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Latest news and stories
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It’s Okay to Ask for Help
By Lauren Dyer, Spiritual Meditation Mama I don’t know about you, but I have a problem asking for help. This just became a realization to me in the past few weeks. In my coaching practice I talk and teach a lot about limiting beliefs and blocks in our life and how to overcome these. You would…
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A Child With Autism Reaches Out
A Poem by Berg Two and a half years ago, 7-year-old Berg came to Horse Boy World burdened with a diagnosis of PDD-NOS and selective mutism. Virtually non-verbal, she rarely made eye contact, would tense her body into a stiff leg/back posture, would avoid all body contact and suffered from regular, long-lasting meltdowns. She lived…
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The New Horse Boy Method…Sans Horses
By Rupert Isaacson and Iliane Lorenz, Horse Boy World For those who read about Horse Boy Method in the August 2012 issue of The Buzz, we have some updates to share with you. As you may know, Horse Boy Method addresses Autism, not as a problem to be fixed, but as a skill set and…
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Not Just Monkeying Around—Consider the Benefits of a Helping Hands Service Monkey
By Megan Talbert, Helping Hands Monkey Helpers Editor’s note: For 41 years, Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers trained capuchin monkeys to provide assistance to people with disabilities and they continue to support the human-monkey teams that they have already placed. Due to a number of federal and state laws that prohibit primates in homes, they are…
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A Guide to Understanding Assistance Dogs
By Jenny Ho The old adage says a dog is man’s best friend; however, for more than 7,000 people with disabilities across the UK, they are a lot more than that. To them, they are lifesavers. Assistance Dogs UK is an organization which works with eight assistance dogs charities to bring canine care to those…
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Assistance Dogs: Private vs. Program Training
By Kristin Hartness, Canines for Disabled Kids More and more often I meet people who tell me they self-trained or privately trained their service dog. The answers I get when I ask why they chose that route vary from thoughtful and well planned choices to vague and mumbled avoided responses. Sometimes I meet people who think…
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Eye-control Empowers People with Disabilities
By Tara Rudnicki, Tobii ATI WHO: Tobii Assistive Technology Inc. (ATI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tobii Technology, is the leading global provider of eye-tracking and gaze interaction-based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices that help improve the lives of individuals with disabilities by enabling them to communicate, control their environment and gain greater independence through their…
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FES Rowing Expands Exercise Possibilities for People with Disabilities
By Mark McAndrew, Concept2 Rowing Concept2 Rowing and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Cambridge will feature Exercise for Persons with Disabilities on September 21 at Abilities Expo Boston. Longtime hub of competitive rowing, Boston has been both witness and participant in an evolutionary form of the sport known as FES indoor rowing. (See front page Sunday Boston Globe…
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Product Spotlight: Sonus Hearing Care Professionals
An estimated 37 million people in the United States suffer from hearing loss. Let’s reflect on the enormity of that number—it’s about one out of every eight people. And of those, only one in four people who experience hearing loss actually seek treatment. When your hearing starts to fail, it is often so gradual that…
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User-focused Assistive Technology Development
By John Riggins, InvoTek Inc. It was bad enough the car accident took away Charlie’s vocation as a personal trainer. Now it threatened to rob him of his dream of teaching Bible students. That is, until some new assistive technology came into his life. Assistive technology (AT) tends to be a catchall phrase for any…
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I Am ‘Disabled!’ I Am Lucky!
By Jim Lynch College graduate, wrestler, team captain, Olympic Trials participant, coach, business owner, husband and father. I think that is a pretty impressive list of accomplishments. Oh yeah, I forgot one. I accomplished all of this in spite of the fact that I was born with cerebral palsy. Disability Does Not Define I have…
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Refocus the Major League Baseball Fan Cam in Honor of ADA
By Greg Smith, Sr., The Strength Coach If you are a baseball fan, surely you have experienced watching the “Fan Cam” during the Major League Baseball television broadcasts. Between innings, the television camera focuses on regular people enjoying their time at the ballpark. It opens showing a young couple on a date, unaware of their five seconds…