Tag Archives: disability rights

Article: “Campus archives reveal genesis of U.S. disability rights movement”

“It was 1997, and Jane Rosario, a librarian at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, was on her way to visit Mark O’Brien, a former Berkeley student with an extensive literary collection of his own works. He was a poet and journalist and larger than life — and Rosario had the job of collecting his poems, essays and book reviews to include in the library’s archives on disability rights and the independent living movement of the 1960s and 1970s.” Continue reading this article by Anne Brice at Berkeley News.

Article: “My disability taught me that not all workers need to be the same”

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I was born in Olympia in 1983, seven years before the passage of the Americans with Disability Act. July 26 marks the 30th anniversary of this hard-fought piece of civil rights legislation, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in schools, transportation, jobs and public spaces. As an infant and toddler, I received early intervention services and vision therapy. These services were the introduction to the message I would receive throughout my childhood — if I just worked hard enough, I could fix my vision (not true!), overcome my disability and be just like a normal kid. Consequently, I pretended I could see things I couldn’t. I tried not to tilt my head at “weird” angles, hold things too close, use large print or binoculars, or ever ask for help. I spent 33 years trying to fake being normal, and it was exhausting.” Continue reading this article by Anna Zivarts at the Seattle Times.