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Disabled RSS FeedsComputer support for persons with cognitive limits: CoPilot - When it comes to keeping computers running smoothly, we all have "special needs". I am known as a "geek-of-geeks", and yet even I can, on occasion, be stymied (more often as I age).In general, the computer situation for special needs persons is getting worse. Fifteen years ago "Simple Finder" for Mac OS, or the short-lived GEOS for DOS, had very simple environments that would be accessible to most people. Those don't exist now, though "Simple Finder" for OS X is irritatingly close (partly finished work that nobody seems to care about [1]).On the other hand, baseline computer expertise is rising. A child I know with a fairly limited IQ is surprisingly facile on almost any device -- from a Wii to OS X to iPhone. There's a certain level of intuitive knowledge similar to knowing how to open a book or navigate a room.So I can set up environments that will work pretty well for someone with special needs, or someone who grew up in pre-computer era (i.e. my...Feed Source: bestyoucanbe.blogspot.com Guanfacine (Tenex) for ADHD - more good news - These results are gratifying, but not surprising Guanfacine Extended Release in Children and Adoles [J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2008] - PubMed Result . Guanfacine extended-release was effective in reducing symptoms of ADHD. Adverse events were mild to moderate, did not interfere with improvements in attention, and rarely led to discontinuation .Guanfacine is a curious and perhaps powerful drug, so we need to treat it with cautious appreciation. The value comes because it's complementary to methylphenidate (Ritalin); it works by different mechanisms and the two seem to mesh well. Although Ritalin is exceedingly safe, it has some street value and can be problematic with adolescents. Ritalin can also exacerbate OCD symptoms and tics; Guanfacine doesn't seem to.... Provigil and ADHD - This is old news (2006) but recent enthusiasm for using Provigil (modafinil) as a productivity enhancement for scientists brought it to mind:Use of Drug to Treat ADHD in Children Opposed - washingtonpost.com A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 12 to 1 against recommending modafinil as safe for children with ADHD. Earlier, the psychopharmacologic drugs panel unanimously agreed that modafinil works as a treatment for ADHD The committee recommended that Cephalon Inc. undertake a 3,000-patient trial to determine the risk modafinil may pose for Stevens-Johnson syndrome one out of 900 children involved in earlier studies of the drug developed the disease. He and Cephalon spokeswoman Jenifer Antonacci said the agency and the company will discuss the com... Software for disabled persons - Hmm. I wonder if they'd consider doing an iPhone version of the Jaeggi working memory trainer Entrepreneurial Edge - Software That Opens Worlds to the Disabled - NYTimes.com ONE computer program would allow vision-impaired shoppers to point their cellphones at supermarket shelves and hear descriptions of products and prices. Another would allow a physically disabled person to guide a computer mouse using brain waves and eye movements. The two programs were among those created by eight groups of volunteers at a two-day software-writing competition this fall. The goal of the competition, sponsored by a nonprofit corporation, is to encourage new computer programs that help disabled people expand their capabilities. The corporation, set up by computer sc... Fragile X and memory - Pretty far from human application, but noteworthy Fruit Flies, Fragile X and Foolery: Scientific American Podcast:University of Alberta researcher Francois Bolduc keeps 300,000 fruit flies in a basement laboratory. He discovered that disrupting one gene known as FMR1 in the flies? brains can wipe out their long-term memory. What?s interesting for us is that damage to that gene in people is associated with learning and memory problems, epilepsy and autism. That constellation of traits is known as fragile X syndrome. Bolduc then worked on curing his forgetful flies?he found a class of drugs that reduces the activity of the FMR1 gene. And the insects were able to regain their memory ... Working memory and COMT inhibitors - the nicotine example - Obviously, I'm not considering smoking as an aide to my son's limited short term memory. It is interesting, however, to note how substances associated with smoking act on the brain FuturePundit: Gene Variant Makes Nicotine Withdrawal Harder . Spurred by their previous findings that carriers of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) val gene variant are more susceptible to smoking relapse, the Penn researchers set out to learn if smokers with this genetic background would be more likely to exhibit altered brain function and cognitive deficits during periods of abstinence from smoking. Results showed that smokers with the COMT val/val genotype suffered greater deficits in working memory and brain function when they had refrained from smoking for 14 or more hours, compared to their performance on this task when they had been smoking as usual... Improving working memory in low IQ children - Working memory, sometimes called short-term memory, is currently thought to be closely related to IQ test results (for example) and perhaps to the cognitive performance that IQ tests try to measure.It's also generally assumed that IQ cannot be improved, that individual capacity is determined almost entirely by genetics, intrauterine life, and perhaps the first few months of postnatal life. [1]. On the other hand, there's some evidence that working memory can be improved by training, though we don't know if the training effects persist.That's roughly whe... Why I will be flexible even if I am old - We all become less flexible as we age.I will be more flexible than most.How can I boast that?It is a small benefit of parenting some very inflexible children. In middle-age my wife and I have been given a graduate level extended boot camp style program in enhanced flexibility.Our natural bounds have been shattered.Assuming a normal decay curve from our