For the past 30 years or so, the Center for Persons with Disabilities at USU has operated the Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center (MPRRC), an Office of Special Education Programs funded project.

The MPRRC was recently refunded for another five-year period.  Under this new contract, the directorship of the MPRRC has shifted to Dr. Carol Massanari.  John Copenhaver will serve as the Principal Investigator for the MPRRC, but he will be focusing his efforts and expertise to the administration of the Center for Technical Assistance for Excellence in Special Education (TAESE).  TAESE is a not-for-profit center developed to provide technical assistance to states and local education agencies that goes beyond the scope and capacity of the MPRRC.  MPRRC is one project among several that are part of TAESE.

The six Regional Resource Centers across the nation assist state education agencies in the systemic improvement of education programs, practices, and policies that affect children and youth with disabilities.  The MPRRC serves Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North & South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and the Bureau of Indian Education.  Their services include consultations, information services, specifically designed technical assistance, training, and product development.

Dr. Bryce Fifield, Director of the Center for Persons with Disabilities, stated “The education of any special education child going to school in those states has been influenced by the work of the MPRRC.”

According to Dr. Massanari, one of the key changes with the new cooperative agreement is an emphasis of greater collaboration across the six Regional Resource Centers in an  effort to be more efficient and responsive to state needs.  This means that the RRCs will be working together to develop tools and strategies.  Each Center will continue to work with individual states, and staff will work across Centers to bring together states from other regions that might have a similar need.

Another way that RRCs will be collaborating is in the development and sharing of tools or resources to reduce duplication of effort.  MPRRC will work with other Centers, as appropriate, to develop and implement more specific or focused technical assistance to address a systemic issue or need.

The MPRRC is committed to continuing to provide high-quality, effective technical assistance that will help states improve outcomes for children and youth with disabilities and their families.

Accessible Designs and Home Modifications for New or Existing Homes will be presented by Roger Borgenicht, Director, and Melissa Hoffmann, Access Design Coordinator at ASSIST Inc—A Community Design Center. ASSIST provides accessibility design assistance throughout the State of Utah and accessibility training throughout the United States. The training is on Wednesday,  November 18, 2009; from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

More details on the training can be found on an earlier blog post.

To participate you will only need a computer with high-speed internet access. If you are interested in participating please RSVP by Monday, November 16, to Heather Young. She will email you the participant instructions.

Note: This article, written by a mother of a child with special health care needs living in Cache County, Utah,  first appeared in the Champions for Inclusive Communities’ November 3 newsletter. It is part of a series focused on the experiences of individual families as they work to obtain community-based services for their children with special health care needs.

The experience in the hospital last year when my 9-year old daughter was first diagnosed and treated with diabetes was very overwhelming. We left feeling unprepared and lacked confidence to deal with her treatment. Luckily, our family doctor – our medical home – helped us through this initial scary phase. He helps coordinate my daughter’s care with her endocrinologist to ensure she stays healthy. He is very good at communicating with my child, and he keeps in regular contact with us.

I also had an interesting experience with the school system not long after my daughter’s diagnosis. I left a message with her school saying that my 9-year old child had been hospitalized and diagnosed with diabetes and asked if we could meet to discuss possible assistance for her. A staff member later left me a message, essentially saying there was nothing they could do. I knew that the school district should provide a health plan for children who require assistance because I have worked with children from the Up to Three program and have been an advocate for families in our school district. I called the secretary back and asked her if my daughter was the first child with diabetes to attend the school. She said that in the past there had been a couple of children, but their mothers came with them to school to help. When I explained that I would talk to the school district’s nurse, her tone changed and she wanted to excuse herself for not providing me with the information I needed concerning a health plan and further assistance for my daughter. She also asked me not to involve the school district’s nurse.

