Thankful for Progress… and so far to go
It’s OH SO EASY to be frustrated, angry, and overwhelmed by the real world of disabled lives today…
…and I am.
But it’s also worth remembering how far we’ve come:
Fifty years ago, on 29 November 1975, the United States passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act—now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Before EHA, many children were denied access to education and opportunities to learn. In 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, or had an intellectual disability.
In 1973, the Rehabilitation Act was passed, including Section 504 for education, which established foundational principles of accessibility (Section 508).
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law, strengthening protections to prohibit discrimination.
Since then, a steady stream of court cases has continued to affirm and expand these basic rights for disabled people and the rights of children with disabilities to access education.
In 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities global treaty came into force (without the US).
These landmark civil rights protections didn’t just happen. They were the result of tireless work by thousands and thousands of people – disabled activists, the broader disability community, and the support and leadership of elected officials.
And they had to fight HARD to achieve the progress that we have all benefited from.
Much progress has already been made—and even more is possible.
None of this was inevitable. It’s easy to forget, now that we have these tools in our hands, what it took to put them there—and who made that happen.
So let’s take a moment to be thankful for the hundreds of thousands of people who got us to where we are today.
And perhaps the best way to honor their work is to continue it—to expand it—for the next generation and beyond.
