♪ ♪ NARRATOR: It's a really sweet image of a mother congratulating her daughter.

That's eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan and her mom Cindy.

But to really get what Jennifer just accomplished, let's look at another snapshot.

There-- that's Jennifer, crawling up 83 steps on her hands and knees to the top of the U.S. Capitol.

And here's what she had to say about it at the time.

JENNIFER: I'll take all night if I have to!

WOMAN: All right!

NARRATOR: Jennifer was the young face of an organization called A.D.A.P.T., American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, that was started in 1983 in Denver, Colorado.

Today, we take things like wheelchair access in public spaces for granted.

But if you were handicapped in 1983, you couldn't use the same facilities able-bodied people could.

So A.D.A.P.T.

members started putting their bodies on the line to make a simple point; they just wanted to ride the bus.

Its members excelled at the kind of punk protests that made headlines.

They blocked traffic, they chained themselves to steering wheels and building entrances.

They climbed inside Greyhound luggage compartments, and under wheel wells, so the buses couldn't move.

And they got arrested.

A lot.

♪ ♪ A.D.A.P.T.

replaced the public perception of disabled people as helpless and dependent, with a new image of wheelchair warriors.

Their protests got attention, and results.

But A.D.A.P.T.

and other disability rights activists knew they needed to push for something even bigger.

The A.D.A., Americans with Disabilities Act, was a groundbreaking civil rights bill to prohibit discrimination and require reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.

In 1988, after decades of work by A.D.A.P.T.

and other activists and lobbyists, the A.D.A.

was finally introduced in Congress.

But the Act got stalled in the House.

That's when A.D.A.P.T.

decided to knock it loose.

WOMAN: A.D.A.!

Now!

NARRATOR: On March 12, 1990, A.D.A.P.T.

protestors led a march of more than 500 people down Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. Jennifer, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age two, was right there with them, marching all the way to the Capitol, where Congress was meeting to debate the A.D.A.

And that's when A.D.A.P.T.

did what it did best-- guerilla civic action.

At the foot of the Capitol, members dropped to the ground from their wheelchairs and started the climb up, backwards or on their hands and knees, whatever they could manage, step by painstaking step.

They were determined to show the public, in the most visceral way possible, what it took for them to have access to the people's House, like all other Americans.

JENNIFER: All right!

NARRATOR: Just four months later, President Bush signed the A.D.A.

into law.

I now lift my pen to sign this Americans with Disability Act, and say let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.

NARRATOR: The A.D.A.

was the lifechanging civil rights act, that A.D.A.P.T.

and other activists had worked toward for so long.

It meant disabled Americans couldn't be denied access to housing, schools, jobs and civic life any longer.

And that's what the Capitol Crawl was for.

So that all the other children, who came after Jennifer, would be able to ride and so, so much more.

To learn more, watch "Change Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act" from American Experience.