Smithsonian Exhibit on the Disability Rights Movement

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History has recently added an online exhibit The Disability Rights Movement. It's a short and shallow (but relatively broad) look at the recent history of the disability rights movement in the U.S. From the exhibit description:

The ongoing struggle by people with disabilities to gain full citizenship is an important part of our American heritage. The disability rights movement shares many similarities with other 20th-century civil rights struggles by those who have been denied equality, independence, autonomy, and full access to society.

This exhibition looks at the efforts - far from over - of people with disabilities, and their families and friends, to secure the civil rights guaranteed to all Americans.

Autism is not referenced specifically (intellectual disability is), but many of the themes in exhibit are shared by the autistic rights movement. Issues of identity, of human rights, of civil disobedience, of institutionalization, of eugenics, of right to access and the role of assistive technology, and yes even the work done by parents to demand an education for their children.

I doubt this exhibit will be very enlightening to those of us who are currently living the work "exhibited" (yes indeed, those efforts are "far from over") but it is, I feel, a good sign that the exhibit is there at all.

The web pages are pretty accessible with clear descriptions of images and audio playback on many of the pages, but I felt the user interface was rather confusing. I recommend just using the "next" buttons to navigate through the whole exhibit if you find the rest of the user interface clunky.

photo from the National Museum of American History exhibit