History of Independent Living
by Gina McDonald and Mike Oxford
This
account of the history of independent living stems from a philosophy
which states that people with disabilities should have the same civil
rights, options, and control over choices in their own lives as do
people without disabilities.
The
history of independent living is closely tied to the civil rights
struggles of the 1950s and 1960s among African Americans. Basic
issues--disgraceful treatment based on bigotry and erroneous
stereotypes in housing, education, transportation, and employment --
and the strategies and tactics are very similar. This history and its
driving philosophy also have much in common with other political and
social movements of the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
There were at least five movements that influenced the disability
rights movement.
Social Movements
The
first social movement was deinstitutionlization, an attempt to move
people, primarily those with developmental disabilities, out of
institutions and back into their home communities. This movement was
led by providers and parents of people with developmental disabilities
and was based on the principle of "normalization" developed by Wolf
Wolfensberger, a sociologist from Canada. His theory was that people
with developmental disabilities should live in the most "normal"
setting possible if they were to expected to behave "normally." Other
changes occurred in nursing homes where young people with many types of
disabilities were warehoused for lack of "better" alternatives
(Wolfensberger, 1972).
The
next movement to influence disability rights was the civil rights
movement. Although people with disabilities were not included as a
protected class under the Civil Rights Act, it was a reality that
people could achieve rights, at least in law, as a class. Watching the
courage of Rosa Parks as she defiantly rode in the front of a public
bus, people with disabilities realized the immediate challenge of even
getting on the bus.
The
"self-help" movement, which really began in the 1950s with the founding
of Alcoholics Anonymous, came into its own in the 1970s. Many self-help
books were published and support groups flourished. Self-help and peer
support are recognized as key points in independent living philosophy.
According to this tenet, people with similar disabilities are believed
to be more likely to assist and to understand each other than
individuals who do not share experience with similar disability.
Demedicalization
was a movement that began to look at more holistic approaches to health
care. There was a move toward "demystification" of the medical
community. Thus, another cornerstone of independent living philosophy
became the shift away from the authoritarian medical model to a
paradigm of individual empowerment and responsibility for defining and
meeting one's own needs.
Consumerism,
the last movement to be described here, was one in which consumers
began to question product reliability and price. Ralph Nader was the
most outspoken advocate for this movement, and his staff and followers
came to be known as "Nader's Raiders." Perhaps most fundamental to
independent living philosophy today is the idea of control by consumers
of goods and services over the choices and options available to them.
The
independent living paradigm, developed by Gerben DeJong in the late
1970s (DeJong, 1979), proposed a shift from the medical model to the
independent living model. As with the movements described above, this
theory located problems or "deficiencies" in the society, not the
individual. People with disabilities no longer saw themselves as broken
or sick, certainly not in need of repair. Issues such as social and
attitudinal barriers were the real problems facing people with
disabilities. The answers
were to be found in changing and "fixing"
society, not people with disabilities. Most important, decisions must
be made by the individual, not by the medical or rehabilitation
professional.
Using
these principles, people began to view themselves as powerful and
self-directed as opposed to passive victims, objects of charity,
cripples, or not whole. Disability began to be seen as a natural, not
uncommon, experience in life, not a tragedy.
ADAPT
Wade
Blank began his lifelong struggle in civil rights activism with Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. to Selma, Alabama. It was during this period
that he learned about the stark oppression, which occurred against
people considered to be outside the "mainstream" of our "civilized"
society. By 1971, Wade was working in a nursing facility, Heritage
House, trying to improve the quality of life of some of the younger
residents. These efforts, including taking some of the residents to a
Grateful Dead concert, ultimately failed. Institutional services and
living arrangements were at odds with the pursuit of personal liberties
and life with dignity.
In
1974, Wade founded the Atlantis Community, a model for community-based,
consumer-controlled, independent living. The Atlantis Community
provided personal assistance services primarily under the control of
the consumer within a community setting. The first consumers of the
Atlantis Community were some of the young residents "freed" from
Heritage House by Wade (after he had been fired). Initially, Wade
provided personal assistance services to nine people by himself for no
pay so that these individuals could integrate into society and live
lives of liberty and dignity. In 1978, Wade and Atlantis realized that
access to public transportation was a necessity if people with
disabilities were to live independently in the community. This was the
year that American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) was
founded.
