In 2001, in an earlier partial settlement, the department store chain agreed to widen entrances and enlarge fitting rooms and make restrooms accessible in its 75 California stores. At the time it also agreed to pay nearly $3 to disabled Macy's shoppers.

The latest settlement requires the stores to widen aisles to 32 inches and provide 36 inches clearance at corners to enable shoppers in wheelchairs to negotiate turns.

Larry Paradis, director of Disability Rights Advocates in Oakland, told reporters that suits against other department stores weren't faring so well. In November, an Alameda County (CA) Superior Court judge ruled that California's Mervyn's stores did not have to widen their aisles to 32 inches because the company would suffer "undue hardship." That suit is on appeal.

Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Now one member of Parliament is accusing the airline of "blatant profiteering".

Lord Carter, who heads a committee examining the Disability Discrimination Bill, said the actual cost of the service at Stansted Airport is only about 2 pence per ticket, meaning that Ryanair could gain as much as 48 pence per passenger.

Ryanair announced the surcharge the same day a court found the carrier had violated the law by not providing a wheelchair for passenger Bob Ross. Touting itself as "The Low Cost Airline", Ryanair had charged Ross, who has cerebral palsy, an £18 fee (about $28 US) each way for the use of a wheelchair at Stansted.

Ross and the Disability Rights Commission, which represented him in the case, argued that the fee was a form of discrimination. The court agreed and ordered Ryanair to pay Ross £1,336 ($2,435 US), and to provide wheelchairs for passengers that ask for them in the future.

The airline plans to appeal the ruling. Attorneys for Ryanair claim that current law requires airports -- not airlines -- to provide wheelchair services.

Related article: "Why is the Ryanair case important?" by disability affairs reporter Geoff Adams-Spink (BBC News Online -- January 30, 2004)

See also: Man Wins Ryanair Discrimination Suit (below)

Jana Bennett, the corporation's director of television, announced new quotas which the four BBC networks are to use to increase the number of such actors and extras in dramatic programs, the numbers of contestants with disabilities in game shows, and the number of such participants in "factual" shows.

"One in four of the population is either disabled themselves or knows somebody with a disability and independent research last summer showed that audiences were overwhelmingly in favour of seeing more disabled people on screen," Bennett said in a BBC press release.

"Although we have been making progress, we still have further to go and we can't lag behind public opinion," Bennett said.

Bennett said that the BBC will also be launching a talent search and holding auditions for actors with disabilities across the country.

"We recognise that the widest possible range of voices, people and characters should be seen on our screens, and disabled people need to be shown less as minorities with issues, and more as people with lives as rich or as complex as the rest of society," she said.

The networks' goals, which also include recruiting writers, presenters, and directors, are to be reviewed every year.

Related: "New drive to improve disability portrayal on BBC Television" (BBC Press Release)

The practice is entirely legal and tax dollars have been supporting much of it since the 1930s. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense, along with other federal, state and local agencies, provide and pay for much of the work through contracts with employment agencies.

The pay scale is called "sub-minimum wage", and the vast majority of those who receive these below-minimum wages are people with developmental disabilities.

Those who receive it are told they are lucky they to get that.

Sub-minimum wage is determined by a formula which measures how fast the average trained, "non-disabled" worker would perform a certain job or assemble a certain item. Then the worker with a disability is timed doing the same work. The speed with which that person does the work, compared to the "non-disabled" or "100 percent" worker, determines how much the worker is paid. In theory, a person with a disability who works half as quickly would receive half the pay of a "normal" worker without a disability.

It's not uncommon for a person to work 40 hours for just a few bucks.

Some advocates in Kansas, which has the lowest state minimum wage in the U.S., want to see that change.

"It has become a sweatshop kind of thing," Greg Jones, director of advocacy for an independent living center in Lawrence, told the Journal-World. "We allow this stuff to happen right here under our very nose and we call it OK."

While the federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, the minimum wage varies from state to state, and even from city to city. The state of Washington's minimum wage -- the highest in the country -- is $7.16 an hour. The minimum wage in Kansas is just $2.65.

Jones and other critics point out that most of the work is overseen by employment service providers that contract with governments, non-profits and commercial businesses for the "piece-work". Most of those providers also receive government funds to serve their clients -- the workers themselves.

"At the same time community service providers are selling the services of people with disabilities at a very substandard rate, these providers are bilking Medicaid waivers of Kansas a daily rate between $32 and $82.54 to keep these people out of their homes for five hours a day, as they perform demeaning tasks for little or no pay," Jones said.

Mr. Jones and others are supporting a bill in the Kansas legislature that would increase the state's minimum wage to $7.50 an hour by Jan. 1, 2007.

"Kansans with disabilities want to work and will work, but they need a fair and decent wage to make that transition attractive," said Shannon Jones, executive director of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Kansas.

Related article: "Wages paid to disabled criticized" (Lawrence Journal-World)

See also: Kansas group uses radio ads to target sheltered workshops

Latimer initially denied allegations that he killed Tracy. But two days later he confessed, saying he did it out of love for the girl -- that it was a "mercy killing" motivated by his desire to not see her "continue to suffer" from her developmental disabilities.

Three years ago this month, Latimer started serving a mandatory minimum 10 years of a life sentence for murdering Tracy. He will be eligible for parole in 2007.

In an interview with the Toronto Star in late January, Latimer said that he has no regrets or apologies for his crime.

"It was the right thing to do," Latimer said at the minimum-security William Head Institution where he is now serving his sentence.

"To our opponents, Tracy's pain was a side issue, something they are very capable of ignoring," he said. "But to us, it was a very real situation confronting us every day."

Many disability rights advocates have suggested that Latimer murdered Tracy because he was tired of dealing with his own emotional pain. Some people who knew Tracy said that even though the girl did not speak, she let them know how much she loved people and enjoyed life. Others point to the fact that when Tracy died, she was scheduled to undergo pain-relieving hip surgery a few days later.

The Latimer case has been the focus of attention for disability rights advocates around the world who see it as one of countless examples that society in general does not think the lives of people with disabilities are important -- that killing people who have certain disabilities is not only tolerated, but also justified as "merciful".

Latimer believes most Canadians are on his side, even though he clearly broke the law.

"It's their game and you have to play by their rules," he said of the justice system.

University of Alberta psychology professor Dick Sobsey noted that Canada experienced a marked increase in the incidence of "altruistic filicide" -- the killing of a child out of a belief that death is in the child's best interest -- in the years immediately after Tracy's murder.

Related:
"Latimer 10 years on: No regrets" (Toronto Star)
"Tracy Latimer's Death: Mercy or Murder?" (Inclusion Daily Express)