Marilyn Golden was a college student on a summer backpacking trip in Switzerland when she fell from a tree after a rotting limb snapped. Her back was broken. She spent two years of rehabilitation at Houston Medical Center and had used a wheelchair ever since.

Ms. Golden would devote the rest of her life to championing civil rights for people with disabilities, all the while rejecting as “ridiculousity” the notion that people like her with disabilities deserved pity.

As policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a leading national organization in the field, Ms. Golden played an important role in the drafting, passage and implementation of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

Ms. Golden died at age 67 on Sept. 21 at her home in Berkeley, CA.