New Feature-- News on Wheelz

There are exciting things in store at Wheelz Life Notes this week. I have been inspired by some excellent blogs to add additional content to this site. The first new feature is "News on Wheelz," Items culled from Google News that meet the following criteria:

• Stories pertaining to people with challenges to their mobility that are national in focus. There's a lot of great local stuff happening; I just don't have time to look at it all.
  
• Stories that are NOT reporting crimes perpetrated by or on a particular disabled individual. I can't see any value to the wheelchair-using community in focusing on this. This rule does not exclude stories about US Supreme Court cases or their equivalent in other countries, far-reaching scams, corporate crimes applying to national products or programs, or any other story reasonably expected to affect lots of people with disabilities.
  
• Stories that are NOT syrupy human-interest profiles of people "overcoming" mobility problems. This rule will exclude any story in which phrases like "Jimmy never complains" or "Sue never lets her wheelchair stop her." I understand that reporters writing such stories "mean well," but that doesn't mean I have to read them, or point to them from my website.
  
• Stories that are NOT Op-Ed. As I see it, it's my responsibility to write the editorial material here.
  
  OK, now that all of that stuff is out of the way:
  
  Today's News on Wheelz
  
  NEC Wheelchair Tennis Tour
  Lawn Tennis Association - Aug 15, 2005
  British Men's No 1 Jayant Mistry (Loughborough, Leicestershire) won his sixth wheelchair tennis doubles title of the year on Sunday when he partnered Frenchman Michael Jeremiasz to victory in the Men's Main Draw Doubles final at the Swiss Open, part of ...
  
  Access at sea: What about land excursions?
  Los Angeles Times
  By Alfred Borcover, Special to the Chicago Tribune. When the US Supreme Court ruled in June that foreign-flagged cruise ships sailing from US ports must adhere to the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 ...
  
  Group Builds Playgrounds to Serve Disabled
  Wired News
  By DAVID N. GOODMAN Associated Press Writer. SCIO TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- Shallon Kovac loves her school's new playground, which is designed so that children with disabilities and those without can play together. ...
  
  IBM donates accessibility code to Firefox
  ZDNet UK
  IBM said on Monday it will donate 50,000 lines of code to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser to make it friendly for people with visual and motor disabilities. The contribution would allow the addition ...