1500 BCE Egypt: The Ebers Papyrus, a medical textbook, devotes an entire chapter to eye diseases. It also shows that deafness is well understood and that clinical knowledge has developed.

400 BCE Graeco-Anatolian Hippocratic writings coin the word epilepsy for a convulsive condition they view as a disease rather than a possession or punishment. Today, it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the 40 million people who currently have epilepsy throughout the world have little access or no access to contemporary treatments.

300 BCE China: The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic is the first text to outline acupuncture. Ordinances on emergency relief for the disabled date to the Han Dynasty, 206 BCE–AD 220. Fiscal and administrative disability classification date at least to the Tang Dynasty, 618–907.

1250– High point of medieval medicalization during which theoretical explanations for conditions gain currency in Western Europe. Prior to this time, in the most general of terms, lay explanations held more sway, ranging from the superstitious to the spiritual to the vindictive. With the founding of the universities, medical theory, typified by the four humors, became more influential in governmental, legal, and elite social circles. Disabling conditions like epilepsy, strokes, and paralyses, as well as psychiatric conditions, increasingly fell under the social control of doctors.

1400 Turkey: Deaf people work in the Ottoman Court from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Sign language becomes a recognized means of communication among both hearing and deaf courtiers.

1593 England: The origins of disability as a social and political category emerge with the first state disability benefits being enacted by Parliament for those disabled in war.

1593 Europe and the United States: English Parliament initiates Europe's first national system of benefits for rank-and-file disabled veterans. The first veterans'homes—France's Hôtel des Invalides, Britain's Chelsea Hospital, and Frederick the Great's Invalidenhaus in Berlin—are established in 1633, 1685, and 1748, respectively. Following the American Civil War, the U.S. government responds with a system of homes, preferences in government hiring, land grants, free prosthetics, and pensions for disabled veterans (however, southern veterans were limited to usually scanty state pensions).

1601 England: The Poor Law is passed to provide family and community support for those unable to make a living for themselves.

1604 Laws on witchcraft in the colonies all evolve from a 1604 English Statute that makes “being a witch” punishable by death. During outbreaks of witch-hunting, the “different” body itself is targeted as a sign and symptom of one's confederation with demonic forces.

1697 England: The first English workhouse for people with mental and physical disabilities is established in Bristol in 1697.

1704 Bethlem Hospital in the United States has 130 residents housing the “furiously mad.”

1714 Canada: The Bishop of Quebec opens the first building in Canada exclusively for the confinement of mentally disturbed individuals. It is adjacent to Quebec General Hospital.

1749 France and England: Denis Diderot pens one of the most influential treatises on the blind and education in his Letter on the Blind in which he argues that the blind can be educated. In 1784, Valentin Haüy opens the first school for the blind in Paris. He perfects a system of raised letters to enable the blind to read. In 1828, Louis Braille modifies a raised dot system invented by Charles Barbier, which is used today by blind persons to read and communicate. In 1847, William Moon, an Englishman, develops an embossed script based on Roman capitals that blind adults can learn to read in a few days. It is the first reading system for the blind to be widely adopted across the world, but because it is costly to print, the Braille system, which can be produced by blind individuals for themselves, overtakes Moon's system.

1755 France, the United States, and Germany: The Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Épée establishes the first statesupported school for the training of young deaf children, where he teaches sign language. The school serves as an inspiration for the establishment of other European schools and has a dramatic impact on social attitudes toward the deaf. In 1817, Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc establish the Asylum for the Deaf (now American School for the Deaf) in Hartford, Connecticut. Clerc imports the French sign system, which influences the makeup of contemporary American Sign Language (ASL). In 1778, Samuel Heinicke establishes a school in Leipzig, Germany, where the “oral method” is used.

1800 France: Victor of Aveyron, a “feral child” found in southern France, is brought to Paris. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, a French physician, develops a systematic training program for the boy and works intensively with him for five years. Itard considered his attempt at educating Victor to be a failure because the boy did not learn to use a language. Nevertheless, Itard's disciples, including Edouard Séguin, Maria Montessori, and Alfred Binet, continue his work by establishing classes for children considered to be “mentally retarded.”

1802 France: The world's first pediatric hospital, L'Hôpital des Enfants Malades, is founded.

1817 The American School for the Deaf is founded in Hartford, Connecticut. It is the first school for disabled children in the Western Hemisphere.

1817 James Parkinson, a London physician, describes what is to become known as Parkinson's disease.

1817 Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc open the American Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford, Connecticut.

1828 Frenchman Louis Braille, blind from childhood, modifies a raised-dot system of code, one of the most important advances in blind education. It not only allows the blind to read at a much faster rate but also makes it possible for the blind to be teachers of the blind. UNESCO creates the World Braille Council in 1952.

1829 France: Louis Braille publishes an explanation of his embossed dot code.

1832 Samuel Gridley Howe is chosen to direct what is later to be called the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. It becomes the model for schools around the nation. Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller attend Perkins. In 1837, Ohio establishes the first state-sponsored school for the blind.

1834 England: The English Poor Law Amendment stipulates five categories of those unable to work: children, the sick, the insane, defectives, and the aged and infirm. This sets the stage for the development of specialty institutions that isolate the disabled from the community.

1841 P. T. Barnum purchases Scudder's American Museum in New York City. This moment is considered to be the beginning of the “Golden Age” of freaks, which persists until the 1940s. The tension [Page C3]between freaks and disability rights comes to a head in 1984, when disability rights activist Barbara Baskin successfully lobbies the New York State Fair to remove Sutton's Incredible Wonders of the World Sideshow, featuring a limbless man who performs as the “Frog Boy,” from the midway.

1843 Due to the influence of Dorothea Dix, an American social reformer, the Massachusetts legislature allocates funds to greatly expand the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. Dix also plays an instrumental role in the creation of 32 mental hospitals and becomes nationally known for her reform efforts. By the late 1840s, Dix focuses on developing a national plan that addresses the treatment of people with mental illness.

1846 William Thomas Green Morton discovers anesthesia and in 1867 Joseph Lister provides a model for antisepsis. These new technologies play a central role in the future of aesthetic surgery as well as surgical intervention for every type of disability that calls for it. Penicillin is discovered in 1929, cutting mortality rates in hospitals dramatically.

1848 The North Carolina School for the Deaf begins the first publication for Deaf persons with its school newspaper, The Deaf Mute. First published in 1907, the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind is an ongoing Braille publication.

1848 Samuel Gridley Howe founds the first residential institution for people with mental retardation at the Perkins Institution in Boston.

1851 In the United States there are 77 residential institutions for children, 1,151 by 1910, and 1,613 by 1933. By the 1950s and 1960s, family members and politicians throughout Western Europe, Canada, and the United States push for the deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities.

1851 The first International Sanitary Conference is held in Paris, France, with 12 countries participating. It leads to the World Health Organization, the WHO, which formally comes into existence in 1948.

1857 Edward Miner Gallaudet, youngest son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, establishes the Columbian Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, located in Washington D.C. Its college division, eventually known as the National Deaf-Mute College, is the world's first institution of higher education for deaf people. Abraham Lincoln signs its charter on April 8, 1864; today it is known as Gallaudet University.

1857 English philosopher Herbert Spencer is first to use the expression “survival of the fittest.” The application of his idea in combination with Charles Darwin's theories in his 1859 book, The Origin of the Species, is called Social Darwinism. It is widely accepted and promoted in Germany in the 1920s and leads Adolf Hitler to express prejudice against the weak, sick, and disabled.

1863 Louis Agassiz, a significant American naturalist, advocates the permanence of different races and worries about the “tenacious influences of physical disability” if races were mixed.

1864 Germany: Karl Ferdinand Klein, teacher for deaf-mutes, and Heinrich Ernst Stotzner are considered the founding fathers of the training school, which calls for schools to be created for less-capable children with the goal of improving their lot. Training schools remain in effect today, but critics maintain that there is an over-representation of socially and economically underprivileged students in this type of setting experiencing little academic success.

1868 Sweden: The Stockholm Deaf Club is the first recorded organization of people with disabilities.

1870 England and Wales: Education for children with disabilities begins when universal elementary education is first introduced around this time. From 1895 onward, schools for “defective” children spring up. In 1899, Alfred Eichholz, an inspector of special education, draws up key recommendations, which leave their mark on the historic 1994 Education Act legislation. In 1978, the Warnock report [Page C4]introduces the term special needs education, which soon gains acceptance worldwide. With the 1994 UNESCO Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, a major shift in organizing educational services for children with disabilities is confirmed internationally.

1876 Isaac Newton Kerlin, Edouard Séguin, and others establish the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for the Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons. Today, it is known as the American Association on Mental Retardation. Séguin, who staunchly believes in the educability of those with significant cognitive disabilities, is styled as “apostle to the idiots,” by Pope Pius X, reflecting the attitude of the time.

1880 The United States National Association of the Deaf (NAD), the first organization of deaf or disabled people in the Western Hemisphere, is established. In 1964, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) is formed to establish a national body of professionals who are trained and certified to enable communication between deaf, signing persons and nondeaf, speaking persons.