On
July 5-6, 1978, Wade and nineteen disabled activists held a public
transit bus "hostage" on the corner of Broadway and Colfax in Denver,
Colorado. ADAPT eventually mushroomed into the nation's first
grassroots, disability rights, activist organization.
In
the spring of 1990, the Secretary of Transportation, Sam Skinner,
finally issued regulations mandating lifts on buses. These regulations
implemented a law passed in 1970-the Urban Mass Transit Act-which
required lifts on new buses. The transit industry had successfully
blocked implementation of this part of the law for twenty years, until
ADAPT changed their minds and the minds of the nation. In 1990, after
passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), ADAPT shifted its
vision toward a national system of community-based personal assistance
services and the end of the apartheid-type system of segregating people
with disabilities by imprisoning them in institutions against their
will. The acronym ADAPT became "American Disabled for Attendant
Programs Today." The fight for a national policy of attendant services
and the end of institutionalization continues to this day.
Wade
Blank died on February 15, 1993, while unsuccessfully attempting to
rescue his son from drowning in the ocean. Wade and Ed Roberts live on
in many hearts and in the continuing struggle for the rights of people
with disabilities.
These
lives of these two leaders in the disability rights movement, Ed
Roberts and Wade Blank, provide poignant examples of the modern
history, philosophy, and evolution of independent living in the United
States. To complete this rough sketch of the history of independent
living, a look must be taken at the various pieces of legislation
concerning the rights of people with disabilities, with a particular
emphasis on the original "bible" of civil rights for people with
disabilities, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Civil Rights Laws
Before
turning to the Rehabilitation Act, a chronological listing and brief
description of important federal civil rights laws affecting people
with disabilities is in order.
1964
Civil
Rights Act: prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion,
ethnicity, national origin, and creed -- later, gender was added as a
protected class.
1968
Architectural Barriers Act: prohibits architectural barriers in all federally owned or leased buildings.
1970
Urban
Mass Transit Act: requires that all new mass transit vehicles be
equipped with wheelchair lifts. As mentioned earlier, it was twenty
years, primarily because of machinations of the American Public Transit
Association (APTA), before the part of the law requiring wheelchair
lifts was implemented.
1973
Rehabilitation
Act: particularly Title V, Sections 501, 503, and 504, prohibits
discrimination in federal programs and services and all other programs
or services receiving federal funding.
1975
Developmental Disabilities Bill of Rights Act: among other things, establishes Protection and Advocacy (P & A).
1975
Education
of All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142): requires free, appropriate
public education in the least restrictive environment possible for
children with disabilities. This law is now called the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
1978
Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act: provides for consumer-controlled centers for independent living.
1983
Amendments
to the Rehabilitation Act: provides for the Client Assistance Program
(CAP), an advocacy program for consumers of rehabilitation and
independent living services.
1985
Mental Illness Bill of Rights Act: requires protection and advocacy services (P & A) for people with mental illness.
1988
Civil
Rights Restoration Act: counteracts bad case law by clarifying
Congress' original intention that under the Rehabilitation Act,
discrimination in ANY program or service that is a part of an entity
receiving federal funding -- not just the part which actually and
directly receives the funding -- is illegal.
1988
Air
Carrier Access Act: prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability
in air travel and provides for equal access to air transportation
services.
1988
Fair
Housing Amendments Act: prohibits discrimination in housing against
people with disabilities and families with children. Also provides for
architectural accessibility of certain new housing units, renovation of
existing units, and accessibility modifications at the renter's
expense.
1990
Americans
with Disabilities Act: provides comprehensive civil rights protection
for people with disabilities; closely modeled after the Civil Rights
Act and the Section 504 of Title V of the Rehabilitation Act and its
regulations.
The
modern history of civil rights for people with disabilities is three
decades old. An essential piece of this decades-long process is the
story of how the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was finally passed and then
implemented. It is the story of the first organized disability rights
protest.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973
In
1972, Congress passed a rehabilitation bill that independent living
activists cheered. President Richard Nixon's veto prevented this bill
from becoming law. During the era of political activity at the end of
the Vietnam War, Nixon's veto was not taken lying down by disability
activists who launched fierce protests across the country. In New York
City, early leader for disability, fights, Judy Heumann, staged a
sit-in on Madison Avenue with eighty other activists.
