BAC Rutland

HOUSE PASSES ADA AMENDMENTS ACT TO MIXED REVIEWS

The House on Sept. 17 approved legislation to amend the Americans with Disabilities Act, marking a new era in the life of the 1990 civil rights law.

Backers of S. 3406, which now goes to President Bush, who is expected to sign it, say the measure will restore the ADA’s protections against discrimination to people who compensate for their disabilities by taking various mitigating measures. “We never expected that those who could mitigate their disabilities would have their efforts held against them,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., before the House passed the measure by voice vote and without dissent. “But the court did exactly that,” he said, referring to a set of U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1999, including Sutton v. United Air Lines

But school officials say the bill would add to their costs, especially under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, whose definition of disability also would be changed by the bill. (more…)

VABIR, an organization that increases the employment of people with disabilities has a great website at www.vabir.org. It contains many informative articles and resources for both job seekers and employers. Visit the following links for more information from their site.

For Job Seekers:
Contact A VABIR Representative
ADA Q & A
Ask A Question
Temp to Hire Program
4-Hire Work Workshops
Local VABIR Offices

For Employers:
Helpful Links
Participating Employer List
Ask A Question
4-Hire Work Workshops
Rehabilitation Terms & Acronyms

Save The Date: WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15, 2008

Disability Mentoring Day™ is a large-scale, broad-based effort designed to promote career development for students and other job seekers with disabilities (mentees) through hands-on career exploration, job shadowing, and internship or employment opportunities, and matching of mentee/mentor relationships. Disability Mentoring Day: Career Development for the 21st Century, will be commemorated on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 as the official kick-off for a year-round effort.
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By John Burgeson
Connecticut Post / September 13, 2008

BRIDGEPORT, Conn.—Back in the 1980s, shopping malls did a brisk business selling things like aromatherapy devices, new-age music, recordings of rainforest sounds, beanbag chairs and the like.

The idea was to relieve stress by masking the din of hectic lives and replacing it with a bath of soothing stimulation.

Whether these things produced the desired result was — and still is — the subject of some debate.

But there is little question in the minds of the people who run Goodwill Industries of Western Connecticut’s Bridgeport headquarters that these calming devices, when properly used, have a profound effect on those with severe intellectual disabilities.

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WASHINGTON, Sept 11, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX

The leaders of a national coalition of disability, civil rights and social justice organizations praised the U.S. Senate today for taking bipartisan action to restore vital civil rights protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In recent years, the ADA – the world’s first human rights law for people with disabilities – has been dramatically narrowed in the courts leaving citizens with epilepsy, diabetes, mental illness, HIV-AIDS and other disabilities unprotected from discrimination. The ADA Amendments Act clarifies the intent of Congress and reverses the “judicial activism” that has resulted in more than 90% of employment-related ADA cases being dismissed on summary judgment.
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KILLINGTON — Vermont opened its first universally accessible portion of the Appalachian Trail on Saturday in Killington.

The boardwalk, which can be navigated with wheelchairs, is located at the foot of Thundering Falls.

It descends from Thundering Brook Road through woods to the base of Thundering Falls, and then over the Ottauquechee River flood plain across 900 feet of boardwalk built by the Green Mountain Club.

It is the fourth section of the Appalachian Trail in the country designed to be accessible to wheelchairs.

Former Major Leaguer Jim Abbott to serve as campaign spokesman

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), in cooperation with Major League Baseball, today announced the launch of the PITCH (Proving Individuals with Talent Can Help) campaign to encourage businesses to hire individuals with disabilities.

Former Major League pitcher Jim Abbott will serve as the campaign’s spokesman. The campaign will include radio public service announcements, media awareness activities and appearances at the Little League World Series as well as Major League ballparks during September and October.
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Posted by Jacob Goldstein

Ben Brewer, a family doctor in rural Illinois, is one of a nation of primary docs trying to manage chronic disease in a system set up for handling acute problems. It’s an uphill battle.

His patients have grown more obese, and he’s seeing the complications of obesity — high blood pressure, diabetes — in ever younger patients. In his WSJ.com column this week, he writes:

We have drugs to treat the conditions. But we don’t have potent enough public health measures, patient education and follow-up monitoring to avoid the heart attacks, strokes and chronic kidney problems that come with the modern disease territory.

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By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 4, 2008; Page A02

A common vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella is not linked to autism, a study published yesterday concludes.

The findings contradict earlier research that had fueled fears of a possible link between childhood vaccinations and a steep increase in autism diagnoses. In February 1998, the Lancet journal published a study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield of 12 children with autism and other behavioral problems that suggested the onset of their behavioral abnormalities was linked to receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. (more…)

By Mary Nichols

According to a national study by researchers at Cornell University, only 37.7% of people with disabilities in the U.S. population were in employment in 2006, compared with 79.7 percent of people without disabilities. Moreover, surveys have consistently shown the average annual earnings of employed people with disabilities to be significantly lower than those for the non-disabled employee population. In 2000 for example, people with disabilities earned an average of $33,109 compared with $43,269 for non-disabled employees. (more…)