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Introduction

Many stories and events related to people with disabilities never make it into the history books or shared public memories. Familiar concepts and events such as citizenship, work, and wars become more complicated, challenge our assumptions about what counts as history, and transform our connection with each other when viewed from the historical perspective of people with disabilities, America’s largest minority.

Disability and History

This section is a general introduction to the subject and includes discussion of concepts and various ways to understand disability in history.

People

This section presents historical issues related to how people lived their daily lives.

Place

This section examines the importance of where people lived, including the need for a sense of community, the struggle for identity and autonomy, and what happened in institutions.

Technology

This section discusses the unique relationship of technology to disability with examples from communication, transportation, medicine, and war.

Citizens

This section covers the history of activism around disability rights.

En Español

Muchas historias y eventos vinculados a las personas con discapacidades nunca llegan a formar parte de los libros de historia o de la memoria colectiva. Conceptos y eventos que nos resultan familiares, como ciudadanía, trabajo y guerras, cuando son vistos desde la perspectiva de las personas con discapacidades –la minoría más importante de Estados Unidos– se complican, cuestionan nuestros supuestos sobre lo que entendemos por historia y transforman nuestro modo de relacionarnos.

About the Exhibition

The traditional way to present history is through languagenumerous books, movies, scholarly articles, and journals explore the history of people with disabilities in that way. Artifacts and exhibitions express information in a different way. A web exhibition is markedly different from an exhibition in a gallery as well. The material and sensory aspects of a museum visit are significant in the learning styles of many people.

Resources

Additional resources to further explore the history of disability in America