Traffic
was stopped. After a flood of angry letters and protests, in September
1973, Congress overrode Nixon's veto and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
finally became law. Passage of this pivotal law was the beginning of
the ongoing fight for implementation and revision of the law according
to the vision of independent living advocates and disability rights
activists. Key language in the Rehabilitation Act, found in Section 504
of Title V, states that:
No
otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States shall,
solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation
in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under
any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Advocates
realized that this new law would need regulations in order to be
implemented and enforced. By 1977, Presidents Nixon and Ford had come
and gone. Jimmy Carter had-become president and had appointed Joseph
Califano his Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).
Califano refused to issue regulations and was given an ultimatum and
deadline of April 4, 1977. April 4 went by with no regulations and no
word from Califano.
On
April 5, demonstrations by people with disabilities took place in ten
cities across the country. By the end of the day, demonstrations in
nine cities were over. In one city, San Francisco, protesters refused
to disband.
Demonstrators,
more than 150 people with disabilities, had taken over the federal
office building and refused to leave. They stayed until May 1. Califano
had issued regulations by April 28, but the protesters stayed until
they had reviewed the regulations and approved of them.
The lesson is a simple one. As Martin Luther King said,
"It
is an historical fact that the privileged groups seldom give up their
privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and
voluntarily give up their unjust posture, but, as we are reminded,
groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. We know, through
painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed."
Leaders in the Independent Living Movement
The history of the independent living movement is not complete without
mention of some other leaders who continue to make substantial
contributions to the movement and to the rights and empowerment of
people with disabilities.
Max
Starkloff, Charlie Carr, and Marca Bristo founded the National Council
on Independent Living (NCIL) in 1980. NCIL is one of the only national
organizations that is consumer-controlled and promotes the rights and
empowerment of people with disabilities.
Justin
Dart played a prominent role in the fight for passage of the Americans
with Disabilities Act, and is seen by many as the spiritual leader of
the movement today. Lex Frieden is co-founder of ELRU Program. As
director of the National Council on Disability, he directed preparation
of the original ADA legislation and its introduction in Congress.
Liz Savage and Pat Wright are considered the "mothers of the ADA." They led the consumer fight for the passage of the ADA.
There are countless other people who have and continue to make substantial contributions to the independent living movement.
References
DeJong,
Gerben. "Independent Living: From Social Movement to Analytic
Paradigm," Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 60, October
1979.
Wolfensberger, Wolf The Principle of Normalization in Human Services. Toronto: National Institute on Mental Retardation, 1972.
ALLIANCE OF DISABILITY ADVOCATES
Center for Independent Living
ALERT
Re: Disability Rights Movement History
JUSTIN DART (1930 - 2002)
Few
people in the disability rights movement understand the power,
importance, and nature of grassroots organizing as well as Justin Dart.
For over two decades he has been an advocate for justice, civil rights,
and human potential in the United States and the world. In addition to
their time, Justin and his wife Yoshiko have dedicated much of their
financial resources to the betterment of people with disabilities. They
have crossed the country sponsoring forums for a variety of campaigns,
including advocacy for the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).
Through their efforts, thousands of "discrimination diaries" became
part of the evidence used to justify the ADA.
Born
to wealth and prestige (his father eventually became a member of
President Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet") Justin had a difficult
adolescence, and traces the beginnings of his "good days" in life to
contracting polio at the age of 18, which left him without use of his
legs and required use of a wheelchair. Around the same time he exposed
himself to the philosophy of Gandhi, which gave him confidence that he
could take responsibility for his life. In 1951, at the age of 21, he
entered the University of Houston. Throughout the latter 1950s and the
1960s, with the support of his Executive Assistant and later wife
Yoshiko Saji, Dart became a successful businessman in the U.S. and
around the world.
