Disability Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Blind, Visually Impaired Students Unite For Braille, Cane Challenges

For the first time since the pandemic, the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind hosted a public version of its annual Braille Challenge and Cane Quest competitions.

March marked a special month for the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.

For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the schools opened their doors to children from across the state for a pair of school traditions placed on hiatus: the Braille Challenge and Cane Quest.

These competitions test children’s skills at reading and writing braille, and using mobility aids like canes to get around.

The Braille Challenge tests skills like reading comprehension, writing speed and accuracy.

In it, students read sheets of braille, and use a machine called a braille embosser to write and respond to questions. These embossers use pins and weights to indent a sheet of paper with braille.

Morgan DiPalma is a teacher at the Children’s Vision Rehabilitation Program (CVRP) in Morgantown, and organized this year’s Braille Challenge. She said group activities like these inspire kids to practice their skills.

“There’s different levels – different levels of kids, different needs,” she said. “Whatever level they’re at, we just encourage them to keep building off that.”

Nearly 40 students representing 11 different West Virginia counties competed in the challenges. Some attend the School for the Blind, and others stayed overnight at the campus in Romney after visiting from schools elsewhere in the state.

Kenzie Hayes (left) and Searra Kline (center) use braille embossers to type braille into a sheet of paper during the Braille Challenge.

*Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In addition to the Braille Challenge, kids also got to participate in Cane Quest. This challenge tests students’ ability to use canes as orientation and mobility devices.

Bethanie Mateer, an orientation and mobility specialist with the CVRP, organized this portion of the competition. She said people often don’t see the work that goes into learning how to use a cane – or how important a tool it can be.

“For the user themselves, it helps them detect drop off,” she said. “But again, that goes into learning how to use it and making sure you’re using it appropriately.”

Canes also signify to others when a person is blind, including fellow blind people who a cane user might encounter in public.

There are several barriers to accessible education for students with disabilities. Mateer said events like these can help amend gaps in traditional education resources.

“They work on technology. They work on independence. They work on self-advocacy, like learning skills,” she said.

For students, an added perk of participating in the Braille Challenge and Cane Quest is getting to meet other students who share their experiences.

“I get the braille, and I just get to hang with the people I love,” said Searra Kline, a high school student visiting campus to participate in this year’s challenge.

“Same here. I am so happy to get to see all of these people, because we live so far away from each other,” added her friend Kenzie Hayes, a middle school student visiting for the challenge. “It’s just so nice to get to see everybody.”

Searra Kline (left) and Kenzie Hayes (right) have been friends for years, and reunited during this year’s Braille Challenge and Cane Quest.

*Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Based in Morgantown, the WVU Eye Institute works with students who are blind or have limited vision from across West Virginia. They also partner with the School for the Blind, and this year helped the school organize its challenge.

Director of Outreach Rebecca Coakley said that events like these are good at bringing youth together because, for many students, there are few times when they are in spaces where their experiences are shared with a majority of their peers.

“Kids who are blind and visually impaired are often isolated in their communities. Sometimes, they may be the only child in the county that’s totally blind,” she said.

“When they come to one of our events, there are kids just like them,” Coakley continued. “They get to be the people who help and provide assistance. So it really builds up their self-confidence, their self-esteem [and] their independence.”

Given all the benefits the event brings, Principal Melanie Hesse said she was excited to reopen the events to out-of-school students.

But she also said this year’s event was particularly bittersweet for the school community. One of the school’s orientation and mobility specialists who helped organize the event in the past, Matthew Stewart, died from COVID-19 in 2021.

The events, which spanned three days, ended with a ceremony open to parents and community members. During the ceremony, school administrators shared a video memorial for Stewart, and reminisced over stories of him.

For Hesse, these memories have only renewed the school community’s desire to continue hosting the Braille Challenge and Cane Quest, in order to carry on Stewart’s legacy in the years to come.

“It was always his baby,” she said. “We want to make sure that we honor his memory.”

W.Va. Among States With Highest Prevalence Of Long COVID

Workers suffering from Long COVID may be eligible for workplace protections and accommodations under federal law.

West Virginia workers suffering from Long COVID, or long-haul COVID-19, may be eligible for workplace protections and accommodations under federal law.

Long COVID can have varying symptoms that impact work performance, such as fatigue, difficulty concentrating and shortness of breath.

A recent analysis published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that West Virginia was among the states with the highest prevalence rate of Long Covid in the country.

In 2022, nearly 6.9 percent of U.S. adults reported ever experiencing Long COVID while a range of 8.9 to 10.6 percent of West Virginians reported symptoms.

According to Tracie DeFreitas, a program leader with the Job Accommodation Network (JAN), a service that is funded by the Office of Disability Employment Policy, job accommodation can take on many forms.

“There are some general categories or sort of common types of accommodations that are available or might be requested by individuals that can include things like job restructuring, where you might be modifying when or how certain job functions are performed,” DeFreitas said.

Workers may have difficulty working the same way they did before and may be entitled to temporary or longer-term support that can help them stay on the job or return to work once ready. Federal laws like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provide protections and accommodations for workers with Long COVID.

