Thursday, October 31, 2013

AAPD Disability Daily ~ The American Association of People with Disability ~ Your news. Daily. Unfiltered ~ Thursday, 31 October 2013


AAPD Disability Daily ~ The American Association of People with Disability ~ Your news. Daily. Unfiltered ~ Thursday, 31 October 2013
HIGHLIGHTS
Hearing announced for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to take place on November 5th. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (10/30)
CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Presiding:
Senator Menendez
Date:
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Time:
02:30 PM
Location:
Senate Dirksen 419
Webcast:
This hearing is scheduled to be live webcast. Please return to this page to view the hearing live at the specified date and time.
Panel One:
The Honorable Kelly Ayotte
United States Senate
The Honorable Mark Kirk 
United States Senate
Panel Two:
The Honorable Thomas J. Ridge
Former Secretary of Homeland Security and current Chairman, The National Organization on Disability 
Chevy Chase, MD
The Honorable Tammy Duckworth
Congresswoman from Illinois and Lieutenant Colonel Illinois Army National Guard 
Washington, DC
The Honorable Richard Thornburgh
Former Attorney General of the United States 
Of Counsel, K&L Gates, LLP
Washington, Washington
Dr. Susan Yoshihara
Senior Vice President for Research and Director, International Organizations Research Group
The Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
Washington, DC
Mr. Timothy L. Meyer
Assistant Professor of Law
The University of Georgia School of Law
Athens, GA
~~~
NATIONAL
Social Security, SSI Benefits To Rise In 2014. Disability Scoop (10/30) by Michelle Diament
Monthly payments will increase next year for people with disabilities receiving benefits from Social Security, including Supplemental Security Income.
The Social Security Administration said Wednesday that benefits will rise by 1.5 percent in 2014.
The automatic adjustment known as COLA is intended to account for higher cost-of-living and is triggered by law when inflation goes up.
The change will take effect starting Dec. 31 for the nation’s 8 million SSI recipients and will begin in January for the 57 million Americans receiving Social Security.
With the increase, the maximum federal benefit for an individual receiving SSI will rise from $710 per month to $721. At the same time, the federal ceiling for a couple on SSI will grow from $1,066 per month to $1,082. Many states add to SSI benefits for their residents meaning that actual payments could exceed these caps.
The COLA for 2014 is similar to that seen this year when benefits rose 1.7 percent over last. Prior to that, beneficiaries saw their monthly checks increase more substantially in 2012, jumping 3.6 percent, after seeing no COLA at all in 2010 and 2011 because inflation was too low to warrant an adjustment.
Federal officials were originally scheduled to release information about the COLA for 2014 weeks ago, but the announcement was delayed until now by the government shutdown.
~~~
STATE/LOCAL
Judge in deaf school abuse case restricts sign language in courtroom. The Baltimore Sun (10/30) by Christopher Neely
The judge in the ongoing trial of a the man accused of sexually abusing female students at the Maryland School for the Deaf implemented an uncommon rule in the courtroom Tuesday.
After the jury was finalized and prior to opening statements, Judge William V. Tucker of the Circuit Court for Howard County forbade any sign language communication by people in the courtroom, either between spectators or between spectators and trial participants. The only exception was for the four official courtroom interpreters and those communicating to the interpreters. 
Speaking to members of the audience, he also said "facial gestures to any witnesses or participants" were forbidden during the trial, threatening to remove anyone who violated the temporary rule. 
The rule was initiated due to the number of key players in the case against Clarence Cepheus Taylor III who are deaf, including the defendant, victims and some witnesses.
"I've never been confronted with a situation like that," said David Oppenheimer, a Berkley Law professor who specializes in discrimination law. 
"I'm not sure if there is an ADA violation (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) or a constitutional violation. It's intriguing," he said. 
Taylor, 38, a former student life counselor and dormitory aid at the Columbia campus of the Maryland School for the Deaf, is accused of sexually abusing seven deaf female students between 2008 and 2011.
After opening statements, there was speculation by the prosecutor that there had been discrete signing by members of the audience. Two court officials were then brought in to watch for any suspicious audience interactions. 
The victims, who ranged between fourth and eighth grade during the time of the alleged abuse, accused Taylor, who is also deaf, of touching them inappropriately while they were overnight students at the school. 
