Judith Heumann

Heumann sued New York's education board in 1970 when it refused her a teaching licence because she used a wheelchair, and won. She founded Disabled in Action, then helped lead the 1977 occupation of the federal building in San Francisco, which lasted nearly four weeks, to force the government to sign regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the first civil rights protection for disabled Americans. She later served in the Clinton and Obama administrations and at the World Bank.