Disability History: The Untold Story

1. Disability History: The Untold Story

2. Models of Disability MEDICAL MODEL – Traditional way our society views disability:       • Disability is a negative thing. • Disability is a personal problem. • Curing people or making them seem less disabled will make their problems better. • Professionals are the experts on disability.

3. Medical Model Reflected in History • Greek and Roman eras: People with disabilities were left to die • Middle Ages: People with disabilities were tortured • Long history of institutionalization • Holocaust: Hitler tested out his killing machines on people with disabilities through “euthanasia programs”

4. Medical Model Reflected in Current Events • Telethons and the “charity model” – people with disabilities are to be cured and pitied • Television and movies • Sad, pitiful characters • Bad guys and villians • “Supercrips” • What movies or TV shows have you watched that may represent the medical model? • Assisted suicide – Jack Kevorkian • Other current events or current practices?

5. Medical model affects us personally… • Trying to appear as “normal” as possible • Being embarrassed or ashamed of having a disability • Asking for help is a sign of weakness • Being independent means doing everything yourself • Not wanting to associate with other people with disabilities

6. Disability Leaders wanted change • 1950s and 1960s experienced civil rights movements of other groups – Women’s Movement and the Black Civil Rights Movement. • People with disabilities began to rise against the long history of exclusion and institutionalization • People with disabilities were denied many basic civil rights too, and they wanted access to quality education (high school AND college), employment, community living, stores, restaurants, libraries

7. A new model of disability: The Social Model • Disability is only a difference, just like gender or race. • Being disabled is neither good nor bad; it’s just part of who you are. • Problems occur when a person with a disability tries to function in an inaccessible and unaccommodating society.

8. Social Model of Disability, cont. • A change in society (like making things accessible for everyone or changing negative attitudes) will lessen many of the problems and issues that people with disabilities experience. • Change can come from a person with a disability, an advocate, or anyone who wants people with disabilities to be included equally in society.

9. Fighting for Change • 504 Sit-in at the San Francisco Federal Building • Ed Roberts fought to attend UC Berkeley and live in the dorms, started the first Independent Living Center • ADAPT fight for accessible transportation and deinstitutionalization • Americans with Disabilities Act • YO! Disabled and Proud: Disability History Week and Anti-Bullying Campaigns • Fighting to keep our rights and services

10. WHO AM I? I lived from 1882 to 1945. I served for 3 terms as President of the United States and helped pull the country out of the Great Depression. Due to polio, I could not walk unassisted and I felt I had to hide my disability from the American public.

12. WHO AM I? I lived from 1939 to 1995. I am known as the “Father of the Disability Rights Movement.” I contracted polio when I was 14. UC Berkeley told me, “"We've tried cripples before and it didn't work,” and the Department of Rehab refused to serve me because I was considered too severely disabled and labeled unemployable. I received my B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and when I was at UC Berkeley, together with my friends in the Rolling Quads, we created the first Disabled Students Program in the nation. I also founded the first Center for Independent Living, served as the Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation, and co-founded the World Institute on Disability.

14. WHO AM I? I was born in 1947 and fought my entire life to be included in the educational system. In 1970 I founded Disabled in Action and moved to Berkeley in 1973 where I served as deputy director of the Center for Independent Living. I led the takeover of the Federal Building offices in San Francisco to get Secretary Califano to sign the Section 504 regulations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This was the longest takeover of a federal building in US history, lasting 26 days.

16. We ain’t where we wanna be; We ain’t where we ougtha be; We ain’t where we’re gonna be; But we sure ain’t where we was! - Sojunner Truth