"The recent announcement of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, that he will not seek re-election in 2014 is very bad news for Americans with disabilities. Harkin has been a genuine champion for disabled people. He was a primary Senate sponsor of, and a galvanizing force behind, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), even though he was in his first term in the Senate at the time. Later, after conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts issued a series of rulings gutting the ADA, Harkin sponsored the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. This law clarified the meaning of the ADA and restored much of its strength." Read story
The Obama administration for the first time is telling school districts across the USA that they must give disabled students equal access to extracurricular sports, a move that advocates say has been years in the making. Read story
"We often think of technology as something that makes us more than human. Marshall McLuhan, the freaky philosopher of television and other 20th-century developments, called media the 'extensions of man.' The suggestion is that tech accelerates our pace, furthers our reach, amplifies our voice." Read story
"The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq War has received a double-arm transplant. Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009." Read story
"Federal laws have long provided guidance on what students with disabilities are legally entitled to during the school day. But what constitutes reasonable accommodation or equal opportunity under the law has become widely debated when it comes to after-school sports." Read story
"Florida State University's High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) is leading a major partnership to develop the next generation of prosthetic limbs for military-veteran amputee patients, thanks to a new contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The two-year, $4.4 million VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) project is aimed at addressing the shortcomings of current prosthetic socket systems--the part where a patient's limb connects to a prosthetic device--through the development, testing and delivery of 'Socket Optimized for Comfort with Advanced Technology' (SOCAT) prototypes." Read story