Or: Why This Was Never Just About the Web
On March 12th, 1990, dozens of disabled activists gathered outside the U.S. Capitol.
Some of them got out of their wheelchairs.
Some of them crawled.
One by one, they pulled themselves up the steps – because the building that housed the laws of the land had no ramp.
Image credit: Tom Olin Collection, University of Toledo Libraries.
No one watching that day could pretend they didn’t see the problem.
It wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t a policy debate.
It was a human being, dragging themselves up the marble, just to ask for the right to exist in public.
The Capitol Crawl, as it became known, was one of the final sparks that pushed the Americans with Disabilities Act into being.
It was brave. It was strategic.
And it was deeply exhausting – because people with disabilities shouldn’t have to crawl to be heard.
And yet, we still do.
The web was just beginning when that protest happened.
And like everything else, digital spaces inherited the same barriers.
New formats. Same exclusion.
But also?
The same fire.
People with disabilities were there at the beginning.
Shaping the standards. Inventing the tools.
Using screen readers before most people had even used a mouse.
This book is about digital accessibility. But that story didn’t start online.
It started on sidewalks. In classrooms. At the bottom of a staircase someone forgot to make accessible.
And it’s still unfolding today.
So before we talk about guidelines, before we get to checklists and color contrast and why your buttons need a focus state –
Let’s start by remembering what this is actually about:
Access isn’t an enhancement.
It’s the foundation.
And it was won – step by step.