Celebrating Disability Pride Month
The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections.
Disability Pride Month History
July is Disability Pride Month! Disability Pride Month celebrates disabled people and challenges stereotypes about disabilities. It also educates the public about issues that the disabled community faces every day. Disability Pride Month celebrations began in Boston in 1990 with the first Disability Pride Day. This celebration coincided with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) being signed into law on July 26, 1990. In 2015, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared July Disability Pride Month in NYC. This declaration coincided with the ADA’s 25th anniversary. Disability pride parades have taken place in cities across the U.S. since 1990, but Disability Pride Month has not yet been declared nationally. To celebrate Disability Pride Month, Special Collections is highlighting the Texas Disability History Collection.
About the Texas Disability History Collection
The Texas Disability History Collection emphasizes the pioneering role played by a racially and ethnically diverse group of Texan disability rights activists, many of whom attended or have worked at UT Arlington. These individuals fought for equal access to education, work, union membership, public transit, and sports. This larger collection is compiled from several different collections held by UTA Libraries.
This collection grew out of a collaboration between UTA Libraries, the UTA Department of History, and the Disability Studies Minor program. The project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
The mission of this project is to showcase Texas’s central role in the disability rights movement, especially as it relates to access to higher education and adapted sports (competitive or recreational sports for disabled people that often run parallel to typical sport activities). This collection aims to reveal the impact of disability rights on people’s lives.
Searching the Texas Disability History Collection website
There are several ways to search the collection’s website. You can search by keyword or browse by topic, format, collection, people, or place.
You can browse the website by the following topics:
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Government, Policy, and Law
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Institutions, Organizations, and Corporations
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Mass Media, Culture, and the Arts
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Physical Environment
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Science, Health, and Technology
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Social Movements and Advocacy
Within each topic you can narrow your search by format, collection, people, and place.
Screen shot of the Texas Disability History Collection website with the search filters circled in red.
Similarly, if you choose to search by format, collection, people, or place rather than topic you can then narrow your search further.
This digital collection consists of photographs, documents, videos, and oral histories related to Texas disability history. The collection is continually growing with both physical and digital items. In addition to the addition of new items, UTA Special Collections hopes to begin archiving websites related to Texas disability history.
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