as a result, or develop a disability as they age. Some people may have a disability that lasts a short time while other people have a disability that lasts a lifetime. Different kinds of disabilities affect people in different ways. 

If you are living with a disability or provide services for people with disabilities, learn about health care and health programs to support the overall well-being of people with disabilities.

The American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law established the national Mentor Program for: law students with disabilities prospective law students with disabilities, and recent law school graduates with disabilities The Program’s purpose is to give members of these groups the opportunity to learn from an experienced attorney. In a recent study conducted for the ABA, those immediately out of law school cited having a mentor as an important driving factor of satisfaction with their career. Career satisfaction, however, is just one benefit of having a mentor-mentee relationship. Practitioners, students, and academics have all praised the benefits of a mentor program for those with disabilities, namely the availability of advice, guidance, and support.  

The American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law established the national Mentor Program for: law students with disabilities prospective law students with disabilities, and recent law school graduates with disabilities The Program’s purpose is to give members of these groups the opportunity to learn from an experienced attorney. In a recent study conducted for the ABA, those immediately out of law school cited having a mentor as an important driving factor of satisfaction with their career. Career satisfaction, however, is just one benefit of having a mentor-mentee relationship. Practitioners, students, and academics have all praised the benefits of a mentor program for those with disabilities, namely the availability of advice, guidance, and support.  

Although there are a variety of school-based services available for children with learning, emotional, and social disabilities, one critical need often goes unfulfilled: providing guidance and strategies that instill self-advocacy.       Most students have only a superficial notion of the reasons they receive these special accommodations, and many children are completely uninformed. Resource teachers and specialists do not generally have the authority to label and enlighten students about their disabilities, the foundation for building self-advocacy. If children are to learn how to become better consumers of educational resources, especially as they grow older, someone must take the lead.      Parents of children with disabilities can fill this role by doing the following: Introduce children’s diagnoses to them in elementary school so that they can make sense out of their struggles Use a matter-of-fact tone of voice when explaining to children that they learn/behave/relate differently from other students and, therefore, need extra help to ensure that they can succeed just like their classmates Don’t leave out the disability label—such as writing disability, ADHD, or Aspergers Syndrome—since labels are a reality of their educational life Emphasize that the teachers and special staff at school who help them will be aware of this label and prepared to help in certain ways to make school a fairer place for them to learn and grow      It’s important to review with children the ways in which their school must provide special help and services. Emphasize that these accommodations are rules the school must follow. “You have the responsibility to do your best job, and teachers must follow the learning/behavior/friendship helping rules that make things fair for you,” is one way to put it. Explain how extra time on assessments, decreased homework, or social skills groups are examples of the helping rules that schools must follow. Discuss how there is a written promise called the individualized education plan (IEP), which includes all the helping rules and makes all of this clear.      Find child-friendly resources—such as books, websites, and videos—that explain in detail their specific disability and the ways other children have learned to cope and achieve despite these limitations. Use these materials as a springboard for deeper discussion about past times when their disability created significant stress or barriers to success. Reassure them that this was before their problem was known and that there is so much that can be done to build a plan for success now that it has been identified.      Point out that one of their most important responsibilities is to be able to discuss their disability with teachers and ask for extra help and accommodation when struggles are too great. Make sure that these discussions take place before middle school, when developmental factors make it harder to get such discussions started. Ensure that they know what practical steps are in their IEP at each grade so that they can respectfully remind teaching staff if necessary.      Having a disability is like having to wear glasses; students with glasses have accepted this fact as necessary to seeing clearly.

Some key findings include the following: People with disabilities experience significant health disparities and barriers to health care, as compared with people who do not have disabilities. People with disabilities frequently lack either health insurance or coverage for necessary services, such as specialty care, long-term services, prescription medications, durable medical equipment, and assistive technologies. Most federally funded health disparities research does not recognize and include people with disabilities as a disparity population. The absence of professional training on disability competency issues for health care practitioners is one of the most significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from receiving appropriate and effective health care. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has had limited impact on how health care is delivered for people with disabilities. Significant architectural and programmatic accessibility barriers still remain, and health care providers continue to lack awareness about steps they are required to take to ensure that patients with disabilities have access to appropriate, culturally competent care.

"Ten Employment Myths" Many employers misunderstand the Americans with Disabilities Act and are reluctant to hire people with disabilities because of unfounded myths. This seventeen-minute video responds to concerns expressed by employers, explaining the ADA in common sense terms and dispelling myths about this often overlooked pool of well-qualified employees.

