The 1968 Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) required that any buildings and facilities designed, built, or funded by federal dollars after the bill’s signing be accessible for people with disabilities. The law applied to a wide range of federally-funded facilities, including U.S. Post Offices, Veterans Affairs buildings, Social Security Administration offices, and public parks, as well as non-governmental agencies receiving federal funds including mass transit, public housing, and universities, like UC Berkeley. While the ABA enacted wide sweeping standards for federally funded buildings, it failed to lay out any mechanisms to enforce compliance, failing to serve Berkeley’s physically disabled student community at the time. And the same year President Lyndon Johnson signed ABA, the Rolling Quads started fomenting a new disability consciousness on Cal’s campus.

Dissatisfaction with the lack of compliance and growing pressure from independent living advocates in Berkeley led to another watershed piece of federal legislation five years later, The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Although limited in scope, we can remember the ABA as a landmark legislation which opened the door for subsequent federal disability protections, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.