Experts by experience

Posted by kavita on August 22, 2011 under Partnership Board Blog | Be the First to Comment

Get my vote

Mencap believes that:

politicians have a legal duty to make democracy accessible
all people have a right to take part in democracy
politicians are not doing enough to engage with people with a learning disability.

Without the opportunity to make informed decisions, people with a learning disability are losing their chance to speak out about things that are important to them.

What we are doing:

Mencap has succeeded in getting the 3 main parties to produce easy read manifestos.
These will make it easier to see what the parties would do if they won the election.
We are holding workshops around the country to teach people about politics and to listen to their views about what politicians should do.

For more

Our campaign to make politics accessible, to ensure people with a learning disability get their voices heard

More information

New pages added – 14th May

Posted by Sukhbinder Basra on March 18, 2010 under Blog, Sukhi's Blog | Be the First to Comment

1. Project SEARCH : Project SEARCH Leicester is a partnership project between Leicester City Council, Remploy and Leicester College, which helps people with learning disabilities to get into paid work.

2. Keep Safe - Information and advice on How to keep safe

3. Adult Social Care Transformation - Leicester City Council

Dyslexia Myth – 16 March

Posted by Sukhbinder Basra on March 16, 2010 under Blog, Sukhi's Blog | Be the First to Comment

Source of this information: Parenting Dyslexia.com

Myth: Dyslexics form a special and identifiable (diagnosable) category of poor readers.

Facts: There is no scientifically valid way of differentiating ‘dyslexics’ from other poor readers. What was for a great length of time the most used definition of dyslexia (the ‘IQ discrepancy’ definition where reading age was considerably lower than IQ would predict) was discredited a long time ago. ‘It is perhaps strange that this notion of a discrepancy definition survived as long as it did’ (Miles p114) NO operational definition or scientifically acceptable way of sorting ‘dyslexics’ out from a group of poor readers has appeared to take its place. As there is, at the present time, no infallible way of separating the ‘dyslexics’ out as a special group, either ALL poor readers are ‘dyslexic’, or none are -see What is dyslexia?

Myth: This is the BIG one; dyslexia is a specific brain weakness; a genetically-based, neurological difficulty with phoneme awareness and processing skills (the ability to detect and process the smallest perceptible speech sounds).

Facts: Phoneme awareness is un-natural; it is only necessary when learning to read and spell involves using a phonetic alphabet and has to be taught. This is confirmed by the research which found that people who read and write using non-phonetic writing systems lack phoneme awareness (Kerr p103-4); studies ’show the strong impact of the type of writing system and type of instruction on the development of phonemic awareness -an environmental effect, and restates the point that you do not acquire this aptitude unless you need it’ (D.McGuinness WCCR p135) As a consequence of normal genetic variation, not a brain defect, some children fall low on the bell curve of ability for learning to consciously hear and work at the level of the phoneme. The opaque English alphabet code exacerbates that lack of talent, as does whole language / mixed methods teaching. Fortunately, modern synthetic phonics programmes have been specially designed to render the English alphabet code transparent for initial teaching.

Myth: Children who fail to discover how to read from embedded phonics instruction by the age of 7-8 yrs., and remain phonologically unaware, are likely to have a specific learning difficulty, dyslexia. Those who continue to struggle despite receiving conventional remediation (described as ‘treatment non-responders’) have the most severe form of the condition.

Facts: Unless the child is profoundly deaf, mute, or grossly mentally disabled the most likely reason why they can’t read is ‘ABT (ain’t being taught!) (Miskin) or dysdidaxia (a problem with the teaching) (Macmillan p134). ‘We know that the intellectual crippling of children is caused overwhelmingly by faulty instruction -not by faulty children’ (Engelmann&Carnine 1982.Theory of instruction). ‘(F)ailure to read is often to do with the nature of the teaching rather than the nature of the child’ (Rose 2009 p60) ‘The reason that so many children fail to read and write is because the wrong teaching methods are used. The education establishment, rather than admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction are at fault, have invented a brain disorder called dyslexia’ (Stringer). They need to be taught the Alphabet Code and the skills of segmenting and blending, FAST.

read more about this here: Luqman’s Dyslexia Blog

‘Real-time Web’ creation – 15th March

Posted by Sukhbinder Basra on March 15, 2010 under Blog, Sukhi's Blog | Be the First to Comment

The idea behind a real-time Web is to create technology that doesn’t require an Internet user to actively seek out something they’re interested in. That could mean anything from getting pinged when an article about your favorite sports team is posted to an alert when you’re mentioned in someone’s blog.

