Resources

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New Media Resources on Disability

Awareness - Attitudinal Change

Difference Is Normal - music video from the Middle East: Brahim, Shafic, Ghassan, Ahmad, Kholood, Hamad, Marwan, Mayssa and Hanadi live their lives despite their disabilities, and all they want is to be accepted and respected. The song is about revealing their beauty and overcoming barriers imposed by society in their daily lives.

Creature Discomforts will help you see disability in a new light. Disabled people are just like everyone. They just want to live life to the full and do normal, everyday things like go to work, catch buses, buy clothes, play sport, go to the pub, travel abroad, watch television and moan about the weather. Leonard Cheshire Disability campaigns to change the way people think about, and respond to, disability. Creature Discomforts is a series of animations based on the experiences of real disabled people. They’re lovely characters and this is where you can find out all about them.

I define me! – a video about the way others define people with disabilities. I define me! comes from the ideas of people with developmental disabilities: what they wanted non-disabled folks to know about what it is like to have a disability. Disabled folks want everyone to know the kinds of labels people put on the disabled. I define me! shows how some disabled folks feel about being labeled. This video has been sent to Canadian TV stations as a public service announcement. Visit www.proudtobedisabled.com to find out more

Clip from "Talk" by the Disability Rights Commission (United Kingdom): You've got a job interview, but suddenly you're in the minority. A tale worthy of the Twilight Zone with a disability twist.

Film Festivals

8th International Disability Film Festival – A short of the films that were presented in 2008. Launched in 1999, the London Disability Film Festival has grown in size, quality and impact every year. The festival returns in February 2008 with a new creative team and a host of new ideas to put the festival firmly back on the map. The festival has served as a model for other disability film festivals in Finland, Canada, Greece and Turkey. Its insistence on accessible premises and access facilities and programming has resulted in its becoming a beacon of best practice

Sprout Film Festival: People with developmental disabilities as subjects and performers remain marginalized in the media. The Sprout Film Festival aims to raise their profile by showcasing works in all genres featuring this population.

Human Rights/International

Advocates celebrate new disability rights treaty:  The harpist Myra Kovary, a member of the disability community started off the celebration of the entry into force of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in the UN General Assembly hall. The convention was adopted by the General Assembly in December 2006 and its negotiation is considered one of the fastest for international treaties, even though it involved extensive consultations with civil society groups representing the disabled. Lex Grandia chairs the International Disability Alliance Forum on the convention, which he says is taking over the advocacy work of the disability caucus that worked on formulating the convention.

Mental Health Visions #4 Gábor Gombos - Speak Truth to Power: Gábor Gombos' work to outlaw the use of caged beds in psychiatric institutions in Hungary has been recognised by the Speak Truth to Power Project, which has honored 51 human rights defenders from around the world including the His Holiness the Dali Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Czech President Vaclav Havel.

Senator Tom Harkin on restoring the American with Disabilities Act: Senator Tom Harkin discussing the Americans with Disabilities Restoration Act.  This would strengthen and clarify the original ADA, which Sen. Harkin helped pass in 1990

HIV/AIDS

John's Story: Deaf, Gay, HIV+, Proud:  John tells his story of being a deaf, gay man in South Africa, and how he found out he was HIV positive. Using sign language to tell his story, John describes the difficulties of communicating with a doctor, and the discrimination he's faced within the deaf community as an HIV-positive gay man.

Inclusive Communities

Including Samuel - Photojournalist Dan Habib rarely thought about inclusion before he had his son Samuel seven years ago. Now he thinks about inclusion every day. Habib’s documentary film Including Samuel examines the educational and social inclusion of youth with disabilities as a civil rights issue.

Living Proof: The Right to Live in the Community - Living Proof provides a voice for members of society who are all too often ignored. Stigma and discrimination perpetuate a social welfare system that keeps people with intellectual disabilities from realizing their fundamental right to live independently. By describing the experiences and presenting opinions of people with intellectual disabilities, this film demonstrates the importance of achieving change in the social welfare system and in society as a whole. "Everyone should leave the institutions and be in apartments the way I am. …they would be better off, like me. They would have their own lives," said Ivka Krzelj, one of the people interviewed in Living Proof. In Croatia, however, one in three people with moderate or severe intellectual disabilities lives in a long stay institution, isolated from society.

Sports

“Wheelchair Racing’s Rising Star”: Josh George, 24, is the United States’ top Paralympic medal contender in races from 100 meters up through the marathon. Here is a look at George’s wheelchair and at his technique, which can propel him to speeds in excess of 20 m.p.h.

Movie trailer for Murderball: Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than-life personalities, Murderball - about tough, highly competitive wheelchair rugby players - won the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Right to Risk is a documentary that accompanies eight individuals with physical disabilities on a 15-day 225-mile whitewater raft trip down the Colorado River through Arizona’s Grand Canyon.  The film is about every individual’s right to choose what they are willing to do and risk in pursuit of their dreams.  The documentary is the foundation of a comprehensive national outreach campaign that engages some of our country's largest nonprofits in a cooperative effort to raise awareness of the issues of disability.

Youth

Going to School: Before Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975, millions of children received inadequate special education services, and at least one million children were prevented from attending public schools altogether. Going to School, a film documentary, details the effort of the Los Angeles Unified School District to include students with disabilities in the curriculum and provide them with the same educational opportunities as other students.

I’m Tyler: Tyler is a typical high school student who happens to have cerebral palsy and some other challenges.  He has taken on a mission to educate the world about Ability Awareness.  He believes that what a person, any person, CAN do is much more important than what he/she can't.

Succeeding in College and at Work: Students with Disabilities Tell Their Stories - In the videos, students with disabilities share strategies to successfully stay in school, graduate and get jobs. Students reveal their struggles with self-reporting their disability, and negotiating accommodations in school and at work.