04/04-2008 to 04/11/2008
This story about Juliana Cumbo, who has just applied, for the second time, to get an acupuncture license, comes via Cilla Sluga at Big Noise. Cumbo, who is 31 and has been blind since she was 10-years-old, was rejected in October 2007 by a committee of the Texas State Board of Acupuncture Examiners after earning a master's degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine and passing the national board exams.
San-Francisco supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, will launch a law-suit against City Hall if it does not resurrect plans to install a wheelchair ramp to the board president's elevated speaking dias. Alioto-Pier, 39, is the first supervisor to use a wheelchair. Critics of the plan argue that it is too expensive. However Alioto-Pier and disability rights groups argue that wheelchair users should have access to the elevated perch 'just like everyone else has throughout the city's history."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, California is closing the Agnews Developmental Center in San Jose, a state institution that has housed thousands of people with developmental disabilities for more than a century. The closing marks part of a philosophical and legal shift away from institutional care, and is said to be one of the most complex and costly mass moves every undertaken. Its residents are being moved into homes scatttered in neighborhoods around the region.
A British woman who convinced her son and his doctor that he needed to use a wheelchair, and got a doctor to prescribe unnecessary medication, has been sentenced to four years in prison for child abuse, the United Press International reports.
Advocates are worried about the growth of the population of people with intellectual impairments in Texas, according to the Lubbock Avalanche Journal.
A 31-year-old woman, who lost part of her leg when she stepped on a landmine, has won the title of Miss Landmine Angola 2008. The aim of the pageant, according to organizers, is to portray disabled women with dignity and to raise awareness about the prevalence of landmines left in Angola following its 30 year civil war.
