Kid Ability: Disability Sensitivity and Awareness for Children

While all people are different in background, interests, and talents, we share common qualities, such as the desire to be accepted, to have fun, and to make friends. Aimed at enhancing young people's understanding of disabled individuals though personal interviews conducted by kids, this program introduces viewers to a blind teenager, a deaf teacher, a mother confined to a wheelchair, and a boy with cerebral palsy, who candidly answer questions about their disabilities, their daily lives, and how they prefer to be treated by other people. The program also includes an enlightening glimpse of technology available to aid the disabled: photocopy machines that read aloud, flashing telephones for the deaf, talking scanners and computers. On the down side, painstaking adherence to political correctness results in awkward phrases and descriptions such as "European-American," "a person with deafness," and "a person with blindness"; a fly buzzes around on camera at one point; and special effects of double images meant to enhance a couple interview sequences actually detract and make one worry that the film is defective. While intended for children in grades K-12, the action doesn't seem to move fast enough to hold the interest of very young children. A laudable idea, somewhat clumsily executed, this is an optional purchase. Aud: I, J, H, P. (J. McDaniel)