1880 Helen Keller is born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. An illness at the age of 19 months leaves her totally deaf and blind. In 1887, Anne Sullivan, recently graduated from Perkins Institution for the Blind, joins the Keller household as Helen's teacher and remains Keller's companion for nearly 50 years. For many, Keller's story is the quintessential overcoming narrative.

1881 The Chicago City Council enacts the first American “ugly law” forbidding “any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself to public view.”

1882 The first major federal immigration law in the United States, the Immigration Act of 1882, prohibits entry to “lunatics,” “idiots,” and persons likely to become unable to take care of themselves. Most of the restrictions that apply specifically to disability are removed from U.S. law in 1990. Today, disabled immigrants are still denied an entry visa if they are deemed “likely to become a public charge.”

1887 Walter Fernald serves as superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded (now known as the Fernald Center) from 1887 to 1924. Unlike most of his colleagues, Fernald moderates some of his earlier extreme views and eventually develops one of the country's largest “parole” systems for moving institutional residents back into smaller, community-based residences.

1887 The American Orthopaedic Association is founded. German and British counterparts are founded in 1901 and 1918, respectively.

1895 The chiropractic profession is founded. This type of care is used to relieve musculoskeletal pain, one of the most common causes of disability.

1899 Maria Montessori and a colleague open the Scuola Magistrale Ortofrenica in Rome, an educational institute for disabled children and a training institute for instructors. Her method relies on the concept of sensory-based instruction as a means for developing intellectual competence. Her methods allow the child the greatest possible independence in order to foster his or her own development (the child's own inner “building plan”).

1904 Sir Francis Galton, half first cousin of Charles Darwin, defines the term eugenics (which he coined in 1883) in a paper he presents to the Sociological Society on May 16. He argues for planned breeding among the “best stock” of the human population, along with various methods to discourage or prevent breeding among the “worst stock.” Galton also develops the idea for intelligence tests. The term feeblemindedness is defined as broadly as possible and is widely used by eugenic social reformers to conflate myriad social problems. Further naming, classification, and labeling provides eugenicists with a troubling rationale for treating people with coercion, disrespect, and profound inhumanity. Persons within the various categories of sub-normality become particularly vulnerable [Page C5]to state-sanctioned segregation, institutional confinement, and enforced sterilization. Eugenics is widely practiced in Europe, the United States, and Canada, culminating in the systemic murder of more than 260,000 disabled people by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945. Today, the so-called new eugenics, known as “human genetics,” appeals to the needs of the individual. Critics (some of the first in Germany), however, criticize individualistic eugenic approaches and disclose the connections between human genetics, national socialist racial hygiene, and eugenics.

1905 Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon publish the first intelligence scale, known as the Binet-Simon Test.

1908 The publication of Clifford Beers's A Mind That Found Itself initiates the mental health hygiene movement in the United States. Speaking out against mistreatment and neglect within the system, Beers establishes the Connecticut Committee of Mental Hygiene, which expands in 1909, becoming the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and is now known as the National Mental Health Association. In 1940 there are 419,000 patients in 181 state hospitals. In 1943, the patient-doctor ratio is 277:1, and by the mid-1950s in New York state alone, there are 93,000 inpatients. The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, founded in 1972 by a group of committed lawyers and professionals in mental health and mental retardation, attempt to improve mental health service provision through individual and class action suits. In 1980, a group of these lawyers form the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). One-third of its board of directors must identify themselves as current or former recipients of mental health care. The association is committed to the abolishment of all forced treatment.

1908 Pastor Ernst Jakob Christoffel establishes a home in Turkey for blind and otherwise disabled and orphaned children. This grows into Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM), an independent aid organization of Christians of various denominations united to help disabled people in third world countries. Today, it supports more than 1,000 development projects in 108 countries. In 1999, CBM, other agencies, and the World Health Organization initiate VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, a global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness by the year 2020.

1909 Germany: The German Organization for the Care of Cripples is created as an umbrella organization for the care of the physically disabled. The Prussian Cripples' Care Law of 1920 for the first time provides a right to medical care and scholarly and occupational education for this group.

1912 Henry H. Goddard publishes The Kadikak Family, supports the beliefs of the eugenics movements, and helps create a climate of hysteria in which human rights abuse of the disabled, including institutionalization and forced sterilization, increases. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, rules in favor of forced sterilization of people with disabilities, further fueling eugenics movements—the number of sterilizations increases.

1914 By this date, Sigmund Freud develops his most enduring influence on the study of disability, namely, the theory of psychosomatic illness in which a psychopathological flaw is given corporeal form as a symptom, thereby establishing the notion that people succumb to disease or disability because they feel guilty about past or present repressed desires.

1918 The Smith-Sears Veterans Rehabilitation Act passes, authorizing VR services for World War I veterans. In 1916, the National Defense Act marks the beginning of the U.S. government's supportive attitude toward rehabilitation. In 1920, the Smith-Fess Act marks the beginnings of the civilian VR program. The Social Security Act of 1935 establishes state-federal VR as a permanent program that can be discontinued only by an act of Congress.

1919 Edgar “Daddy” Allen establishes what becomes known as the National Society for Crippled Children. In the spring of 1934, the organizational launches its first Easter “seals” money-making campaign. Donors place seals on envelopes containing their contributions. The seal is so well-known that it [Page C6]becomes part of the organization's official name. Today, Easter Seals assists more than one million children and adults with disabilities and their families annually through a nationwide network of more than 500 service sites. During the 1920s, Franklin D. Roosevelt inspires the March of Dimes.

1920 At about this time, the Shriners open hospitals for the care of crippled children. President Herbert Hoover establishes a “Children's Charter” in 1928 highlighting the need to attend to the needs of crippled children.

1921 Franklin D. Roosevelt contracts poliomyelitis. Despite damage to his legs (which makes him a wheelchair user) and deep depression, through enormous rehabilitative effort, he eventually re-enters politics and becomes president of the United States. His triumph over personal disability becomes legendary. Critics, however, fault him for choosing to minimize his disability in what is called his “splendid deception.” He establishes a center for the treatment of polio patients in Warm Springs, Georgia, called the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation (1927), which hires medical specialists from Atlanta to direct orthopedics. In 1937, President Roosevelt becomes the prime mover behind the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis Research.

1921 Mary L. McMillan (Molly) establishes the American Women's Physical Therapeutic Association, which is known today as the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA).

1921 The American Foundation for the Blind is established.

1921 Canada: Researchers isolate the hormone insulin. In 1922, Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J. B. Collip, and J.R.R. Macleod produce and test the pancreatic extract on people with diabetes, for which they are awarded a Nobel Prize. Insulin becomes a wonderful treatment for diabetes, but not a cure.

1921 France: Three historical waves of advocacy movements can be identified beginning with the National Federation of Injured Workers (FNAT) in 1921 and other organizations that focus essentially on the protection of rights. Another factor that stimulates advocacy groups in the first wave is the wounded veterans of World Wars I and II. A second wave dates from the period after World War II. Many advocacy groups form between 1950 and 1970, such as the Union of Associations of Parents of Maladjusted Children (UNAPEI) in 1960. A third wave finds a gradual emergence of three types of associations: those that run specialized facilities (for example, Living Upright, which, in 1970, leads to the creation of the first group living facility); those interested in trade unions; and those represented by user-advocate associations. Financing comes in large part from public funds, thereby creating a government-association partnership.

1922 The founding of Rehabilitation International sets the stage for the establishment of other international organizations of and for people with disabilities that link together throughout the world. Later international organizations include, among numerous others, the World Federation of the Deaf (1951), Inclusion International (1962), the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability (1964), Disabled Peoples' International (1981), and the International Disability Alliance (1999).

1925 The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, today the American Academy of Speech Correction, is established to provide high-quality services for professionals in speech-language pathology, audiology, and speech and hearing science, and to advocate for people with communication disabilities.

1928 Charles Nicolle is the first deaf person to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

1929 Seeing Eye establishes the first dog guide school in the United States.

1930 The Veterans Administration is created to administer benefits, promote vocational rehabilitation, and return disabled veterans to civil employment. There is a record of provision for disabled veterans in the United States since the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. After World War I, three agencies administer veteran's benefits.

[Page C7]1932 Herbert A. Everest, a mining engineer with a disability, and Harry C. Jennings collaborate to design and patent the cross-frame wheelchair, which becomes the standard for the wheelchair industry that exists today. Developed during World War I, the first powered wheelchair appears, but doesn't gain popularity for another 30 years.

1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act of 1935 on August 14. Beginning in 1956, SSA amendments provide disability benefits.

1935 By 1935, in the United States more than 30 states pass laws allowing for the compulsory sterilization of those deemed genetically unfit in state and federal institutions. By 1970, more than 60,000 people are sterilized under these laws.

1935 As a result of being denied participation in the Works Progress Administration (WPA), six young people with disabilities hold a sit-in at the offices of New York City's Emergency Relief Bureau, demanding jobs in non-segregated environments and explicitly rejecting charity. The League of the Physically Handicapped is born out of this activism and operates in New York from 1935 to 1938. The League identifies social problems that remain issues today.

1935 Peer support in the United States is traced to the establishment of Alcoholics Anonymous in this year. Interest in peer support increases in the 1960s and is adopted by the disabled community. Movements, such as the Center for Independent Living, and groups, such as the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, make peer support one of their major activities.

