Disability rights activist Judy Heumann passed away at the age of 75.
Heumann, who became a quadriplegic after contracting polio as a child, played a major role in the passage of what is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975.
- In 1970, Heumann co-founded Disabled in Action, an advocacy group that fights for the rights of disabled Americans.
- In 1977, she joined a sit-in protest at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health to demand the adoption of disability rights legislation.
- She would go on to work on disability rights and special education issues in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and served as the World Bank's first Advisor on Disability and Development in the early 2000s.
- More recently, she authored her 2020 memoir "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" and hosted "The Heuman Perspective" podcast starting in 2021.
- "Disability only becomes a tragedy for me when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives––job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example. It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair," she once said.
