While the access to education swelled in some ways in the area, some students were undoubtedly left behind. One such group of pupils which were ignored as the city took these strides were disabled students. Many times, students who were disabled were forced to stay at home (if not institutionalized) keeping many of the possible doorways to success closed to them forever. While we are standing at a vantage point today that is far from perfect, we can also look back and pinpoint some moment's in our city's history which certainly made lives better for disabled pupils. 

The journey toward unlocking the doors of knowledge for disabled children has been long and arduous. While there have been great strides made in this fight, the victories have been too few and far between to have made things truly equal. 

Today, there are parameters in place to ensure students have the appropriate support and resources for their ability level as well as pathways into a happy post-high school life regardless of what that might mean for them. Many secondary schools offer opportunities to gain valuable experience via work based learning inside the school as well as outside of it. This allows for students to achieve an independent lifestyle that they otherwise could not obtain at other periods of history. 

However, there are still gaps in these systems that students can fall through when educators are not vigilant. The truth is that those is positions of power (in the classroom as well as outside of it) are humans. There is rarely an occasion of overt and intentional malice. When the simple oversights are added together, though, they create something equally violent. Ableism is still ableism whether it is conscious or not. 

To avoid these sorts of oversights going forward, educators should remind themselves of the brevity of this timeline. These events have had measurable impacts to be sure, but they came as the result of hard fought battles.