1936 The American Academy of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation is founded, leading to the approval of the American Board of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation by the American Medical Association in 1947.

1937 The Fair Housing Act of 1937 passes with a mandate to assist the poor, a group that includes people with disabilities, by creating public housing. However, it is not until the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that housing law specifically deals with discrimination faced by individuals with disabilities in housing programs that receive federal funding. The 1988 amendment to the Fair Housing Act of 1968 extends protection for people with disabilities beyond those of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to include private housing.

1939 The Nazi regime institutes the Aktion T4 program in Germany. Children and, later, adults with disabilities are selectively killed both in hospitals and in special centers. The program was officially terminated by Adolf Hitler in August 1941, but practitioners “informally” continued it through a phase historians have called “wild euthanasia.”

1940 State activists for the blind, including Jacobus Broek, come together in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to charter the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). In 1957, the NFB publishes the first edition of the Braille Monitor, which is still in print today. In 1960, dissatisfied NFB members form the American Council of the Blind (ACB).

1940 Paul Strachan establishes the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, the nation's first cross-disability, national political organization.

1942 The American Psychiatric Association develops a position statement in favor of the euthanasia of children classified as idiots and imbeciles.

1943 The LaFollette-Barden Act, also known as the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments, adds physical rehabilitation to federally funded vocational rehabilitation programs.

1943 The United Nations is established on October 24 by 51 countries. The global Programme on the Disability is the lead program concerning disability. Many other types of programs, activities, and instruments include the 1975 Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, the 1981 International Year of [Page C8]Disabled Persons, the 1982 World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons, the 1983–1992 UN Decade of Disabled Persons, and the 1993 Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. In 1988, the first UN Disability Database (DISTAT) publishes statistics from 63 national studies covering 55 countries and the 2001 publication presents 111 national studies from 78 countries, indicating a growing interest worldwide for the collection of usable data. In 2005, a UN Ad Hoc Committee continues to consider a Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons that is a legally binding human rights instrument. Today the UN membership totals 191 countries.

1943 Sweden: In possibly the first reference to the concept of normalization, the most significant driving force in the ongoing closure of state-run or state-funded institutions for people with a disability is made by the Committee for the Partially Able-Bodied, established by the Swedish Government. Through the advocacy of people such as Niels Erik Bank-Mikkelsen, normalization, with its profound positive effect on the lives of people who were once removed and segregated from society, remains relevant today.

1944 Richard Hoover invents long white canes known as Hoover canes that are used by many blind people.

1944 The word genocide first appears in a book by a Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin titled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe in which he describes Nazi Germany's practices but also seeks the adoption of legal restrictions so that genocide will not occur. In 1948, the United Nations adopts a declaration and then a convention on genocide that describe both against whom genocide might be directed and acts constituting genocide. Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, uses language identical to that in the UN convention to define genocide. More than 90 countries are parties to the ICC, but not the United States.

1945 President Harry Truman signs into law an annual National Employ the Handicapped Week. In 1952, it becomes the Presidents' Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped, a permanent organization, which reports to the President and Congress.

1945 Canada: Lyndhurst Lodge, the first specialized rehabilitation center for spinal cord injury (SCI) in the world, and the Canadian Paraplegic Association, the first association in the world administered by individuals with SCI, are established.

1946 The first chapter of what will become the United Cerebral Palsy Association, Inc. is established in New York City. It is chartered in 1949, and along with the Association for Retarded Children, it becomes a major force in the parents' movement of the 1950s.

1946 The National Mental Health Foundation is founded by attendants at state mental institutions who aim to expose abusive conditions. Their work is an early step toward deinstitutionalization.

1946 The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) are founded in the United States.

1946 Europe: The European Union is founded on September 17 in Paris. It consistently shows its commitment to eliminating discrimination on many fronts through joint declarations, resolutions, directives, and action programs. With regard to disability, the European Union supports actions in favor of people with disabilities, principally in the form of European Social Fund interventions. Action programs aim at facilitating the exchange of information between member states and nongovernmental organizations with a view to identifying good practices, integrating people with disabilities into society, and raising awareness of related issues. The EU Council of Ministers Recommendation on the Employment of Disabled People (1986) calls on member states to “eliminate negative discrimination by reviewing laws, regulations and administrative provisions to ensure that they are not contrary to the principle of fair opportunity for disabled people.” Further [Page C9]steps are taken in 1996 when a communication on equality of opportunities for disabled people sets out a new European disability strategy that promotes a rights-based approach, rather than a welfaretype approach. This is strengthened in 1997 when the heads of state act to strengthen Article 13 of the European Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers (1989), giving the European Community specific powers to take action to combat a broad spectrum of discrimination that includes disability.

1948 The National Paraplegia Foundation is established as the civilian branch of the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

1948 The World Health Organization is established. The WHO actively promotes human rights and the principle of equity in health among all people of the world, including persons with disabilities. Today it consists of 191 member states, but strives for universal membership. In 1980, the WHO publishes the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH) and issues a revised version in 2001, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF).

1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopts the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” which promotes and affirms the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and security; to medical care and social services; and to the benefit from scientific progress and its uses.

1948 Sir Ludwig Guttmann organizes the first Stoke Mandeville (England) Games for the Paralysed, thus launching the Paralympic movement. The Games become international in 1952. In 1960, the first Paralympic Summer games are held in Rome and the first Paralympic Winter Games follow in 1976. The Paralympic Games are multi-disability, multi-sport competitions and have become the secondlargest sporting event in the world, only after the Olympic Games.

1948 World War II bomber pilot and war hero Leonard Cheshire establishes what is to become the largest charitable supplier of services for disabled people in the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, the resistance of disabled people who live in one Leonard Cheshire home, Le Court, plays a major role in establishing the British disabled people's movement. In the late 1990s, the Leonard Cheshire organization establishes the Disabled People's Forum, which is run by disabled people and supports disabled people's involvement and empowerment.

1949 Timothy Nugent founds the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, and the first Annual Wheelchair Basketball Tournament takes place.

1949 Europe: The Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organization, is founded. Its activities cover all major issues facing European society other than defense. Human dignity, equal opportunities, independent living, and active participation in the life of the community form the heart of the Council of Europe's activities in relation to people with disabilities. The European Social Charter of 1961 and its revision in 1996 include specific wording and expand the rights of individuals with disabilities.

1950 The Social Security Amendments of 1950 provide federal-state aid to the permanently and totally disabled (APTD), which serves as a limited prototype for future Social Security assistance programs for disabled people.

1950 The National Mental Health Association is formed with the mission to continue 1908-advocate Clifford W. Beers's goals of “spreading tolerance and awareness, improving mental health services, preventing mental illness, and promoting mental health.”

1950 The National Association for Retarded Children (NARC) is established by families in Minneapolis. It is the first and most powerful parent-driven human-services lobby in the nation to emerge in the 1950s.

[Page C10]1950 Amniocentesis is developed by a Uruguayan obstetrician. Later, advanced prenatal testing provides a battery of powerful medical tools to predict risk of disability and provide information to parents about their pregnancies.

1951 With the founding of the World Federation of the Deaf, the deaf community becomes international.

1953 Francis Crick and James Watson propose a three-dimensional structure for the DNA molecule. The paper they publish also gives clues to genetic mechanisms. Today, more than 6,000 monogenic disorders have been identified, and these affect approximately 1 in 200 live births.

1955 The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, becomes available, thus ending polio epidemics in the Western world. A new oral vaccine, developed by Dr. Albert B. Sabin, is approved for use in 1961.

1956 Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) becomes available through amendments to the Social Security Act of 1935 (SSA) for those aged 50–64. Other important amendments to SSA include the following: 1958: provides for dependents of disabled workers; 1960: removes age limit; 1965: Medicare and Medicaid provide benefits within the framework of the SSA (until 1977); 1967: provides benefits to widows and widowers over the age of 50; 1972: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) establishes a needs-based program for the aged, blind, and disabled; 1984: the Social Security Disability Reform Act responds to the complaints of hundreds of thousands of people whose disability benefits have been terminated; 1996: President Clinton signs the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, making it more difficult for children to qualify as disabled for SSI purposes.

1959 The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child is adopted; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is adopted in 1989. A central principle of both documents is access to education for all children including those with disabilities. In 1993, a related UN document, the Standard Rules for the Equalization of Opportunity, extends this to preschool children, and in 1994, UNESCO's Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action specifies the provision of special education for children with disabilities or learning difficulties. These documents constitute a universal bill of rights that can serve as a framework in the development of national policies worldwide.

1961 The American Council of the Blind is established.

1961 Europe: The European Social Charter (ESC) protects “the right of physically and mentally disabled persons to vocational training, rehabilitation and social resettlement.” In 1996, it is revised, updated, and expanded to take account of social changes.

1961 Michel Foucault's work The History of Madness in the Classical Age becomes obligatory reading for those concerned with the archaeology of madness and its treatments. It continues to be an academic rite de passage.

1962 Battered child syndrome is defined. Researchers estimate that the incidence of maltreatment of children with disabilities is between 1.7 and 3.4 times greater than of children without disabilities.