Dart visited
a Vietnamese institution for children with polio during the Vietnam
War, and saw malnourished children packed into a shed infested with
flies, urine, and feces. He responded by pledging his life to reform
and devoted six years to philosophical reflection and introspection in
the mountains of Japan. Dart and Yoshiko returned to Texas from Asia in
1978, soon after which Dart began his career in disability advocacy,
participating in the Texas Governor's Committee on the Handicapped, the
National Council on the Handicapped, the Rehabilitation Services
Administration, the President's Committee on the Employment of People
with Disabilities, the ADA Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of
People with Disabilities, and a multitude of local and national
demonstrations.
Dart received
recognition from President Clinton in the form of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Dart immediately
removed the medal to bestow it upon his wife Yoshiko and insisted that
it belonged to everyone in the disability rights movement.
JUDY HEUMANN
After
contracting polio at the age of 18 months, in 1949, Judy Heumann faced
numerous obstacles in gaining a decent education. Barred from the
public school because she used a wheelchair (a "fire hazard"), Heumann
relied on home instruction and then finally attended a segregated
school for people with disabilities. She began organizing her fellow
classmates before she was even 10 to discuss ways that they could
improve their lot. Heumann also earned the loyalty of her peers by
assisting many individuals with greater mobility restrictions in tasks
such as eating.
With the
support of dedicated parents who formed their own organization to fight
for their kids, Heumann and several friends eventually made it to a
public, non-segregated high school. Heumann enrolled at Long Island
University in 1965 and majored in secondary education. Although she
excelled in her coursework, college administrators denied Heumann a
teaching certificate. Heumann responded with a lawsuit, and won. In
addition to going on to be a public school teacher in New York, she
used the media attention surrounding her litigation to form an
important, cross-disability organization: Disabled in Action. DIA was
explicitly political in orientation and focused on such issues as
transportation and architectural accessibility.
Heumann
obtained a Master's in Public Health from the University of California
at Berkeley in 1975. After serving as an assistant to Senator Harrison
Williams, she became Deputy Director of Berkeley's Center for
Independent Living, begun under the leadership of Ed Roberts. She
worked to advocate the philosophy of independent living around the
country and the world. Her international interest culminated in the
1983 co-founding of World Institute on Disability. Since 1993, Heumann
has served the Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of
Education for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services, where she oversees a budget of roughly $7 billion. Ms.
Magazine was certainly correct in identifying her as one of the "women
to watch" for the 1980s.
ED ROBERTS
Ed
Roberts has come to symbolize the Independent Living movement and its
impact on American society. Roberts was behind the opening of the
Center for Independent Living in Berkeley in 1972, for which he was
Executive Director until late 1975. CIL, in turn, became a model
program for fledgling centers around the country and profoundly shaped
the development of independent living.
The
beginnings of Roberts's career in disability advocacy may be traced to
his entrance into the University of California at Berkeley in 1962, at
the age of 25. Roberts was paralyzed from the neck down because of
polio, which also required resting in an "iron lung" for many hours
each day. Although many people with extensive mobility restrictions now
attend colleges, it was a revolutionary concept in the early 1960s.
Unaccustomed to accommodating students like Roberts, the university
housed him in the third floor of Cowell Hospital, where he was aided by
friends and attendants with eating and dressing. Despite being
segregated from the rest of students, Roberts excelled in his studies,
and obtained a master's degree in political science.
Roberts's
success opened the doors for other people with similar impairments. By
1967, 12 students who called themselves the "Rolling Quads" had joined
Roberts. One outcome of their brainstorming sessions about how to
improve their self-sufficiency was the creation of the federally-funded
Physically Disabled Students' Program, a program to enable disabled
students to maximize their independence through counseling, personal
attendant referrals, and wheelchair repair. CIL emerged from Physically
Disabled Students' Program as an attempt to carry the university
program's mission into the community.
After
leading CIL from 1972 to 1975, Roberts became the Commissioner of
California's Department of Rehabilitation, appointed by Governor Jerry
Brown. Roberts was now the chief of an agency which many years before
had denied him rehabilitation services, because they considered him
"unemployable." He used the authority of his position to advocate
independent living throughout the state of California. This in turn
attracted the attention of Congress, which held hearings about
independent living in Berkeley and then passed legislation in 1978 to
develop independent living centers around the country.
