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In most indigenous communities, there was no word or concept for a "disability". "Disability" occurred only when someone had weak community relationships, and it only came if a person was removed from community reciprocity. As long as an individual could maintain relationships that involved emotional or labor reciprocity, then they were not considered to be disabled. If one's mind, body, and spirit were in disharmony, regardless as to whether or not in modern days were considered disabled, they would be considered imbalanced, meaning "disabled". "Acquired handicaps were so common that little attention was paid to them."

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The first Europeans explore North America. In European ports, able-bodiedness depended on whether or not individuals seemed undesirable or unlikely to survive the voyage to the New World. This mindset followed those European explorers.

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Spanish explorers disregarded sign language used by the indigenous peoples as unsophisticated hand signals. The indigenous peoples had developed sign language in order to communicate with the hard of hearing and deaf community, and to break down language barriers between tribes.

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In Europe around the 1600s when people were traveling to North America, the definition of disability was the inability to perform labor. European colonies were less focused on physical disabilities, but paid more attention to cognitive and mental disabilities.

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Epidemics caused by the European travelers decimated indigenous peoples' populations. 90% to 95% of indigenous Algonquian people were killed between 1616 and 1619. From 700,000 indigenous peoples in Florida in 1520, disease brought that number down to only 2,000 survivors by 1700. These epidemics either killed the indigenous peoples, or caused them to have severe disabilities.

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"The racist ideology of slavery held that Africans brought to North America were by definition disabled. Slaveholders and apologists for slavery used Africans' supposed inherent mental and physical inferiority, their supposed abnormal and abhorrent bodies, to legitimize slavery. Slaveholders argued that the bodies and minds of those they enslaved were disabled to such an extent that slavery was a beneficial kindness owed to those in need of care." Since slave traders wanted to make money, they only sought to enslave people with bodies and minds considered fit for work. Although physical differences and history of diseases may have prevented some individuals from being sold into slavery, they were still victims of extreme violence. If people were considered "valueless", they were killed. Disability resulted in a loss of profit to slave traders. If disabled enslaved people were on ships for the slave trade, they were often thrown overboard since they would not make sufficient profits.

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Colonial settlers developed a male-disabled-veterans benefit that promised "if any that shalt goe returne maimed [and] hurt he shalbe mayntayned competently by the Colony during his life."

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Massachusetts guaranteed that "children, idiots, distracted persons, and all that are strangers, or new commers" would not be punished for breaking the law

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The Massachusetts "Body of Liberties" guaranteed that no one would be made to perform public service if they were unable to do so. This included "want of years, greatness of age, defect in mind, failing of senses, or impotency of limbs." It also established legal protections for those deemed "mentally incapable of making sound financial decisions." This included "any woman that is married, any child under age, Idiot or distracted person."

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Poor laws allowed local officials to use the estates of "idiots" and "the distracted" to defer the cost of community support. These laws also helped to protect and manage property owned by those considered "idiots" or "distracted" in order to ensure that the community would not end up financially responsible for their daily needs. According to the law of 1693, "idiots" were "naturally wanting of understanding, so as to be uncapable to provide for him or herself." Those deemed "idiots" were born as an "idiot" and their conditions were lifelong and permanent. A "distracted person" were people who had mental instability that occured later in life and could be temporary.

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"Poor people deemed insane, and those violent or uncontrollable, became a community responsibility. A Massachusetts statute guaranteed that each community was biw responsible to "take effectual care and make necessary provision for the relief, support and safety of such impotent or distracted person." Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia soon followed.

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"In this period of early colonization and conquest, bodily variabilities pervaded families, communities, and daily life. Europeans thus made little comment on such anomalies- as long as one could labor." If families did not have to worry about the laboring inability of their family member with congnative or mental disabilities, then their disability remained irrelevant to the community.

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Laws in Massachusetts were designed to prevent the "poor, vicious, and infirm" from coming to North America by requiring the master of each seagoing vessel to "post bonds if any of their passengers embarked as lame, impotent, or infirm persons, incapable of maintaining themselves." At this point, disability was defined as the inability to maintain oneself economically, and those who were unable to support themselves were discouraged from boarding ships to North America.

