Independent Living Movement and Ed Roberts
The Independent Living Movement began when Ed Roberts — a disability rights pioneer with severe post-polio disability who used an iron lung at night — enrolled at UC Berkeley in 1962 and began organising his fellow disabled students. By 1972, Roberts and his colleagues had founded the first Center for Independent Living, establishing a philosophy that disabled people should control their own lives and services.
Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads
Ed Roberts contracted polio at age 14 in 1953, the year before the Salk vaccine became available. The virus left him paralysed from the neck down and dependent on an iron lung for breathing at night. His high school initially refused to grant him a diploma because he had not completed physical education and driver's education. He fought that decision and won — foreshadowing decades of advocacy.
When Roberts applied to UC Berkeley in 1962, a state rehabilitation official reportedly said he was "too disabled to be employable" and tried to block his education funding. UC Berkeley accepted him despite having no accessible housing; he lived in the campus hospital's respiratory unit.
Roberts was not alone for long. He helped recruit other severely disabled students to UC Berkeley, forming a group that called themselves the Rolling Quads — a mix of self-deprecating humor and radical self-assertion. They organised, advocated for accessible housing and transportation, and developed a philosophy that became the foundation of the independent living movement.
The Philosophy of Independent Living
The Independent Living (IL) philosophy challenged the dominant medical model of disability, which framed disabled people as patients to be treated and managed by professionals. The IL philosophy asserted:
- Self-determination — disabled people, not professionals, should control decisions about their own lives
- Consumer control — services should be designed and run by disabled people, not by non-disabled service providers
- Community integration — disabled people belong in the community, not in institutions
- Peer support — the experience of living with a disability is a form of expertise that should be shared among disabled people
These principles were radical in their time — and remain foundational to disability rights today.
The Center for Independent Living
In 1972, Roberts and colleagues founded the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley — the first organisation of its kind. The CIL was run by disabled people, for disabled people. It provided peer counselling, attendant care referrals, wheelchair repair, and advocacy. The model spread rapidly: by the 1980s, hundreds of CILs existed across the US, eventually supported by federal funding under the Rehabilitation Act.
Ed Roberts's Legacy
Ed Roberts later became Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation — a remarkable appointment for a man the state had once tried to block from receiving rehabilitation funding. He co-founded the World Institute on Disability and continued advocating until his death in 1995.
The independent living movement he sparked became the philosophical backbone of the ADA, the CRPD, and disability rights movements worldwide. The principle that disabled people are the experts on their own lives — not charity recipients, not patients — is Ed Roberts's most enduring gift to the movement.