Brett Slatkin, a software developer with Google, said a real-time Web would create numerous new opportunities — among them, giving small, local retailers a chance to catch up with major online stores that capitalize on convenience.

“If my corner store can say [to a customer online], ‘Yes, I just got five rickshaw bags in stock and you wanted one — you can just walk down here and get it,’ it’s a chance to change competition and commerce,” he said.

On sites like Twitter, Gowalla and Foursquare, Google Buzz and Facebook, status updates already exist as elements of a real-time Web.

Developers note that the speed with which information travels on the Internet is already dramatically faster than it was just a couple of years ago — before Twitter and location-based apps existed and before Facebook became a worldwide phenomenon.

“This creates lots of interesting social scenarios,” said Dare Obasanjo, of Microsoft. “In the ‘old days,’ you would have written a blog post about something you did and I’d be like, ‘Crap, I was in the next room.’ “

Multiple players, at both major Internet companies and new startups, are working on an Internet platform to “real time” the rest of the Web. That starts with faster searching.

Current search engines “crawl” around the Internet — adding the material they find to their databases. But that can sometimes take awhile, particularly on smaller Web sites.

Then, there needs to be a universal system for pushing that information to the right people.

Source of this information: CNN Technology news

Micro-Sculptor Puts Art in a Needle’s Eye – 12th March

Posted by Sukhbinder Basra on March 12, 2010 under Blog, Sukhi's Blog | Be the First to Comment

The U.K. native never meant for his tiny works to become a business, but some of his carefully crafted pieces sell for more than $100,000. Beauty and the Beast dance atop a pin head. Willard Wigan never meant for his art to become a business.

In fact, he never really set out to be an artist; the vocation found him as he was hiding from the real world at 5 years old.

Now 53, Mr. Wigan is renowned for his “micro-sculptures,” ultra-miniature works in a rare genre he helped create. He makes the minutest of statuettes, fitting them in a needle’s eye or fixing them atop a pinhead. He carves figures into matchsticks and puts lipstick and clothes on dead houseflies. In short, he takes life-size ideas and characters and shrinks them to a “molecular level.”

These uniquely small works, a sampling of which is currently on display at the Atlanta Art Gallery in Buckhead, fetch high-profile buyers at big prices. During an interview in February, Mr. Wigan said he was working on a commissioned sculpture that would bring seven-foot-tall basketball star Shaquille O’Neal down to nano size.

England’s Prince Charles, musician Elton John, boxer Mike Tyson and “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell all own pieces of Mr. Wigan’s work, which range in price from $35,000 to upwards of $100,000. David Lloyd, the former British tennis player, owns 72 pieces, almost half of Mr. Wigan’s total output of about 200.

Though his work has made him a millionaire, Mr. Wigan doesn’t do it for the money.

“If I wasn’t going to get paid for it, I’d still do it,” he said. “It’s like telling someone who plays basketball they won’t get paid. They’ll still do it. You do what you love.”

What has become a passion began as a defense mechanism. Mr. Wigan suffers from dyslexia, which made school life a “nightmare” for a boy born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England.

Insensitive to his learning disability, a teacher named Mrs. Adams (he made it a point to mention her name) paraded him around the school campus as the poster-child for academic failure.

“She used to make it a hobby to humiliate me. She said something so humiliating that it sticks in my mind and it will be here always. She said, ‘The word failure was invented because of you,’” Mr. Wigan said.

President Barack Obama and family celebrate election victory

The Incredible Hulk breaks out of the needle's eye

When he was supposed to be at school, Mr. Wigan would sometimes hide in the shed in his backyard. One day, as he watched ants moving in and out their holes, he decided they needed a better place to live.

“I saw an ant carrying a blade of grass, and that’s when I thought, ‘Wow, he’s trying to build a house, so I’m going to help him,’” Mr. Wigan said.

Using remnants of his dad’s discarded razor blades, 5-year-old Willard began slicing splinters of wood into the raw materials for tiny log cabins with windows made from transparent plastic candy wrappers.

Little ladders, furniture, merry-go-rounds, rocking horses and seesaws followed, and Mr. Wigan’s mother began to take interest in his work. She became the biggest source of encouragement on the self-taught artist’s quest to overcome the teacher’s negative influence.

“It’s almost wanting to tell people how big nothing can be because she made me feel like nothing. My art work has defended me to the degree now to where the doors have completely opened,” Mr. Wigan said. “It’s almost like it’s an atom bomb, these small, little sculptures have created this colossal explosion of excitement into the world.”