Three of the victims also accused him of attempting to solicit nude photographs of them via text message. 
The investigation began in late 2012, after some of the victims told a student counselor of the abuse that took place a few years earlier.
The judge said Tuesday the trial is expected to last 10 days.
~~~
Minnesota launches plan to improve treatment for people with disabilities, mental health conditions. StarTribune (10/31) by Chris Serres
Theresa Dolata had her first suicidal thought at age 5, was hospitalized for mental illness at age 14, and tried to decapitate herself with a sword — “as a sacrifice to God,” she says — at age 31. Yet Dolata, now 39, considers herself fortunate.
In 2005, she discovered Vail Place, a Minneapolis nonprofit that helped her find a job, affordable housing and proper medication for her condition: bipolar obsessive compulsive disorder. “I would be on the streets, dead or in a mental hospital were it not for the personal care I’ve received here,” Dolata said.
The state of Minnesota is about to undertake an ambitious effort to duplicate that experience on a large scale for thousands of other individuals who live with potentially disabling conditions, from severe mental illness and traumatic brain injuries to neurological disorders like Asperger syndrome.
Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon will unveil a detailed plan Thursday designed to end the unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities by dramatically expanding Minnesota’s range of community and home-based treatment options. Crafted by eight state agencies, the plan calls for transitioning thousands of people housed in state-run mental hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions to settings, such as Vail Place, that are less restrictive and more focused on integrating them into the community.
The wide-ranging proposal, developed in part because of a federal lawsuit, would accelerate the controversial deinstitutionalization of mentally ill and disabled persons that began in Minnesota in the 1970s, while altering the way state agencies deliver care for vulnerable populations.
“It’s ambitious, but we believe it’s the right thing to do,” said Solon, who is chairwoman of the committee that drafted the plan. “We really and truly have made an effort to walk in the shoes of the person with disabilities, and to provide services that they feel are the best for them.”
Among its recommendations, the 131-page plan calls for increasing the state’s stock of affordable housing for people with disabilities by 10 percent a year and dramatically reducing unnecessary hospitalizations at the Anoka-Metro Regional Treatment Center, where a large share of patients could be discharged if there were suitable alternatives. The plan also calls for a reduction in the controversial use of restraint and seclusion in state-run psychiatric institutions — a form of segregation that many disability rights advocates consider unnecessary and inhumane.
Years in the making
Disability advocates lauded many of the report’s recommendations, but many were left asking: What took so long?
The proposal, which still must be approved by a federal judge, comes 14 years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling, Olmstead v. L.C., which said that segregating individuals with disabilities can be discriminatory. Disability rights advocates have compared the ruling to Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 case that banned segregation in public schools.
Twenty-nine other states have unveiled similar proposals, known as Olmstead plans, for reforming the treatment of persons with disabilities.
Many states did not move to adopt an Olmstead plan until they were sued, and Minnesota is no exception.
In 2009, the families of three adults with developmental disabilities filed a lawsuit alleging they were improperly handcuffed at a state-run facility in Cambridge, Minn. A 2008 report by the state’s ombudsman for mental health and developmental disabilities found the state facility routinely put residents in metal hand and ankle restraints to punish them — and not just for safety reasons as required by law.
As part of a settlement in that case, the state agreed to produce an Olmstead Plan for improving treatment of people with disabilities.
The state had already taken significant steps toward deinstitutionalizing patients; in 1960, there were more than 16,000 patients in state hospitals, compared with fewer than 2,000 today.
But state officials recognized that the job was unfinished, and the improper use of restraint and seclusion has remained a problem at state-run facilities. Last year, the Minnesota Department of Human Services fined the Minnesota Security Hospital, a state psychiatric facility in St. Peter, for placing a resident in seclusion without a mattress for more than two hours and without any clothing for about an hour. In another case, investigators found that staff at the facility took a patient’s mattress away, leaving the patient to sleep on concrete for 25 nights.
‘Culture change’
The Olmstead plan calls for a statewide effort to “increase positive practices and eliminate use of restraint or seclusion” by July 1, 2014, as well as a common reporting system for the emergency use of restraints.
