Rights of the Disabled: Congress Passes Rehabilitation Act
The 1973 Rehabilitation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law on this day, was an important milestone in federal programs for disabled persons. It replaced previous laws passed in 1954 and 1965.
The first federal law supporting the rights of the disabled was the Smith-Fess Act, which President Woodrow Wilson signed on June 2, 1920, and which provided federal support for vocational rehabilitation for people with physical disabilities.
Section 504 of the new law was particularly important, expanding the rights of persons with disabilities, greatly expanding grants to the states for vocational rehabilitation, and also expanding federal research and training related to persons with disabilities.
When the Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW) failed to issue regulations implementing Section 504, disability rights activists protested with a sit-in on April 5, 1977. HEW issued the regulations three weeks later.
The campaign for the rights of the disabled culminated in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990. The ADA served as the model for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was signed on March 30, 2007. The U.S. Senate has still not ratified the Convention, however, because of conservative opposition. See December 5, 2012 for a Senate vote on ratification that failed.
Visit the National Disability Rights website: http://www.napas.org/
Learn more: Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (2012)
Read More: Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (2012)
Learn more about the rights of persons with disabilities: https://www.aclu.org/disability-rights
Visit the ADA website: http://www.ada.gov/
Study a timeline on federal laws and regulations regarding disabled persons: http://www.in.gov/fssa/files/History_and_Regulations.pdf
View the 31-point Minnesota ADA Legacy project here
Learn more at the National Disability Rights Network: http://www.ndrn.org/index.php