October 2023
Visit https://www.census.gov/history every month for the latest Census History Home Page!
U.S. Census Bureau History: National Disability Employment Awareness Month
Congress established National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week on September 22, 1945. The current month-long
observance of National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) began in 1988.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month in the United States. Established as National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week in 1945, Congress renamed and expanded recognition of disabled employees to a month-long observance in 1988. For 35 years in the month of October, Americans have celebrated the contributions of our nations disabled employees while learning how inclusive employment polices benefit both employers and employees each October.
On August 11, 1945, Congress approved Public Resolution No. 176 designating the first week of October each year as National Employ the Physically Handicapped week. In anticipation of its first annual observance, president Harry S. Truman issued a proclamation on September 22, 1945, asking “the governors of States, mayors of cities, heads of the various agencies of the Government, and other public officials, as well as leaders in industry, education, religion, and every other aspect of common life, during this week and at all other suitable times, to exercise every appropriate effort to enlist public support of a sustained program for the employment and development of the abilities and capacities of those who are physically handicapped.” Two years later, Truman established the President’s Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. This Committee assumed the responsibility of coordinating events and generating publicity for the weekly observance. In 1949, Congress authorized an annual appropriation for the committee. In amendments made to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act in 1954, Congress directed the committee to work with state and local authorities to promote job opportunities for the physically handicapped. One year later, President Dwight Eisenhower established the committee as a permanent organization and renamed it the President’s Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy renamed the committee the President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped and charged it with developing employment opportunities for both the physically and mentally handicapped. In 1970, Congress formally recognized the inclusion of both physically and mentally handicapped individuals in legislation changing the name of the weekly observance from National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week to National Employ the Handicapped Week.
President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order changing the committee’s name to the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities in 1988. Later that year, Congress passed legislation expanding National Employ the Handicapped Week to the month-long National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
In the years since the first observance of National Disability Employment Awareness Month in 1989, legislation has further strengthened the rights of Americans with disabilities. Key among this legislation is the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 signed into law by president George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. The law prohibits discrimination based on disability and affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal, and later included sexual orientation and gender identity. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations. Ten years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, more than 9.6 million of the nation’s 15.7 million people aged 21 to 64 reporting a disability were employed. In 2010, the American Community Survey estimated that 33.7 percent of the nation’s disabled population aged 16 and older was working.
On July 26, 2010—the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990—President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13548 committing the federal government to hire more individuals with disabilities. A 2020 report from the Government Accounting Office analyzing the response to that executive order showed that federal agencies hired approximately 223,200 people with disabilities between 2011 and 2017. Of the 24 agencies studied in 2017, 31.3 percent of people hired by the Social Security Administration reported having a disability, followed by 27.1 percent at the Office of Personnel Management, and 26.8 percent at the Small Business Administration. The U.S. Department of Commerce—under which the U.S. Census Bureau operates—reported that 20.3 percent of its new hires in 2017 had a disability.
A Note on Language: Census statistics date back to 1790 and reflect the growth and change of the United States. Past census reports contain some terms that today’s readers may consider obsolete and inappropriate. As part of our goal to be open and transparent with the public, the Census Bureau is improving access to all original publications and statistics, which serve as a guide to the nation’s history.
You can learn more about National Employment Awareness Month and Americans with disabilities using census data and records. For example:
The 1830 Census was the first to collect data about Americans with disabilities. That year, U.S. marshals who conducted the censuses from 1790 through 1870 counted the number of people who were deaf, mute, or blind, by race and age. Most experts consider the data collected in 1830 and 1840 to be useless as marshals forgot to ask the question, misunderstood its meaning, or faced households unwilling to provide a response to the inquiries. Published data for 1830 showed that of the nation’s 12,860,702 people, just 3,974 White and 1,470 Colored Persons were reported as blind and only 5,363 Whites and 743 Colored Persons were deaf and mute. In 1840, 6,684 Whites and 981 Colored Persons were deaf and mute; and 5,024 Whites and 1,892 Colored Persons were blind. By comparison, the 1850 Census paid particular attention to more accurate collection of disability and mortality data. That year, 9,803 Whites, Free Colored, and Slaves were deaf and mute; 9,794 were blind; and 3,060 were deaf alone.
Supplementary questionnaires used during the 1880 Census asked additional questions of people identified as having mental or physical disabilities. In 1880, 48,928 people reported being blind; and 33,878 were deaf-mutes. Native-born White males were most likely to be reported as blind and/or deaf-mute in 1880.