“Implementation of this vision will require a culture change … reinforcing positive skills and practices and replacing practices which may cause physical, emotional or psychological pain or distress,” the report states.
It remains to be seen how the plan will actually take effect. Many of the proposals, such as increasing the stock of affordable housing, will be expensive. The drafting committee is still working on an overall cost estimate. Solon said officials are also considering the creation of a “permanent office” for holding state agencies accountable for fulfilling the plan.
Today, Dolata runs her own personal-care attendant business.
“I would probably not be here today to talk to you without safe and affordable housing and without meaningful things to do,” Dolata said. “After all, what else is there to live for?
~~~
Students with disabilities share stories with other students. SunSentinel (10/30) by Lois K. Solomon
West Boca—
Dozens of hands popped up when Alli Gootner, who has Tourette's syndrome, invited questions about her disability from fifth-graders at Water's Edge Elementary School.
Does it hurt? Was she born with it? Is it contagious? Can she control it?
Gootner, 18, a recent graduate of West Boca High School, was born with Tourette's, which forces involuntary bodily movements such as eye-blinking, throat-clearing, shoulder-shrugging or jumping. The disorder is controlled with medication as well as other techniques, such as meditation and relaxation.
It does hurt sometimes, Gootner said, when her neck keeps jerking. She said fellow students mocked her in middle school, but by the time she got to high school, she cared less about her peers' comments.
"People looked at me like I was a freak," Gootner said. "You need to learn not to care if you're being bullied."
Gootner was one of eight Palm Beach County high school students or recent graduates to talk about their impairments at Water's Edge's "Day of Inclusion," a morning for students to learn about the real experiences of disabled teens. Young people with autism, attention-deficit disorder, muscular dystrophy, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness and deafness also addressed the students, who were in third, fourth and fifth grades.
Like a growing number of Palm Beach County public schools, Water's Edge includes students with disabilities in typical classrooms instead of keeping them together in special clusters. One or two classes in each grade are "inclusion classrooms," with specialists coming through each day to help the disabled with occupational therapy, tutoring or other assistance, said Adriana Gonzalez, the school's exceptional student education coordinator.
Lisa DelPozzo, a sign language instructor at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, organized the morning, the second day of inclusion she has offered to an elementary school. She said she thought of the idea as part of her master's thesis and hopes to bring it to more of Palm Beach County's schools.
"It's powerful for the kids to see someone stand up and say, 'I'm different,' " DelPozzo said. "Once they are educated, they tend to include more."
Amanda Mostyn talked about life with Down syndrome, having few friends and a deep desire to be part of a group. Danni Rodriguez, a Spanish River High student, used a sign-language interpreter to share stories about life with profound deafness. Students were awed by Thomas Ballegaard, a Boca Raton High School student who has muscular dystrophy, and his $20,000 wheelchair.
Jack Lebersfeld, 13, who is home-schooled, told the students about his Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. He said after the talk he was intrigued by the students' questions, especially why anyone would want to bully him.
Water's Edge fifth-grader Isabella Santovenia said she was deeply moved by Jack's presentation, especially his openness about being hassled by peers.
"It changed my way of how I see people with disabilities," said Santovenia, 10. "Some people think they're just weird, but if you think about it, it's not their fault."
Lsolomon@tribune.com or 561-243-6536
Copyright © 2013, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
~~~
INTERNATIONAL
Paris by Wheelchair: A Seemingly Impossible Challenge. The Atlantic (10/31) Anthony Flint
France has been late to the game when it comes to wheelchair user access. As the city of Paris prepares for the implementation of a sweeping law similar to the Americans with Disability Act (it will go into effect in just over a year), it's easy to see why.
Cobblestone streets. Cozy bistros. Steep stairs, tiny bathrooms, elevators that can barely hold three standing people, let alone anybody in a wheelchair. This just isn't a place that can be easily retrofitted.
The law, itself a reinforcement of broad 1975 legislation guaranteeing rights for the disabled, passed in 2005. The requirements for better public transportation access, including buses, kicked in soon thereafter. But the bulk of public establishments, from restaurants to workplaces, got a full ten years to comply. It seemed like a long time to prepare. But now, the 2015 deadline is right around the corner.