"My Country" In this one-hour documentary, symphony conductor James DePreist, who contracted polio as a young man, profiles three people with disabilities whose lives have been shaped by the struggle for equal rights. Mr. DePreist is the nephew of African American contralto Marian Anderson, who in 1939 was prevented from singing at Constitution Hall. He draws parallels between racial barriers and the barriers faced by people with disabilities.

Ten Small Business Mistakes This thirteen-minute video identifies common mistakes that small businesses make when trying to comply with the ADA and addresses the importance and value of doing business with 50 million people with disabilities. The video features statements by store owners expressing their doubts or misunderstandings about the ADA followed by responses from the Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights and other Department of Justice employees explaining the law in common sense terms.

What: In order to help keep you more informed, we are hosting monthly calls to update you on various disability issues as well as to introduce you to persons who work on disability issues in the Federal government. This call is open to everyone, and we strongly urge and ask that you distribute this email broadly to your networks and listservs so that everyone has the opportunity to learn this valuable information. If you received this email as a forward but would like to be added to the White House Disability Group email distribution list, please visit our website at http://www.whitehouse.gov/disability-issues-contact and fill out the contact us form in the disabilities section or you can email us at disability@who.eop.gov and provide your full name, city, state, and organization. We are excited to announce that Dr. Jill Biden will be speaking on our next call that will take place on Monday, June 27 at 10:30 AM Eastern. We apologize for the early time, but due to the time difference in Greece, this was necessary. When: June 27, 2011 8:30am Mountain Conference Call information: Dial in for listeners: 800-230-1951 Title: White House Disability Call (use instead of code) This call is off the record and not for press purposes.

A Washington, D.C. newspaper is facing rebuke after an editorial written by its own staff criticized federal efforts to hire more people with disabilities. The opinion piece from The Washington Times editorial board focused on a recent U.S. Department of Justice memo informing employees about the agency’s plan to hire more people with so-called targeted disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and severe intellectual disability. “Most employers would balk at even minor mental disabilities in hiring a lawyer, let alone severe ones. But the policy states that the Cabinet department run by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. must ‘achieve a work force from all segments of society,’ which includes those who are teetering on the edge of sanity,” The Washington Times said in its Aug. 22 editorial. The commentary is drawing strong backlash from disability advocates who say the criticisms are baseless and rely on untrue information. “While the Times editorial suggests applicants with disabilities would be fast-tracked into jobs at the DOJ without due screening and assessment, the DOJ memo clearly states otherwise,” said Jonathan Young, chair of the National Council on Disability. “To mischaracterize the DOJ initiative with fear-mongering and hyperbole misses the point.”

Raising the achievement of students with learning disabilities is hard, expensive, controversial and complex. School systems must pay private school tuition for students they can’t adequately serve. Educators and parents sometimes disagree on what methods to use. Education writers like me rarely deal with the subject because it is difficult to explain and lacks many success stories. That explains in part why learning disabilities are so poorly understood, as revealed by a remarkable survey just released by the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities. The representative sampling of 2,000 Americans provides a rare look at the depths of our ignorance. Forty-three percent believe that learning disabilities correlate with IQ. Fifty-five percent think that corrective eyewear can treat certain learning disabilities. Twenty-two percent believe that learning disabilities can be caused by spending too much time watching computer or television screens. All of those impressions are wrong.

On any given day, the feeds of my social media accounts are brimming with resources, stories, and motivation about disabled people: parenting tips, educational advice, how to work with someone who has a disability, etc. About us, but too often not including us. There are countless communities geared towards supporting parents, family members, and professionals, sharing words of encouragement on how to be the best advocates for the disability community. And while I understand such support networks are usually well intentioned, in many cases, they take the power out of the hands of the people who know themselves and their needs best: people who are actually disabled. Don’t get me wrong – allies, or what I refer to as advocate-allies, are incredibly important to advocacy efforts. “Ally” implies being supportive, while “advocate-ally” paints a more accurate picture of people who join in along with self-advocates. And true advocate-allies deserve the utmost respect. But a real advocate-ally is someone who doesn’t overshadow the voices and efforts of the people who experience being disabled every single day. Of course, as a disabled child is just beginning life, parents and professionals have a responsibility to play a key role as advocates. Obviously, a four-year-old wouldn’t be able to discuss medical procedures or know what kind of environmental access modifications are needed, so we can hope that parents will make sound and informed decisions on their child’s behalf. But as disabled children grow older, if they can communicate effectively in any way, then the primary goal should be to embrace the child’s form of communication, working with them to develop their own voice for advocacy. It can become problematic if parents or professionals are reluctant to relinquish their positions of authority and move to the role of advocate-allies, advocating alongside, instead of on behalf of, disabled people. Therefore, as important as it is to step up as advocates, it’s more important to know when to step down.