Definition - One of nine types of muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic, degenerative diseases primarily affecting voluntary muscles.
Cause - Insufficient production of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep muscle cells intact.
Onset - Adolescence or adulthood.
Symptoms - Generalized weakness and wasting first affecting the muscles of the hips, pelvic area, thighs and shoulders. Calves are often enlarged. BMD is similar to Duchenne muscular dystrophy but often much less severe. There can be significant heart involvement.
Progression - Disease progresses slowly and with variability but can affect all voluntary muscles. Most with BMD survive well into mid- to late adulthood.
Inheritance - X-linked recessive. BMD primarily affects boys and men, who inherit the disease through their mothers. Women can be carriers but usually exhibit no symptoms.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access
has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book;
“Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!!
If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road
map to success!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Definition - One of nine types of muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic, degenerative diseases primarily affecting voluntary muscles.
Cause - An absence of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep muscle cells intact.
Onset - Early childhood - about 2 to 6 years.
Symptoms - Generalized weakness and muscle wasting first affecting the musclesof the hips, pelvic area, thighs and shoulders. Calves are often enlarged.
Progression - DMD eventually affects all voluntary muscles, and the heart and breathing muscles. Survival is rare beyond the early 30s.
Inheritance - X-linked recessive. DMD primarily affects boys, who inherit the disease through their mothers. Women can be carriers of DMD but usually exhibit no symptoms.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
Cause - An absence of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep muscle cells intact.
Onset - Early childhood - about 2 to 6 years.
Symptoms - Generalized weakness and muscle wasting first affecting the musclesof the hips, pelvic area, thighs and shoulders. Calves are often enlarged.
Progression - DMD eventually affects all voluntary muscles, and the heart and breathing muscles. Survival is rare beyond the early 30s.
Inheritance - X-linked recessive. DMD primarily affects boys, who inherit the disease through their mothers. Women can be carriers of DMD but usually exhibit no symptoms.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Disability Discrimination
Disability discrimination occurs when an
employer or other entity covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, as
amended, or the Rehabilitation Act, as amended, treats a qualified individual
with a disability who is an employee or applicant unfavorably because she has a
disability.
Disability discrimination also occurs when a covered employer or other entity treats an applicant or employee less favorably because she has a history of a disability (such as cancer that is controlled or in remission) or because she is believed to have a physical or mental impairment that is not transitory (lasting or expected to last six months or less) and minor (even if she does not have such an impairment).
The law requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation to an employee or job applicant with a disability, unless doing so would cause significant difficulty or expense for the employer ("undue hardship").
The law also protects people from discrimination based on their relationship with a person with a disability (even if they do not themselves have a disability). For example, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because her husband has a disability.
Note: Federal employees and applicants are covered by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, instead of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The protections are mostly the same.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
Disability discrimination also occurs when a covered employer or other entity treats an applicant or employee less favorably because she has a history of a disability (such as cancer that is controlled or in remission) or because she is believed to have a physical or mental impairment that is not transitory (lasting or expected to last six months or less) and minor (even if she does not have such an impairment).
The law requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation to an employee or job applicant with a disability, unless doing so would cause significant difficulty or expense for the employer ("undue hardship").
The law also protects people from discrimination based on their relationship with a person with a disability (even if they do not themselves have a disability). For example, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because her husband has a disability.
Note: Federal employees and applicants are covered by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, instead of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The protections are mostly the same.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
Friday, March 2, 2012
Terms
In order for individuals with disabilities to become full partners in the
cyberspace era, their situation must be considered early in the design process
of products and work environments. I believe that the key to good early design
is an elimination of a confusion that is all too common concerning the
connection between disabilities and handicaps.
In untangling the confusion we use the following glosses on ``impairment,'' ``disability'' and ``handicap'' that basically follow the World Health Organization (WHO); we add the term ``inability'' to fill an important logical gap.
Paraplegia, a disability, is directly linked to the inability to walk. But it is only circumstantially linked to the inability to move around under one's own power. This inability can be removed with a wheelchair. Blindness is directly linked to the inability to see text on computer monitor. But it is only circumstantially linked to an inability to gather the information presented there. The inability to get information from displayed or printed text can be removed through the use of Braille displays and speech-output screen readers. This example brings up an important distinction that must be made between information (the content of the textual message) and the form of information (displayed text, printed text, Braille text, audio text, etc.); we will discuss this concept again in the last section.
The term ``handicap'' is sometimes now avoided, but we think it can be put to good use, in the way WHO does. A handicap is an inability that leaves one at a comparative disadvantage. So conceived, a handicap is a special case of an inability. The connection between handicap and disability is much looser. We can be handicapped, even when we are not disabled. Americans who do not speak Japanese will be handicapped when they visit Tokyo, because while most people will be able to gather important information by reading signs on buildings, they will not. And one can be disabled, without being handicapped relative to many tasks, if the proper tools and supporting structures are provided.
The concepts we now want to introduce are the ``intrinsic conception of disability, inability, and handicap'' and the ``circumstantial conception of disability, inability, and handicap''. For short we will refer to them in an abbreviated form: the intrinsic conception of disability and the circumstantial conception of disability.
