What is a service animal? The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 didn't state that clearly, so for the past twenty years, people have been claiming to have all sorts of service animals as a loophole to carry them around while traveling or shopping in stores:

The law termed it "any animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability" — but here was the rub: That seemed to imply that an elephant, just for instance, could make an excellent service animal.

Elephants are very smart. And strong. They can carry things for people and give them rides. Yet surely the lawmakers didn't intend for people to have service elephants they could go shopping with in grocery stores and travel with on planes.

Fortunately, in the last 20 years, no one ever seems to have claimed to have a service elephant. On the other hand, plenty of people have claimed to have service cats and rats and parrots and ferrets and llamas and iguanas and at least one snake (yes, really, a boa constrictor). And they've tried to take these service animals along with them everywhere — the way the law assured them they could — including into places where other people told them they were very out of place.

Impasse ensued. Confusion reigned. Until this March, when the government issued a new definition.

Well that loophole is now closed. The United States government has defined a service animal to be a trained dog (and under certain conditions, miniature horses).

This seems to have left monkey helpers hung out to dry! Link

Django Reinhardt

Jazz fans and gypsy music lovers adore Reinhardt, although the name isn’t familiar to many other music fans. Even so, he was a wildly inspirational musician who pioneered his own style of jazz that blended gypsy roots with jazz guitar. His music has since been featured on about a dozen movies, including The Matrix, L.A. Story, Chocolat and more.

Reinhardt started learning to play music as a boy, starting with the violin and then moving to the banjo and the guitar. When he was 18 though, tragedy struck. Django and his wife were living in a caravan where they sold imitation flowers made from celluloid and paper to supplement their meager income. When Reinhardt accidentally knocked down a candle on his way to bed, the caravan burst into flames, destroying all of his property and leaving him with first- and second-degree burns over the entire left side of his body.

As a result of the accident, his right leg and the 3^rd and 4^th fingers on his left hand were completely paralyzed. Doctors said he would have to get his leg amputated and that he would never play a string instrument again. But Reinhardt refused to get the surgery and within a year, he was able to walk with the use of a cane. While his fingers never recovered, the doctors were wrong about his music career as well.

As it happens, learning to play guitar again may have saved his life. Reinhardt ended up getting stuck in France during WWII and it was said that and handful of jazz-loving Nazis ensured his safety despite the fact that thousands of Gypsies were murdered under Nazi-occupied territories. To help protect himself further, he also developed a distinctively non-jazz sound to please the Nazis who, like the majority of their party, were adamantly against jazz.

Source

Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath

Interestingly, Django wasn’t just influential when it came to jazz musicians, he also played a major role in the creation of heavy metal. You might be asking yourself how in the world a gypsy jazz musician helped create one of the darkest genres around, but the answer isn’t in his sound, it’s in his story.

You see, guitarist Tony Iommi was talented, but he came from a poor, working-class family so he was forced to work at a sheet metal factory as a youngster, rather than chase his dreams of rock n’ roll stardom. Unfortunately, industrial factories aren’t the safest place for the hands of budding musicians. On his last day of work, Iommi severed the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. As a leftie, this meant his fretting hand was destroyed. Unsurprisingly, the teen was heart-broken and convinced this would be the end of his musical aspirations. However, his boss from the factory inspired Iommi to stick with his craft by bringing him a Django Reinhardt album and telling him about the jazz musician’s injury.

The inspiration worked like a charm and soon enough, Iommi was trying to remaster the guitar. At first he tried learning to play right-handed, but when that didn’t work, Iommi instead developed a few prosthetic fingertips using plastic covered in leather. Because his prosthetic fingers weren’t as tough as the real thing, Iommi started using lighter strings and detuning the strings so the tension would be lowered. To match Iommi’s sound, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler did the same, and suddenly, the dark, deep sound of heavy metal was born solely as a technique to work around an injury.

Iommi’s technique was certainly successful. Aside from shaping the sound of a whole new music genre, he also went down in the history books as one of the most talented guitarists of all time, ranked 86^th on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” and number one in Guitar World’s “100 Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time.”

Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss

Image via Adam Bielawski [Wikipedia]

Jerry Garcia

While Reinhardt and Iommi had to relearn their craft after losing a finger, Garcia started playing the guitar long after he lost a finger during a wood chopping incident that occurred when he was only four. Even so, he was inspired by Django to learn the banjo when he was in third grade. At 15, he got his first guitar and by 1960, Garcia was ready to start rocking the world with the Grateful Dead.