After
Brown left office, Roberts joined Judy Heumann and Joan Leon to found
the World Institute on Disability in 1983. A year later he received a
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur ("Genius") Fellowship in recognition
of his human rights work. Later in the 1980s Roberts helped found
Disabled Peoples' International, an organization dedicated to uniting
disability organizations from around the world. He traveled extensively
throughout Europe and Asia to promote international disability
awareness. Roberts died in 1995.
EVAN KEMP
Evan
Kemp was a key link for the disability community to George Bush and his
administration during the 1980s and the ADA deliberations. During the
1970s, as a Washington attorney, Kemp struck a close friendship with
(and found a long-time bridge partner in) C. Boyden Gray, Bush's Chief
Counsel. Kemp's friendship was indispensable to Gray for understanding
disability when the Reagan administration considered weakening
disability-related regulations in the early 1980s. Through this process
Kemp also developed a friendship with Bush, who began asking Kemp to
write his speeches for disability-related events. Bush secured Kemp an
appointment as a commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission during the Reagan administration. In 1990, Bush named him
Chairman of the EEOC. President Bush's impassioned support of the ADA
was crucial for the ADA's eventual success. Kemp was on the podium for
the signing of the ADA in 1990.
Evan
Kemp was born in New York City in 1937. At the age of 12 he began
having symptoms of muscle weakness, and eventually learned that he had
Kugelberg Weylander Syndrome, a rare form of muscular dystrophy. After
graduating from University of Virginia Law School with honors, Kemp
received rejections from 39 different law firms. He finally obtained a
job with the Internal Revenue Service, and subsequently the Securities
Exchange Commission. Discrimination persisted. After being denied
promotion to a supervisory position because he used a wheelchair, Kemp
successfully sued the SEC.
Kemp
left the government in 1980 to lead the Ralph Nader-sponsored
Disability Rights Center. In addition to battling the Reagan
administration's deregulatory efforts, Kemp wrote a series of articles
and appeared on television and radio to protest the Jerry Lewis
Telethons, which maintained debilitating stereotypes of people with
disabilities as child-like, pitiable, unemployable, creatures. He also
developed close ties to grassroots disability organizations such as
ADAPT and joined a variety of disability rights campaigns.
After
leaving EEOC in 1993, Kemp founded Evan Kemp and Associates, a business
dedicated to providing products and services that enhanced the lives of
people with disabilities. Kemp died in 1997 of conditions unrelated to
his disability. He is honored, among other ways, through an annual
presentation of the Evan Kemp Entrepeneurship Award by the President's
Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.
PAT WRIGHT
Pat
Wright's leadership during the ADA's passage eventually earned her the
nickname "The General." She was one of a handful of leading
strategizers based in Washington, DC, and worked especially closely
with Ralph Neas, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on
Civil Rights. Wright and Neas collaborated with a number of other
leaders who focused on different objectives for passing the Americans
with Disabilities Act: Washington lobbyists Liz Savage and Paul
Marchand; Grassroots organizers Justin Dart and Marilyn Golden; and
attorneys Arlene Mayerson, Chai Feldblum, and Robert Burgdorf.
Wright
originally planned to be a medical doctor. During medical school in the
1960s, however, she developed a progressive eye disease that eventually
left her legally blind. Being prevented from realizing her aspirations
was devastating, and Wright was temporary aimless. But she found a new
interest in assisting persons with disabilities move from institutions
to community-based living. This also gave her an intimate knowledge of
how legal technicalities affected the lives of persons with
disabilities. Wright made her first major inroads to the disability
rights movement at the Section 504 sit-in in San Francisco in April,
1977. Although she was there largely to serve as a personal assistant
to Judy Heumann, Wright began to reveal and develop her negotiation
skills in dealing with authorities. This experience led her to become
more involved with advocacy. In the late 1970s she joined DREDF, the
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, where she worked with
Robert Funk, Mary Lou Breslin, and Arlene Mayerson to advocate for
disability rights on a national level.
In
addition to sponsoring training sessions in disability rights, Wright
and DREDF formed a crucial working relationship with Ralph Neas and the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights by collaborating on such
legislative initiatives as the Civil Rights Restoration Act. Such
efforts earned Wright a place on LCCR's Executive Council. Wright was
so widely respected in Congress and the White House that her highly
individual apparel and colorful vocabulary were safe from reproach. The
ADA's success was due in no small part to Wright's strategic leadership.