The intrinsic conception of disability goes like this:
A disabled individual is one who cannot make some movement that the majority of the population can make, or lacks some sensory capacity that the majority of the population has. As a result, disabled individuals are handicapped in many ways; they cannot realistically expect to accomplish many goals that others can accomplish. A disabled individual must either regain the motor or sensory abilities, or abandon the goals.
In contrast, the circumstantial conception goes like this:
A disabled individual is one who cannot make some movement that the majority of the population can make, or lacks some sensory capacity that the majority of the population has. As a result, an individual with a disability may need to use different means than non-disabled individuals standardly use to accomplish certain goals. Handicaps are created when the tools and infrastructure to support these alternative methods are not available.
Ron Amundson puts the point this way, in his excellent article ``Disability, Handicap, and the Environment''
The life of Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933-1945, illustrates the difference between the two conceptions. Roosevelt was disabled as a result of polio; the muscles in his legs were wasted. For a long time he tried to learn to walk, to overcome the effect polio had had on his legs through exercise, grit and hard work. He was in the grip of the first conception of disability. He was not successful in walking again.
At a certain point he decided to put his time and energy into politics rather than into the struggle to walk again. He used a wheelchair to move about his homes and offices. He had ramps and other structures built to accommodate his wheelchair.
Roosevelt had an impairment, atrophied leg muscles, which left him with a disability, he could not walk. Because of the disability, he was handicapped; he could not move around under his own power. He tried two methods for getting rid of the handicap. First he tried to get rid of the disability. Then he gave up on that, and simply adopted a different method for moving about under his own power.
After Roosevelt died, the ramps were removed from Hyde Park, his home. As a result, for a long time some of the visitors to Hyde Park were handicapped (relative to the goal of moving about quickly and efficiently), in a way that Roosevelt himself had not been.
From the point of view of the circumstantial conception of disability, using a wheelchair was a reasonable decision on Roosevelt's part. It is similar in structure to the decision a commuter makes to buy a car, rather than getting in shape to run to work--or trying to learn to fly. Or the decision a teacher might make to use a microphone, rather than learn to shout. Or the decision an executive might make, to buy a Rolodex rather than enroll in a memory course. It was simply a matter of using technology to get rid of an inability--something each one of us does all the time. The only difference in the case of Roosevelt was that the inability to move around resulted from a disability.
Roosevelt felt that it would be political suicide to reveal to the American public that he used a wheelchair. It's not that Americans wanted to see their President walk everywhere. It was acceptable to the public for him to get from place to place by car--for there he was employing a bit of technology that non-disabled individuals also use. But it was not acceptable for him to use a wheelchair. Roosevelt knew that the American public was in the grip of the intrinsic conception of disability. At meetings in the White House, he would always be seated where he wanted to be, in a regular chair, when guests entered, and remain there when they left. He used heavy iron supports on his legs, that clamped into a position that kept his leg rigid, when he had to give a speech standing up. In certain situations, Roosevelt had to appear to walk to a podium to deliver a speech. In these situations his sons or associates would move him forward in such a way that his legs would swing forward as if he were walking with a little help. In fact he could not supply locomotion at all.
The illusion was thus created that Roosevelt had learned to walk again, but just couldn't do it very well. Being a poor walker was acceptable to the American Public. The truth, that Roosevelt had become an adept and efficient wheelchair user, was not acceptable. Most Americans who were alive when Roosevelt was President were unaware that he used a wheelchair. This fact became common knowledge only years after he died.
This attitude towards the President was pretty silly. As Roosevelt's career demonstrates, it simply was not essential, for the tasks a President needs to perform, that he be able to walk. Applicants for the Presidency of the United States, like applicants for any job, should be judged on their ability to accomplish the tasks that the job requires, not on whether they do them in the standard way.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
In untangling the confusion we use the following glosses on ``impairment,'' ``disability'' and ``handicap'' that basically follow the World Health Organization (WHO); we add the term ``inability'' to fill an important logical gap.
- An inability is anything a person cannot do.
- An impairment is a physiological disorder or injury.
- A disability is an inability to execute some class of movements, or pick up sensory information of some sort, or perform some cognitive function, that typical unimpaired humans are able to execute or pick up or perform.
- A handicap is an inability to accomplish something one might want to do, that most others around one are able to accomplish.
Paraplegia, a disability, is directly linked to the inability to walk. But it is only circumstantially linked to the inability to move around under one's own power. This inability can be removed with a wheelchair. Blindness is directly linked to the inability to see text on computer monitor. But it is only circumstantially linked to an inability to gather the information presented there. The inability to get information from displayed or printed text can be removed through the use of Braille displays and speech-output screen readers. This example brings up an important distinction that must be made between information (the content of the textual message) and the form of information (displayed text, printed text, Braille text, audio text, etc.); we will discuss this concept again in the last section.