1962 Russia: The Moscow Theater of Mime and Gesture is the first professional deaf theater in the world. It has been in continuous operation for more than 40 years and has staged more than 100 classic and modern plays.

1963 Congress enacts new legislation to ensure funding for a comprehensive program of research on mental retardation through the National Institute on Child Health & Human Development. In 1965, the Office of Economic Opportunity launches the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), commonly known as Project Head Start. The goal is to prevent developmental disability by providing increased opportunities for disadvantaged children in the preschool years.

[Page C11]1963 The Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (DD ACT) is authorized, with its last reauthorization in 1996. It focuses on individuals with developmental disabilities such as intellectual disability, autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and hearing and visual impairments, among others.

1964 The Civil Rights Act is passed. It becomes the model for future disability rights legislation.

1964 France: L'Arche is established. By the beginning of the twentieth-first century, it includes more than 113 communities in 30 countries. “The Ark” is a distinctive style of community living, based on “core members” and “assistants,” who view their commitment as sharing life with people with disabilities, rather than as caregivers.

1965 Newly enacted Medicare and Medicaid provide national health insurance for both elderly (over 65) and disabled persons.

1965 The Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1965 are passed. They provide federal funds for the construction of rehabilitation centers and create the National Commission on Architectural Barriers to Rehabilitation of the Handicapped.

1965 The Autism Society of America is founded.

1967 Deaf actors establish the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD). It is the world's first professional deaf theater company and the oldest continually producing touring theater company in the United States. Today, after almost 40 years, the NTD chronicles over 6,000 performances. The National Theatre Workshop for the Handicapped begins in 1977 and the Other Voices Project in 1982. These groups are among the earliest groups formally to place the disability experience at the heart of their creative endeavors.

1967 Heart transplantation is introduced. This technology is preceded by open-heart surgery developed in the 1950s and coronary bypass and internal pacemakers in the1960s. The Framingham Heart Study begins in 1948. It collects data over the next decades that help identify major risk factors contributors to heart disease.

1967 Paul Lemoine in France in 1967 and Kenneth Jones and David Smith in the United States in 1973 independently describe the condition fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which comprises a recognizable pattern of birth defects attributable to the adverse effects of maternal alcohol abuse during pregnancy.

1967 England: St. Christopher's Hospice in South London opens. It is the first attempt to develop a modern approach to hospice and palliative care.

1968 Congress enacts the Architectural Barriers Act. The ABA requires access to facilities designed, built, altered, or leased with federal funds.

1968 The Fair Housing Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1968 guarantees civil rights of people with disabilities in the residential setting. The amendments extend coverage of the fair housing laws to people with disabilities and establish accessible design and construction standards for all new multifamily housing built for first occupancy on or after March 13, 1991.

1968 Sweden: The origins of People First® go back to a meeting of parents of children with intellectual disabilities whose motto is “we speak for them.” However, the people with disabilities in attendance wish to speak for themselves and start their own self-advocacy group. Similar groups quickly spread to England and Canada. The name People First is chosen at a conference held in Salem, Oregon, in 1974. People First is an international self-advocacy organization run by and for people with intellectual disabilities to work on civil and human rights issues.

[Page C12]1970 Landmark legal cases such as Diana v. State Board of Education (1970; Latino students) and Larry P. v. Riles (1971–1979; minority students) challenge biases inherent in standardized testing procedures used to identify students as eligible for special education. Both cases call into question the widespread use of “scientifically” objective measures to gauge intellectual ability. Today, despite reforms, a disproportionate number of students from racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities continue to be placed in special education classes.

1970 Japan: The Disabled Persons' Fundamental Law (DPFL) becomes one of the 27 fundamental laws that stipulate basic principles in each policy area. Major revision takes place in 1993 reflecting a progress of guiding principles in disability policy that are deeply influenced by international movements such as the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) and the UN Decade of Disabled Persons (1983–1992). Disability Studies as well as modern disability movements are born this same year, when members of Aoi Shiba, a group of people with cerebral palsy, protest publicly for the first time against sympathetic views toward the killing of disabled children by their parents. Aoi Shiba and other disability movements join in the establishment of Disabled Peoples' International in 1981. In 1986, the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of Japan (RESJA) is established. In 1992, disability movements in Japan initiate the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons 1993 to 2002. The Japan Society for Disability Studies is established in 2003 and a unified national organization, Japan Disability Forum (JDF), is established in 2004.

1970 United Kingdom: The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDPA) strengthens the provisions in the 1948 National Assistance Act (NAA). Later, the Disability Discrimination Acts of 1995 and 2005, together with the Disability Rights Commission Act of 1999, constitute the primary source of antidiscrimination legislation for disabled people.

1971 A U.S. District Court decision in Wyatt v. Stickney is the first important victory in the fight for deinstitutionalization.

1971 WGBH Public Television establishes the Caption Center, which provides captioned programming for deaf viewers.

1971 Gerontologist M. Powell Lawton defines functional assessment as any systematic attempt to objectively measure the level at which a person is functioning in a variety of domains. Over 30 years later, functional assessment, in combination with outcomes analysis, is considered one of the “basic sciences” of rehabilitation. In 1980, the World Health Organization proposes a series of definitions, which have a profound impact on the assessment of functional status and outcomes in rehabilitation. It is modified and revised in 1993 and 2001.

1971 The Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons (UN 1971), the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons (UN 1975), and the World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons (UN 1982) indicate the emergence of a global discourse of rights for disability.

1972 A group of people with disabilities (including Ed Roberts, John Hessler, and Hale Zukas), known as the Rolling Quads, living together in Berkeley, California, formally incorporate as the Center for Independent Living (CIL). This first CIL in the country becomes the model for Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the group's advocacy efforts help pass the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). CILs are always controlled by disabled people. Accepted by most people as the birth of the modern independent living movement, the Berkeley concept migrates to other countries. In 1999, a global summit on independent living is held in Washington D.C. The summit brings together more than 70 countries. The Washington Declaration that comes out of the conference establishes a set of basic principles. In 1996, the Ed Roberts Campus, an international center and a service facility, is created in Berkeley, California, in memory of Edward V. Roberts, founder of the independent living concept.

[Page C13]1972 A young television reporter for the ABC network, Geraldo Rivera, is given a key to one of the wards at Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, New York. Established in the late 1930s as a state-of-the-art facility for the “mentally deficient,” by 1972, Willowbrook becomes a warehouse for the “socially undesirable” of New York City, with a substantial minority having no disability at all. The inhumane conditions deteriorate to the extent that a visitor remarks, “In Denmark we don't let our cattle live this way.” Rivera's exposé leads to a lawsuit that results in the Willowbrook Consent Decree of 1975, which creates a detailed system of monitoring and oversight of all residents living there at that time, to be met until the last of the “class clients,” as they are sometimes referred to, pass on. The property has since been sold to a college.

1972 Paul Hunt's call for a consumer group to promote the views of actual and potential residents of institutional homes for the disabled in the United Kingdom results in the establishment of the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS). The group's aim is to formulate and publicize plans for alternative forms of support in the community. Hunt is regarded by many disability activists as the founder of the modern disabled people's movement.

1972 New Zealand: Three key pieces of legislation pass have long-term effects on the disabled community: the 1972 no-fault Accident Compensation Act that provides monetary compensation to victims based on level of impairment suffered; the 1975 Disabled Persons Community Welfare Act, giving assistance to disabled people, parents, and guardians, as well as voluntary associations; and the Human Rights Act of 1977, which does not include disability as a recognized grounds for discrimination. Today, disabled populations in New Zealand continue to fight to establish an identity as disabled people rather than a group needing “welfare.” One task is to promote legislation that includes disability as a group against whom discrimination is outlawed.

1973 The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 lays the foundation for the disability rights movement. Its Section 504 asserts that people with disabilities have equal rights that prevent discrimination based on their disability in programs or activities that receive federal funding. This is the first major nationwide antidiscriminatory legislation designed to protect disabled Americans. These rights are further protected with the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Section 501 of the Act requires affirmative action and nondiscrimination in employment by federal agencies of the executive branch. Section 502 creates the Access Board, which grows out of the 1965 National Commission on Architectural Barriers to Rehabilitation of the Handicapped. As a result of the commission's June 1968 report, Congress enacts the Architectural Barriers Act (ABA). Section 503 requires that to receive certain government contracts, entities must demonstrate that they are taking affirmative action to employ people with disabilities. The enduring hallmark of the act, Section 504, provides that no otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal funds. However, it would take five years of lobbying and protesting before the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD) wins the release of regulations that allow Section 504 to be implemented.

The Act is in many ways the direct predecessor to the ADA. However, the primary focus is vocational training and rehabilitation, and over the next half-century, disability law and advocacy move from the medical (medical issues) and vocational (often a justification for welfare and benefits) models to a civil rights model, which seeks to remove the barriers that impede the full integration of people with disabilities into society.

1973 The term mainstreaming emerges within the educational jargon associated with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), the early U.S. legislation subsequently reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) in 1990.