“Once a person with Long COVID asks for an accommodation, the employer and the individual will engage in that accommodation process,” DeFreitas said. “It’s a basically they take those steps to kind of figure out what the individual’s needs are, and in doing that, there is a series of sort of asking relevant questions to help them the employer understand what the individual’s needs are to kind of work through the situation to figure out what the person’s limitations are, how those are affecting job duties.”

Accommodations for Long COVID may include telework, flexible schedules and job restructuring.

“When we think about accommodations, we really want to keep an open mind and be creative,” DeFreitas said. “We know that telework, for example, has been an accommodation that can be beneficial to many people with disabilities, but especially those with Long COVID. It can help to sort of decrease or eliminate commuting to work, which can oftentimes deplete energy levels. And so this might allow someone to return to work sooner than anticipated.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.

Senate Bill Would Require Public Venues To Display Closed Captions On Televisions

A bill introduced to the West Virginia Senate would require that public venues display closed captioning on their televisions. The bill was referred to the Senate Government Organization Committee for review.

A bill proposed in the West Virginia Senate would make public spaces more accessible for people with hearing loss.

Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, proposed Senate Bill 251 earlier this month, which would require public venues to display closed captioning on their televisions.

The bill includes exceptions for televisions without a closed captioning function. Likewise, venues with several televisions on display would only have to display closed captioning on half of their screens.

Ultimately, the bill stipulates that places of public accommodation should make a “reasonable effort” to preemptively provide closed captioning on televisions, without placing the onus on patrons to request such services themselves.

The bill is under consideration by the Senate Government Organization Committee, which on Tuesday created a subcommittee to review and develop the bill further.

Mine Workers Union Opposes House Bill To Cap Workers Compensation

House Bill 3270 would amend the state’s deliberate intent law to cap economic damages at $250,000.

The United Mine Workers of America opposes a workers compensation bill in the West Virginia Legislature.

House Bill 3270 would amend the state’s deliberate intent law to cap economic damages at $250,000.

That would be bad for mine workers, UMWA President Cecil Roberts said in a statement Tuesday.

Under the current law, injured workers can sue their bosses and recover damages if the bosses knowingly placed them in harm’s way.

According to Roberts, workplace management would face no consequences under HB 3270.

Additionally, Roberts said, the lower limit on damages would cause families to struggle.

The bill is before the House Judiciary Committee. A similar bill is before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The House of Delegates hosted a public hearing on the issue on Feb. 20, with the speakers split evenly for and against the change.

Judiciary Committee Will Recommend Electronic Absentee Voting Bill For People With Disabilities

Members of the Joint Judiciary Committees voted Monday to recommend a bill to their respective chambers, allowing voters with certain physical disabilities to cast absentee ballots electronically.

Currently, West Virginia allows voters with qualifying impairments to cast paper mail-in votes, as long as they’re on a special absentee voting list maintained by the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office.

But, according to Jeremiah Underhill, legal director for the group Disability Rights of West Virginia, navigating a piece of paper can be an impediment for someone who has a serious hand or visual impairment.

“Voting is a fundamental right that is preserved in the U.S. Constitution,” Underhill told the committee. “Everyone is afforded a legal opportunity to vote.”

And, said Donald Kersey, general counsel to the West Virginia Secretary of State, everyone has a constitutional right to vote privately. That’s something West Virginia’s existing system for casting ballots may be violating.

“If you’re a voter with a disability that prevents you from seeing [or] from using your hands, you don’t have any other way to vote right now in West Virginia, except by getting help from someone, you have to have someone mark the ballot for you,” he said.

Kersey told lawmakers on Monday that counties must draw their ballot orders by Feb. 18, meaning the sooner legislators pass this bill, the better.

“It’s something we need to do now,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do, it’s the legally required thing to do.”
He added if the state doesn’t address the issue now, it eventually will have to by the legal order of a court.

Some states have already dealt with this, including the Maryland Board of Elections in 2016 and the Ohio Secretary of State’s office in 2017. In both situations, a federal judge agreed paper ballot voting systems discriminate against those with disabilities.

According to Kersey, a law firm in D.C. is making plans for similar legal action in West Virginia if the Legislature doesn’t make its own plans this session.

Federal and local governments are required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure voters with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to vote. Because the voters mentioned is this bill are such a small subsect of West Virginia’s disability community, the Secretary of State’s office said it does not have numbers on how many voters this bill might ultimately affect. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2013 to 2017 14.4 percent of the state’s population under 65 has a disability.

West Virginia will not pay any costs in 2020 associated with this electronic ballot technology, Kersey said. Instead, he said Tusk-Montgomery Philanthropies offered to cover the equipment for the upcoming election. The same group funded a mobile voting pilot in West Virginia last year.

After 2020, the bill gives counties the chance to decide what kind of technology they want to use and pay for. All the bill requires is that there be some kind of electronic method of ballot delivery for eligible voters with qualifying disabilities.

In addressing concerns of possible voter fraud, Kersey said that with electronic ballots, voters will still have to register with personal information, offer their state-issued IDs for verification and do video facial recognition before casting an electronic ballot.

