Judith Heumann, an activist who helped secure legislation protecting the rights of disabled people, died March 4 in Washington, DC. She was 75.

Judith Heumann has been called “the mother of the disability rights movement” for her longtime advocacy on behalf of disabled people through protests and legal action, her website says. She lobbied for legislation that eventually led to the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, which was enacted in 1990, also the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and the Rehabilitation Act.

She served as the assistant secretary of the U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, beginning in 1993 in the Clinton administration, until 2001. She also was involved in passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was ratified in May 2008.

She also helped found the Berkley Center for Independent Living, the Independent Living Movement, and the World Institute on Disability, and served on the boards of several related organizations.

Judith Heumann was the child of German-Jewish immigrants who fled Germany before the Holocaust with their son and their daughter, who had polio and had lost her ability to walk at age 2.

“She helped people accept who they were as disabled people and take pride in that identity,” said Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People With Disabilities. “She helped so many people understand their own power as disabled people.”