The 1890 Census inquired if people were suffering from an acute or chronic disease, including the name of that disease, and length of time they were affected. Similarly, people responding that they were crippled, maimed, or deformed were asked to specify the nature of their disability. The Census Bureau reported these data in an 1895 volume that showed:
106,485 people were identified as suffering from conditions that included acute or chronic mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, epilepsy, and dipsomania.
80,616 people were deaf, but not mute; 40,592 were deaf and mute.
50,411 people were blind. Most common causes of blindness were reported as “unknown” (14,456) or an injury (7,134).
The 1890 Census included a special census of military veterans. The U.S. Pension Office proposed the veterans census to help Union veterans locate comrades who could corroborate their injuries and/or disabilities were a result of military service and to determine the number of survivors and widows for pension legislation. Enumerators collected veterans’ data at the same time as the 1890 population census. Question 2 on the 1890 population schedule asked “Whether a soldier, sailor, or marine during the civil war (U.S. or Conf), or widow of such person.” People identified as Union veterans or their widows completed the Veterans Census schedule. Famous Americans reporting an injury or disability in the 1890 Veterans Census include president Rutherford B. Hayes, Battle of Gettysburg Medal of Honor winner Joshua Chamberlain, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The U.S. Census Bureau appointed Alexander Graham Bell—inventor of the telephone—as an “Expert Special Agent” to assist with designing a questionnaire and publishing data about the nation’s deaf and blind population in 1900. His 1906 report The Blind and the Deaf was the most comprehensive in census history and included detailed statistics about individuals’ levels of disability, cause, age at onset, school attendance, occupation, and methods of communication. For example, the report showed that the onset of total deafness occurred before age 20 for 90.5 percent of people so identified; and of the 89,287 people who were totally deaf, 55,501 were able to speak well, 9,417 spoke imperfectly, and 24,369 could not speak at all.
Did you know that president Harry S. Truman’s advocacy for establishing National Employ the Physically Handicapped week in 1945 was influenced by his own debilitating childhood illness. In 1894, Truman contracted diphtheria—a serious bacterial infection—that left the 10-year-old future president paralyzed for several months and affected his vision for the rest of his life. Diphtheria was a deadly disease that claimed thousands of lives in the United States until widespread vaccination began in the 1930s. Vital statistics data collected by the Census Bureau showed that in 1890, 27,815 Americans died from diphtheria and 16,475 died in 1900. A global vaccination program to inoculate infants against diphtheria has saved millions of lives and reduced deaths from the bacterial infection in the United States from 13,000 to 15,000 deaths in the 1920s to just 14 cases and 1 death between 1996 and 2018.
The 2000 Census long-form questionnaire was the last decennial census to collect data about people with disabilities. That year, census data showed that 49.7 million of the civilian noninstitutionalized population aged 5 years and over (19.3 percent) reported some type of long-lasting condition or disability. The population aged 65 years and over was most likely to report a disability, including 43 percent of females and 40.4 percent of males.
In 2014, the Social Security Supplement to the Survey of Income and Program Participation collected data on people who experience limitations in their ability to perform certain activities and the degree to which they experience these limitations. The supplement used more than 100 questions about specific functional and participatory activities, conditions, and symptoms to arrive at a measure of disability. Based on the broad measure of disability used by the supplement, approximately 85.3 million (27.2 percent) of people living in the United States reported a disability in 2014. About 55.2 million (17.6 percent) people had a severe disability, and 24.2 million people (10.1 percent) aged 18 and over indicated that they needed assistance performing tasks like getting in or out of bed or a chair due to a long-lasting condition. Other data published from the Social Security Supplement showed that:
The prevalence of severe disability and the need for personal assistance increase with age. In 2014, the probability of having a severe disability was less than 1 in 10 for adults between 18 and 24 years, and about 3 in 10 for adults between 65 and 69 years. Among adults 75 years and over, 53.9 percent had a severe disability.
Among adults 18 years and over, 27.8 percent reported a physical disability followed by mental (13.7 percent) and communication (11.8 percent) disabilities.
Following the 2000 Census, the annual American Community Survey (ACS) replaced the decennial census’ collection of data about people with disabilities. Recent ACS data shows that:
Approximately 13 percent (nearly 42.5 million) of the civilian noninstitutionalized population (326.9 million) in 2021 reported a disability, including more than 20.5 million males and 21.9 million females.
