A couple of interesting disability-related items. First, Governor Dean has posted the disability rights plank of his platform. He seems to have a good grasp of the fundamentals, including full funding of IDEA, passage of MiCASA, and appointing people with disabilities to visible posts in the Executive Branch. Democrats have been traditional supporters of disability rights, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that Dean is addressing this issue. At the same time, a lot of this support comes across as patronizing lip service. Dean seems pretty thoughtful and it will be interesting to see how the other candidates respond.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has an article about my former employer, PACER Center, and its joint collaboration with IBM on a summer technology camp for girls with disabilities. The camp is intended to introduce these girls to careers in technology and science. The girls are also paired with mentors from IBM. It’s a fucking great idea. I wish stuff like this had been around when I was a kid. For me, summers were mind-numbingly boring because there just wasn’t much for me to do. I sometimes enrolled in a summer class at the local university, but I still had a lot of time on my hands.
The other night, my dad neeed help figuring out how to use the burner on his new notebook computer. I had to explain to him that you can’t just save a file to disc like you would with a floppy. We had to go over the process a few times before he got it. At one point, I wanted to scream, “Dad, it’s after 11 and I’m more than a little tired and I just want to watch the latest Project Greenlight on my TiVo! Can we do this later?” But I didn’t. I wonder if, in another 10 or 20 years, I’ll be similarly befuddled by new technologies.
I’ve often wondered this myself. I hope not.
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