Ed Roberts (activist)

Roberts, who used a ventilator after polio, had to fight the University of California, Berkeley, to be admitted in 1962 and lived in the campus hospital wing. With other disabled students, the "Rolling Quads", he organised for kerb cuts and attendant support, and in 1972 they founded the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, run by disabled people for disabled people. The model spread to hundreds of centres, and Roberts went on to run California's vocational rehabilitation department.