07/26/2026
Judy Heumann was refused a place in public school as a child because, in the words of the school, she was a "fire hazard." She was denied a teacher's license as an adult because officials decided she could not evacuate a classroom in an emergency. She used a wheelchair after surviving polio at eighteen months old, and she spent her life turning that kind of exclusion into a movement -- one whose crowning achievement was the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the world's first comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities.
Signed on July 26, 1990, and celebrated today as National Disability Independence Day, that law exists in large part because of one person: Judy Heumann, the woman often called the "mother of the disability rights movement." As she once observed, “when other people see you as a third-class citizen, the first thing you need is a belief in yourself and the knowledge that you have rights. The next thing you need is a group of friends to fight back with.”
Pictured here as TIME's Women of the Year for 1977, Heumann was at the center of multiple battles for civil rights for people with disabilities, most famously the 504 Sit-In. Organized by Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen, over 150 other activists occupied the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 28 days in 1977 demanding the implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, one of the first federal disability rights laws. The 504 Sit-In remains the longest sit-in ever at a U.S. federal building.
Equally importantly, Heumann helped change the narrative about disability, showing that the true burden of disabilities is how others respond to it: "Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example," she once said. "It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."
The exclusions that shaped her began early. As a child, when Heumann was refused admission to public school as a "fire hazard," she was offered two hours a week of in-home instruction instead. When New York denied her a teacher's license in 1970, on the grounds that she would not be able to evacuate her classroom in an emergency, she took the Department of Education to court -- and won, becoming the first wheelchair user to teach in the city's schools.
After the passage of the ADA in 1990, Heumann served as the U.S. assistant secretary of education, and took her advocacy global, traveling to more than 30 countries as they passed their own disability rights legislation. Until her last days, she kept up her fight for equality, noting how much progress still needs to be made.
"Change never happens at the pace we think it should," she once wrote. "Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip."
Her incredible story is told in a captivating picture book biography "Fighting for YES! The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann" for ages 6 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/fighting-for-yes
Judith Heumann was also the author of a powerful memoir for adult readers, "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" at https://www.amightygirl.com/being-heumann
Her memoir was adapted into a young readers edition, "Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution" for ages 10 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/rolling-warrior
For more books for children and teens starring Mighty Girls with disabilities of all varieties, visit our blog post "Many Ways To Be Mighty: 35 Books Starring Mighty Girls with Disabilities" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12992
