The ADA, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation enacted in 1990, sent businesses, schools, and other public entities scrambling to figure out what had to be done to existing and new environments. There were many discussions—and lawsuits—around ramps, accessible door handles, the way job descriptions were written, Braille signage, captioning on TV, and making elevators talk. Working out the meaning of "reasonable accommodation" reshaped urban landscapes and relationships among people.

While signing the ADA, President George H. W. Bush said he hoped the law would break down "the shameful walls of exclusion" people with disabilities encountered throughout their lives. The ADA sought to make discrimination illegal by prohibiting employers from disqualifying people with disabilities from jobs and requiring reasonable accommodation. In the first year, 12,000 individuals used the law to file discrimination complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

After contracting polio as a teen, Justin Dart used a wheelchair for mobility. Seen here with his wife Yoshiko, Dart was a tireless advocate for disability rights. He had Texas swagger and was a driving force behind passage of the ADA. Head of the Rehabilitation Services Administration and then the President’s Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities, he was on the platform at the law’s signing. He later co-founded the American Association of People with Disabilities.

Lois Curtis was one of two litigants in the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision. She voluntarily entered a state facility for treatment of mental illness and developmental disability. Although she completed treatment and was cleared for release into a community-based program, she remained confined for several years and finally sued under the ADA and won release. Olmstead was the Brown v. Board of Education of disability rights—allowing people to live in the community rather than institutions.

Cyndi Jones contracted polio as a toddler in the ‘50s; when the understanding of disability was much different. The terms “handicapped” and “cripple” were common and disability was portrayed as a tragedy or something to hide. Seeing her own image stamped “NOT THIS” sparked the activism that later led Jones to publish Mainstream Magazine and become a Pastor of Disability. Today disability activists put their energy into turning shame, stigma, and exclusion into pride, acceptance, and equality.

Junius Wilson, b. 1908, lived most of his life before passage of the ADA. As a poor and deaf teen he was wrongfully accused of a crime and confined to a psychiatric hospital. He spent the next 67 years institutionalized. In 1927 the state castrated Wilson and others deemed “defectives.” Wilson's story is a troubling chapter of American ableism (the belief that people with disabilities are inferior to the able-bodied) and racism. He earned money for his cherished bicycles selling fishing worms.