Judith Heumann

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Judith E. Heumann (Judy Heumann), (born 1947), is an American disability rights activist. Heumann's commitment to disability rights stems from her personal experiences, she had polio at the age of 18 months, and has spent most of her life in a wheelchair.^[1] She co-founded Disabled in Action in 1970. She co-founded the World Institute on Disability in 1983 with Ed Roberts and Joan Leon in 1983, serving as co-director until 1993. She served in the Clinton Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services at the US Department of Education from 1993 to 2001. She also served as the World Bank Group's Advisor on Disability and Development, leading the World Bank's work on disability and its integration into their programmes and projects. She currently is the Director of the Department of Disability Services in Washington, DC.

Heumann graduated from Long Island University in 1969 and gained a Master of Science degree in public health at the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by Long Island University in Brooklyn, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was the first recipient of the Henry B. Betts Award from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (later awarded jointly by the American Association of People with Disabilities).

[edit] References

^ Independent Living USA: biography

[edit] Further reading

Judith E. Heumann, Including the Voices of Disabled People in the International Development Agenda, Thornburgh Family Lecture Series, University of Pittsburgh School of Law accessed at [1] July 24, 2006
Judith E. Heumann, Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement: Pioneering Disability Rights Advocate and Leader, 1960s-2000, oral history, Online Archive of California, 2004, retrieved from [2] July 24, 2006