Like students putting off a term paper, France is in a state of denial, seemingly hoping the new requirements will somehow just go away. A report issued earlier this month by the office of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault flatly states that there is virtually no way the 2015 deadline will be met. "The lack of political leadership has failed to mobilize the actors on the ground," the report reads.
New housing construction is in good shape, the report says. But places of employment, transportation, and especially the lifeblood of the urban economy – restaurants – show few signs of taking "reasonable steps" to remove physical barriers.
Jammed into a middle row of lunch tables recently on the marvelously crowded second floor of Café Constant in the 7th arrondissement, I was sympathetic to the response by small businesses, which might be boiled down to, c’est une blague, non? – are you kidding me? A ramp over the steps from rue Saint-Dominique? An elevator? Where to find the space for a giant bathroom?
Some bistro owners have talked of banding together and finding a spot for a common handicap accessible bathroom, in proximity to a cluster of restaurants. For others, they may take their chances. If there are fines levied for noncompliance, the options would either be to challenge them or just pay them, as an added cost of doing business.
France is no stranger to regulation. There are strictly enforced rules for just about everything. But like the rest of the European Union, the nation never really got serious about disabled access. That might say something about the realities of European cities, and how much effort is realistic.
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone put it bluntly, telling Time magazine in the aftermath of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act that train stations then required to be retrofitted were "built during Victorian or Edwardian times, when disabled people either died at birth or stayed in the home. There was no expectation that disabled people would be wheeling around the city."
In the U.S., the ADA is both a blessing and a curse. My architect friends can't stand it, bristling at the uniform application of standards regardless of context and cost. Access ramps slapped onto the streetscape can be viewed as a kind of blight. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has spent millions rebuilding T stations for handicap access. At issue are both practical costs and historic preservation.
Yet a friend of mine who's used a wheelchair ever since being injured in a bicycle accident comes to visit, and I see thresholds and steps in a whole new way. When is it unreasonable to retrofit the built environment so he can get around just like anyone else? Is it possible to make the city totally accessible?
I've spent three weeks in Paris this fall as a visiting fellow at The American Library in Paris, working on my forthcoming narrative biography of Le Corbusier. I walked so much – across the Champs de Mars, up the stairs of the Trocadero, to the No. 42 bus and the Line 6 Metro, up and down flights of stairs and down sidewalks and over bridges – I managed to give myself tendonitis. It was a reminder of how much the city is made for walking. Which is something to celebrate – except for those who can’t.
Anthony Flint is a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., and author of Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City and This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America. His next book, The Raven: The Life of Le Corbusier, Maker of the Modern will be published in the fall of 2014 by Amazon Publishing. 
~~~
HEALTH
An Ignored Group of Smokers: People With Mental Health Conditions.
U.S. News and World Report (10/30) by Kimberly Leonard
People who have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or another serious mental illness die 25 years earlier than the average American. What kills them, however, is not their illness, but complications from smoking, such as heart disease, lung disease and cancer, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Journal of American Medical Association Psychiatry.
Tobacco control measures, including taxes on cigarettes and smoking bans, have cut smoking in the United States in half during the last 50 years, yet these initiatives barely have made a dent in the smoking rate among people with mental illness. Experts who wrote the JAMA Psychiatry article, "Partnership Between Tobacco Control Programs and Offices of Mental Health Needed to Reduce Smoking Rates in the United States," attribute this to the acceptance of smoking in treatment facilities, the physical needs of someone who has a mental illness, the lack of collaboration between behavioral health and public health agencies and insufficient Medicaid funding for tobacco control. Public health officials who run tobacco-control efforts do not think of people with mental illness as a high-priority population, though their smoking rates are double those of the general population, the report states.
U.S. News turned to psychiatry and smoking experts to discuss why smoking rates are exceptionally high among people with mental illness and what can be done to address the issue.
Smoking is a part of mental health culture. The cultural role cigarettes play in the mental illness community has been difficult to change. Historically, staff at mental health treatment facilities have used cigarettes as a way to reward patients for complying with treatments. "We hope that's a thing of the past," says Jeffrey Willett, a coauthor of the report. Still, many residences and outpatient treatment programs schedule smoking breaks and reserve designated smoking areas for patients and visitors. Often, patients start smoking while they are in treatment programs, says Jill Williams, professor of psychiatry and director of the division of addiction psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Williams, a coauthor of the JAMA Psychiatry article, says many behavioral health staff have training and experience with helping people overcome addictions other than tobacco, but have yet to view it as severe as drug or alcohol dependency. "It's addictive, deadly and its impact exceeds all other drug use combined," Willett says. "Yet it is a legal product."
