Legislation, Disability

Overview

One of the first serious efforts to create public policy for people with disabilities was a conference held by the President’s Commission on Employment of the Handicapped in 1958. It called for the establishment of voluntary standards for accessibility in the architectural design of buildings. These standards were developed with the oversight of representatives from government, private, and civil society organizations and published in 1961. In 1965, the issue of architectural barriers was officially acknowledged by the federal government as a problem. However, voluntary standards were not enforceable.

The disabilities movement was inspired by and adopted the strategies and rhetoric of the civil rights movement. The language of whole sections of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, for example, reflects the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This represented the first formal policy definition of discrimination toward people with disabilities. However, it prohibited discrimination only by organizations that received federal funds. Its importance rested in the fact that it moved disability issues from the fields of philanthropic, therapeutic, and social services to the political arena of civil rights. It was not until 1978 that regulations to enforce the Rehabilitation Act were issued.

Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, which established a mandate for free and appropriate public education for children with disabilities. It did not, however, clarify the term appropriate, leaving that to be negotiated by states and lower courts. The act introduced the concept of mainstreaming, which means that whenever possible, a school system must provide the same educational environment as that provided to children without disabilities.

The concept of independent living for people with disabilities was already under consideration, in therapeutic fields, in the 1950s. In 1978, federal funding for independent living services was made available. In the 1950s, the concept of independent living was considered within the context of services provided by health professionals. After a few decades, however, it had become a self-empowerment concept in the disability movement. At the time, supporting people with disabilities so they might live in residences of their own choice challenged conventional ideas of dependency to which people with disabilities were subject. The independent living movement also challenged the prevalent idea that people with disabilities should be institutionalized, and activists fought for services so that people with disabilities could live in the community.

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