No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

This is one of the core books of the disabilities rights movement, an exhilarating journalistic account of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and several magazine length accounts of the lives of people with disabilities. Shapiro makes it clear again and again that the biggest barrier to people with disabilities living a worthwhile life on their own terms is not their impairments, or even the built environment, but social prejudice and a welfare system that funnels money to expensive institutions rather than community based care. This work is more anecdotal than synoptic, and slightly outdated (particularly in its discussion of technological developments), but it covers the major categories of disabilities (blindness, deafness, quadriplegia and cognitive impairments), and tells the stories of people with disabilities.