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Almshouses began to be regularly used by the end of the colonial period. They met many community needs and were also a "dumping ground for all those unable to support themselves financially." Connecticut's first institution was established in 1727. It was intended to house "all rogues, vagabonds and idle persons going about in town or country begging, or persons... feigning themselves to have knowledge in physiognomy, palmistry, or pretending they can tell fortunes, or discover where lost or stolen goods may be found, common pipers, fidlers, runaways... common drunkards, common night-walkers, pilferers, wanton and lascivious persons... common railers or brawlers... as also persons under distraction and unfit to go at large, whose friends do not take care for their safe confinement." The need for confinement rather than diagnosis set the groundwork for early development of institutionalization.

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Town officials paid community members to house and feed those with mental and cognitive disabilities. In the case of Samuel Coolidge, he was sometimes lock in a schoolhouse at night to make sure he would be there to teach the next day. In 1763, he worsened and residents of his community refused to board him. When he became unmanageable, town leaders isolated and locked him in in a room.

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Virginia established the first asylum exclusively for those with mental and cognitive disabilities. The goal of the institution was to "care... [for] those whose cases have not become quite desperate... [and restrain] others who may be dangerous to society." Those institutionalized were treated extremely poorly. They were assaulted and tied up, and deprived of any effective motion.

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Public and private groups worked diligently to establish insane asylums, schools for the deaf and blind, community hospitals for those in poverty, and schools for those with mental and cognitive disabilities across the country. In 1817, the first disability-specific institution in the states, the American Asylum for the Deaf, was established in Hartford, Connecticut. The asylum set out to transform "those unfortunate beings who... would be condemned all their life, to the most sad vegetation from the class of brutes to the class of men."

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The Revolutionary War led to an immense amount of disabled veterans. Some were unable to find work after their injuries. The Revolutionary War Pension Act of 1818 established disability as a legal and social welfare category. The act assumed that impairments from war injuries did not render one disabled. Under this act, disability was described as the inability to perform economically productive labor. Revolutionary War veterans were expected to engage in this labor. Through this, however, since disability was the inability to labor, women and slaves became associated with the disabled.

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For the first time ever, in 1830, the census had recorded populations of deaf, blind, and "dumb" residents.

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The 1840 census included "insane and idiot" residents. The results indicated that free black people had an "insanity and idiocy" rate 11 times more than the enslaved population. Slavery advocated that this data was proof of the "incapacity of African Americans, the deleterious effects of freedom, and the nation's moral obligations to maintain the practice." However, in 1842, this data was full of likely purposeful errors. The "insane and idiots" were deemed incapable of voting wisely, and so they were not allowed to vote.

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Samuel Gridley Howe argued that "idiots" could be educated. Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children and Youth opened in 1849. "The goal was to integrate those considered idiots into the community via institutionalization."

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Massachusetts and Alabama used what is now known as an LPC, or "likely to become a public charge" clause. These LPC regulations gave much power to port officials

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With the increase of deaf schools and communities, literacy, education rates, and economic success rates for deaf people rose dramatically. Not every family had the financial means to leave home and enter an educational institution. Southern states had fewer institutional opportunities, and the ones available were segregated and were of lower quality compared to those in the North.

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President Lincoln and the War Department established the Invalid Corps. "The Invalid Corps was designed to release able-bodied men for fighting while using disabled veterans for other labor. The disabled soldiers guarded military prisoners, protected warehouses and railways, squelched antiwar uprisings in both Vermont and Pennsylvania, and enforced the unpopular draft in the face of fierce opposition, including during a series of draft riots on New York City in 1863.

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Section 1754 was passed. This was a federal measure that gave disabled veterans in civil service employment a preference. Many disabled Civil War veterans found it challenging to recreate an economic and social life in a newly disabled body.

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The first wheelchair patent was created.

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The number of patents for prosthetic limbs and assistive devices increased over 3 times as much as the previous 15 years.

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"The nation experienced economic crisis, the consolidation of labor unions, and political unrest." As Civil War veterans returned home, the urban areas expanded, and industrial accidents became more common. States began to pass "ugly laws". in San Francisco, they banned "any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object from the streets, highways, thoroughfares or public places of the city." These laws penalized people.