It wasn’t until 1986 that Jerry would face his greatest musical challenge yet. After suffering from drug use, a poor diet and a weight problem, Garcia collapsed into a diabetic coma that lasted for five full days. The coma had a dramatic effect on him, forcing him to relearn some of his most basic motor skills, which meant he had to completely relearn to play guitar. Fortunately, Jerry was dedicated to his own recovery and was able to play again after only a few months. He was even able to tour with the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band later that year.

Source

Image via Carl Lender [Wikipedia]

Chet Baker

Even if you aren’t familiar with jazz, you’ve probably at least heard of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker. Baker was a talented musician and quickly garnered a strong following in the jazz community. But, unfortunately, like many jazz musicians, he eventually became addicted to heroin. His addiction almost ended up destroying his career, too, when he was savagely beaten in 1966 trying to get some drugs after a gig in San Francisco. When I say “savagely beaten,” I don’t just mean a black eye and a few sore ribs, I mean they essentially destroyed his livelihood by knocking out all of his front teeth.

For the next few years, Baker was stuck having to take odd jobs like pumping gas. All the while he worked to relearn to play the trumpet with his new dentures. If you’ve never played a woodwind or brass instrument, this might not seem all that difficult, but the reality is that these instruments require a precise use of the lips, teeth and facial muscles to be able to create a distinctive sound. With all new dentures and a whole new set of scars on his lips and cheeks, it took eight years for Baker to relearn to play the trumpet. In the meanwhile, he was able to play the flugelhorn in a West Coast Jazz style, but that certainly wasn’t his strong point and most jazz fans tend to overlook this point in his career.

Source

Image via Michiel Hendryckx [Wikipedia]

Rick Allen of Def Leppard

Rick Allen joined Def Leppard at exactly the right time. As soon as he joined the band, he was immediately opening for AC/DC and within a few months, he helped them record and release their first album, On Through the Night. Unfortunately, only a few years into his new musical career, he was involved in a serious auto accident on his way to a New Year’s Eve party. Allen’s Corvette flipped and while his girlfriend came out of the accident without any major injuries, Allen wasn’t so lucky. Because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt properly, Allen thrown from the vehicle and his left arm was severed.

The first person at the scene was a nurse who knew just what to do and the couple was quickly rushed to a hospital. Because the response was so quick, Allen’s arm was able to be reattached. It had to be removed later. though. due to a serious infection. Allen thought this was the end of his career and he began to suffer from major depression.

After seeing the pain of his friend and band mate, Def Leppard’s lead singer, Joe Elliot, was inspired to help Allen work around his loss. The pair soon met with a few engineers and designed a drum set that could be operated with only one arm and both feet. Pretty soon Allen was back on the road again and recording with the band.

Source

Image via Weatherman90 [Wikipedia]

In the end, these stories are great sources of inspiration, not only in showing what we are capable of overcoming in the face of adversity, but also in illustrating just how powerful friendship can be when it comes to recovering from an injury. Without help from his brother, Django Reinhardt never would have learned to play again. If Iommi’s boss had not introducing him to Reinhardt’s music, he may never have been inspired to play again. Without Joe Elliot, Allen may not have bothered trying to come up with a drum system that could be operated by pedals. Essentially, if you don’t have good friends and family, you’d better have some darn good disability insurance, because you might never be inspired to recover after a serious accident.

Crack open any text on bioethics and I can almost guarantee that the “is shortness a disability” example will be somewhere among the pages. Shortness (and deafness, which The Dish is also exploring at the moment) sits right in the blurry space among disability, disease, and normal. How short is “too short?” Why is 5’2? too short for a man, but not a woman? The answer is pretty much: because we think it is. Human height does fall along a bell curve, but it varies around the world and throughout history. Yet, at some point, being short goes from a relative and descriptive term (e.g. I am shorter than Yao Ming) to a normative one implying a disability.

Growing taller than you would normally can have its advantages, but its all relative to the height of others around you. What would you do in this situation? Munkittrick looks at how we define “disability” at Science Not Fiction. Link

“We submitted his entry because we felt his penmanship was amazing considering he completes most of his work without using his prostheses,” said Cheryl Hasenfus, Readfield Elementary School principal.