Nicotine reacts with mental health medications. People with mental illness receiving treatment are likely doing so through a course of medication and therefore have a more difficult time quitting cigarettes than the average smoker, Williams says. Doctors take a patient's smoking habit into account when prescribing medication, says Willett, who is vice president for programs at the Kansas Health Foundation. He explains that a person with a mental illness who wants to quit smoking will need medication adjustments to account for nicotine withdrawal and additional side effects that may develop. Williams adds that breaking a nicotine addiction can be a challenge for someone with a mental illness, who has more difficulty coping with physical withdrawal and emotional symptoms, like irritability, than someone who does not.
Public and behavioral health services need to collaborate. Behavioral and general medical services have developed separately, with different funding sources and leadership. Now, however, there is a shift toward addressing both the physical and mental sides of treatment in achieving wellness. Willett says the JAMA Psychiatry article is a call to action for the mental and behavioral health systems to work together when it comes to lowering smoking rates among people with mental illnesses. The two groups have individually tried to address the issue, but failed, he says. During the next year, the Kansas Health Foundation will be investing resources in a fellowship that will bring together public health communities and mental health clinicians to discuss solutions for smokers with mental illnesses in the state. "We don't have a specific solution in mind but we believe we're going down the right path," he said.
Increase Medicaid reimbursement of tobacco control services. At least 11 percent of Medicaid, or $22 billion, is spent on medical illnesses related to tobacco. Still, Willett says, in the past the government has not invested in continuous treatment to help people quit smoking, whether through nicotine patches, gum or medication. This may shift in some states under the Affordable Care Act, in which smoking cessation treatment for low-income parents and their children is covered by Medicaid and private health plans. Most people who smoke want to quit, Willett says, and at least half have tried during the past year and been unsuccessful. "We're not taking away a privilege, but supporting smokers who want to quit," he says
~~~
CULTURE/MEDIA
The disability-friendly approach to Halloween. BBC News (10/31) by Emma Tracey
As younger children catch the trick or treat bug, Halloween fancy dress has moved away from horror and taken a turn for the creative and clever. This has given rise to a new wave of innovative costumes for disabled children and adults.
In 2011, Twitter came alive with photos of a little boy called Atti dressed as Doctor Who in his wheelchair, which was cleverly made to look like a Tardis.
As well as witches and ghosts, nowadays lots of children are following suit and dressing as their favourite characters from TV and books. With a paucity of disabled princesses and superheroes, kids who use wheelchairs and their parents have to think outside the box... and that box happens to be cardboard, an excellent material for creating a sitting-down costume.
We've seen chairs adapted to look like other wheeled favourites like a digger, an ice cream van and Thomas the Tank Engine depicted widely on the web on blogs, disability sites and photo sharing sites like Pinterest.
Irish dad Paddy Brown found fame this week when a photo of his efforts to turn son Oisin's wheelchair into a bat-mobile went viral. He made the costume so that Oisin would feel included at his school fancy dress party.
For girls on wheels a good alternative to the floaty fairy princess seems to be a mermaid outfit. Helpfully there is a website that gives instructions on how you can achieve this look - adopted by Lady GaGa in 2011. In short, simply cover the entire wheelchair with material to hide your legs and make a sparkly fish tail for the back. It's a costume that upright walking people could never achieve.
Disabled adults have been getting in on the act too. Former US Paralympic skier, now motivational speaker Josh Sundquist, is dressing as a flamingo this year. By perching upside down with crutches taking his body weight, his only leg becomes the bird's neck and bill.
Sundquist is known for his clever Halloween costumes that incorporate his limb difference. According to a YouTube video where he reveals this year's look, in 2010 he dressed up as a half-eaten gingerbread man - something an amputee is more readily able to achieve.
The move away from stereotypical disabled oddities or baddies like Edward Scissorhands and Captain Hook who had missing or altered body parts, and Scarface with his facial disfigurement, is no doubt welcome. And on Halloween night, these characters reportedly can confuse and upset children with autism or learning difficulties.
