Abstract

Disability Rights Movement: Overcoming the Social Barriers

In this article, the author focuses on the legal aspect of the disability rights movement of deaf students at the Gallaudet University. The victory won in March 1988 by deaf students signals that disabled people may finally be achieving recognition of the right to control their own lives. This movement was supposed as the birth of civil rights movement, but civil rights struggles such as this have been going on for years. Eleven years ago, deaf people joined protesters in wheelchairs, on crutches and with guide dogs at Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices around the country to demand that President Jimmy Carter's Administration sign rules implementing nondiscrimination provisions of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act's Section 504. Section 504 had been tacked onto a routine funding bill by Congressional staff members who believed in civil rights. Although the act was passed in 1973, rules implementing Section 504 weren't signed until the demonstrations four years later.