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life | ed roberts
TEXT BY JOSH A. HALSTEAD
Ed Roberts (1939–1995) politicized the social paradigm of disability in the US. Roberts contracted polio at an early age and used an iron lung to support breathing. In 1962, he was denied admission to UC Berkeley because dorm rooms were not designed to accommodate his iron lung. After a good fight, Roberts and his family and friends found a space on campus, and he went on to complete his undergraduate and graduate studies in political science.
During his transition from undergradu- ate to graduate degree programs, he also transitioned from a manual wheelchair to an electrically powered one. He soon found that curbs, which then had no ramped cut- aways, or “curb cuts,” prevented him from getting around campus independently. He often had to find alternate routes, some- thing not required when he used a manual chair with an attendant.
So Roberts and a group of disabled classmates—the Rolling Quads, as they cavalierly named themselves—lobbied the City of Berkeley to install curb cuts across town. The City agreed and gradu- ally started installing curb cuts in choice locations. From 1972 to 1976, Berkeley’s
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 disabled population spiked from about 400 to 5,000. Why? Berkeley was the most accessible place in the US—with respect to infrastructure but also with respect to culture. Disabled people fostered a place where disability was a political identity worth celebrating.
In the 1960s, Berkeley and the Bay
Area were hotbeds of Civil Rights activ- ism. Roberts and his friends demanded rights for disabled people. Their first big action launched on April 5, 1977, when a cross-disability coalition occupied ten federal offices across the US to demand that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act be signed without being watered down. Stated with full force, the act made it illegal for any entity receiving public financial assistance to discriminate based on disability. They won. The Rehab Act was signed, paving the way for other rights- based legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990/2008. These chang- es too required protest. Elevators, ramps, and closed captions are enjoyed by society because disability communities demand change over and over and over again.
I had to struggle so hard to do what I wanted to do that
I just thought, Why don’t we struggle together? Many of us have made individual changes in our lives that have ended up affecting thousands, even millions, of people.
   ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER TOBIAS























































































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