Disability History Museum

Description:

The Disability History Museum hosts a Library of virtual artifacts, Education curricula, and Museum exhibits. These programs are designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities.

The Disability History Museum is a virtual project, it has no bricks or mortar. It aims to provide all site visitors, people with and without disabilities, researchers, teachers and students, with a wide array of tools to help deepen their understanding of human variation and difference, and to expand appreciation of how vital to our common life the experiences of people with disabilities have always been.

Social struggles of many kinds—civil rights, labor issues, suffrage, immigration and assimilation, the provision of health care for all—make it clear that history is useful for understanding the experiences and problems we encounter in the present. According to the US Census of 2000, there are 54 million Americans living with disabilities. UN figures put the number of people living with disabilities around the globe at 650 million, or, taking families into account, they report two billion people are affected by the experience of disability.

Young people growing up in the United States today have never lived in a built environment that was not notably accessible, where a public education was not provided to a person with a disability. The access and the education may not be perfect, but both are established as important community responsibilities. Yet, legislative change alone doesn't change attitudes, and awareness must be raised and assumptions challenged.