Atlantans can see Mr. Wigan’s works at the Atlanta Art Gallery until March 27. Depictions include President Obama and family celebrating his election victory on a needle’s eye, Charlie Chaplin dancing on the tip of an eyelash and the Titanic floating on a piece of crystal the size of a grain of sand, among many others.

For perspective, the works are displayed in plastic globes equipped with futuristic-looking microscopes. Peering around the sides of the globes, it’s hard to glimpse the sculptures. Seeing is easier in the microscope, but believing is still tough.

“There’s a mysticism when people see my work,” Mr. Wigan told GlobalAtlanta. “It almost becomes an unbelievable thing for them to actually see.”

The work of a micro Michelangelo requires loads of patience, Mr. Wigan said. It can take months to produce a single sculpture, and he sometimes works for 18 hours at a time sitting upright like a zen master hovered over a microscope at his home.

“I have to work between my heartbeat because my work has gotten so small I’ve got to be almost a dead man working,” he said. “I have to concentrate because I’m working on a molecular level.”

Mr. Wigan calls his steady hands and surgical precision a God-given gift, one he has been cultivating over the past 48 years.

His tools are varied, from high-tech instruments to natural fibers. Chisels of choice include a shard of diamond glued to the end of a needle and a scalpel specially designed by a British firm that makes surgical equipment. He scrapes away at a many media, the most common of which is a piece of nylon carpet fabric. To add color, Mr. Wigan uses hairs from a fly as a paintbrush.

The work is so small that Mr. Wigan has inhaled one of his sculptures.

“I’ve actually breathed and then my own work’s gone,” he said.

James Lawer, Mr. Wigan’s manager, said Mr. Wigan’s narrow niche gives his work broad credibility and appeal. The affluent show status by owning something that no one else can duplicate. Mr. Wigan’s work isn’t like a Rembrandt or a Picasso, of which people can own copies or prints.

“Who’s going to copy this?” Mr. Lawer said in Atlanta, adding that the economic downturn has had little effect on Mr. Wigan’s ability to sell his work. “They say there’s no depression among the rich.”

Mr. Wigan has been invited to show his work in France, Germany and Hong Kong. About 20 pieces are on display in Liverpool, England. The current U.S. tour is the first exhibition outside the U.K., hitting cities like Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.

Bill Dixon, director of the Atlanta Art Gallery, said he saw Mr. Wigan’s work in Wall Street Journal article in September and was drawn to it.

“Nobody’s showing anything like this,” Mr. Dixon said.

It’s a departure for his gallery, which focuses on late 19th and early 20th century paintings and sculptures. Mr. Dixon hoped the $5 price tag for the exhibition would bring in school groups, for which Mr. Wigan has become an inspiration.

“God gave me this gift. He threw it to me and I caught it and ran with it, but at the same time I’m showing it to the world; I’m showing it what his powers are capable of doing,” Mr. Wigan said.

Like any artist, though, Mr. Wigan keeps pushing for bigger and better – or in his case, smaller and better – things.

“I’m still not satisfied; my work’s too big,” he said.

Source of this information: Global Atlanta.com

Students learn about people with disabilities – Walking in another’s shoes

Posted by kavita on under Blog, Partnership Board Blog | Be the First to Comment

On Monday, students in Karen Bakalarski’s kindergarten at class at Gill Hall Elementary in the West Jefferson Hills School District set aside their school work in order to learn some life lessons.

Instead of handling flashcards, books and crayons, the pint-sized pupils were trying out crutches, wheelchairs, mechanical voice boxes, examining Braille books and learning sign language.

It was all part of a presentation called Building Disability Awareness sponsored by Easter Seals Western Pennsylvania.

And it wasn’t just a lecture. It was a hands-on experience led by Tracey McDonough, an integration coordinator, and Betsy Smith, an integration specialist for Easter Seals.

“Our goal is to get the students to be accepting of disabilities at a very young age,” Mrs. McDonough said.

The first part of the presentation was to introduce the students to each of the devices and explain how they help individuals overcome their disabilities.

They explained how people who have difficulty walking may wear braces on their legs and some children with leg braces may also have to wear helmets to protect their heads if they fall.

Mrs. McDonough asked the students to close their eyes to simulate blindness. She then instructed them to feel their hair, shirt and shoes.

“So even if someone can’t see, they can feel with their hands,” she pointed out.

