On my way to Toronto, I wheeled my suitcase toward the taxi that would take me to the airport, finding the curb cut in the sidewalk so that my luggage could roll seamlessly down to the street. What a nice convenience provided by municipal governments all over the United States, one that so many of us take wholly for granted.
But there was a fierce struggle for their existence, once deemed a radical, far too costly alteration to the nation’s infrastructure. (The same was argued about ramps and other means of accessibility.) They now exist ubiquitously across the country largely because of the tireless efforts of disability rights activists like Judith Heumann, one of the most prominent leaders of that cause from the 1970s until her death in 2023. Those who’ve seen Heumann in the Netflix documentary Crip Camp will remember her wit and tartness and zeal. That spark has now been bluntly captured in writer-director Sian Heder’s Being Heumann, a biopic covering the first major political act of Heumann’s long war on government indifference.