My point is that I know I could have eventually received the support and health plan I needed for my daughter in that first school, but I could never change people’s attitudes towards parents and children with special needs. My daughter was already dealing with a life-changing event – an incurable disease, paired with the stress over not fitting in or being liked. I did not want to add eye-rolling, non-empathetic behaviors that would make her feel like a “chore” to anyone.

I decided to home school her for few months, but it did not work so well because I still was working, both away from and at home, making all the meals, cleaning, doing laundry, learning about diabetes, grieving, and helping other members of my family deal with the situation. I was tired! I could not leave my job because we needed the health insurance. So I prayed for help and was directed to Summit Elementary School.

My daughter and I were just visiting Summit one day when a lovely woman, who was so sweet and friendly, stopped in front of my daughter, shook her hand, looked into her eyes, smiled, and said “hello sweetheart.” My daughter said hello back and smiled and the lady hugged her. This sweet lady, the school secretary, asked both of us if we were interested in enrolling in Summit. I explained that I home school and that I was just looking and maybe signing up for a math class or a gym class. I explained that my daughter has diabetes Type 1 (very different from Type 2 diabetes). She said “me too” and showed her insulin pump to us. Then she added that in fourth grade there is a little boy with the same diagnosis whose teacher was well trained and had taught other children like my little one before. This little boy’s mother also teaches fifth grade at Summit and knows all about the condition. She has even done shots for other children.

Within two days my daughter was enrolled full time in Summit Elementary. Soon after, we had a meeting with the district nurse (who was well prepared for our family health plan), the school principal, her teacher-to-be (who is excellent), and the fifth grade teacher and mother who was and is an angel. This woman took the time to share a tear with me, she read a book called “Taking Diabetes to School” to my daughter’s classmates, she helped her feel welcome, and she also gave her a backpack equipped to care her insulin supplies along with a Teddy bear name Ruffes who has diabetes. My girl loves her bear and gives him shots. She comforts him and reassures him at night.

All of this has been so helpful. Everyone I have seen at Summit seems to be happy and seems to love their job. In the hallways, children are greeted and noticed by teachers and the two super secretaries keep good track of her blood readings. Summit Elementary gave us the support we needed.

This article first appeared in the latest National Center on Disability and Access to Education newsletter. NCDAE seeks to improve education for all by promoting accessibility in electronically-mediated education. It is a project at the CPD.

Amazon’s Kindle had generated a lot of buzz over the past few years. This innovation is an electronic paper display that uses wireless technology to allow users to purchase and read over 275,000 book titles on a display that is lighter and easier to carry than a typical paperback book. The buzz turned ugly when Amazon announced that their new version (Kindle 2) would include a text to speech function. This caused the Author’s Guild to object – complaining that this infringed on copyright laws and would damage sales of audio books. Amazon then agreed to give the publisher’s the option to disable this functionality.

However, advocates for the blind and reading disabled protested – vocally! They argued that removing this function was discriminatory and interfered with their rights to equal access. Furthermore, they argued, text to speech is not a threat to audio books – audio books are performances while the synthetic voice used by text readers, while much improved over early versions, is not the same as a professionally read book.

The Authors Guild then suggested that those with print disabilities take advantage of an exception to the copyright act that allows them, with special certification, to activate their Kindles to override the voice restrictions placed on the book by the publisher. However, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) argued that this places undue burden on the users who must prove they qualify or pay extra for the functionality.

Even with the text to speech functionality, Kindle 2 was not fully accessible, with limited font sizes. It also lacked voice prompts for the menus. However, Amazon is working on making the Kindle usable for sightless navigation and the Reading Rights Coalition is circulating an online petition to stop the removal of the text to speech option.

This issue is critical as the outcome will likely inform copyright and accessibility issues for years to come.

Note: Since the original article’s publication, Yahoo! News reports that two universities refused to use Amazon’s Kindle DX as a way to distribute textbooks, citing accessibility issues.

Disabled World has published an overview of the Kindle 2′s accessibility.

For a look at the original article and an extended list of links on the subject, see the NCDAE newsletter.