Facts of the Day Calendar
October 01, 2016
"#InclusionWorks" has been chosen as the theme for the 2016 National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy said that this year’s theme seeks to inspire social media awareness of workers with disabilities.
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October 2, 2016
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, service animals are dogs trained to perform tasks for people with disabilities. This includes guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, and calming a person with post-traumatic stress disorder during an anxiety attack. The tasks a dog has been trained to perform must be directly related to the person’s disability.
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October 3, 2016
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that when federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, federal employees and the general public with disabilities have access to and use of information that is comparable to access to and use of information by people without disabilities.
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October 4, 2016
Photographer Dorothea Lange walked with a limp as a result of contracting polio as a child. She said of her disability, “I think it was perhaps the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me -- all those things at once. I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.”
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October 5, 2016
to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, about 1 in 68 children have been identified with autism spectrum disorder, which occurs in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. It is almost five times more common among boys, 1 in 42, than among girls, 1 in 189.
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October 6, 2016
In the 1950s, veterans with disabilities and other people with disabilities began the barrier-free movement. The combined efforts of the U.S. Veterans Administration, the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped and the National Easter Seals Society, among others, result in the development of national standards for "barrier-free" buildings.
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October 7, 2016
The 2016 Paralympics, the 15th Summer Paralympic Games, were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and introduced two new sports to the competition: canoeing and the paratriathlon.
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October 8, 2016
The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps updated information about national labor force statistics with demographic characteristics available from the Current Population Survey (CPS).
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October 9, 2016
The effort to educate the American public about disability and employment began in 1945 when Congress declared the first week in October "National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week." In 1962, "physically" was removed to acknowledge the employment needs and contributions of all individuals with disabilities. In 1988, Congress expanded the week to a month and changed the name to "National Disability Employment Awareness Month."
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October 10, 2016
In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected the 32nd President of the United States. Roosevelt used a wheelchair as a result of contracting polio in 1921. He inspired and directed the March of Dimes program that eventually funded the polio vaccine.
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October 11, 2016
On June 22, 1999, the Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead vs. L.C. that unjustified segregation of persons with disabilities constitutes discrimination in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiffs were two women who had mental illness and developmental disabilities. They had been voluntarily admitted to the psychiatric unit of a state-run hospital but were held for several years after their initial treatment.
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October 12, 2016
In 1935, the League for the Physically Handicapped formed in New York City to protest discrimination by the Works Progress Administration. The 300 members — most with disabilities caused by polio and cerebral palsy — had been denied WPA jobs because the Home Relief Bureau of New York City had stamped their applications “PH” for physically handicapped. League members held sit-ins and eventually generated thousands of jobs nationwide.
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October 13, 2016
About 27 million women in the United States have disabilities, and the number is growing. More than 50 percent of women older than 65 are living with a disability. The most common cause of disability for women is arthritis or rheumatism.
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October 14, 2016
The Disability History Museum provides visitors an array of tools to help deepen the understanding of human variation and difference, and to expand appreciation of how vital to our common life the experiences of people with disabilities have always been. The website is located at disabilitymuseum.org.
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October 15, 2016
The first Special Olympics Global Development Summit was held in 2013 to explore ways to "End the Cycle of Poverty and Exclusion for People with Intellectual Disabilities." Participants in the summit included government officials and human rights activists, as well as leaders from the sports and business world. There's no easy answer to the questions raised, but as one activist noted, "when we bring our skills together, we are unstoppable."
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October 16, 2016
The Road To Freedom tour kicked off on Nov. 15, 2006. This 50-state bus tour and photographic exhibit chronicled the history of the grassroots movement that led to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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October 17, 2016
The Disabled American Veterans was founded in 1920 by disabled veterans from World War I to represent their special interests. In 1932, the DAV was congressionally chartered as the official voice of the nation’s wartime disabled veterans.
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October 18, 2016
Jim Langevin was the first quadriplegic to serve in the House of Representatives. At 16, he was injured while in the Boy Scout Explorer program working with a local police department and was hit by a bullet and paralyzed when a gun accidentally discharged. Inspired by the community support he received, he decided to enter public service. In 1994, he became the nation’s youngest Secretary of State, and in 2000, he was elected to the House of Representatives.
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October 19, 2016
Daniel Inouye was born and raised in Hawaii. In 1942, he enlisted in the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat team, made up of soldiers of Japanese ancestry. After losing his right arm in battle in 1945, he was honorably discharged in 1947, earning the Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart, among other awards. He became Hawaii’s first congressman when it became a state in 1959. In 1962, he was elected to the Senate, where he served for almost 50 years.
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October 20, 2016
In 2004, the Supreme Court heard Tennessee vs. Lane, a case in which individuals sued the state of Tennessee for failing to ensure that courthouses were accessible to people with disabilities. One plaintiff was arrested when he refused to crawl or be carried upstairs. The state argued that they could not be sued under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Supreme Court was in favor of people with disabilities, however, ruled that Tennessee could be sued for damages under Title II for failing to provide access to the courts.
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October 21, 2016
In 1935, Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, establishing federal old-age benefits and grants to the states for assistance to blind individuals and children with disabilities. The act also extends the already existing vocational rehabilitation programs established by earlier legislation.
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October 22, 2016
Thomas Edison lost almost all his hearing when he was about 12 years old. This may have been caused by scarlet fever, but he believed it resulted from being grabbed by the ears and lifted onto a moving train. He often regarded his disability as an asset that allowed him to concentrate on his experiments and research. He became a renowned inventor who acquired 1,093 patents, and whose inventions included the light bulb and the phonograph.
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October 23, 2016
Down syndrome remains the most common chromosomal condition diagnosed in the United States. Each year, about 6,000 babies born in the United States have Down syndrome. This means that Down syndrome occurs in about 1 out of every 700 babies.
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October 24, 2016
The BARD mobile app provides access to Braille and talking books directly from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped with the Braille and Audio Reading Download. BARD contains nearly 80,000 books, magazines, and music scores in audio and braille formats, with new selections added daily.
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October 25, 2016
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the ADA stems from collective efforts by advocates in the preceding decades and is the most comprehensive disability rights legislation in history.
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October 26, 2016
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a law ensuring services to children with disabilities. The IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.
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October 27, 2016
Over the past 25 years, Boy Scouts Troop 409, whose members have had various physical and mental disabilities, have earned 1,000 merit badges and produced eight Eagle Scouts. Scoutmaster Richard Coleman, a former Air Force sergeant said, "To me they aren't disabled -- they're scouts -- and that's how I treat them." The troop has 22 members, including seven of its ten charter members who are still involved because age limits don’t apply to scouts with permanent disabilities.
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October 28, 2016
In the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Marla Runyan finished eighth in the 1,500-meter run, the highest finish by an American woman in that event. Runyan, who holds American women’s records in several running events, was the first legally blind person to compete in the Olympics.
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October 29, 2016
In 2010, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13548, to increase federal employment of people with disabilities. The Office of Personnel Management released model strategies to help agencies meet their obligations. The DoD employs about 52,000 individuals with disabilities, defining them as current employees who have elected to identify themselves as an individual with a disability.
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October 30, 2016
One of the common misconceptions about individuals who are visually impaired or blind is the belief that they can read and write Braille. In actuality, only about ten percent of people who are blind can read and write Braille.
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October 31, 2016
The last "ugly law" was repealed in Chicago in 1974. These laws allowed police to arrest and jail people with "apparent" disabilities for no reason other than being disfigured or demonstrating some type of disability.
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