American Indian and Alaska Natives alone (15.1 percent) and Black or African American alone (14.5 percent) were most likely to report a disability, whereas Asians (7.8 percent) were least likely to report a disability in 2021.
4.3 percent of children under the age of 18 reported a disability. At 5.9 percent, American Indian and Alaska Native children had the highest rates of disability while Asian children reported the lowest rate at 2.3 percent.
46.1 percent of people 75 years and over reported a disability, followed by 24 percent of people aged 65 to 74 years, and 12.5 percent of people aged 35 to 64 years.
Ambulatory difficulty was the most common disability reported by more than 20.4 million in 2021, followed by cognitive difficulty (16.5 million), independent living difficulty (14.7 million), hearing difficulty (11.6 million), vision difficulty (8 million), and self-care difficulty (7.9 million).
Among the 39.7 million people aged 16 and over reporting a disability in 2021, 25.9 percent were employed while 70.3 percent were not in the labor force.
President George H.W. Bush signed the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 into law on July 26, 1990. The law prohibits discrimination based on disability
and affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race,
religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal, and later sexual orientation and gender identity.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
This Month in Census History
Following the 1930 Census, several states asked that the Census Bureau provide the names of people identified as illiterate gathered from the question, “Can the person read and write?”
The Census Bureau refused, and on October 2, 1930, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ruled that federal law protected the confidentiality of census records, regardless of their intended use.
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Census Alumni
The U.S. Census Bureau has employed people with disabilities since the 19th century when it hired disabled Civil War veterans to work as census takers and supervisors.
A few of the employees with disabilities honored at the Census Bureau’s Notable Alumni website include:
Still’s Disease left Virginia Hammond Lowder with inflammatory arthritis. Despite challenges, she began preparing statistical tables for the Census Bureau in 1950, advocated for disabled employees, and was a member of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped.
Roy James Stewart lost his hearing when he was 9 years old. After graduating from Gallaudet University in 1899, he began a 5- decade government career at the Census Bureau’s tabulation department where his hearing loss shielded him from intense noise made by the tabulating equipment. He moved to the Vital Statistics division in 1906 and transferred to the U.S. Public Health Office in 1946.
William Ohge, Jr. joined the Census Bureau in 1978 and worked as a mail clerk, messenger, space manager, and copy center technician during his 30-year career. He was an officer in an advocacy group for those with mental disabilities and helped make Census Bureau offices more navigable for the disabled.
Born deaf in 1914, Hilda Lynch Altizer joined the Census Bureau in 1964 as part of a program with Gallaudet University to place deaf and hard of hearing individuals in jobs with high noise levels. Over the next 11 years, she worked with the agency’s computers, mastered binary coding, and trained employees. After leaving the Census Bureau, she helped establish the Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons in 1988.
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For the Record
Franklin D. Roosevelt hid his use of a wheelchair or leg braces following a 1921 bout with polio so well that many Americans did not know he had difficulty walking. His mobility challenges did not stop Roosevelt from winning the 1928 New York gubernatorial election and four presidential elections between 1932 and 1944.
Today, the Roosevelt Memorial located in Washington, DC, features a lifesize bronze statue of the 32nd president in a wheelchair. A nearby quote by Eleanor Roosevelt states, “Franklin’s illness . . . gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons—infinite patience and never-ending persistence.”
Roosevelt was not the only American leader to face physical or mental challenges. For example, Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower battled dyslexia, while Woodrow Wilson was dyslexic and had impaired mobility following a 1919 stroke.
President James Madison suffered from a seizure disorder; John F. Kennedy had an autoimmune disease; and Ronald Reagan began wearing hearing aids in 1983. After leaving office, Reagan announced in a November 5, 1994, letter that he had been diagnosed with a cognitive disability (Alzheimer’s disease).
A detached retina left president Theodore Roosevelt blind in one eye, while glaucoma impacted George H.W. Bush’s vision.
The loss of their three children left president Franklin Pierce and his wife deeply depressed for decades. Mental health issues also dogged Abraham Lincoln throughout his life. His “melancholy” intensified when his son Willie died in 1862.
Learn more about prominent Americans with disabilities including Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Maya Angelou, Thomas Edison, and others using census data and records at our Famous and Infamous webpage.
Visit https://www.census.gov/history every month for the latest Census History Home Page!