The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

SACRAMENTO — In the three years since her son Diego was given a diagnosis of autism at age 2, Carmen Aguilar has made countless contributions to research on this perplexing disorder. She has donated all manner of biological samples and agreed to keep journals of everything she’s eaten, inhaled or rubbed on her skin.

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Laurens, IA. - Federal prosecutors say the government has settled a complaint with the city of Laurens in northwestern Iowa stemming from the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. attorney’s office said Friday that Laurens has installed more than 200 curb cuts to ensure people with physical disabilities can safely access sidewalks. The city was accused in October 2003 of not letting a disabled teenager and others who use motorized wheelchairs operate them on city streets.

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An estimated 54 million Americans are living with a disability. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act--the landmark legislation that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Although much progress has been made, individuals with disabilities are still underrepresented in the federal workplace--representing little more than five percent of the 2.5 million federal employees, including ...

Prevent crimes by the mentally ill with a federal Ed Thomas Act, Bruce Braley says

Federal lawmakers should pass a version of Iowa’s “Ed Thomas Act,” which gives law enforcement officials new ways to ensure they’ll be informed when mental hea...

3 Ruling Find No Link to Vaccines and Autism

By Donald G. McNeils, Jr.

Published: March 12, 2010, New York Times

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a mercury preservative, does not cause autism. The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding ...

Crimes distort reality of schizophrenia

By Tony Leys, Des Moines Register

March 7, 2010

Cedar Rapids, Ia. - A newspaper lying in Steve Miller's kitchen blared the latest front-page news about a person with schizophrenia. The big black headline announced: "Becker guilty." The paper showed a picture of a stone-faced Mark Becker, the ...

Blind violinist injured in Haiti quake fighting the odds, once again

By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 7, 2010

MIAMI -- As darkness fell on what was left of his music school in Haiti, Romel Joseph found a distraction for his pain and fear. He imagined himself performing Tchaikovsky's Violin C...

WHEN it comes to special education, Becky McGee and her 19-year-old son, Kyle, feel as if they’ve seen it all. And Ms. McGee hopes her hard-won lessons might benefit other parents. Kyle was born with orthopedic and neurological problems. In elementary school he was found to have several learning disabilities that included severe dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder. Ms. McGee sought for years for her son to get the kinds of therapy and intervention that would help him succeed in his ...

The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote: "The world is ugly and the people are sad." Stevens was an insurance executive as well as a poet and he spent his commercial life poring over actuarial tables. He saw how fragile luck really is and how our dreams of beauty and health are shortened by accidents, genetics, war and much else. A flap arose not long ago when the Fox cartoon series "Family Guy" featured a character with Down syndrome. The character Ellen was presented as the episodic love intere...

Industry reports consistently rate workers with disabilities as average or above average when it comes to employee performance, attendance, retention and safety. So why are so many people with disabilities unemployed? The No. 1 barrier preventing many companies from hiring people with disabilities continues to be "attitudes at all corporate levels," according to a report published in the February edition of T + D magazine, the trade publication for the American Society for Training & Deve...