It is used as a name for civil rights movements and mutual aid networks for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Previously at this time, people with developmental disabilities were not considered able to make any decisions, including about where they wanted to go, and this program indicated a drastic departure.
[4] In 1968, a conference was held in Sweden as part of the normalization model where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities came together to discuss their lives, their opinions and their hopes.
"[3] In 1969, Nirje presented about these achievements to the 11th World Congress of the International Society for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, saying "This is akin to any decent revolt.
At a meeting to plan the conference, one man, argued against the label of "mentally retarded" saying "I want to be known as a person first!"
[6] In 1990, Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE), the first American national self-advocacy organization was created by self-advocates, including Roland Johnson.
[7] In 1965, then-Senator Robert Kennedy visited Willowbrook, a state institution in New York with a television crew and spoke about the horrifying conditions he witnessed, calling them "snake pit[s]".
[11] In 1966, Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan released Christmas in Purgatory, an photographic essay about the conditions inside five state institutions for developmental disabilities.
In 1974, Terri Lee Halderman and her family sued Pennhurst State School and Hospital for multiple incidents of abuse and the violation of the residents' civil rights.
[19] Jim Sinclair is credited as the first person to communicate the anti-cure or autism rights perspective in the late 1980s.
[20] In 1992, Sinclair co-founded Autism Network International (ANI), which publishes newsletters "written by and for autistic people" with Donna Williams and Kathy Grant, who knew Sinclair through pen pal lists and autism conferences.
The first issue of the ANI newsletter Our Voice was distributed online in November 1992 to an audience of mostly non-autistic professionals and parents of young autistic children.
[21] In 1996, ANI established a yearly retreat and conference for autistic people, which was known as "Autreat" and was held in the United States.
[25] In 1996, Martijn Dekker, an autistic computer programmer from the Netherlands, launched an email list called "Independent Living on the Autism Spectrum" (InLv).
[26] American writer Harvey Blume was a member of the list;[26] he described it as embracing "neurological pluralism" in a 1997 article in The New York Times.
[31] Blume was an early self-advocate who predicted the role the Internet would play in fostering the international neurodiversity movement.
[32] In 2004, autistic researcher Michelle Dawson challenged applied behavior analysis (ABA) on ethical grounds.
[33] The same year, The New York Times covered the autism self-advocacy perspective by publishing Amy Harmon's article, "How about not 'curing' us, some autistics are pleading".
[34] The rise of the Internet has provided more opportunities for disabled and so called "neurodivergent" people to connect and organize.
Considering the geographical distance, communication and speech patterns of neurodivergent people and the domination of non-autistic and non-disabled professionals, and family members in established organizations, the Internet has provided a valuable space for self-advocates to organize and communicate.
The least restrictive environment clause means that students must be, whenever possible, educated in mainstream classrooms with their non-disabled peers.
Despite this, many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are segregated in special education classrooms and not given the accommodations they need to succeed.
John F. Kennedy, in addition to passing civil rights legislation, also assembled a President's Panel on Mental Retardation.