The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), founded in 1979, is a leading national civil rights law and policy center directed by individuals with disabilities and parents who have children with disabilities.
Americans with disabilities make up one of the United States’ largest minorities. More than 25% live in poverty and only about 20% have gone to college. Seventy–five percent are unemployed. Such economic and social disenfranchisement is not an inevitable consequence of the physical and mental limitations imposed by disability; it is the result of society’s historic response to those limitations: lack of accessibility in the built environment and policies that encourage or even require exclusion, segregation, and institutionalization. The result is a legacy of prejudice and paternalism that is deeply embedded in the social consciousness.