artificially elevated heights, we may expect a twenty year flexibility bonus.It's good to have something to offset the accelerated aging associated with parenting special needs children.... Warner on Risperdal use in children - The NYT's Judith Warner meant well with a recent blog post about Risperdal use in children with "bipolar disorder" but she was ill-served by the research psychiatrists she interviewed.Here are some excerpts of her writing, with the less sensible parts removed Tough Choices for Tough Children - Judith Warner Blog - NYTimes.comIt was disturbing to read in The Times this week that the ?atypical? antipsychotic Risperdal, a tranquilizing whopper of a drug with serious, sometimes deadly side effects, is now being widely prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. .. why, according to new Food and Drug Administration data on doctors? prescribing practices, were 16 percent of the pediatric users of Risperdal over the pa... Altering brain chemistry through dietary means: implications from Alzheimer?s research - A BBC Science article on the animal Alzheimer studies caught my attention because of the reference to altering brain function through dietary changes. Emphases mine ? BBC NEWS | Health | Fatty acids clue to Alzheimer's Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer's disease, an American study has suggested. Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals' memory problems and behavioural changes. Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs? ? Scientists from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California looked at fatty acids in the brains of normal mice and compared them with those in mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer's-like condition. They identifie... Diary of a Special Ed Teacher - Just found this one through a NYT essay "Miss Dennis" wrote - Your Mama's Mad Tedious: Diary of a Special Ed Teacher. I'll be reading the back posts and subscribing to the feed.I hope to do a post on her NYT article, she does repeat the article in her blog.... OpenOffice for OS X: touts accessibility - I'm impressed that their accessibility support is a touted feature: www: OpenOffice.org 3.0 New Features: "OpenOffice.org integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications."... Accessibility solutions for OS X - Apple has long been a distant 2nd when it comes to accessibility solutions. Microsoft has put more effort into a reasonable foundation, and 3rd party vendors have built on top of Microsoft's base.Recently, though, Apple has tried a bit harder. Legal threats from several states and fears of being shut out of the education market may have provided valuable motivation. (See: section 508.)For example, OS X 10.5 has an improved screen reader, though Apple still has a long way to go. On the other hand persons with joint and motor disorders want robust voice commands and speech-to-text recognition -- but OS X provides only the feeble and under-developed "Speech Commands" tool.In addition to the improved OS X accessibility page (still heavy on the marketing) Apple now has a 3rd party O... Harcourt family learning series - useful - We've been using the Harcourt Family Learning Complete Curriculum books with our kids, including one child who's disabilities make reading and math pretty darned hard.I'm happy with them. Amazon.com has a pretty good list of the books. The books were published by "Spark Publishing" (Flash Kids), but their web site is gone. I suspect they're no more. I can't find any evidence anyone else is publishing these.The reading and math exercises are interesting enough and quite polished. The Grade 3 level readings are reasonably interesting to our 11 yo boy; it's tough to find that kind of age interesting/readable combination anywhere else.Recommended if you can find 'em! We have the "complete curriculum" for grades 1, 3 and 4.... Controlling nerve cell connectivity - more developments - A day or two ago my post on Fragile X and autism research included a discussion of a general theme in current autism research Bear and other scientists have also identified several drugs that seem to correct the problem. The drugs don't replace the missing brakes in the brain. Instead, they limit acceleration by reducing the activity of a group of receptors on brain cells known as mGluR5 receptors.The drugs have reversed most of the effects of Fragile X in mice. They are now being tried in humans. And at least one small study found that a single dose of a drug had an effect .The idea is that neuronal connectivity is a delicate, dynamic, balance. Too much connectivity, or too little, can both prevent cognition from working correctly.So now there's research on modulating neuronal interco... Minnesota Special Hockey Oct 11th open skate - Our family has enjoyed MN Special Hockey four about 2.5 seasons. We joined up in a pre-launch test, back when we skated with sled hockey. We're starting a new season with a free open skate the University of Minnesota's Mariucci arena (pdf flyer, see directions).If you have a friend or family member in the Twin Cities region with a cognitive or social/behavioral disability, please invite them to our open skate - or check out our contact list.MN Special Hockey has worked well for us. It's kind of a milder version of pond hockey, except that we play in good settings with great volunteers and coaches. We even have cheerleaders for the spe... Congress Passes Mental Health Parity Bill - Bush says he'll sign. This is a big step forward for all children and adults with special needs, though the primary focus is on the adult psychiatric disorders Health Blog : Congress Passes Mental Health Parity BillThe long fight over putting the coverage of mental health on par with other health conditions is nearly over. Both houses of Congress yesterday passed bills that would prohibit employers who offer mental health coverage from doing things like charging higher co-pays for mental health services than for other kinds of health care. That?s long been a common practice . Kennedy, who has battled substance abuse, is a Rhode Island Dem. and a sponsor of the bill. His dad, Sen. Ted Kennedy, now battling brain