The disability rights movement began in the 1960s and drew on other rights movements, including the civil rights movement, women’s movement, and gay rights movement. People with disabilities in the US were not protected under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and faced problems with accessible transportation, housing, buildings, telecommunications, and other areas of life—excluding them from having the same experiences as people without disabilities. A specialist in disability studies, Lennard Davis describes how his parents, who were deaf, could not talk on the phone, request sign language interpreters during appointments, drive, or go to church or the movies because of a lack of closed captioning and sign language interpretation:

Disabled people were treated like children—dependent, helpless, and unlike children, pitiable. Most disabled people were not allowed the dignities of work, a love life, friends, children, advanced education, and a profession. And worse than all of this, being a person with a disability was tantamount to being an invisible person. No one cared about your plight; society ignored you. You essentially did not exist (Davis, Lennard. Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans the Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights. Beacon Press, 2015).

Disability rights began with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, when World War II veterans with disabilities demanded rehabilitation services and vocational training from the government.