1973 Ronald Mace is the driving force behind the creation of the first accessible state building code in the United States (North Carolina, 1974) and in the drafting of national accessibility codes and [Page C14]standards. He coins the term universal design to capture and promote his expanded philosophy of “design for all ages and abilities”—curb cuts being his favorite example.

1973 Washington D.C. introduces the first handicap parking stickers. The Federal-Aid Highway Act funds curb cuts.

1974 First Lady Betty Ford and investigative reporter Rose Kushner are diagnosed with breast cancer. They help break the public silence on this topic. In 1954, Terese Lasser begins Reach to Recovery, a program of volunteers who have previously undergone radical mastectomies who provide emotional support to hospitalized women who have just had the operation. Today, one in eight women is diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime.

1975 The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the first separate federal legislation authorizing special education for children and youth, passes, due, in part, to the advocacy efforts of a group of parents. In 1990, it becomes known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

1975 The Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, providing federal funds for programs that provide services for people with developmental disabilities, passes.

1975 The Association of Persons with Severe Handicaps (TASH) is founded. It calls for the end of aversive behavior modification and deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities.

1975 The UN General Assembly adopts the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, which states that all persons with disabilities have the same rights as other people. This document is not legally binding and can be attributed in part to a UN Ad Hoc Committee set up in 2001 to consider a Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons that is legally binding.

1975 United Kindom: The Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS) publishes a paper that redefines the term disability, which becomes known as the social model of disability as it radically transforms the way disabled people see themselves and their place in society.

1976 The Higher Education Act of 1965, which establishes grants for student support services aimed at fostering an institutional climate supportive of low-income and first-generation college students, is amended to include individuals with disabilities. In March 1978, the Association on Handicapped Student Service Programs in Post-Secondary Education is founded. It later becomes the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD).

1976 Sponsored by Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law, the Disability Rights Center is founded in Washington D.C.

1977 Protesting the federal government's delayed enactment of the rules and regulations for the implementation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, disabled activists on April 1 organize protests at the federal offices of the Department of Health and Human Services in various cities across the United States. In San Francisco, protesters hold the regional offices hostage for 28 days, gaining national attention and resulting in an agreement with federal officials for the rapid establishment of the rules and regulations to implement Section 504 of the Act.

1977 Max Cleland is appointed to head the U.S. Veterans Administration. He is the first severely disabled person to hold this post.

1977 S. Z. Nagi defines disability as an individual's performance of tasks and activities related to achievement of social roles—a distinct concept, different from impairment. It is further formalized with the introduction of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps in 1980 and further refined in 2001 in its International [Page C15]Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health. Nagi's model is used as the basis for the Americans with Disabilities Act, for almost all disability social policy in the United States, and for statistics at the United Nations and in Europe.

1978 The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 promote the adoption of children with special needs, including disabilities.

1978 The Atlantis Community, the second independent living center in the country after Berkeley, is established in Denver, Colorado, in 1975. On July 5–6, 1978, twenty disabled activists from the Atlantis Community block buses with their wheelchairs and bodies and bring traffic to a standstill at a busy downtown intersection. This act of civil disobedience results in the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, the original name for the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT.

1978 Legislation creates the National Institute on Handicapped Research. In 1986, it is renamed the U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). Its mission is to contribute to the independence of persons of all ages who have disabilities. It is located in the Department of Education under the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services.

1978 The World Health Organization starts to promote the concept of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as a means of helping people with disabilities in the developing world. It emerges, in part, from the WHO primary health care campaign Health for All by the Year 2000. Around the same time, in Western countries, home-visiting programs in which a trained worker regularly visits the family to advise on ways of promoting child development become one of the success stories of modern disability services. Among the best-known programs are those based on a model originating in Portage, Wisconsin, and now used in many countries.

1978 England: The Warnock report introduces the term special needs education. It marks a major shift in organizing educational services for children with disabilities and results in the new conceptualization of special needs education. This change is confirmed internationally by the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education at the UNESCO's Conference held in Salamanca in 1994. This theoretical shift is marked with the change of the term integration to inclusion or inclusive education.

1978 USSR: The Action Group to Defend the Rights of the Disabled is established to advocate for legal rights for Soviets with disabilities.

1979 The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) establishes itself as a leading crossdisability civil rights law and policy center. It is founded by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities. Because its philosophy is closely aligned with other civil rights struggles, in 1981, DREDF is invited to join the executive committee of the national's largest coalition of civil rights groups, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. In 1987, DREDF establishes the Disability Rights Clinical Legal Education Program and begins teaching disability rights law at the University of California's Boalt Hall School of Law.

1979 The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) is founded. NAMI is an advocacy and education organization.

1979 Germany: The first Cripples' Group is founded as a cross-disability group with emancipatory aims. In an attempt to reinterpret disability in positive terms, the cofounders choose the term Krüppel over handicapped or disabled.

[Page C16]1979 Nicaragua: The Organization of the Revolutionary Disabled is set up in the wake of the Sandinista victory.

1980 The California Governor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities and entertainment and media industry professionals establish the Media Access Office (MAO).

1980 About the time Congress is considering passage of the ADA (1990), marketers begin to acknowledge the economic potential of the disabled community; consequently, the appearance of disabled characters in consumer goods advertising mushroom and ability-integrated advertising becomes much more commonplace. Organizations such as MAO and NOD (National Organization on Disability) provide advertising strategies and guidance.

1980 The Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA), an interdisciplinary association composed of individuals interested in technology and disability, is founded.

1980 The World Health Organization's International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH), a groundbreaking, but controversial, classification system is tentatively released for trial purposes with the goal of uniform information collection worldwide. It has a negligible impact on disability statistics or data collection; however, researchers argue that it is a vast improvement over available tools. It is renamed and vastly revised in 2001.

1980 England: Graeae Theatre Group, composed of disabled actors, directors, and other theater professionals, is founded in London by Nabil Shaban and Richard Tomlinson. It takes its name from the the Graeae of Greek mythology, three gray-haired sisters who shared one eye and one tooth. Graeae's first production is Sideshow.

1980 Netherlands: The Liliane Foundation starts by assisting 14 children. In 2002, it helps 31,982 children spread over 80 countries. The Foundation's efforts are directed primarily toward children with disabilities living at home. Its aim is to have direct contact with the child within the home situation and to assist the personal growth and happiness of the child, thus providing “tailor-made” assistance.

1980 Taiwan: The Physically and Mentally Disabled Citizens Protection Law is promulgated. It guarantees legal rights for the disabled and creates a significant improvement in their welfare. Although most of the disabled people in Taiwan still struggle to earn their due respect, today, public awareness of this group is emerging gradually and significantly.

1980 United Kingdom and Europe: The Black Report (Report of the Working Group on Inequalities in Health) is published. Among other groups it targets disabled people for better conditions that lead to better health. The report does not find favor with the Conservative government, but begins to be implemented under the Labour government in 1997. With its central theme of equity, the report plays a central role in the shaping of the World Health Organization's Common Health Strategy of the European Region.

1981 The Reagan Administration begins to amend and revoke disability benefits, a policy that continues throughout his administration and leads several disabled people who are in despair over the loss of their benefits to commit suicide.

1981 Justin Dart, recognized as the founder of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990), is appointed to be vice-chair of the National Council on Disability. The council drafts a national policy on equal rights for disabled people; the document becomes the foundation of the ADA.

[Page C17]1981 The Committee on Personal Computers and the Handicapped is established in Illinois, an indicator of the disabled community's interest in information technology (IT) accessibility, but in order to stimulate the development of suitable products, activists lobby for legislative protections, which are included in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In 2000, a suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind against AOL is suspended when AOL agrees to make its software accessible by April 2001. The World Wide Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) launches in 1997. It raises the level of awareness of disability accessibility issues within the Internet community, especially among those who design and implement web pages.

1981 The first reported cases of AIDS in the United States appear in June. Today, the World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, approximately 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS; 22 million men, women, and children have died; and 14,000 new infections are contracted every day. Around the world, in the year 2003, the AIDS epidemic claims an estimated 3 million lives, and almost 5 million people acquire HIV, 700,000 of them children. Currently, 6 million people infected with HIV in the developing world are estimated to need access to antiretroviral therapy to survive, but only 400,000 have this access.

1981 Disabled Peoples' International (DPI) is officially founded at a meeting in Singapore. The establishment of such international organizations around this time represents the disability movement becoming a global social movement instead of a national one. DPI is directed by persons with disabilities working in human rights advocacy. It sponsors World Assemblies, which are held every four years to develop a multiyear action plan. The most recent one is held in 2002 in Sapporo, Japan, where delegates from more than 100 countries come together. A leading slogan for DPI and other disability groups, coined in the early 1990s, is “nothing about us without us.”

1981 The International Year of Disabled Persons encourages governments to sponsor programs that assimilate people with disabilities into mainstream society. Despite the positive worldwide effects it has, the UN program also creates some angry activists with disabilities who protest against the charity approach officially adopted for the event. Consequently, the activists build their own infrastructure consisting of counseling and advocacy facilities as well as job creation programs.

