First, I’ve got to insert a bit of patriotism here. For all the battles my family has endured in securing a free, appropriate public education for LuLu (which we have or have not succeeded at yet, depending on how you look at it), I can think of no other place on this earth where we would be afforded as many rights for her as we are in the United States. I shutter to think about where my Chinese daughter with so many disabilities would be at this moment if she were still in China.

And, no matter what negative things you think about Richard Nixon, he was the one who signed this bill into law 35 years ago. This was the first major piece of legislation that provided rights for people with disabilities Centered around vocational rehabilitation, the act was created because traditional voc rehab services were not meeting the needs of those with disabilities. Many of the service provider agencies refused to work with people with severe disabilities. This act broadened the definition of rehabilitation and addressed federal government discrimination of people with disabilities.

The Act has five titles, of which Title V is the most famous, because it created a “Bill of Rights” for Americans with disabilities. The sections within this Title V are well-known.

1. Section 501 committed the federal government to providing equal opportunity at all agencies and departments of the government to workers with disabilities and established plans to increase the number of federal employees with disabilities.

2. Section 502 established the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board to enforce the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968.

3. Section 503 required federal contractors to have Affirmative Action hiring plans that didn’t discriminate against people with disabilities.

4. Section 504 is the most significant part of the whole Act because of its language focusing on non-discrimination. The language broadly prohibits the denial of public education participation or the benefits offered by public school programs because of a child’s disability. This paved the way for a federal education act to follow only a couple years later.

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