But, we hear you cry, you are discriminating against my disabled dog, he needs a costume too. Never fear, Fido shall go to the fancy dress apple bobbing ball. See below - for a wheelchair-using dachshund dressed as a hotdog.
Follow @BBCOuch on Twitter and on Facebook, and listen to our monthly talk show
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SPORTS
Speed of sight: The world's fastest blind daredevil. CNN (10/31) by James Masters
(CNN) -- Ever imagined flying an airplane with your eyes closed? Or driving at nearly 200 miles an hour with a blindfold? How about racing a speedboat in complete darkness?
Sounds crazy? Well take off those blinkers and meet Mike Newman -- the world's fastest blind daredevil.
On Friday, Newman will attempt to break the blind water speed record in a powerboat just off the English coast and secure his place in history.
Being unable to see has proved no barrier to the 52-year-old who is aiming to become the first man to hold the blind speed records for land, sea and air in the same year.
Having already succeeded on four wheels and in the cockpit of an airplane, it is just the sea which stands between him and sporting immortality.
"To hold all the records would be amazing," Newman told CNN, who is hoping to reach speeds of 95 miles an hour in a top of the range powerboat.
"I first started riding motorcycles 12 years ago when I was pushing 40 and I just went from there.
"I moved on to cars after that and I've loved it. People love all types of different sports but for me it was always motorsport.
"I love the engines, the smells, the noises which come with it. I love all the elements and just because I can't see, it doesn't detract from the experience."
Newman's story is as rapid as it is remarkable.
Diagnosed with glaucoma as a child, Newman lost his sight at the age of eight.
But it was not until some years later that he began his love affair with speed -- breaking blind land records on land and in the air.
It was 12 years ago that he first attempted to break a record -- riding a motorcycle at 89 mph after just three days practice.
He twice broke blind land speed records in 2003 and 2005, improving from 144mph to 175mph in the space of two years.
In October 2011 he achieved the world blind aerial aerobatic record; flying the most consecutive loops in formation.
I love the engines, the smells, the noises which come with it. I love all the elements and just because I can't see, it doesn't detract from the experience.
Mike Newman
A five times Guinness World record holder, there isn't much Newman can't do.
"The main point of all of this is to make sure that people who aren't able to have these opportunities get that chance," added Newman.
"The charity is doing a great job and although we're only quite young we've made great progress.
"I can't believe the amount of attention we've had. Hopefully it will continue for a while yet."
There will be hundreds of people present for Newman's latest record attempt with television cameras, journalists and photographers all ready to capture the moment.
His exploits have made him into something of a celebrity -- a tag of which he's not too keen on.
That he is blind is not an issue to him -- what everyone else thinks is up to them.
"Whatever I attempt, I do it in my own environment," Newman told CNN.
"If I get on the bus, go to the post office or the supermarket, I'm doing it in my own environment and it's normal for me.
"Being blind doesn't stop me doing things. I don't really think about being a role model or if I've broken down barriers. I'm just doing this to help other people in life."
John Galloway, the team principal, has worked with Newman for over a decade and has watched his friend and colleague meet each challenge head on without showing an ounce of fear.
Being blind doesn't stop me doing things. I don't really think about being a role model or if I've broken down barriers. I'm just doing this to help other people in life.
Mike Newman
"I have known Mike for over 11 years now and never met someone with such self belief," Galloway told CNN.
"He has a driving ambition to chase his dreams and able to catch them. He is a great example to all of us."
Newman will now turn his attention to breaking the blind water speed record and become the first man to hold all three records at the same time.
Former soldier Mark Treadgold currently holds the record of 91mph but Newman is confident he can surpass that achievement when he hits the water at Torque Harbor, Devon, on England's south west coast.
Newman will be assisted by Andrew Langdon, who owns the race boat Silverline and will offer navigational assistance through helmet to helmet radio communication.
The team believes he can reach 95mph if conditions allow -- a result which would see him become the first man to hold the land, air and sea record in the same year.
"It would be amazing if we could do it," added Newman.
"It's really exciting and I cannot wait for it to happen."
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American Association of People with Disabilities
2013 H Street NW, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20006 United States
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