Michigan Disability Resistance

An intellectually disabled woman in her 60s plans to sue the government for forcibly rendering her sterile as a teenager under a law aimed at “preventing the birth of inferior offspring.”

The lawsuit, which will be filed as early as in January, would be the first in Japan to challenge the constitutionality of enforcing sterilization operations under the Eugenic Protection Law of 1948, according to her lawyers.

The woman, who lives in Miyagi Prefecture, will demand a state apology and compensation, contending that the eugenic sterilization operation, performed without her consent, violated her constitutional right to pursue happiness.

“(What she experienced) was nothing but inhumanity and a disregard for human rights,” the woman’s sister-in-law said at a symposium in Tokyo on Dec. 3. “Somebody should speak up to redress such suffering because the victims are getting older.”

Under the Eugenic Protection Law, authorities were allowed to compel people with certain conditions, such as mental disorders, hereditary diseases or Hansen’s disease, to have abortions or undergo sterilization procedures.

If you missed the event on Saturday.....

https://goo.gl/DQy93H

We had a wonderful twitter chat with Joe Shapiro. It was his first time on a twitter chat, and to be honest, it was my first time hosting!

I’ve tried to pull together the pieces of the twitter chat into a Storify – I rearranged as many of the tweets into the relevant questions and sections as possible. It might not all make sense initially, but if you look at the time stamps on the tweets, it helps.

I am grateful that Joe Shapiro talked with us all about his book. I’m excited about his next project (read about it in the Storify!), and will be tuning in for the full story.

If you’d like to join the Lit League (The Riveting Book Club with Disability Intersections), come on over to Facebook by clicking here!

This is my first International Day of Persons with Disability since getting home from a five-month mission in Beirut, Lebanon, where I helped eight other NGOs make their water points, toilets and hygiene facilities more inclusive for people with disabilities, older people, and the vulnerable.

As a woman who is a native Arabic speaker with a “CP (cerebral palsy) accent,” this was an opportunity to not only do the job, but to show Lebanese people, and Syrian refugees the professional potential for a woman with a disability.

The job was the easy part. I’ve worked on inclusion for 25 years, and mostly in the Middle East. The barriers of making things inclusive are not new to me. The environment in a place like Lebanon was not new to me. Over the years, I became accustom to the attitudes of the local population toward people with disabilities.

One day, on my way to work, I noticed that the sidewalks were being renovated. I was excited and was willing to speak with the construction workers about making sure the pathway was accessible. To my surprise, on my way home, I saw that one of the corners was accessible as it had a curb-cut. I was thrilled, until the next day when I saw that the other corner was inaccessible. What a shocker!

So that’s when the attitudes of the people need to be understood. When I asked the barber about the inaccessible curb in front of his shop, he indicated that he disliked the curb-cut because it meant that people would park directly in front of his place of business and block the entrance. But when I asked the convenience store owner on the other side of the street why he accepted the curb-cut, he said it was easier for his deliveries. The fact is, there is no oversight by local municipalities to monitor such renovations even if it's in a public space.

Two Broken Chairs, One Mission

I wasn’t looking for a platform. The platform came looking for me. When I was booking my first post-injury flight in the spring of 2016, a cross-country trip from Seattle to the East Coast for United Spinal’s Roll on Capitol Hill, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Not even one calendar year later, Alaska Airlines caused $16,000 in damage to another wheelchair on my way back from ROCH 2017. Once is a case of bad luck. Twice is the universe revealing your path. Having two wheelchairs destroyed by two different airlines in the span of a year has a way of thrusting you into a bit of reluctant advocacy with a lot of questions that need answers.

How is it that in the year 2017, in the age of one-day Amazon Prime delivery of damn near anything you desire, a full 27 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that airplanes in America are not wheelchair accessible? Why is it so hard to transport wheelchairs safely? What kind of recourse does someone like me have to hold the airlines accountable when they break what are essentially my legs? What is being done to address what seems to be a systemic issue within the industry?

Big Surprise......

https://goo.gl/gVvLE7

A new study by the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology shows that Yelp reviewers give nursing homes significantly less favorable ratings than those found on the federal website, Nursing Home Compare, run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Consumers view the quality of nursing homes as poorer than the CMS is reporting it to be,” said Anna Rahman, a co-author of the report and an assistant research professor of gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School.

Both the Nursing Home Compare website and the popular online business ratings site, Yelp, feature five-star rating systems to help consumers evaluate nursing homes

The study published in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety on Nov. 13 showed that a nursing home’s Yelp rating differed from the Nursing Home Compare rating more than 75 percent of the time, and it was significantly lower in three of four categories reviewed.

Rahman said both ratings systems have weaknesses and strengths.

“Many Americans are now familiar with how Yelp works and evaluate Yelp reviews with a critical eye. They know not to believe everything they read on the site,” Rahman said.

By contrast, consumers have reported difficulty with understanding Nursing Home Compare ratings, she added. This is problematic because prior research indicates that some nursing homes listed on the federal website are gaming their ratings.

“Regrettably, there is no easy or highly intuitive way to spot fake ratings on NHC [Nursing Home Compare],” Rahman said.

“However, we cannot say that Yelp is a better resource than Nursing Home Compare,” she added. “Our best recommendation is that consumers consult both resources, with the caveat that they must understand how each source generates its ratings.”