PAUL LONGMORE
Paul
Longmore is one of the leading scholars of disability studies and one
of only a small but growing cadre of historians studying disability. He
is currently Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State
University, where he also serves as Director of the newly-established
Institute on Disability. Although Dr. Longmore is widely known in the
disability community for his extensive publication and speaking on
disability, his original specialty is in early American history. His
book, The Invention of George Washington (University of California
Press, 1988) studies Washington as a political actor and the conscious
way in which he shaped his public image. In addition to early American
history and disability history, Dr. Longmore has taught courses in U.S.
intellectual and cultural history and political theory.
San
Francisco State University's Institute on Disability is funded by the
U.S. Department of Education. It has a multi-disciplinary objective. It
aims to develop a more comprehensive disability studies curriculum,
launch community service projects, and support disability-related
research projects, including assistive technology, that will have
local, national, and international impact. Dr. Longmore brings
considerable experience to his role as Director. From 1983 to 1986, he
served as the administrator of the Program in Disability and Society at
the University of Southern California, a pioneering disability-studies
project.
Like many people with
disabilities, Longmore originally distanced himself from issues of
disability and disabled individuals. His interest in disability as an
academic subject did not come until he neared completion of his Ph.D.
in history from the Claremont Graduate School in 1984. Since then,
however, Dr. Longmore has published widely on the history of the
disability rights movement and the representation of people with
disabilities in the media. He is also a leading voice in advocating an
academically-respected field of disability studies. Dr. Longmore's
expertise has been called upon by ABC's Nightline, ABC's World News
Tonight, NBC's Today Show, and National Public Radio's Weekend Edition,
as well as in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington
Post, McCall's, and TV Guide. He is the recipient of numerous awards,
including an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the
Humanities, an H.B. Earhart Foundation Research Fellowship, and the
Claremont Graduate School Alumni Award.
FRANK BOWE
Dr.
Frank Bowe has led a diverse career as disability activist and leader,
government administrator, businessman, and scholar. He is currently
Professor in the Counseling, Research, Special Education and
Rehabilitation Department at Hofstra University. Since 1995 he has also
been the Special Education Coordinator at Hofstra. Before joining the
faculty at Hofstra in 1989, Dr. Bowe served as a Regional Commissioner
of the U.S. Department of Education's Rehabilitation Services
Administration, a position to which he was appointed by Justin Dart.
From 1984 to 1986 he was the Chairman of the U.S. Congress Commission
on Education of the Deaf.
In
the disability community, Dr. Bowe is perhaps best known for his
leadership as Executive Director of the American Coalition of Citizens
with Disabilities from 1976 to 1981. He was the organization's first
executive officer (Eunice Fiorito was the first President), and
provided crucial direction during the nation-wide sit-ins regarding
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1977. Subsequently, Dr. Bowe
helped ACCD achieve gains in housing, transportation, and special
education.
An expert grant
writer, Bowe's writing has also fostered the growth of the disability
rights movement, including : Coalition Building: A Report on a
Feasibility Study to Develop a National Model for Cross-Disability
Communication and Cooperation (1978) and Planning Effective Advocacy
Programs (1979). Rehabilitating America: Toward Independence for
Disabled and Elderly People (1980) was a pioneering analysis of
disability in America. All told, Dr. Bowe has written 30 books,
including studies of personal computer design, social policy on age and
disability, demographics, and public interest advocacy.
For
over two decades Bowe has been a consultant to the U.S. Congress on a
variety of issues. In 1992, he received the Distinguished Service Award
from the President for his lifetime achievement. In 1994, he was
inducted into the National Hall of Fame for People with Disabilities.
Hofstra University presented him with the Distinguished Teaching Award
in 1996. Dr. Bowe is named in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in
America, Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in Computing, and
Who's Who in Public Relations.
# # #
Alliance of Disability Advocates
Center for Independent Living
promotes the advancement of
“People First Language.”
Alliance of Disability Advocates
Center for Independent Living
PO Box 12988
Raleigh, NC 27605-2988
919.833.1117 V/TTY
919.833.1171 FAX
"Before commitment is vision.”
-- Unknown
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