BARRIERS TO INDEPENDENT LIVING
In 1970, the Rolling Quads created the Physically Disabled Students Program (PDSP) to provide services such as wheelchair maintenance, counseling, and attendant care to students with disabilities at UC Berkeley. As more and more students began reaching out to the PDSP for assistance, the Rolling Quads created the Center for Independent Living, which offered the same services to an even wider audience: disabled individuals throughout the city of Berkeley.
"
They make revolutions in Berkeley...[S]omething new and positive has been happening here. The handicapped are clanking into town and living independent lives. The reason for all the action...was the Center for Independent Living."
-Sonny Kleinfield, reporter for the New York Times
[Debbie Kaplan, a civil rights lawyer, on the importance of the Center for Independent Living. We Won't Go Away (dir. Patricia Ingram, 1981)].
[Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Ed with the CIL team at the Telegraph Avenue office.]
This established the standard for independent living centers nationwide, liberating millions of Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) from the dehumanizing confines of nursing homes and institutions.
[Raymond Lifchez. A student playing Frisbee on Berkeley's green. 1979.]
[Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities, University of Colorado.]