cancer, has been a ... Bill Clinton on heatlhcare coverage for autistic children - It's hard to remember the glory days of Bill Clinton's administration.Here's a side comment on an interview he recently had Clinton on the bail-out ? Crooked Timber: . He didn?t talk about healthcare in great detail, but it was clearly on his mind. He said that when he had been stumping for Hillary, he had heard tragic stories about people with no or insufficient health insurance in every town that he had visited. He had been particularly struck by the lack of help for families with autistic kids. He didn?t talk at all about the policy responses ? but this was clearly something that he saw as a priority .... NPR series on autism: Hope for Fragile X, autism in college and more. - Public radio has been running a series on cognitive disorders. You can read summaries and listen to audio on the npr web site. I assembled this list by visiting a few and checking out related links. It covers most of the programs over the past two years, the more recent ones are first. Drugs Hint At Potential Reversal Of Autism (see below) An Autistic Student's Journey To College Confronting 'That Autism Thing' Autism: Helping Children Connect How To Avoid Being Bankrupted By Autism ... The rise and fall of autism vaccine theories - Salon features a book review by a physician journalist that traces the rise and fall of theories relating autism to vaccines. These theories are as dead as phlogiston, but strong supporters persist. Some of those supporters have financial motivations, but for others the belief has come to resemble religious devotion.Most of the story was familiar to me, though I recall far more early skepticism than Dr. Parikh mentions. I think there was more early support among UK scientists, but US physicians were more suspicious. Those suspicions were justified, Lancet retracted the original article and the primary author is now suspected of fraud (emphases mine):Salon.com Books | Inside the vaccine-and-autism scareBy Rahul ParikhSep. 22, 2008 | Dr. Paul A. Offit's new book, "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicin... Kindle reader - not ready for visually or cognitively impaired - It's a little disappointing that the Kindle is not quite ready for people with visual impairment Amazon.com: Vision Impaired - Can a Kindle help? - kindle swindle Discussion ForumA family member has been having a signifificant problem with her vision. I liked the idea of the magnification provided by a Kindle. I have several questions Reviewing the responses I learn that the Kindle allows several font sizes, but even the largest is only comparable to a large text book. The contrast doesn't work as well for persons with macular degeneration as a backlit device.Of course there's no screen reader integration - yet.The good news is that there are no technical problems with increasing the font sizes, and even the screen reader abilities can't be too far away.... Palin cut special needs funding by 62% - She made these cuts while Alaska's oil revenue was booming. Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong [Palin]: To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. But then you read: However, a comment here notes that Palin actually slashed funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%. Budgets: FY 2007 (pre-Palin), 2008, 2009 (all pdfs). This is consistent with her political record and ideology. We already know McCain's dismal attitude toward... Technology for special needs - It's hard for corporations to invest in solutions for special needs adults with cognitive disabilities. The market seems too small.On the other hand, it's easy to justify solutions for aging Americans with pre-dementia -- that's a large and growing market that will hopefully include me one day. (Live long enough, your brain will go.)The cognitive state of a pre-demented 75 yo overlaps with that of a young person with cognitive impairment. So all of the solutions described in this article are applicable to our loved ones (emphases mine) Basics - For the Advanced in Age, Easy-to-Use Technology - NYTimes.com ?The new market is old age,? said Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the Age Lab at ... Public response to autistic behaviors - living in a small world - Dave Kolpack's editorial on public responses to disruptive children begins with the phrase "politically incorrect". That's best read as "truth that offends the weak minded". He gets a little better, but not much better.Emphases mine.Disruptive behavior by autistic children stirs debate, brings forth conflicted feelingsBy DAVE KOLPACK , Associated PressAugust 13, 2008FARGO, N.D. - When a 13-year-old Minnesota boy was banned from church after parishioners complained about his behavior, it exposed a painful truth so politically incorrect that some people feel guilty just saying it out loud: Some autistic children can be annoying and disruptive in public.The case of Adam Race and others like him has laid bare conflicted feelings ? among both parents of these children and other people ? over autistic youngsters in public places. And it has stirr... The Tropic Thunder boycott - Here's the email from the Down Syndrome of MN executive director:By now you may be aware that Tropic Thunder, a film which depicts people with developmental disabilities in a derogatory and disrespectful manner, will open in our area tomorrow evening.Despite aggressive attempts to get Dreamworks-Paramount to modify the offensive content, the film with its offensive and hurtful stereotypes about people with disabilities has debuted intact. The Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota, therefore, joins the National Down Syndrome Congress, National Down Syndrome Society, Special Olympics and Arc of the United States and other disability organizations in calling for a boycott. One of the best ways to send a message to Hollywood is to cut into their ticket sales.Considering what we ask, we must be completely honest. While trusted members of our community were allowed to preview the complete film, all that is available generally is a promotional trail... 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