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The Immigration Act of 1882 prohibited entry to the United States to any "lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care if himself or herself without becoming a public charge."

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Scientists assumed that physical "defects" went hand in hand with mental and moral "defects". This resulted in the forcing of sterilizing of over 65,000 Americans, and also increasing immigration laws. "Eugenics is the belief that the way to improve society is through better human breeding practices so that only those with "positive" hereditary traits reproduce." More women than men were sterilized.

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Immigration officials required a medical certificate from immigrants who were deemed "mentally or physically defective".

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Industrialization devastated many people. It was disabling American workers in huge numbers. "Progressive Era reformers sought to soften the disabling blows of industrialization." Almost 43% of industrial accidents left the injured with a diminished income. Almost 13% of laborers would never be able to find work again.

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Immigration officials were ordered to reject any immigrants with "any mental abnormality whatever... which justifies the statement that the alien in mentally defective." Those considered to be first-class passengers experienced less inspection. Some aspects that prohibited immigrants from entering America include homosexuality, trachoma, back problems, hernias, mental illness, eye problems, pregnancy, heart problems, and being Jewish.

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The Great Depression started.

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As part of the New Deal, the Work Projects Administration employed millions of unemployed people in construction and social services. WPA programs, however, refused to hire people with disabilities.

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The Great Depression hit disabled communities hard, especially the deaf community. 44% of deaf workers who were employed before the Depression had lost their jobs by 1935. The national unemployment rate was only 20%

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President Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. It raised funds for polio prevention, development of vaccines, and it provided assistive devices like braces, wheelchairs, and iron lungs.

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With the beginning of World War 2, there was now encouragement for the employment of people with disabilities due to the war time crisis demands. The number of those with disablities employed rose from 28,000 in 1940 to 300,000 in 1945.

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The first nation cross-disability activist organization, the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, was created. This organization urged building accessibility policies and better disability prevention in work settings.

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Doctors would encourage parents to institutionalize their children with "mental retardation". However, some parents began to argue on behalf of their children to reject the stigma around cognitive disabilities. Parent advocate groups helped to change institutional landscapes for people with cognitive disabilities.

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Pictures from an institution were secretly taken and published. These photos showed "naked or half-dressed individuals in crowded and barren environments, the common use of physical restraints simply to relieve the staff of care obligations, and the jarringly casual disregard for fellow human beings."

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The disability rights movement began to take place. "The movement focused on legal efforts to prohibit discerimination in employment and education, access to public spaces and public transportation, and on institutional transformations that better enabled the self-determination of those with disabilities.

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Congress passed the Architectural Barriers Act which stated that all future buildings, and buildings being significantly altered, would need to be accessible to all citizens.

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State-run phsyciatric facilites began to release their long-term patients. The number of people institutionalized asylums fell by 60%. Patients used to spend years to decade in asylums, but in the 1970s, these stays now only lasted a few days or weeks.

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The Rehab Act was passed, which guaranteed a public education to children with disabilities. It also meant that the legal and cultural frameworks that shaped the lives of disabled people would have to be changed.

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" Independent-living activists sought the removal of both the architectural and transportation barriers that made civic participation almost impossible for people with disabilities... accommodations that would enable people with disabilities to live independently, manage their own lives, and make tehir own decisions."

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Disability activists held demonstrations in Washington, DC, and also at every Health, Education, and Welfare offices around the country. This sit-in shows how the disability rights movement intersected with the free speech, antiwar, feminist, and racial freedom movements.

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Burton Blatt had began to argue for the push of deinstitutionalization.

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"The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is the best-known civil rights legislation for those with disabilities- impacting an estimated 43 million people at the time of its passage. The ADA built on the Architectural Barriers Act of 1973, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975. It also built on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination based on sex and race in employment and public places. Most importantly, the ADA built on centuries of activism on the part of people with disabilities, and centuries of public debate over rights, citizenship, and engagement in civic life."

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Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act to redress the decisions made by courts that limited the ADA's breadth.