These are the most impactful pioneers ensuring and expanding the civil rights of people with disabilities all across the globe.

L aws and guidelines regarding disability serve many purposes. They guarantee access to voting booths and restaurants. They require minimum standards for education and employment accommodations. Less visibly, they also help standardize consistency and interoperability across borders, so that the closed captioning on a program that’s made in Hollywood will work on a cable box built in Japan and then watched in France.

The people and companies below are translating jargonistic laws into plain English, working with insurance companies to decrease user costs, and advocating for minimum-wage fairness. They exist to protect civil rights, standardize policy across continents, and lobby against systems that discourage disabled people from returning to work or even getting married.

^{European Commission}

Inmaculada Placencia Porrero

The long-awaited European Accessibility Act, which takes effect June 28, could ultimately have the same worldwide impact on people with disabilities as European regulations have had on data protection. The EAA requires major accessibility functions in just about everything: computers, smartphones, tablets, ATMs, ereaders, ebooks, ticketing machines, online services, public transport, and so on. The single person most responsible will be Inmaculada Placencia Porrero, the European Commission’s Senior Expert on Disability and Inclusion, who started working on the underlying tenets of the Act back in 1991 before graphical interfaces even existed. The more she and her team worked with access to computers and electronics over the years, the more they discovered that every company and country had to work together to guarantee accessibility for all, she says. Closed-caption descriptions might not be displayed by all television models, for example—or might be lost as shows moved from one country to another. The EAA addresses that at the European Union level. "The European standard is now being used in Canada, is being used in Australia, Africa is looking into it," Porrero says. "It's like a dream."

^{International Foundation For Electoral Systems}

Virginia Atkinson

When Virginia Atkinson joined the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, which protects voting rights and fair elections around the world, no organization existed to help municipalities open elections to those with disabilities. With IFES' support, she created a group to do just that. IFES partners with governments, election commissions and human rights commissions to make polling places physically accessible (the majority in the United States were not, a 2017 GAO report found) and election materials understandable for those with hearing or vision loss, then protect that access with local laws. Their approach focuses on low-cost, innovative solutions: In the Philippines, they helped move elections to the country's popular shopping malls. "One election official told me, 'I've never seen anyone with a disability in the streets, so I don't think we have that problem here,' " says Atkinson, now IFES’ Senior Global Advisor for Inclusion. "It's because you have such an inaccessible political process that they can't or don't feel welcome participating."

^{Law Office Of Lainey Feingold}

Lainey Feingold

A group of blind clients went to Lainey Feingold in 1995 to say that there wasn't a single ATM in the U.S. they could use independently. She could have threatened to sue. Instead, "we decided to write letters to three banks—Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank—and say, 'Would you sit down and talk to us?' " she says. The companies agreed, so bankers and ATM developers gathered with people from the blind and low-vision community to hash out "talking ATMs" that would soon become ubiquitous (and have since gone global). "Watching your blind client jumping up and down with joy because she could get $20 of her own money out of the machine has changed the way I think about banking forever," Feingold says. The more inclusive (rather than litigious) strategy was so successful that it swiftly got a name—Structured Negotiation. She even wrote a well-regarded book on the subject.

^{National Down Syndrome Society}

Kayla McKeon

Being the first registered Washington lobbyist with Down Syndrome isn’t why Kayla McKeon is impactful—it’s because she is excellent at the job. The manager of public policy at the National Down Syndrome Society, McKeon has lobbied lawmakers to avoid cuts in Medicaid, to reduce what is often a significant financial disincentive to marry (because of severe limitations to receive Supplemental Security Income), and to ensure that people with disabilities get fair pay. Currently, in order to encourage the hiring of people with disabilities, the Department of Labor allows employers to pay them far below—often half—the minimum wage. "People today are still getting paid cents on the hour for the job they are currently doing; we want to get paid the same amount as everyone else," she says. McKeon has helped Mattel design its new Barbie doll with Down Syndrome, earned an honorary doctorate degree, and won two Special Olympics gold medals. "I'm a relentless advocate,” she says. “I'll keep going and going, and make sure those nays turn into yeas.”

^{New Disabled South}

Dominic Kelly

Untangling the meaning and possible effects of complex government legislation can baffle even the most informed citizen. For those with intellectual or developmental disabilities, it can be almost impossible. New Disabled South, a nonprofit based in Atlanta, has created the “Plain Language Policy Dashboard,” an online resource that translates disability-related legislation in 14 southern states into easy-to-understand bullet-points that re-engage people in the political process. (For example, a convoluted Oklahoma voting bill became, “Disabled voters can choose to send the ballot back online, print and mail it, or give it to someone in person.”) Run by Dominic Kelly, one of three triplets born with cerebral palsy, New Disabled South plans to expand into federal legislation by the end of the year.

^{So Every BODY Can Move}

Nicole Ver Kuilen

People with leg amputations can, in general, get an insurance company to cover a basic prosthesis to walk. But what if they want to run, which requires a separate appendage—a curved, springy “foot” called a blade—designed for impact and propulsion? Not so easy. So Every BODY Can Move writes and pushes legislation to create state insurance laws that require companies to cover prostheses and orthotics designed for specific types of exercise, like swimming, skiing, biking and strength training. “Physical activity is a basic human right,” says Ver Kuilen, whose left leg was amputated when she was 10. “I started to question the whole system and why insurance was allowed to get away with this. I was told it is never going to change.” Yet change it has: nine states have passed laws requiring insurance to pay for exercise-specific prosthetics, while 22 more have legislation under consideration. “Our goal,” Ver Kuilen says, “is to enact legislation in 28 states by the ’28 Paralympics. Then pursue federal reform.”

^Spinalpedia

Josh Basile

People with disabilities who cannot work receive benefits from the Social Security Administration and their state Medicaid, but those benefits can disappear if the person begins work, or if their spouse exceeds income and asset limits—known as the “benefits cliff”. “People don’t go back to work because of their fear that they would lose everything,” says Josh Basile, an attorney outside Washington, DC, who, as a quadriplegic power wheelchair user, has fought successfully for reform in several states’ approach to work-incentive benefits for the paralysis community. He founded Spinalpedia, a website that has curated 40,000 videos that break down topics type of task (driving, cooking, and so on) and functionality to make those activities more accessible. Basile also founded AdapTee Golf, a modification of the sport that allows people who can’t physically swing clubs the ability to play actual courses with equipment outfitted with firing mechanisms, slingshots and pendulum putters.

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