December 10, 2005
Inside ■ Beep Ball— p. 3 ■ Living Independently— p. 6 ■ Communications In Gov.— p. 7
And the winner is . . . see pg 3
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“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
— Mark Twain
Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Mpls. MN Permit No. 4766
Volume 17, Number 12
Minnesota’s Disability
Community Newspaper
December 10, 2005
NCD Calls For Changes In Policy T by Mark S. Quigley
he National Council on Disability (NCD) released its annual progress report (http:// www.ncd.gov/newsroom/ publications/2005/ progress_report.htm) calling on the Federal Government to be more creative in program design; be more accountable in measuring the impact of civil rights compliance for people with disability; and provide greater crossagency coordination in man-
aging disability programs.
According to Glenn Anderson, Ph.D., NCD vice chairperson, “NCD’s examination of the status of disability policy discloses that incremental progress made in some areas is clouded by other major barriers and challenges that continue to block paths available to the general population. Gaps in necessary services and supports remain to the extent that far too many
Americans with disabilities are undereducated and unemployed.” NCD has identified several important and recurrent themes that need to be addressed. Program Design for a New Century In programs for people with disabilities, such as special education and vocational re-
habilitation, the need for innovative program design has been recognized, but the means for carrying it out remain matters of debate. How tightly should these programs be tied, in procedures or expectations, to their mainstream counterparts—No Child Left Behind in the case of education, and the Workforce Investment Act in the case of employment? The debate regarding the need
An Introduction To Braille by Herb Drill
for innovative approaches to program concept and design is taking place in a variety of ways. New program models; new definitions of services themselves and of target populations and stakeholder groups; new allocations of responsibility and authority among federal, state and private sector partners (including end-users and consumers themselves); and new criteria for measuring program outcomes and success—all of these can be seen to one degree or another in virtually every major piece of legislation discussed in this report. Accountability
B
eloved sage and scholar Rabbi Hillel asks all people a rhetorical question in the Hebrew writings Pirke Avot known as “Ethics of the Fathers.” The query is: “If I am not for myself, who is for me; and if I am only for myself, what am I;and if not now, when?” That long ago inquiry brings us to a moving tale told about touch. More to the point, or might we say “pointer,” it concerns 15 women in the 48-year-old Braille group at Congregation Ahavath Chesed. They are training to help the blind to read. On a recent Thursday morning at Congregation Ahavath Chesed, 15 women began training to join the congregation’s Sisterhood Braille Group. Seated in front of Perkins Braillers at 10 am at Ahavath Chesed, some of the women said they expected the nine-month course to be difficult.
The Perkins Brailler the women use at first is known as a Braille writer, and years ago Braille writers were costly, noisy, heavy, and needed frequent repair. In the 1930s, Dr. Gabriel Farrell, director of the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, wanted his printing department to produce a better machine. In the woodworking department, he found teacher David Abraham, who had training as a mechanic and experience designing and building machines that made stair railings. Dr. Farrell asked him to design a new Braille writer. With the help of Dr. Edward Waterhouse, a math teacher, the three men developed the specifications, and the prototype was completed in November, 1939. After World War II, production began.
A century before in Coupvray near Paris, harness maker Simon Braille and his wife, Monique, had a growing family. After they welcomed their fourth child, Louis, they discovered he was bright and inquisitive. But at age three, playing in his father’s shop, Louis injured an eye Brailler Perkins with a sharp awl. Infec-
Jack Gillrup, chief of Jacksonville,FL's Disabled Services Division, in his motorized wheelchair tion set in and spread to the other eye, leaving him completely blind. At 10, Louis was sent on scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. It was French army captain Charles Barbier de la Serre who invented the technique of using raised dots for tactile writing and reading to allow soldiers to compose and read messages at night without light. Barbier adapted the system and presented it to the Institution for Blind Youth, calling the system Sonography, because it represented words according to sound rather than spelling. Louis discovered the potential of the basic idea and the shortcomings. By age 15, he developed the system that is now Braille, employing a sixdot cell and based upon normal spelling.
Back at Congregation Ahavath Chesed, Kaynn Davis saw the Braille transcription course as “an opportunity to help those who may need to read books in Braille. It sure will be a challenge, but I like learning something new.” Kathy Balistreri added, “It is something I always wanted to learn.” The City of Jacksonville, FL purchased a computerized transcriber which can take an e-mail in Microsoft Word format and turn it into Braille material. “Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, we do that for city-related events if need be,” said Jack Gillrup chief of Jacksonville’s Disabled Services Division. “In that regard, as a municipality we’re rather ahead of the curve.” In the Twin CitBraille - cont. on p. 14
Perhaps no single word is heard more often in the discussion of domestic policy today than accountability. At the same time, perhaps nowhere is the meaning of accountability more critically at issue than in the area of civil rights. NCD believes that vigilant civil rights enforcement is an indispensable component of any balanced effort to achieve equality of opportunity in society. But if statistical evidence were needed to justify this belief, one would be hard-pressed to produce it. Evidence of the costs of compliance to industry and government can readily be produced, but comparable data demonstrating the value of a just society or tracking the impact of vigorous enforcement on public attitudes and behavior over time is hard to define, let alone to collect. NCD supports the goal of extending accountability to as many programs and sectors as possible. While NCD believes that the costs of compliance with all laws should be minimized, NCD also strongly believes that emphasis on the dollar costs of compliance to government and business is premature, unless accompanied by reciprocal attempts to ascertain the costs
of noncompliance for individuals and for society as a whole. Cross-Agency Coordination
In light of the concerns about program accountability noted before, it is gratifying to note that President Bush’s New Freedom Initiative (NFI) recognizes the interconnection of programs and subjects. In 2004, NCD published its Livable Communities report (http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2004/ LivableCommunities.htm). This report vividly showed how a variety of programs must work together efficiently in order to achieve a high quality of life for those they intended to benefit. As NCD’s work and common experience make clear, it is no longer possible to look at housing in isolation from transportation, at employment separately from health care, or at income supports in old age apart from long-term services and non-cash supports. The challenge is to shape this growing awareness into processes that will fulfill the promise of coordinated planning and programming. NCD does not underestimate the difficulties associated with such efforts. Throughout this report, readers will encounter these difficulties in illustrations of inconsistency or even conflict among programs, and in instances where the recognition of the need for coordination was sincere but achievement of the goal was largely lacking. Broadly speaking, as these examples show, the methods for implementing this next vital step in effective planning and budgeting are yet to be devised or put in place. ■ News Release: NCD #05– 501, November 17, 2005; For more information: 202-2722004 (202-272-2074 TTY); mquigley@ncd.gov