Because
of the disability rights movement, people with disabilities today
have more civil rights, more self-determination, and more participation
in society than at any time in history. All Americans owe a huge
debt of gratitude to the hundreds of known and unknown people who
have worked—and
are working—to advance disability rights.
True/False Quiz
Here’s
a true/false quiz about some of these influential people. Are you
up-to-date on disability history? See how you do. Answers follow:
1.Ed Roberts, of Berkeley California, was one of the founders of the
Independent Living Movement.
2.Helen Keller accomplished many things in her life because people
felt sorry for her.
3.Phillipe Pinel took charge of a French insane asylum in 1793 and
immediately locked everybody in chains.
4.The first president of People First, in 1973, was Valerie Schaaf.
5.Chester Finn is the current president of SABE.
6.Justin Dart worked for over 10 years to write and pass the ADA,
but it never was signed into law.
7.Dorothea Dix visited jails in New England in the mid 1800s, where
she found that people with disabilities were well-treated.
8.Nancy Ward was a disability rights activist in ancient Greece.
9.President Franklin Roosevelt had a disability, but hid it from the
American public.
10.Jesus, in the first century, was one of the first people to say
that disability is NOT caused by sin.
11.Sandra Jensen was the first person with Down syndrome to receive
a heart/lung transplant, but she had to fight for her right to get
it.
12.Judy
Heumann was the actress who played Dorothy in the movie “The
Wizard of Oz.”
13.In 1848, Samuel Gridley Howe opened the first residential school
for children with disabilities in America.
14.Clifford Beers, the first American self-advocate, had his own TV
show in the year 1771, shortly before the American revolution.
Answers
1.True.
2.False. She made her accomplishments on her own and was accepted
in society as an equal, not as merely an inspirational, high achieving,
disabled person.
3.False. He immediately unlocked the shackles and set the inmates
free.
4.True.
5.True.
6.False. George H. Bush (the first President Bush) signed it in 1990.
7.False. They were receiving horrible treatment and abuse.
8.False. She is from the U.S.
9.True.
10.True.
11.True.
12.False. She was a disability rights advocate and one of the founders
of the Independent Living Movement.
13.True.
14.False. Beers was committed to an asylum in 1900. After getting
out, he and several others formed an organization to expose and end
abuse in institutions.