At those times, Nicholas writes by holding a pen or pencil between his upper arms.

On behalf of Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of educational materials, Hasenfus presented a trophy to Nicholas during a school assembly for his excellent penmanship. The school is in Readfield, Maine.

Inspired by his ability, Zaner-Bloser decided to create a new award category in his honor: Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellent Penmanship

Other winners of the competition will be announced in May. Link -via Arbroath

Instructables member Shawn Melito designed and built a special “water scooter” for his then-5-year-old daughter, who has Cerebral Palsy. This gave her buoyancy, mobility, and independence on the water -under supervision, of course. He explains how he he built at at the link. Then comes the kicker:

BTW – After two seasons of use my daughter has grown out of this, but it still works great. It is free to the first person who has a disabled child the right size that can use it safely. We live near Toronto, Ontario.

Link -via NeatoBambino

He’s Tom Willis, and he’s a San Diego-based motivational speaker who has made it his goal to throw out the first ball at every major league baseball stadium.

So far, he’s up to nine — including eight this year — and will add No. 10 to his resume when he throws the first pitch for the Texas Rangers on Sept. 30.

What makes Willis extraordinary? He doesn’t have any arms, just a small left hand with two fingers that aren’t very strong.

Link

The photo above comes from the Spaarnestad collection in the Nationaal Archief – the National Archive of the Netherlands.  The image is sourced to Great Britain and dated 1935, but carries no explanatory text other than “Piano especially designed for people who are confined to bed.”

Perhaps some Neatorama reader with a knowledge of music history can provide additional information regarding this remarkable invention.

Nationaal Archief’s Flickr photostream.

Sheila Radziewicz was scheduled to take her test next month at Bruce McCorry’s Martial Arts in Peabody. The 32-year-old brown belt, who was born with thrombocytopenia-absent radius, or TAR syndrome, told The Salem News she’s been training in martial arts for three years. [...]

The Salem resident, who works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence, said she has never let her disability stop her. At 23, Radziewicz earned her driver’s license. She uses a car that she controls with her feet.

Link | Photo: AP

Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife.

But the payments dried up this fall and when Blanchard called Manulife, she says she was told she was available to work because of Facebook.

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.

Link

Still in the concept stage, the Watergate is an alternative to the turnstile. If you’re disabled, getting through a turnstile can be a challenge. That’s why designers Michael Tatschl, Sascha Mikel and Martin Schnabl came up with this solution. It would allow disabled people to get through, and spray everyone else with water.

Link via DVICE

Being paralyzed shouldn’t stop someone from engaging in a sport lovingly described by Mark Twain as "a good walk, ruined," thanks to the Paragolfer machine by Parabasetec.

Check out the paragolfer in action (yes, it’s a promo video, but it’s amazing nonetheless): Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]. If you want one, be prepared to shell out upwards of $26K.

If you consider that the modern toilet paper was first introduced in 1857, the whole butt wipe thing is waaay due for a major advance.

Ancient Romans used to wipe their butts after going to the bathroom with a sponge on a stick (which they put in a bucket of saltwater after they’re done for reuse – Eew!) – so, in a nod to history, here’s Comfort Wipe: a stick that lets you wipe your behind without ever coming close to touching it with your bare hands.

Now, before you recoil in horror, consider that this invention is actually quite useful for people with limited range of motion due to disability. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via AdFreak

From her horizontal world — a 7-foot-long, 800-pound iron cylinder that encased all but her head — Ms. Mason lived a life that was by her own account fine and full, reading voraciously, graduating with highest honors from high school and college, entertaining and eventually writing.

She chose to remain in an iron lung, she often said, for the freedom it gave her. It let her breathe without tubes in her throat, incisions or hospital stays, as newer, smaller ventilators might require. It took no professional training to operate, letting her remain mistress of her own house, with just two aides assisting her.

“I’m happy with who I am, where I am,” Ms. Mason told The Charlotte Observer in 2003. “I wouldn’t have chosen this life, certainly. But given this life, I’ve probably had the best situation anyone could ask for.”

Ms. Mason wrote a book about her life entitled Breathe and starred in the documentary Martha in Lattimore. Link -via Fark

(image credit: Wake Forest University)