1981 Australia: Australia's modern disability policy takes shape after the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons. Examples: The 1980s see a shift away from institutional care; the Commonwealth Disability Service Act provides a framework for the provision of disability services; and in 1991, the federal Disability Reform Package maximizes the employment of disabled. In 1995, a legal decision represents a watershed in telecommunications policy for people with disabilities when a commission's inquiry finds the national carrier, Telstra, guilty of discrimination against people with severe hearing or speech impairments. The success of the action results in the Telecommunications Act of 1997, which includes new provisions for the deaf community.

1981 Mexico: The Program of Rehabilitation Organized by Disabled Youth of Western Mexico begins as a rural community-based rehabilitation program.

1981 Soweto: The Self Help Association of Paraplegics begins as an economic development project.

1981 United Kingdom: Disabled people set up the British Council of Disabled Persons (BCOPD), the United Kingdom's national organization of disabled people, to promote their full equality and participation in UK society.

1981 Zimbabwe: The National Council of Disabled Persons, initially registered as a welfare organization, becomes a national disability rights group.

[Page C18]1982 Disability Studies originates with the formation of the Society for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability. In 1986, it officially changes its name to the Society for Disability Studies (SDS). Disability Studies is a critical field of study based in human and social science.

1982In re Infant Doe (commonly known as the Baby Doe case) launches the debate as to whether parents or medical authorities should choose to let a disabled infant die rather than provide the necessary medical treatment and nourishment essential to sustain life. In response to this and other cases, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services creates a rule maintaining it unlawful for any federally funded hospital to withhold medical treatment from disabled infants. In 1984, the U.S. Congress enacts the Child Abuse Amendments, which calls for the medical treatment of newborns with disabilities unless the child would die even with medical intervention. The issue makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 with the Bowen v. American Hospital Association case. The Court holds that denying treatment to disabled infants does not constitute legally protected discrimination under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and that hospitals and physicians are to implement the decision of the parents. The decision results in the passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Amendments of 1984. In the year 2000, a scholar argues that the Amendments, presidential commission writings, and disability advocates “have all combined to ensure that most babies who can benefit from medical interventions do receive them.”

1982 Disability Awareness in Action (DAA) and other groups such as the Disabled Peoples' International (DPI) and International Disability Alliance (IDA) are the driving force behind the globalization of disability issues through the World Program of Action (1982), the United Nations Standard Rules of Equalization of Opportunities for People with Disabilities (1993), the World Summit for Social Development (1995), and the Education for All Framework for Action (2000), as well as the current campaign to secure a UN convention on the rights of disabled people.

1982 The National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) is formed in the United States. It provides an excellent example of leadership for people with disabilities by people with disabilities.

1982 Canada: The Charter of Rights and Freedoms section of the Constitution provides protection to persons with disabilities.

1982 France: Handicap International is founded in Lyon. It is active in various areas associated with all the causes of handicaps, both traumatological (land mines, road accidents) and infectious (polio, leprosy). In the 1990s it begins working on mental disability issues as a result of experience with Romanian orphanages and the war in the Balkans. In 1992, Handicap International creates its first two mine clearance programs and in 1997 it is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for its leading role in the fight against landmines.

1983 Rights-based approaches to disability rapidly gain currency in many developing countries since the UN Decade of Disabled Persons, 1983–1992. UNESCAP's Biwako Millennium Framework for Action towards an Inclusive, Barrier-Free and Rights-Based Society for People with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific sets the priorities for the extended Decade of Disabled Persons, 2003–2012.

1983 Access and accessibility are concepts discussed throughout the World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons passed by the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly in 1993 passes the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities.

1983 England: The first Covent Garden Day of Disabled Artists is held in London.

1983 Thailand: DPI-Thailand is established.

1984 The Access Board issues the “Minimum Guidelines and Requirements for Accessible Design,” which today serves as the basis for enforceable design standards. The 1990 Americans with [Page C19]Disabilities Act (ADA) expands the board's mandate to include developing the accessibility guidelines for facilities and transit vehicles. The Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 give the Access Board additional responsibility for developing accessibility standards for electronic and information technology. In 2001, Section 508 of federal law establishes design standards for federal websites, making them accessible to individuals with disabilities.

1985 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issues the first comprehensive national minority health study, which shows racial disparity in health and concludes that the difference in mortality is not acceptable. In 1998, studies indicate that racial disparity has not improved as much as hoped; consequently, President Bill Clinton launches an initiative that sets a national goal of eliminating disparities in six key areas by the year 2010. Some of these areas include diseases and conditions considered to be disabling as well as life threatening.

1986 The Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) passes. It requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop new regulations that ensure that disabled people are treated without discrimination in a way consistent with the safe carriage of all passengers. The relevant regulations, Air Carrier Access rules, are published in March 1990.

1986 The National Council on the Handicapped publishes its report Toward Independence. It recommends that “Congress should enact a comprehensive law requiring equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities” and suggests that the law be called “the Americans with Disabilities Act.” In its 1988 follow-up report, On the Threshold of Independence, the council takes the somewhat unusual step of publishing its own draft of the ADA bill.

1986 The Equal Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act allows recipients of federal disability benefits to retain them even after they obtain work, thus removing a disincentive that keeps disabled people unemployed.

1986 Australia: The Disability Services Act provides that a person with disability has the right to achieve his or her individual capacity for physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. In 1992, the Disability Discrimination Act supports nondiscrimination in education and training. It also makes it unlawful to discriminate in relation to access to premises, including public transportation.

1986 Canada: The Employment Equity Act mandates the institution of positive policies and practices to ensure that persons in designated groups, including persons with disabilities, achieve at least proportionate employment opportunities.

1986 England: The first issue of the magazine Disability Arts in London (DAIL) is produced in London.

1986 Southern Africa: The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled is formed as a federation of nongovernmental organizations of disabled persons.

1988 The Technology Act (Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988 and its 1994 amendments), and, in 1998, the Assistive Technology Act (AT) provide financial assistance to states to support programs of technology-related assistance for individuals with disabilities of all ages. The1988 act defines assistive technology (AT). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, public institutions, commercial facilities, transportation, and telecommunications, which includes accessibility to all entrances, bathrooms, program areas, and parking spaces as well as interpreters for the deaf and Braille and large-print materials for the blind. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the telecommunication industry to make equipment that will support transmission of information in forms accessible to people with disabilities including broadband and television program captioning. By 2000, approximately 10 percent of the U.S. population uses AT devices and/or modifications to their home, work, or school that allow them to participate in major life activities.

[Page C20]1988 Congress introduces a series of amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, including a prohibition of housing discrimination against people with disabilities. These amendments are known as the Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988.

1988 China: Deng Pufang, a wheelchair user and son of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, is the driving force behind a series of laws and programs initiated to improve life for the disabled. In 1984, he sets up the China Welfare Fund for Disabled Persons and, in 1988, the China Disabled Persons' Federation, which endeavors to improve public images of disabled people. Today, there are 60 million disabled people in China.

1989 The European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) is set up. It focuses on personal assistance as a key component of independent living.

1990 ADAPT, the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, originally called the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, continues to gain public awareness through tactics of civil disobedience until regulations are finally issued with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The ADA passes, after ADAPT uses tactics of civil disobedience, in the tradition of other civil rights movements, in one of the largest disability rights protests to date (600 demonstrators), the “Wheels of Justice March,” during which dozens of protesters throw themselves out of their wheelchairs and begin crawling up the 83 marble steps to the Capitol to deliver a scroll of the Declaration of Independence. The following day 150 ADAPT protesters lock wheelchairs together in the Capitol rotunda and engage in a sit-in until police carry them away one by one.

George H.W. Bush signs the ADA on July 26. It provides employment protections for qualifying persons with disability. It is the most prominent and comprehensive law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability in the United States, expanding the mandate of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to eliminate discrimination by prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, and public services.

In June 2000, the National Council on Disability issues a report, Promises to Keep: A decade of Federal Enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes 104 specific recommendations for improvements to the ADA enforcement effort. On December 1, 2004, the council issues a final summary report, Righting the ADA, in order to address “a series of negative court decisions [that] is returning [Americans with disabilities] to ‘second-class citizen' status that the Americans with Disabilities Act was supposed to remedy forever.”

1990 The ADA requires public entities and businesses to provide effective communication to individuals with disabilities. Title IV of the ADA mandates that nationwide telecommunication systems be accessible to persons with speech or hearing disabilities. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires relay services to be in place by July 26, 1993. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 adds provisions to the Communications Act of 1934 that requires manufactures and providers of telecommunications equipment and services to ensure accessibility to persons with disabilities. In 2000, President Bill Clinton establishes regulations governing the accessibility to people with disabilities of the electronic and information technology used within the federal government.

1990 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is enacted. It guarantees the right to free and appropriate education for children and youth with disabilities and focuses on higher expectations, mainstreaming students where possible, and an increased federal rule in ensuring equal educational opportunity for all students. IDEA requires schools to provide a free and appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities. It also requires schools to develop an individualized education plan (IEP) for each child and placement in the least restrictive environment (LRE) for their education. IDEA is amended in 1997 and reauthorized again in 2004 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act.

