Gallery to show artists' abilities, not disabilities

The Enquirer
By Karen Vance
Enquirer contributor

Anderson Hills United Methodist Church sees the Christian Church as a jigsaw puzzle of people.

The congregation is making a point Sunday of highlighting contributions to that puzzle by people with disabilities, with an art show called "The Gallery of Capabilities."

"Every piece of the puzzle is important to make it complete, and if a church doesn't have all the pieces it isn't complete," said the Rev. Lilanthi Ward, pastor of congregational care at the church. "Every person is valuable in God's eyes. This should be a place where people with disabilities can come to worship.

Check this out

If you are an artist interested to show your work visit the National Arts and disability Center' site to get more info. Show your art. Show your Ability!!! Choose-Ability

*Art
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Disabled Sailor crosses English Channel

This is an awesome story.
Excerpted from The Guardian

Photo by Gill Allen, Timesonline


By Colin Blackstock

Hilary Lister A paralysed woman has become the first quadriplegic sailor to cross the English Channel. yesterday sipped and puffed her way into the record books, becoming the first quadriplegic to sail solo across the Channel.

Lister, who is able to move only her head, eyes and mouth, used two straws to navigate her eight-metre (26ft) boat Malin through one of the busiest and most dangerous shipping channels in the world.

By sucking and blowing on the straws in her specially adapted boat she was able to adjust the sails and tiller of the boat

After arriving in France the 33-year-old said: "I am just thrilled."

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Deaf student follows movie dream

A deaf student who wants to become a film maker has described how studying photography helped him to "hear" and understand the world around him.

" For me pictures are a source of information, they are how I hear things, they are how I learn," said the 23-year-old from Reading, Berkshire."

"I had a personal tutor, they provided a computer, they did so much for me here"

Luke Blackburn

He has been offered a place at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

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Bringing e-democracy to the disabled

Photo By Mopgel

Austinchronicle.com
BY WELLS DUNBAR

Imagine a veritable NASCAR of breakneck Web design, where the city's top site constructors join with local nonprofits to bring blind and disabled Internet users into the winner's circle.

"We believe that everyone, regardless of disability, should have access to the information technology that has changed our lives," said Sharron Rush, executive director of Knowbility, at a press conference last week.

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Reinventing the wheelchair

A friend of ChooseAbility sent me the link of this story.

By Margie Manning

Tampa Bay Business Journal.

The James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa is one of a dozen veterans hospitals in the United States now offering the disabled a new way to get around.

Two physical therapists at the hospital have been trained to work with patients using the iBOT Mobility System, a sophisticated device that looks like a wheelchair but allows users to climb curbs, go up and down stairs, and travel at an elevated eye-to-eye level.

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Our First Weekly Conference on Skype

We have liftoff! 10:44 and Paul finally got his Skype to work. Art is still working on it. The meeting was scheduled for 10pm.

This is where we work out the bugs and see if Skype meetings are actually feasible for PWDs, specifically quadriplegics.

Art is online, we are conferencing!

.....


Paul was just too beat to continue, so Art and I will go ahead and work on getting Art's blog running again.

Art's, er female friend, to avoid naming names, went nuts saying this is the stupidest thing she has ever heard of. She said, "I thought you were meeting with people all over the world, but you're all right here!" (meaning New York City, Manhattan and Brooklyn)

Well, not RIGHT here. We are each at least 45 minutes travel time apart. If we have the weekly meeting like this, we don't lose the hour and a half of travel time and we each have our own computer to use instead of trying to share one computer.

Art has problems with an echo, I suggested using headphones. That fixed it for my brother. He also has a very old version of WIndows which does not support Skype so he was borrowing a friend's connection. I wonder if that is common among People with Disabilities; having an OLD version of Windows. Maybe we should look into
Gizmo, the other Skype competitor. Nope, I just looked and Gizmo wants at least WIndows 2000 too.

After a very long tutorial and some simple but time-consuming debugging, Art's blog is online again:

artoi.chooseability.org

He and Paul will work on getting Paul's blog online again too.

It's 2:00am now.

That's a long meeting.

Skype is cool. We'll see if it is, in reality, the best way for us to do these virtual meetings.

The issues Paul has are:

No headmouse, so he has to have someone there to click because you can't talk and do voice commands and the same time. You may want to consider donating, so he can get a headmouse.

Insane background noise.

Innumerable distractions.

Inability to speak loud without a breathing helper. The breathing helper he has is LOUD so it can't really be used while Skyping.

Windows spyware problems and general computer problems.