The year 1990 saw the culmination of a fifty-year battle for equal access to government and private institutions with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Preceding the act’s passage were a series of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., where this photograph was taken. The most famous section of the demonstrations was the “Capitol Crawl,” when physically disabled participants pulled themselves bodily up the Capitol steps to show the world the barriers to their access to government institutions and their determination to gain access anyway. Three months after the demonstration, on July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. The law prohibited employment discrimination against the disabled and demanded their physical and institutional accommodation in both public and private institutions. The ADA changed the United States dramatically, making disability accommodation an accepted aspect of public and private life and beginning a still-unfinished road to equality for all citizens of the United States.