Celebrating the Legacy of Women in Disability History

When I was first injured in 2005, I was 14 years old and had no clue how to move forward. Sure, I had a team of inpatient nurses who taught me to transfer and roll in the grass, but I had no guidance on my new rules of life: newly sitting down, newly stranded in a wheelchair, and dramatically different from my peers.

While I was still in the hospital, I was paired with a “seasoned” and local wheelchair user who accompanied me to PT a few times, talked about her version of our shared disability, and gave a heads-up on the inaccessibility of our city. With the ambiguity of the world, I was rolling into for the first time, her value was in having someone to ask questions, helping me to advocate for myself, and just making me feel less alone in my “new” and fiercely ambiguous body.

I’m thankful for people like her – those in the disabled community with strong voices – and I acknowledge that our world couldn’t be where it is without them. There are many, many more people who have blazed a path for the disabled communities’ equality and recognition.

I’ll mention a few notable women off the list:

1. Judith Heumann – Judith is a dominating presence in shaping disability legislation and policies in the US and worldwide. She had a strong hand in helping to get the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990, which is largely how I and so many others can navigate the world with relative ease and accessibility. Before that, she led a historic 26-day sit-in to protest disability-based discrimination in federally funded programs. She has been called the mother of the Disability Rights Movement.
2. Alice Wong – Alice also played a key role in getting the ADA passed in 1990, then she went further to create the Disability Visibility Project (DVP). The DVP is an online community focused on creating, recording, sharing, and amplifying the voices of the disabled. In partnership with StoryCorps, the more than 140 stories preserved by the project aim to make the stories of those people more accessible and relatable, which led to a greater acceptance from everyone.
3. Haben Girma – Haben is the whole package: an advocate, a public speaker, and a lawyer. She’s known for her successes within the problems of accessibility and inclusion for disabled people (or lack thereof), at the same time as being the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law. In her work, her mindset is centered around building bridges and creating opportunities for disabled people to be successful, instead of expecting them to “overcome” their disability.

There are loads more influential and outstanding I can add to my list, from those mentoring newbies from a hospital bed to those making a lasting impact on future generations. In my opinion and experience, there’s something extra special about a friendship with someone who can understand and speak to my struggles on such a deep level. Even more special are the ones who do the heavy lifting for everyone, known and unknown.

As a disabled community, we have a lot of strong women to thank for where we are today. Let’s give it up for the powerful women who paved the way.