Story one: in a battle over a service dog, a school board is brought to heel:
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Stevie is a good dog. He doesn’t eat from the table or have accidents in the
house. And he never pulls on his leash.
The white-and-tan Staffordshire terrier also has a special talent: He alerts
caregivers when his little boy, Anthony Merchante, is going to have a seizure or
has trouble breathing.
Anthony’s mother, Monica Alboniga, tried for two years to persuade the
Broward County School Board in South Florida to permit Stevie, a trained service
animal, to accompany the 7-year-old on campus. But school administrators
repeatedly said Stevie didn’t belong at school. And they hoped that a Fort
Lauderdale federal judge would agree with them.
Instead they got a scolding. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Beth
Bloom ruled that Stevie should be allowed to join his human friend at Nob Hill
Elementary — and without a series of requirements the school district had tacked
on.
Stevie, Alboniga said, “has saved Anthony’s life. I feel completely safe
every time he is with the dog, because I know the dog will look for help.”
As the lawsuit progressed in federal court, the school board allowed Stevie
to go to school every day, but administrators continued to fight the case.
“The district has always permitted the service dog at the school,” said the
district’s spokeswoman, Tracy Clark. Alboniga “pursued the lawsuit as the
parties [the district and the plaintiff] differ somewhat in the interpretation
of the federal regulations governing service animals. The district’s legal
department is reviewing and analyzing the order.”
Had the district won, Alboniga’s lawyer said, 4-year-old Stevie almost
certainly would have been expelled.
Anthony suffers from a host of serious disabilities: He has cerebral palsy,
spastic paralysis, a seizure disorder, and he cannot speak. To get around, he
depends on a wheelchair, to which Stevie is tethered most of the time.
Alboniga, 37, who is raising her son alone, paid to obtain and train a dog up
to the specifications of Assistance Dog International Standards, records say.
Stevie can aid caregivers in a variety of ways: He can step onto Anthony’s
wheelchair and lay across the boy’s lap; once there, the dog is trained to help
stabilize Anthony’s head so his airway isn’t impeded.
“Stevie was also trained to ‘tell’ or ‘alert’ human responders in the event
that [Anthony] was experiencing a medical crisis,” Bloom wrote. The dog can jump
on a sensor mat that activates an alarm, or bark to get the attention of
caregivers. He also wears a red service dog vest that holds medical supplies, as
well as detailed instructions on how to respond to medical emergencies.
“Stevie lets me know when he has seizures or problems breathing. He pushes me
toward Anthony. He barks,” Alboniga said. “When Anthony is having convulsions,
he starts barking and goes looking for us. Then he goes back to Anthony and
stays with him.”
At home in Sunrise, Fla., Stevie is also a house pet, although he isn’t all
that interested in Anthony’s baby sister, Mariangel, a 5-month-old, because he
seems to intuitively understand that Anthony is his full-time job. “He loves
Anthony,” Alboniga said. “And Anthony loves Stevie, too.”
“He is a very good dog,” Alboniga said. “He is very sweet, and very obedient.
He is the best there is.”
All 50 pounds of Stevie rest next to Anthony in bed each night, and the boy
and dog are virtually inseparable. That’s partly by design. It’s best if service
animals spend almost all of their time with their “targets,” trainers say, and
long separations diminish the animal’s “responsiveness and effectiveness,” Bloom
wrote.
Alboniga first approached the school board in May 2013, and submitted a
formal request for the dog two months later. In its reply in August 2013, the
school board said Stevie must obtain a host of vaccinations that rarely are
applied to dogs, required Alboniga to obtain costly liability insurance, and
mandated that she provide, at her own expense, a “handler” for Stevie.
The requirements, said Alboniga’s lawyer, Matthew Dietz, amounted to “an
impossible barrier,” and violated federal civil rights laws that give preference
to the choices of people with disabilities. “The fact that the judge said the
school board’s rules made no sense vindicates this woman’s belief that what she
was doing for her son was the right thing,” Dietz said.
For the first four months that Anthony attended Nob Hill Elementary School as
a kindergartner, beginning in August 2013, Alboniga worked, at the district’s
requirement, as Stevie’s handler herself. Later, the school board appointed a
custodian to work as Stevie’s handler. His responsibilities were “to walk Stevie
alongside [Anthony] with a leash, instead of allowing Stevie to be attached” to
the boy’s wheelchair, and to take the dog outside to urinate. The custodian also
ensured that other children did not try to play with the dog.
“While at school,” the judge wrote, “Stevie does not eat or drink. Nor does
Stevie defecate or make stains, or require cleaning or exercise.” Alboniga, the
judge said, “attends to Stevie’s daily feeding, cleaning and care needs.”
But administrators continued to assert in the lawsuit that it was not the
district’s responsibility to help the boy keep Stevie at school. Anthony’s
“individual educational plan” — a detailed accounting of the school’s
accommodations to the child — does not mention Anthony’s use of a service dog,
Bloom wrote.
Anthony found a friend in the U.S. Department of Justice. The department’s
civil rights division enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act, landmark
legislation passed by Congress in 1990. Last month, the DOJ weighed in on the
lawsuit, arguing that the school board “fundamentally misunderstands” ADA
regulations, which require that “public entities generally must permit
individuals with disabilities to be accompanied by their service animals.”
“Congress specifically intended that individuals with disabilities not be
separated from their service animals, even in schools,” the DOJ wrote.
The school board contended that it wasn’t necessary for Stevie to accompany
Anthony to school since the elementary’s staff already was trained to perform
the same tasks as Stevie. The district also argued that, even if Stevie was
permitted on Nob Hill’s campus under the ADA, it was not reasonable for the
district to bear the costs of the dog’s handler.
The judge wrote that the dispute pivoted on whether it was reasonable to
expect the district to allow Stevie on campus under the federal civil rights
law.
The judge ruled that it was indeed reasonable, “in the same way a school
would assist a non-disabled child to use the restroom, or assist a diabetic
child with her insulin pump, or assist a physically disabled child employ her
motorized wheelchair.”
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Good grief. Those folks at that school ought to be ashamed of themselves. Meanwhile--during the recent broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremonies, there was a TV ad shown designed to spark conversations concerning how persons with disabilities consume entertainment:
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A national television ad debuting during the Oscars is designed to spark
conversation about how people with disabilities consume entertainment.
The 60-second spot for Comcast features a 7-year-old named Emily who was born
blind describing what she sees in her mind when she watches her favorite movie,
“The Wizard of Oz.” Visuals in the commercial recreate Emily’s version of the
classic film.
The cable giant is using Emily’s story to hawk its new “talking guide,” which
reads television program titles, network names, times and other details aloud so
that users with visual disabilities and other special needs can independently
navigate the TV experience.
“We want to create opportunities for people who love film and television, but
who might not have the opportunity to experience it to its fullest,” said Tom
Wlodkowski, Comcast’s vice president of accessibility who is blind himself. “By
bringing the talking guide to as many people as possible, we can help to bridge
that gap and make entertainment just as compelling, captivating and fun for
people with a visual disability as it is for anyone else.”
Some of Hollywood’s top talent worked to make Emily’s version of Oz a reality
and Academy Award winner Robert Redford does the voice-over for the
advertisement, Comcast officials said.
Advertising during Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast on ABC is big business,
with the cost of a 30-second commercial reportedly fetching an
average of $1.95 million.
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If you go to the link above, you can see the ad itself. Good for Comcast.
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