The term ``handicap'' is sometimes now avoided, but we think it can be put to good use, in the way WHO does. A handicap is an inability that leaves one at a comparative disadvantage. So conceived, a handicap is a special case of an inability. The connection between handicap and disability is much looser. We can be handicapped, even when we are not disabled. Americans who do not speak Japanese will be handicapped when they visit Tokyo, because while most people will be able to gather important information by reading signs on buildings, they will not. And one can be disabled, without being handicapped relative to many tasks, if the proper tools and supporting structures are provided.
The concepts we now want to introduce are the ``intrinsic conception of disability, inability, and handicap'' and the ``circumstantial conception of disability, inability, and handicap''. For short we will refer to them in an abbreviated form: the intrinsic conception of disability and the circumstantial conception of disability.
The intrinsic conception of disability goes like this:
A disabled individual is one who cannot make some movement that the majority of the population can make, or lacks some sensory capacity that the majority of the population has. As a result, disabled individuals are handicapped in many ways; they cannot realistically expect to accomplish many goals that others can accomplish. A disabled individual must either regain the motor or sensory abilities, or abandon the goals.
In contrast, the circumstantial conception goes like this:
A disabled individual is one who cannot make some movement that the majority of the population can make, or lacks some sensory capacity that the majority of the population has. As a result, an individual with a disability may need to use different means than non-disabled individuals standardly use to accomplish certain goals. Handicaps are created when the tools and infrastructure to support these alternative methods are not available.
Ron Amundson puts the point this way, in his excellent article ``Disability, Handicap, and the Environment''
"...a disability such as paraplegia becomes a handicap only to the extent that the paraplegic person's environment isolates him from some need or goal. A wheelchair user has virtually no mobility handicap in a building with accessible doorways, elevators, and work areas. But he is greatly handicapped when his goals are located up or down a flight of stairs. This is the environmental concept of handicapA handicap results from the interaction between a disability and an environment; it does not flow naturally from the disability alone. We humans frequently construct our environments in handicap-producing ways. The reason is obvious. We design and construct our environments with a certain range of biologically typical humans in mind.
The life of Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933-1945, illustrates the difference between the two conceptions. Roosevelt was disabled as a result of polio; the muscles in his legs were wasted. For a long time he tried to learn to walk, to overcome the effect polio had had on his legs through exercise, grit and hard work. He was in the grip of the first conception of disability. He was not successful in walking again.
At a certain point he decided to put his time and energy into politics rather than into the struggle to walk again. He used a wheelchair to move about his homes and offices. He had ramps and other structures built to accommodate his wheelchair.
Roosevelt had an impairment, atrophied leg muscles, which left him with a disability, he could not walk. Because of the disability, he was handicapped; he could not move around under his own power. He tried two methods for getting rid of the handicap. First he tried to get rid of the disability. Then he gave up on that, and simply adopted a different method for moving about under his own power.
After Roosevelt died, the ramps were removed from Hyde Park, his home. As a result, for a long time some of the visitors to Hyde Park were handicapped (relative to the goal of moving about quickly and efficiently), in a way that Roosevelt himself had not been.
From the point of view of the circumstantial conception of disability, using a wheelchair was a reasonable decision on Roosevelt's part. It is similar in structure to the decision a commuter makes to buy a car, rather than getting in shape to run to work--or trying to learn to fly. Or the decision a teacher might make to use a microphone, rather than learn to shout. Or the decision an executive might make, to buy a Rolodex rather than enroll in a memory course. It was simply a matter of using technology to get rid of an inability--something each one of us does all the time. The only difference in the case of Roosevelt was that the inability to move around resulted from a disability.
Roosevelt felt that it would be political suicide to reveal to the American public that he used a wheelchair. It's not that Americans wanted to see their President walk everywhere. It was acceptable to the public for him to get from place to place by car--for there he was employing a bit of technology that non-disabled individuals also use. But it was not acceptable for him to use a wheelchair. Roosevelt knew that the American public was in the grip of the intrinsic conception of disability. At meetings in the White House, he would always be seated where he wanted to be, in a regular chair, when guests entered, and remain there when they left. He used heavy iron supports on his legs, that clamped into a position that kept his leg rigid, when he had to give a speech standing up. In certain situations, Roosevelt had to appear to walk to a podium to deliver a speech. In these situations his sons or associates would move him forward in such a way that his legs would swing forward as if he were walking with a little help. In fact he could not supply locomotion at all.
The illusion was thus created that Roosevelt had learned to walk again, but just couldn't do it very well. Being a poor walker was acceptable to the American Public. The truth, that Roosevelt had become an adept and efficient wheelchair user, was not acceptable. Most Americans who were alive when Roosevelt was President were unaware that he used a wheelchair. This fact became common knowledge only years after he died.
This attitude towards the President was pretty silly. As Roosevelt's career demonstrates, it simply was not essential, for the tasks a President needs to perform, that he be able to walk. Applicants for the Presidency of the United States, like applicants for any job, should be judged on their ability to accomplish the tasks that the job requires, not on whether they do them in the standard way.
"Don't allow your disABILITY to shut you out of life; your request for Access has been Granted"
Be on the lookout for my new highly anticipated book; “Don’t Let the 4 Wheels F.O.O.L. You”!!! If you have ever felt as though society has counted you out! You won’t want to miss this inspirational road map to success!
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