Disabilities Need Not Define Anyone

Nobel prizes do not begin to recognize all the scientific advances overcoming human frailties. Actually, scientists and others have a lot to work with: the capabilities of the human body, including its immune system, and brains.

     From a wheelchair-accessible igloo built by a Dad to robotic legs that enabled a veteran to walk for the first time in 30 years, people are not giving up on those with infirmities. A performer with no feet can be "Dancing with the Stars" on TV, a young lady with Downs Syndrome has modeled a gown on a designer's catwalk, a sightless artist's paintings hang in a gallery, a former spy recovered from being poisoned by foreign agents. Google's 2019 Super Bowl commercial showed how video game controllers can be adapted for those with disabilities. Users can open packaging for games with their teeth, if necessary.

     Around the world, people are figuring out how to provide the little boost some need to keep connected with society. That's always been done. Ben Franklin realized older people needed bifocals when their eyes' focus changed. Someone came up with white canes to help sighted people look out for the blind. FDR could become President with the help of leg braces, a wheelchair, and a car's driver. And Dr. Salk created a cure for polio so victims of the disease no longer needed these assists.

      At abledata.com, check out "assistive technology information" about the wide range of products available to overcome walking, sitting, personal care, communication, hearing, and other limitations.Also see usicd.org (the U.S.  International Council on Disabilities), the authors at disabilityinkidlit.com, and read The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 2 Fuzzy, 2 Furious by Shannon and Dean Hale. A teen character wears a hearing aid.

     Several special projects deserve mention. In Washington, D.C., deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing employees run a Starbucks using American Sign Language. In Brazil, trendwatching.com tells how a foundation for the blind and a beer institute teamed up to teach blind students to employ their enhanced smell and taste in service to the sensory analysis of beer. The first of "The 50 Best Inventions of 2018" featured by TIME magazine this year (Nov.28/Dec.3, 2018 issue) is a robotic arm that updated the artificial arm, shown on PBS's "Antique Roadshow," that was invented for injured soldiers in the American Civil War.

     While helping an 80-year-old friend navigate a luncheon outing, I saw how easily she converted her walker to a wheelchair, locked a brake, and hung her purse on the handle. If she wanted to take any of what she didn't eat home, she had a bag hanging ready on the other handle. To fit in my car, the unlocked walker/chair easily collapsed. In his final years, a therapy dog helped former President George H. W. Bush the way animals, including a horse, assist and comfort ill, blind, and other disabled people.

     According to TIME magazine's section on 2018's innovations (Nov. 26/Dec. 3, 2018), three million Americans need to get around in wheelchairs. Whill's new $4,000 electric Model C1 wheelchair, available in different colors, can travel 10 miles indoors and out, climb 2-inch obstacles, maneuver in cramped spaces, and disassemble for transport in minutes. 

     Elsewhere, scientists work to discover what can help us and what can hurt us. Glyphosate was hailed as a way to rid fields of weeds but it also was discovered to be a possible cancer-causing agent for humans. The same gene editing that promises to rid the world of malaria-carrying mosquitoes can inject dangerous mutations into generations of humans. Controversy continues to fuel debate over how cellphone radiation might contribute to memory loss, brain cancer and sperm damage. The manufacturer of Truvada tries to warn those who use the pill that reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex that additional safe sex practices are still needed to prevent pregnancy, syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections. Besides, for Truvada or its generic equivalents to work, those who need it have to come forward.

     The good news is: young people always will have an opportunity to create ways to overcome human limitations, and all of us humans know there are folks thinking up ways to make our lives better.

   



     

You Have To Be Carefully Taught

If a child has never met a blind student from Peru, a Muslim actor, or a rich Chinese businessman, how will he or she feel about these people? In the musical, South Pacific, the U.S. soldier who begins to fall in love with an island girl he meets during World War II sings "You have to be carefully taught."

     Lucky children like Meghan Markle might have a black and a white parent, and a young President Obama even had a mother from the United States and a father from Kenya, got to spend early years in Indonesia, and grew to a young man in the diverse cultures of Hawaii. Lucky kids might get to know Hispanic, black, and white kids while playing basketball together on a neighborhood court. Korean and Italian kids could meet singing together in a church choir. And before a teen in a wheelchair and the school's aspiring ballerina publish their first comic book, they might have worked together on the school's newspaper.

     All sorts of robotic, marketing, math, trivia, and forensic competitions bring together kids with different backgrounds and genders. Yet, news events constantly show the danger of relying on luck to form children into adults who acknowledge the similarities and respect the differences of others. The fact is, children have adult mentors who influence them to think about people in ways that help or harm the world.

     In the United States, children are about to honor their Mothers on Mother's Day this weekend and their Fathers on Father's Day next month. Around the world, mothers and fathers should be honored, because they are in a powerful position. They can pass on their prejudices or open young minds.

     When trendwatching.com reports the Mexican startup company Sign'n, uses software to employ artificial intelligence that translates speech into Mexican sign language, we suspect someone nurtured a young inventor's concern for those marginalized because of their hearing disability. Likewise, visually-impaired  Brazilians employed to use their enhanced smell and taste senses as beer sommeliers have someone to thank for helping a young person learn to consider and remedy the needs of others.

     A Muslim friend recently introduced me to a book, Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets, that uses rhymes and English translations of Arabic to present various shapes and to convey Islamic traditions and terms. At the end of the book, a Glossary provides definitions of the Arabic words used and a phonetic guide to their pronunciations.
     As an example of the way the book's author, Hena Khan, and artist, Mehrdokht Amini, combine words and art, picture how, under an arch embellished with complex borders and patterns of flowers and vines that resemble those in Persian rugs. readers learn:

Arch is the mihrab

that guides our way.

We stand and face it

each time we pray.

In contrast to picturing Muslims as over a billion religious people known for the early contributions of their mathematicians and astronomers, today's news reports Boko Haram added to its Nigerian terrorist kidnappings and killings by bombing a mosque and market. And Islamic fighters in Iraq commit genocide and sell Yazidi women and girls into slavery or hold them as sex slaves. Somehow these Muslims have not been carefully taught right from wrong. 

     Regimes, like those in Iran, China, and Russia, seem oppressive because they censure the broadcast and social media they allow their populations to see. But aren't we doing much the same thing, when algorithms select the books we read, the films we watch, and the news and ads we see, or when we self-censure by only watching the cable news stations that agree with us? Teaching ourselves and our children to keep open minds takes work, work both needed and worth doing...very carefully.