Disability on Television: Family Guy

The following excerpt is taken from an article that was published on August 27, 2010.

The National Down Syndrome Congress of the U.S. is taking Emmy organizers to task for nominating the song Down Syndrome Girl for an award for outstanding original music and lyrics.  The song was sung by Baby Stewie on the satirical animated show Family Guy in an episode broadcast in February.  There was outrage when the episode was shown, and Down syndrome advocates became more concerned after the song picked up still more viewers on YouTube. The Emmy nomination added to the insult.  “It goes through a litany of stereotypes that people with Down syndrome have been fighting for years, and so self-advocates stood up and said ‘we’ve had enough,'” Carol Bishop Mills, a member of the board of the National Down Syndrome Congress, said Friday in an interview with CBC’s Q cultural affairs show.

To read the rest of the story, go to the CBC site here or at this url: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2010/08/27/down-syndrome-girl-emmy.html

You can also listen to the relevant segment of the episode of Q referenced above right here or at

http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2010/08/27/should-the-song-down-syndrome-girl-from-family-guy-win-an-emmy/

You can watch the video for Down Syndrome Girl immediately below

Next is a video that displays the lyrics fairly clearly:

Int J of Disability, Community and Rehabilitation Special Issue on Nanotechnology, Disability, Community and Rehabilitation

New in the Int J of Disability, Community and Rehabilitation (IJDCR)

The issue can be found here

An IJDCR Special Issue on Nanotechnology, Disability, Community and Rehabilitation edited by Gregor Wolbring,
Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies Program, Dept of Community
Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Canada

Articles:

Editor’s Introduction to the Special Issue, by Gregor Wolbring

If Nanotechnology Were a Magic Wand What Obligations Would it Bring? Or:
The Right to Enhance Versus the Right to Morphological Freedom, by Heather
Bradshaw

Optimization of Human Capacities and the Representation of the Nanoscale
Body, by Michele Robitaille

Nanotechnology: Changing the Disability Paradigm, by Laura Cabrera

The journal welcomes submissions on a continuous basis that focus on nanoscale and nanoscale-enabled science and technology as it impacts on disabled people and the broader community and the role of rehabilitation professionals, family members and others.

Disabled? Watch This And You Won’t Think So.

Further proof that people categorized as “disabled” can be amazingly talented and easily surpass the skills of those categorized as “abled”.

Woogle Works

Woogle Works Logo: The O's in "Woogle" are little stick people in wheelchairs.

Woogle Works is a very cool blog by designer Wai Lam Wong that focuses heavily on design ideas for people who are either permanently or temporarily disabled.  Some of the niftier gadgets include a device for opening bottles with a single hand and a computer mouse that is dual-purpose in the sense that it fits both the hand of a man with a differently shaped right hand and the right hands of his family.  If you’d like to see what another blogger has to say about this blog, look here.

Families and Memory — Free Public Symposium

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A Free Public Symposium on Eugenics and Family Life:
Past, Present & Future
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Friday, October 24, 2008, 8:30 am – 4:00pm
Edmonton Public Library, Stanley Milner Branch (Downtown)

This FREE PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM will centre on the stories and experiences of survivors of sterilization, institutionalization, and other aspects of our social structure that have excluded persons with real or perceived disabilities from family life

Planning on attending? Enrollment is limited! Please tell us!

Visit http://www.whatsorts.net and register today
(Register Here)

Get more details on the day beneath the fold.

CBC News – Disability Matters

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran a monthly column focusing on disability issues in 2005 & 2006. The series rotated between three disabled Canadians–Anna Quon (Nova Scotia), Ed Smith (Newfoundland), and Hélèna Katz (Montreal)–and was intended to focus in on their experiences and reflections as such. The column concluded in August 2006, but the stories and comments remain relevant and thought provoking. A complete list of the columns follows. I especially recommend Imagine a Disability You Can’t See and The Beautiful Kindness in People.

What Sorts of Paralympics? A Disabled Swimmer’s Dream, a Mother’s Fight

Its about a swimmer with cerebral palsy and developmental differences. An excerpt

“Mr. Kendall Bailey, an athlete who is a citizen of the USA and eligible to represent the USA in international competition, is inappropriately classified to compete in International Paralympic Committee (IPC) swimming competition. Mr. Bailey is intellectually disabled. The intellectual disability classification for swimming (S14) is not presently recognized by the IPC; nor is an intellectually disabled swimmer eligible to compete under the IPC Swimming Functional Classification System.”

see hereTechnorati Tags: Sports, Ableism, Olympics, Paralympics, Discrimination, Disabled people

Olympics-Guide’s disabled descriptions to be amended

more here
one has to see whether the new language will be better