My eyelids get heavy even when I overhear someone utter the word “baseball”, but I’d pony up the money for a ticket to a game at the new uber-accessible Yankee Stadium. I’m accustomed to seeing disability seating in sports venues clustered in a few spots (and usually priced at a premium), but the new ballpark has disability and companion seating scattered throughout the whole park, even the cheap seats. The dugouts and fields are also accessible, which means fans with disabilities will be able to rush the field along with everyone else when the Yankees win the next pennant. The team will also provide assistive listening devices and game programs printed in Braille and large print.

I recently walked by the nearly-complete Target Field (only the Yankee have the resources to avoid slapping a corporate logo on their stadium), the new home for the Twins which opens next year. I’m hopeful it will provide a similar level of accessibility.

Last week, my sister attempted to make brunch reservations at a popular local restaurant that shall remain nameless. My sister explained that she needed reservations for six, including one person in a wheelchair. The hostess informed my sister that she could accommodate everyone in the party except for the person in the wheelchair. My sister protested and asked to speak to the manager. The hostess called my sister back a short while later and backtracked on her earlier prohibition on me and my wheelchair entering her restaurant.

I understand that restaurants have space issues, particularly during busy weekends. But we could have made the reservations without mentioning my disability, shown up at the restaurant, and let the staff decide at that moment whether to accommodate. And it’s a good illustration of how disability bias differs from other kinds of bias. I don’t encounter many people who outright hate me because of my disability. Instead, I’m usually seen as an inconvenient presence, an unexpected and confounding interruption to someone’s daily routine. It’s easier to ignore me rather than figure out how to accommodate me. It’s a perfectly human reaction that can usually be countered with a judicious mix of humor and patience, but there are times when I get weary of being a mobile teachable moment and just want to shove someone into the path of the oncoming clue train.

Minneapolis, like any urban center, has its share of blight. These days, the North Side is considered the sketchy part of town. But a few decades ago, Minneapolis’ skid row was located near downtown, only a few blocks from my home. A locally produced documentary that aired on public television ten or twenty years ago includes amazingly candid footage of Washington Avenue’s denizens circa 1960. Back then, Washington Avenue was a much different place–bars and flophouses lined the street and drunken railroad workers horsed around on the sidewalk and in the alleys. The film’s narrator, a former bar owner who calls himself Johnny Rex, expresses a great deal of affection for these skid row inhabitants and doesn’t dwell much on the part he played in feeding their habits.

The forces of gentrification and time have erased most signs that these places ever existed. Washington Avenue is now lined with condos and coffehouses. And it will probably be completely transformed again in another fifty years’ time.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip.

When it comes to achieving full employment of people with disabilities who want to work, the United States still has a long way to go. But things are much grimmer in places like Argentina, where one in three people with disabilities have not even completed elementary and concepts like “reasonable accommodation” are unheard of.

The author of the report states that job opportunities for people with disabilities in Argentina will only improve once they don’t have to “generate  profits” for others. I’m not sure that’s right. Rather, activists and advocates need to help employers understand that people with disabilities can be as productive as able-bodied employees and can usually be accommodated at minimal expense. It requires some employers to be willing to serve as trendsetters and hire people with disabilities, thus demonstrating to everyone else that this is a win-win proposition for the employer and employee.

“Do you think I need a lawyer?”

People ask me that question regularly and I usually give the standard answer they teach us in law school: “It depends.” Not every legal issue requires an attorney’s advice. When I clerked for a judge in Hennepin County, I saw plenty of people appear before the court pro se. Sometimes, people can represent themselves just fine. But in many cases, people would have been better served by having a lawyer at their side. But lawyers can be expensive and, as the Times points out, the recession is forcing more people to represent themselves whether they want to or not.

The judge for whom I clerked did his best to guide pro se parties through the hearing process and to ensure that they don’t get ambushed by opposing counsel. But judges aren’t advocates; I can remember the pained expression on my judges’s face as we watched a confused and sometimes terrified pro se individual struggle to present his or her side of the case. My own rule of thumb: if the other side is represented by counsel, do whatever you can to obtain representation.