[Page C21]1990 Legislation establishes the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR), whose mission is to foster development of scientific knowledge needed to enhance the health, productivity, independence, and quality of life of persons with disabilities. It has primary responsibility for the U.S. Government's medical rehabilitation research that is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

1990 The World Declaration on Education for All (EFA) is adopted in Jomtien, Thailand, by more than 1,500 persons representing the international community. Article 23 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that disabled children have the right to a “full and decent life” and that member nations provide free education and training to disabled children whenever possible in order to provide the “fullest possible social integration and individual development.” UNESCO is the lead UN organization for special needs education.

1990 Korea: The disability movement celebrates the passage of the Employment Promotion Act for People with Disabilities. The government imposes control over the disabled population in the 1960s and 1970s by forwarding institutionalization under the banner of “protection,” promoting sterilization, and violating the rights of disabled people in general. The 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons influences the government, and new laws, such as the Welfare Law for Mentally and Physically Handicapped, are enacted, and the human rights of disabled people becomes the dominant rhetoric of the disability movement.

1990 United Kingdom: The National Disability Arts Forum is launched at the UK-OK Conference at Beaumont College in Lancashire, UK.

1991 The Resolution on Personal Assistance Services is passed at the International Personal Assistance Symposium. Personal assistance services are the most critical services for individuals. Critical aspects of these services are that they must be available up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to people of all ages, and with access to governmental payments. In the United States alone, personal assistance services affect the lives of more than 9.6 million citizens with disabilities.

1991 Australia: The federal Disability Reform Package is introduced; the Disability Discrimination Act, which covers issues of discrimination in education, is enacted in 1992; and the Commonwealth Disability Strategy, designed to provide equal access to government services for people with disabilities, is first introduced in 1994 and then revised in 2000. During the 1990s similar discrimination legislation emerges in other countries, such as New Zealand's Human Rights Act, the U.K.’ s Disability Discrimination Act, Israel's Disabled Persons Act, Canada's Human Rights Act, and India's Disabled Person's Act.

1991 China: The most important laws and initiatives reside in the 1991 Law on Protection of Disabled Persons and a series of National Work Programs for Disabled Persons (1988, 1991, 1996, 2001), which integrate disability into the government's Five-Year Plans. China participates heavily in the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons, 1983–1992, and initiates the Asia Pacific Decade of the Disabled Persons, 1993–2002. China continues to collaborate with UN projects involving the disabled and will host the 2007 International Special Olympics in Shanghai.

1991 Serbia and Montenegro: From the 1960s to the 1980s, post–World War II Yugoslavia is lauded for being a socially advanced nonaligned nation, but the contemporary wars that decimate Yugoslavia begin in 1991, and today there are more than one million disabled citizens, refugees, and casualties due to the wars. Disabled people in Serbia and Montenegro (formally named the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—FRY) are left with shattered pieces of the spent past with little hope for the near future. Although the FRY constitution prescribes special protection of disabled persons in accordance with legal provisions and Serbia is party to numerous UN documents and acts, a disabled expert in 2004 admits that discrimination against persons with disability in Serbia and Montenegro is a [Page C22]long-term problem that people without disability tend to ignore. Two of the most effective advocacy groups making in-roads today are the Association of Students with Disabilities and the Center for Independent Living in Belgrade.

1992 The UN Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) proclaims a 10-year program known as the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons 1993–2002 with goals of full participation and equality for persons with disabilities.

1993 The United Nations publishes the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, which becomes the international legal standards for disability programs, laws, and policies. Although not legally enforceable this instrument sets an inclusive and antidiscriminatory standard that is used when national policies are developed. It marks a clear shift from the rehabilitation and prevention paradigm to the human rights perspective on disability.

1993 Slovak Republic: The Czech and Slovak Republics separate into two independent countries. They both join the European Union in 2004. In Slovakia, a large number of highly innovative and resourceful grassroots nongovernmental organizations emerge to address the human rights, quality-of-life, and independent living priorities of citizens with disabilities. They pursue this mission, however, with extremely limited resources and with varying degrees of support from a multiparty parliament.

1993 Sweden: The Independent Living Institute (ILI) is founded.

1994 Two networks, one for elderly persons and the other for persons with disabilities, join together to form the U.S. National Coalition on Aging and Disability. In following years, policy makers and advocates begin to see the benefits of merging some services.

1994 Germany: The disability rights movement is successful in using for its own aims the reform of the German constitution, which is made necessary by the reunification process. An amendment to the constitution forbids discrimination on the grounds of disability. Other such laws as the Rehabilitation of Participation Law (2001) and the Federal Equal Rights Law (2002) are formulated with the active contribution of disability rights activists, and in 2003, the official German program of the European Year of People with Disabilities is organized by a prominent activist.

1994 Sweden: The Swedish Disability Act (LSS) comes into force. It expands the 1985 Special Services Act. The LSS is also more ambitious than its predecessor, calling for “good living conditions” rather than just an “acceptable standard of living.”

1995 The National Council on Disability, a federal agency, makes recommendations to the president and Congress on disability issues. Among other issues, it calls for the end to the use of aversives (techniques of behavior control such as restraints, isolation, and electric shocks) because they are abusive, dehumanizing, and psychologically and physically dangerous. Other organizations follow, such as the Autism National Committee in 1999, TASH in 2004, and the International Association for the Right to Effective Treatment in 2003.

1995 The Commission for Case Management Certification (CCMC) incorporates. Case management is a process of care planning and coordination of the services and resources used by people with disabilities and their families.

1995 Europe: The Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe (AAATE) is founded as an interdisciplinary association devoted to increasing awareness, promoting research and development, and facilitating the exchange of information. AAATE is composed of more than 250 members from 19 countries. It interacts with sister organizations in North America, Japan, and Australia to advance assistive technology worldwide. The Tokushima Agreement, signed in 2000 by AAATE, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America [Page C23](RESNA), the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of Japan (RESJA), and the Australian Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Association (ARATA), promotes exchange of information and collaboration.

1995 United Kingdom: The campaign for antidiscrimination legislation begins in earnest with the emergence of the disability movement in the late 1970s. The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 (DDA) together with the Disability Rights Commission Act of 1999 constitute the primary source of antidiscrimination legislation for disabled people in the United Kingdom. The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 extends the protection.

1996 There are 1.4 million fewer disabled older persons in the United States than would have been expected if the health status of older people had not improved since the early 1980s.

1996 Advocates for mental health parity such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI; 1979) believe that mental illnesses are real illnesses and that health insurance and health plan coverage for treatment should be equal with coverage of treatment for all other illnesses. Due in part to advocacy, the Mental Health Parity Act becomes law in 1996. In 1999, mental illness ranks first in causing disabilities among many industrialized nations, including the United States, which experiences a loss of productivity in this year of $63 billion. In the United States, 5 to 7 percent of adults suffer from serious mental disorders and 5 to 9 percent of children suffer from serious emotional disturbances that severely disrupt their social, academic, and emotional functioning.

1996 Costa Rica: Approval of a law called Equal Opportunities for People with Disabilities is a turning point for the population with disabilities, which is among the most excluded sectors of society. The law is inspired in part by the United Nations Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Disabled People (1993). Disability experience in Costa Rica is definitely transformed as a result of the mandates of this generic law, as people with disabilities and their families start to use this legal instrument as a strategy to empower themselves.

1996 Europe: Created in 1996, the European Disability Forum (EDF) is today the largest independent, trans-European organization that exists to represent disabled people in dialogue with the European Union (EU) and other European authorities. Its mission is to promote equal opportunities for disabled people and to ensure disabled citizens full access to fundamental and human rights through its active involvement in policy development and implementation in the EU. The EDF has national councils in 17 European countries and has 127 member organizations. The European Year of People with Disabilities 2003 is one of the EDF's most important campaigns.

1996 India: The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, becomes law. It is the first legislation for equal opportunities for disabled people. Prior to this, disabled persons receive services but not legal protection. Improvements in conditions begin in 1981 with the International Year of Disabled Persons. India is a signatory to the UN resolution of 1976 establishing it and is thereby committed to improving the lot of the disabled. The Lunacy Act of 1912 is repealed and the National Mental Health Act is passed in 1987. Nonetheless, with approximately 70 million disabled people residing in India (in a population of over a billion), the government does not include the domain of disability in the 2001 census, which reflects the attitudinal barriers in acknowledging the disabled identity.

1997 Government expenditures on behalf of persons with disabilities may total as much as $217.3 billion (taking into account the costs that would be expected among persons with disabilities in the absence of the disability), the equivalent of 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product in the United States for 1997.

1997 The landmark 1997 UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights frames the actual application of the new scientific developments raised by genetics. As a policy [Page C24]statement, it provides the first signs that genetics will be applied in ways that maintain human rights. In 2003, the Council of Europe and the council's Steering Committee in Bioethics issue policy statements in a working document titled Application of Genetics for Health Purposes. In the case of gene therapy, in 1994, the Group of Advisors on the Ethical Implications of Biotechnology of the European Commission voices concern regarding equity, maintaining that all genetic services that are available for the entire population should be equally available for persons of disability. Today, UNESCO's Human Genome Organization's Ethics Committee, the World Health Organization, the Council of Europe, and consumer organizations such as Inclusion International, Rehabilitation International, and Disabled Peoples' International play major roles in translating genetic innovations into health service and public health fields, helping develop policies that focus on the general recognition, respect, and protection of the rights to which all people, whether disabled or nondisabled, are entitled. Concerns related to the possible undermining of human rights are expressed in 2003 when Disabled People's International demands a prohibition on compulsory genetic testing.

