ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, April 20, 1996               TAG: 9604220035
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON 
SOURCE: Associated Press

CANDIDATE SPEAKS OF NEEDS OF THE DISABLED

Each year without fail, around the anniversary of the World War II wounding that cost him the use of his right arm, Sen. Bob Dole pauses to speak to the nation about issues that affect the disabled.

And so it was that Dole, bidding to become the first disabled president since Franklin Roosevelt, told the Senate on Friday that disabled people need help obtaining technology to improve their lives.

``For people with every kind of disability - whether sensory, cognitive, motor or communication - technology can provide tools to speak, hear, see, learn, write, be mobile, work and play,'' Dole said. ``In short, to live as fully and independently as possible.''

On April 14, 1945, either a bullet or shrapnel caught Dole on the battlefront in Italy and crushed part of his spine and broke his shoulder, arm and collarbone. He has no use of his right arm and only partial use of his left arm as a result of the injury.

While Roosevelt's polio-stricken legs were largely hidden from public view, Dole's disability is in plain sight. He cannot put on a shirt without a buttonhook, cannot cut food with a knife and must wear loafers because he cannot tie his shoes.

Disabled people today, Dole said, take advantage of such innovations as voice synthesizers, motorized wheelchairs and artificial limbs. Yet not everyone can afford such expensive technology, and Dole indicated that government must play a role in assisting them.

He cited a move by the Kansas Legislature to spend $100,000 a year helping the disabled pay for technology. Dole has also worked this year to permit Medicare beneficiaries to use their payments as a supplement to buy the items.

Dole told several stories about disabled people who now lead better lives because of scientific advances, including one about a Pennsylvania woman with muscular dystrophy who found a good job supervising a computer Internet program and 75 employees for Microsoft Inc.

Dole said the new telecommunication bill encourages computer companies to make products that are accessible to the disabled. That law also provides for more closed-captioning of television.

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