History and Overview of Disability Rights and Benefits

History

The disability rights movement reflects the contributions of several different constituencies. In the 1960s, the movement focused on the rights of institutionalized persons. By the 1970s, it included persons with severe disabilities in institutions and in the community and expanded in the 1980s to self-advocacy for all persons with disabilities. The movement culminated with the enactment and enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., in the 1990s. In the early 1970s, special interest groups representing a number of distinct categories of persons with severe mental and physical disabilities, for example, individuals with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, headed the movement for disability rights in the community. The foundations for this revolution are federal legislation that have altered the course of history for all people with disabilities (Berkowitz , 1991). 

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., offered vocational rehabilitation services on a national scale to qualifying persons with disabilities. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, Pub. L. No. 94-142, 89 Stat. 773 (1975), now known as the IDEA, offered help educate and train children with severe disabilities who were likely to be placed in institutions (Berkowitz, 1991). In 1997, Congress reauthorized the act and amended many of its key provisions. On May 11, 1999, the Department of Education's final regulations interpreting the amendments went into effect Fed. Reg. 1,2406 (1999) codified at 34 C.F.R. §§300, 303 (Annino, 1999).