From good will to civil rights: transforming federal disability policy

Health, Society, and Policy

by Richard K. Scotch

Now that curb cuts, braille elevator buttons, and closed caption television are commonplace, many people assume that disabled people are now full participants in American society. This book tells a rather different story. It tells how America's disabled mobilized to effect sweeping changes in public policy, not once but twice, and it suggests that the struggle is not yet over.

The first edition of From Good Will to Civil Rights traced the changes in federal disability policy, focusing on the development and implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Richard K. Scotch's extensive interviews with policymakers, leaders of the disability rights movement, and other advocates, supplemented the sketchy official history of the legislation with the detailed, behind-the-scenes story, illuminating the role of the disability rights movement in shaping Section 504. Charting the shifts in policy and activist agendas through the 1990s, this new edition surveys the effects and disappointments associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, in the context of the continuing movement to secure full civil rights for disabled people.

Genres: Disability

205 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1984

Reviews

[Torie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for research. Incredibly helpful and important history of the passage of Section 504.

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful history of Section 504, but I would have appreciated a more explanatory methods section in the appendices, especially with how interview and archival data were compared and prioritized.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a detailed legislative history surrounding the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabiliation Act of 1973, and its implementing regulations. Scotch raises an interesting point that Section 504, which mandated an end to discrimination on the basis of disabilities, was passed without comment, by outsiders largely unfamiliar with the main disability/rehabilitation discourse. Because implementation was given to civil rights lawyers rather than rehabilitation social workers, the law became an instrument for creating social wide change, abet on a more symbolic than pragmatic level.

As a guide to current affairs, this book is somewhat outdated, given the passage of the ADA in 1990. But it still a fascinating look at a very important symbolic law.