Today’s a day to celebrate disability rights, with Google Doodle honoring what would have been the 78th birthday of Ed Roberts, a pioneering disability rights activist.

In 1953, when Roberts was fourteen, he contracted polio and spent eighteen months in hospitals. When he returned home, he was almost completely paralyzed from his neck down. He spent much of his time in an iron lung, since it was difficult for him to breath otherwise. He had a special wheelchair with a respirator which he used when he was up during the daytime.

Although his disabilities threatened to overwhelm him, he persevered with the encouragement of his mother, Zona, and continued his schooling over the phone and in person.

Ed Roberts began his career as an activist for disability rights when he encountered difficulties acquiring his diploma due to his incomplete physical education and driver’s education. After fighting for, and receiving, his diploma, he went on to become the first severely disabled student of University of California, Berkeley. Once there, he formed a group of fellow disabled students and began the Physically Disabled Students Program, which was the first student-led disability services program.

After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science, he returned to lead the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, guiding its rapid growth as the disability rights movement began to take shape around the world. The Center for Independent Living inspired many new community organizations to deal with the issues and concerns of the general disability population.

In 1976, in an ironic turn of events, Governor Jerry Brown had Roberts appointed as the director of the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation – the same organization that had once pronounced him too severely disabled for employment. In 1983, Roberts continued his mission of advocating for disability rights by returning to Berkeley and co-founding the World Institute on Disability, which is internationally recognized for its disability activism until this day.

On May 15, 1995, two months after his passing, a volunteer towed Ed’s empty wheelchair to lead over 500 advocates from around the country on a memorial march in his honor, after which his wheelchair was donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

“He took great pleasure in watching people with disabilities achieve greater acceptance,” said his mother, Zona.