She also asked the students to close their eyes while she spoke so they could realize that people who are blind can still hear.

Then, Mrs. Smith showed the children a mobility cane that is used by those with visual impairments, a cane that has a black handle, white body and red tip.

Mrs. Smith then demonstrated how a mobility cane is used. And, she showed how an able-bodied person can help a visually impaired person by offering to let him or her hold onto an elbow and then guiding them to their destination.

The women also showed the students a stuffed animal service dog and pointed out the harness with a handle around its trunk, instructing students to take note of it. The harness, Mrs. Smith said, meant the dog was a service dog and not simply a pet.

“Don’t ask to pet a service dog, because they are doing their work,” Mrs. Smith told the students.

She also explained that while the students can’t take their dogs into a restaurant or school, service dogs are permitted to go with their owners.

The students also learned about a device called a SpringBoard Lite, a mechanical voice box of sorts that can be used by people who can’t speak. The machine “speaks” words and phrases when buttons are pushed.

The students then helped their guests to demonstrate some of the equipment.

Hanna DuJordan, 6, demonstrated walking with wooden crutches and classmate Sami Garbowksy, 5, used a walker with wheels and later paged through Braille storybooks.

Luke Regna, 5, demonstrated a wheelchair, learning to use the seatbelt and footbraces before moving and Sami Garbowsky, 5, learned to use a walker with wheels and a seat.

Afterward the children were able to divide into groups and try out the equipment on their own.

Mrs. McDonough said the Building Disability Awareness Program started last year after Easter Seals was able to garner grant money from the FISA Foundation, the Wallace Hough Charitable Trust and the V. Kelly for Handicapped Children fund though the PNC Charitable Trust.

It has become so popular that its presenters are booked solid with about 300 presentations a year to schools and Scouts. Among the other places presentations were recently given were to Girl Scouts in Mt. Lebanon, Westminster Nursery School in Upper St. Clair and Jewish East Suburban Preschool in Monroeville.

Source of this article: Post-Gazette

New book raises disability awareness

Posted by kavita on under Blog, Partnership Board Blog | Be the First to Comment

Kris Schanilec and Rachel Faldet of Decorah, Iowa, have co-edited “From My Perspective: Essays About Disability,” a book authored by people affiliated with The Spectrum Network, an Iowa-based organization that helps people with disabilities with work and training, daily living tasks, and day activities. The book published last August.

One woman with a disability wrote about her many roadblocks faced when having to negotiate with her support team the possibility of her marrying the man who would become her husband. One man discussed the anxiety and joy felt moving into an apartment on his own for the first time. The book also features several stories from staff members and parents of people with disabilities. Except for one mentioning epilepsy, not one writer mentioned their specific disability. “

And every story has a different angle,” said Schanilec. “One was written by a staff person talking about her experience in the human services field and then having a medical problem putting her in the hospital. She was on the other side of the coin.” A public reading occurred last October at the Decorah Public Library to a packed house. “There was a lot of dignity in that room,” said Schanilec. “About eight authors read out loud. Reading their stories in print makes you think about their experience objectively, but hearing it read aloud in a public setting took it to another level.” Their work has received “overwhelmingly positive” community feedback, she said.

Many people read the book repeatedly before passing it on to friends. Besides working with The Spectrum Network, Schanilec has other connections to disability. Her mother had mobility issues while having a brain tumor and a friend has bipolar disorder.

For more stories of courage in disability, visit Stories about disabilties

Source of this information:Hernando today

A Woman’s Undying Gift to Science

Posted by Sukhbinder Basra on February 4, 2010 under Blog, Blog - A Discussion Board, Sukhi's Blog | Be the First to Comment

A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of “Erin Brockovich,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Andromeda Strain.” More than 10 years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent. The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave. To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine. There are, Ms. Skloot writes, “trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.” Laid end to end, the world’s HeLa cells would today wrap around the earth three times. Because HeLa cells reproduced with what the author calls a “mythological intensity,” they could be used in test after test. “They helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Skloot writes. HeLa cells were used to learn how nuclear bombs affect humans, and to study herpes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. They were sent up in the first space missions, to see what becomes of human cells in zero gravity. Bought and sold and shipped around the world for decades, HeLa cells are famous to science students everywhere. But little has been known, until now, about the unwitting donor of these cells. Mrs. Lacks’s own family did not know that her cells had become famous (and that people had grown wealthy from marketing them) until more than two decades after her death, after scientists had begun to take blood from her surviving family members, without their informed consent, in order to better study HeLa.