Actor Noah Wyle, best known for his role as Dr. John Carter in the long-running television series, ER, was among dozens of demonstrators arrested April 23 during an action by the disability rights group ADAPT protesting proposed cuts in Medicaid in-home services for people with disabilities.

According to news reports, more than 100 arrests were made during the protest at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. ADAPT spokeswoman Marsha Katz gives a smaller number, saying 76 people were arrested.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Wyle — who currently stars in the TNT series Falling Skies — described being arrested for the first time as “slightly surreal.” He also took the opportunity to press ADAPT’s case against the proposed cuts.

“Those cuts would reduce the hours of home health care aides being able to come in and give basic services, which would force people to basically give up their right to live in integrated ... accessible housing and put them in an institution,” Wyle said.

According to Katz, Wyle first became interested in disability issues while still filming ER in Chicago, where he came into contact with local ADAPT activists. “He’s a great guy who has previously lent his name and voice to efforts to get health care coverage for all people,” Katz says. “Our issues were very naturally connected, and he is very articulate about them.”

The protest was part of a weeklong action by ADAPT targeting issues of accessibility and community-based services. On April 25 activists also blockaded the D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, demanding that the agency release regulations governing the Community Choice First Option, a federal program to expand in-home services — “six months after they were supposed to come out, and a year after the CFC was established [as part of] the Affordable Care Act,” Katz says.

The group also attended congressional hearings on proposals to exempt hotel and motel swimming pools from accessibility requirements under the ADA. “We also did some street theater outside the Supreme Court, which is deliberating the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act,” Katz says.

Under the terms of a bill introduced in Congress, persons in need of complex rehab technology, such as custom wheelchairs and specialized seating systems, would have fewer bureaucratic hurdles to overcome in getting the equipment they need.

HR 4378, the “Ensuring Access to Quality Complex rehabilitation Technology Act of 2012,” would establish a separate benefit category for CRT within Medicare. Sponsored by Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., the bill is being supported by a wide range of organizations representing the disability and rehab communities, including United Spinal Association, the National Coalition for Assistive and Rehab Technology, the American Association for Homecare, the National Registry of Rehab Technology Suppliers, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, and the Independence Through Enhancement of Medicare and Medicaid Coalition.

Currently, Medicare guidelines include CRT as part of the overall benefit category for durable medical equipment established over 40 years ago. In a statement, ITEM said, “The current benefit category structure presents serious and often insurmountable obstacles for individuals who need to access CRT ... to achieve good health outcomes, live independently, be employed where possible, care for their loves ones, engage in civic functions and perform everyday activities.”

Melissa Mitchell, a writer and disability activist from Eugene, Ore., who has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and seating system that are specially designed and fitted — equipment she is frequently denied coverage for despite submitting all the required documentation and undergoing the necessary assessments.

“Consequently, I spend months to years in equipment that no longer fits, provides the appropriate support or functions properly, leading me to experience increasing pain, fatigue and equipment-related injuries,” she says. While excited that a bill has been introduced in the House to remedy this problem, she says there is still work that needs to be done — including getting co-sponsors to sign onto the bill, and having a similar bill introduced in the Senate. “By having the bill moving through both sides of the legislature, we increase the likelihood the bill will be voted into law.”

Settling a federal lawsuit over wheelchair access, the Los Angeles Angels baseball club has agreed to offer discount prices to wheelchair users for some seats and to expand in-seat service to wheelchair seating areas at Angel Stadium this season.

The suit, filed in 2009 by wheelchair user J. Paul Charlebois against the baseball club and the city of Anaheim, Calif., where the stadium is located, claimed the Angels failed to provide basic accommodations on the Stadium’s club level. As part of the settlement, wheelchair tickets in the Diamond Club — the luxury seating area behind home plate, where seats typically cost $150 apiece — will be offered for $50. In addition, in-seat food and beverage service will be extended to wheelchair users and their companions on the stadium’s Terrace Level.

In March 2011 New Mobility profiled Guillermo Sfiligoy — the Venezuelan whose T12 spinal cord injury did not get in the way of his passion for life and for sailing. Now, in 2012, that passion has propelled him to become the first para to race through the Panama Canal in a traditional Central American Canoe.

In the annual Cayuco Regatta Ocean to Ocean on March 31, Sfiligoy teamed up with three nondisabled canoers to make the three-day trip from the Atlantic end of the canal to the Pacific. He believes he served the team well. “Paddling this distance requires a fine level of coordination between all members of the team,” he says. “I was the first paraplegic to paddle the distance between the two oceans in the 60 years of the competition.”

To find out more about the Ocean to Ocean race, go to www.cayucorace.org.

In Somerville, Mass., the Arts at the Armory Building — a historic armory converted into a community arts center and meeting space — has faced a rash of accessibility issues since its opening in 2009. But after numerous canceled events and fines totaling $75,000, the facility seems to be on the way to full accessibility. “All of the violations appear to be solved now, but this could have been done two years ago,” Tom Hopkins, executive director of the state’s Architectural Access Board, told the Somerville Journal.

In the most visible improvement, the ramp at the entrance to the building — originally a chair-tipping slope of 13.4 percent — was replaced with a gentler, ADA-compliant grade. To Eileen Feldman, the local disability activist who led the fight to improve access at the Armory, the new ramp is “proof that disability rights work leaves sustainable and positive results throughout communities.”