In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the first Social Security Act into law, making it a federal mandate to provide financial assistance to underserved individuals, with a specific section stipulating aid for people who are blind. Prior to the Social Security Act, it was left to state and local organizations to provide assistance to blind people. This legislation was an attempt to address the poverty faced disproportionately by the blind community, without taking into account that poverty and the risk of poverty experienced by blind people resulted from societal beliefs that blind people are more difficult to educate and thus harder to employ. 

Social Security Act, Title X

While Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case that ruled segregation illegal on a federal level and is most often connected to the fight for Black civil rights, the ruling also pertained to students with disabilities. The Brown ruling, which pointed out that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” would lay the groundwork for later legislation requiring disabled students to be incorporated into public school classrooms.    

American Constitution Society on Brown v. Board of Education

The last piece of legislation signed into law by President John F. Kennedy was the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA), which had three main objectives: 1) Determining the causes of mental illness and finding treatments for them; 2) Research and training of skilled personnel; and 3) Strengthening and improvement of programs and facilities for treating the “mentally afflicted.” This legislation was part of broader efforts in the 1960s to deinstitutionalize people with mental illnesses and other disabled people who often got lumped into that category. 

Rhode Island Medical Journal on the Community Mental Health Act  Archival recording of JFK’s remarks upon signing the bill

More than twenty years before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, the Architectural Barriers Act was enacted to ensure that buildings financed with federal funds, intended for use by the public or “which may result in employment or residence therein of physically handicapped persons,” are fully accessible to and usable by handicapped individuals. Given the limits of the legislation, it would be several more decades before Congress wrote a more comprehensive bill for accessibility. 

Department of Labor on ABA

Despite Brown v. Board of Education ruling that segregated education is unequal in 1954, it was still common to deny disabled students free, publicly funded education. Pennsylvania state law allowed public schools to deny services to children “who have not attained a mental age of five years” by the start of first grade. This class-action lawsuit was the first right-to-education lawsuit in the country and overturned the Pennsylvania law, stipulating that not only did education have to be provided in a public school along with non-disabled students, but that transportation also had to be provided for disabled students. 

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse on PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 

Public Interest Law Center on PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

It was not until 1978 that an advisory council was specifically formed for federal oversight on matters related to disability policies, programs, procedures, and practices to enhance equal opportunity. The council is composed of nine members: four appointed by leadership in Congress, and five appointed by the President, making their work subject to the whims of any given administration. 

National Council on Disability, “About Us”

Aiming to be a more broadly applicable civil rights law, the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities, including employment, state and local government services, public transit, businesses open to the public, and telecommunications. Though many schools, businesses, and locations are not ADA compliant, this law allows for legal recourse for disabled people who are still facing discrimination. 

Read the ADA in Full

The latest in a series of legislation aimed at making free public education accessible, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act makes education and related services available for students with disabilities. IDEA does not just cover what happens in the classroom—it also has provisions for providing intervention services for infants and toddlers from birth through age two and their families, as well as supporting state personnel development, technology, and parent-training and information centers.  

Department of Education’s page about IDEA