A new school has opened in California in honor of Edward V. Roberts, a leader in the independent living movement for people with disabilities.
The Ed Roberts Campus opened in November 2010 and is expected to serve 30,000 people annually. A grand opening celebration took place April 16. Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) attended the event.
The non-profit campus is located at the Ashby BART Station in South Berkeley, an accessible transit hub. It features fully accessible meeting rooms, a computer and media resource center, a fitness center, a cafe and a child development center. The campus also holds offices for the organizations involved.
The campus’s mission is to ensure that people with disabilities can live independently and without discrimination. The school is intended to be a model of universal access for the nation and the world.
Ed Roberts (1939-1995) was the first student with significant disabilities to attend the University of California at Berkeley. He was a founder of the university’s Physically Disabled Students Program that has become a model for hundreds of independent living centers in the nation, including the Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, where Roberts served as director.
Roberts’ leadership roles also included being the first person with a disability to become the California State Director of Rehabilitation. He was co-founder and president of the World Institute on Disability. He also received a MacArthur fellowship.
Zona Roberts, mother of Ed Roberts, told the Oakland Tribune, “He'd want something inclusive, a place to bring different types of people together to do good works. He'd want something that would benefit as many people as possible.”
The partner organizations that contributed to the development of the campus are the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program, the Center for Accessible Technology, the Center for Independent Living, the Computer Technologies Program, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Through the Looking Glass and the World Institute on Disability.
For more information visit www.edrobertscampus.org
This article was published in the May 2011 issue of Able News.
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