Committee staffer Sarah Canterbury said the bill, as currently drafted, doesn’t include mental disabilities or any physical disability where it’s still possible to vote by paper ballot.

She additionally pointed out Monday the state is only required to make a reasonable effort not to discriminate, exempting legislators from committing to extremely costly or burdensome efforts.

“As more technological options become available, we can improve,” Canterbury told the committee. “But I think this is the best we can do, for this time.”

According to Kersey, the bill will be made available online once it has sponsors. During the Judiciary Committee meeting on Monday, senators and delegates agreed to sponsor the bill in their respective chambers.

DHHR Staff Estimate State Is Spending Millions On Committing ‘Forensic Patients’

State staffers and advocates for people with disabilities say the state likely is spending “millions of dollars” on involuntarily committing people to inpatient mental health facilities for unnecessarily long periods of time.

In a presentation to the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary on Monday, Michael Folio — assistant general counsel for the state Department of Health and Human Resources — said that it’s been 12 years since the state last updated its laws for involuntary commitment.

Folio says several pharmacological solutions have emerged in the last decade to treat people with various mental illnesses and cognitive disabilities.

“Since 2007, there have been at least five therapies that have been developed. They are proven effective, safe pharmacological therapies that can treat people with psychosis, schizophrenia and chemical dependency,” Folio said. “And if those [therapies] are administered, these people then could possibly be discharged.”

Folio had no bills for the committee to consider on Monday during its December interim meeting. For the time being, he said the DHHR is studying ways it can update state law, to minimize the number of people in its care who have involuntarily been placed in a psychiatric ward.

“The goal is to ensure that the clinical director can exercise appropriate clinical discretion, and that we can minimize the number of inpatient patients in the state,” Folio said.

West Virginia had 317 ‘forensic patients’ earlier this month, according to a report from the state Office of Health Facilities. Forensic patients refers to individuals who were found not guilty of a crime, due to a mental, development or intellectual disability.

The OHF reported on Dec. 11 that 240 of those individuals were placed in a mental health facility. Seventy-seven are still classified as forensic patients, but the state has connected them to other treatment options.

Overspending On Health Care

Considering the range of modern therapies available to forensic patients, Jason Parmer with the group Disability Rights of West Virginia said the state is likely overspending in this area.

“Doing the math, this is millions of dollars we’re spending to keep people in hospitals, when they’re not presently dangerous,” Parmer said.

Folio estimated that treatments outside of state-run facilities, sometimes called community placements, could cost $350 per individual, per day, whereas placing an individual in a state-run facility costs approximately $850 a day.

“And then we pay even more to place people in the private psychiatric hospitals, because we have patients in our state hospital that should be in the community, taking up that space,” said State Forensic Medical Director John Justice.

Financial disclosures with the West Virginia Health Care Authority show that in 2018 the state spent $925 daily on each patient it sent to Highland Clarksburg Hospital, a private facility. The state spent $1,300 per patient per day at another private facility, River Park Hospital in Huntington.

Anticipating Legal Dilemmas

According to Parmer, the number of forensic patients in West Virginia has been rising since updates to state code in the 1990s, when legislators agreed to give courts the authority to discharge forensic patients, instead of hospital physicians.

“The effect of this change has been that some courts order patients to stay in a hospital even when they are not currently mentally ill and dangerous,” Parmer wrote in an email. He added that the amendment violates the U.S. constitution.

“I think the current code … is vulnerable to a legal challenge,” Folio told the Judiciary Committee. “There have been a number of class action suits that have been filed around the country that have challenged other statutes.”

An Update on Sharpe Hospital

Bob Crouch, Secretary of the DHHR, told another joint committee later Monday that changes at the William R. Sharpe, Jr., Hospital in Weston, Lewis County, may also change the way the state deals with its forensic population.

Sharpe is a 200-bed, state-run facility that exclusively treats involuntarily committed forensic and civil patients, the latter of which are not involved with the criminal justice system.

In late 2017, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found the hospital had been providing inadequate treatment to the people committed there. CMS ultimately revoked the hospital’s ability to bill the Medicaid or Medicare for services.

The decision from CMS that year has led the state-run hospital to spend thousands more dollars in relocating patients, many of whom would’ve otherwise used Medicaid or Medicare to cover their treatment.

Before losing Medicaid, the state spent nearly $18 million in 2016 on paying other hospitals to take 1,030 civil patients and 40 forensic patients, according to a report from the West Virginia Legislative Auditor’s office.

By contrast, the state spent $30.8 million in 2018 to move 1,267 civil patients and eight forensic patients.

CMS re-instated the hospital’s ability to bill Medicaid in August. Crouch said he expects this will reduce some of what the state has been spending on committing forensic and civil patients to other hospitals.

According to Crouch, the ordeal “caused us to focus on these issues, on that forensic population, and make some significant changes at that hospital.”

Going forward, he told lawmakers he looks forward to focusing more on the state’s forensic population, and ways to minimize their stays at state-run facilities.