1997 Colombia: The General Act for People with Disabilities, also known as the Disability Act: Law for Opportunity, passes. The 2003–2006 National Plan of Attention to Persons with Disabilities estimates that 18 percent of the general population has some type of disability. Despite the existence of at least 37 disability-related legal policies (2001), the government provides limited spending on programs that protect the rights of people with disabilities, and the lack of enforcement of rights remains a major concern. Today's awareness efforts include marathons with the participation of the general population to raise money for educational programs for children with special needs, Special Olympics, new organizations such as the Colombian Association for the Development of People with Disabilities, and media awareness campaigns.

1998 President Bill Clinton issues an executive order ensuring that the federal government assumes the role of a model employer of adults with disabilities.

1998 President Clinton signs into law the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Amendments. Section 508 requires that electronic and information technology (EIT), such as federal websites, telecommunications, software, and information kiosks, must be usable by persons with disabilities.

1998 Ireland: The Irish Employment Equality Act entitles all individuals, including disabled persons, equal treatment in training and employment opportunities. The Education Act of 1998 requires schools to provide education to students that is appropriate to their abilities and needs. The Education for Persons with Disabilities Bill passes in 2003. A Disability Bill published in 2001 fails to underpin a rights-based approach and is withdrawn amid a storm of protest in 2002; a redrafting of a new Disability Bill is suffering from continuing delays. Traditionally, Irish voluntary organizations play a reactionary role in the development of services for people with disabilities and a key role as pressure groups trying to keep disability issues on the political agenda.

1999 The National Center on Physical Activity and Disability (NCPAD) is established as an information and resource center that offers people with disabilities, caregivers, and professionals the latest information on fitness, recreation, and sports programs for people with disabilities.

1999 Established by a panel of experts brought together to evaluate the UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disability, the International Disability Alliance (IDA) encourages cross-disability collaboration and supports the participation of international disability organizations in the elaboration of a proposed UN convention on disability.

1999 England: The first disability film festival, Lifting the Lid, is held at the Lux Cinema in London.

[Page C25]2000 The National Telability Media Center collects documentation of 3,000+ newsletters, 200 magazines, 50 newspapers, 40 radio programs, and 40 television programs dedicated to disability in the United States alone. The Ragged Edge, Mainstream (Internet-based), and Mouth are examples of disability rights-focused publications.

2000Healthy People 2000, the second edition of the Surgeon General's report on health promotion and disease prevention (the first edition published in 1979), includes some reference to the health and well-being of people with disabilities, but few data are available. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services begins a dialogue with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to include people with disabilities in the third edition, Healthy People 2010. The resulting report includes more than 100 objectives that include “people with disabilities” as a subpopulation for data gathering.

2000 The World Bank, increasingly concerned with how to include disabled persons in the economies and societies of developing nations, establishes an online clearinghouse to make documents concerning the disabled readily available to member nations and the general public and holds its first course on disability issues in 2004 in Guatemala.

2000 Africa: The African Decade of Persons with Disabilities, 2000–2009, is adopted by the Declaration of the Organization of African Unity. The African Network of Women with Disabilities (2001) and the community-based rehabilitation organization CBR Africa Network (CAN) are examples of the many activities that result from the African Decade.

2000 Brazil is one of the few countries to include an entire section on disability in its 2000 census. Results show that 14.5 percent of the population, roughly 24 million people, report having some form of disability, the poorest region, the northeast, reporting the highest percentage and the richest, in the south, the lowest. People with disabilities in the first half of the twentieth century have no voice or representation. In 1932, the first Pestalozzi Society, a community-based school for children with intellectual disabilities, is founded. By the end of the twentieth century, there are 146 Pestalozzi Societies and more than 1,700 chapters of the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional. The first center for independent living is established in 1988 (CVI-RIO). In 1992 and 1995, CVI-RIO organizes two international conferences on disability issues called DefRio, out of which comes “Goals of the ILM,” a document that delineates the basis for the independent living movement in Brazil; however, financial support is not provided by the government, creating a struggle for sustainability. Brazil has progressive policies toward disability. The constitution includes sections on the rights of people with disabilities, and laws have been passed with regard to accessibility, education, and employment.

2000 Europe: A European Community directive requires all member states to have introduced antidiscrimination laws in the fields of employment and training by the end of 2006. It seeks to establish a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation and to render unlawful discrimination based on, among other categories, disability. The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights sets out in a single text, for the first time in the EU's history, the whole range of civil, political, economic, and social rights of European citizens. Disability is included in the general nondiscrimination clause (Article 21), but Article 26 specifically states that the Union recognizes and respects the rights of persons with disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational integration, and participation in the life of the community.

2000 The Human Genome Project (HGP), an international effort to specify the 3 billion pairs of genes that make up the DNA sequence of the entire human genome, produces its first draft in June 2000. Formally begun in October 1990, it is completed in 2003.

[Page C26]2001 President Clinton declares in Executive Order No. 13217 the commitment of the United States to community-based alternatives for individuals with disabilities. This ensures that the Olmstead v. L.C. decision (1999), which mandates the right for persons with disability to live in the leastrestrictive setting with reasonable accommodations, is implemented in a timely manner. The executive order directs federal agencies to work together to tear down the barriers to community living.

2001 In the United States, census data indicate that only 48 percent of citizens 25 to 64 years old with severe disabilities have health insurance compared with 80 percent of individuals with nonservere disabilities and 82 percent of nondisabled Americans. Women with disabilities in general are more likely to live in poverty than men. Minorities with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than nonminorities with disabilities. In 2003, in the United States, about 28 percent of children with disabilities live in poor families compared with 16 percent of all children.

2001 A UN Ad Hoc Committee begins discussions for a legally binding convention under the draft title Comprehensive and Integral Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. Its fifth session is held in early 2005.

2001 A new World Health Organization classification of people with disabilities, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), replaces the old International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH). The ICF definition shifts the focus from disability as an innate deficit (“medical model”) to disability as constructed through the interaction between the individual and the environment (“social model”). This shift encourages a focus on the kinds and levels of interventions appropriate to the needs of individuals.

2001 UNESCO launches pilot education projects for disabled children in Cameroon, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ghana, India, Madagascar, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Paraguay, South Africa, Vietnam, and Yemen. The global initiative Education for All 2000 has as its primary millennium development goal universal education by the year 2015.

2002 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that executing persons with mental retardation is unconstitutional.

2002 Disabled Peoples' International's 2002 Sapporo Platform, developed by 3,000 delegates from more than 90 countries, urges members to take every opportunity to seek publicity and awareness in order to change negative images of disabled people.

2002 Canada: The Canadian International Development Bank announces the approval of the Canada-Russia Disability Program, a four-year $4 million project, focusing on education, disability studies, social work practice, social policy, and information dissemination.

2003 A national survey that updates the Disability Supplement to the 10-year-old National Health Interview Survey highlights barriers to care among the uninsured. The uninsured are four times as likely to postpone care and three times as likely to go without needed supplies.

2003 The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) issues a policy statement that discusses their core values with respect to working with people with disabilities, including self-determination, social justice, and dignity and worth of the person. The statement emphasizes that social workers are responsible to take action with people who have disabilities in advocating for their rights to fully participate in society.

2003 The Disability Awareness in Action (DAA) database contains a total of 1,910 reports of known abuse affecting nearly 2.5 million disabled people. In the area of education alone, it documents [Page C27]118 cases affecting 768,205 people in 67 countries. Responding to this documentation and other reports, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights creates the Global Rights campaign to address human rights abuses. Disability rights organizations use this information to insist on a UN convention on the rights of disabled people that would be legally binding on nation-states.

2003 The International Association for the Study of Pain has more than 6,700 members, representing more than 100 countries and 60 disciplinary fields. Chronic pain is one of the leading causes of recurrent and permanent disability in the developed world today, yet less than 1 percent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health's budget supports research into mechanisms and management of pain. The U.S. Congress declares 2000–2010 the Decade of Pain Control and Research.

2004 The Journal of Gene Medicine (January) reports that 636 gene therapy clinical trials are completed or ongoing, involving 3,496 patients. The first gene therapy clinical trials begin in the early 1990s.

Today Seventy to eighty percent—approximately 400 million—of the world's disabled people (600 million, or 10 percent of the world's population) live in the developing world, and of the world's poorest of the poor, 20 to 25 percent are disabled. In most countries, 1 out of 10 persons has a disability. Many international efforts are under way to address poverty and disability, such as those of the Action on Disability Development and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre.

Today E-health is the use of emerging interactive telecommunications technologies such as the Internet, interactive TV, kiosks, personal digital assistants, CD-ROMs, and DVD-ROMs to facilitate health improvement and health care services, including those with disabilities. E-health relies on environments that use a variety of technologies that can compensate for the lack of sensory ability. Telerehabilitation is an example of services delivered information technology and telecommunication networks.

Today Celebrating difference is the mantra and visible manifestation of disability culture in all regions of the world.