50 free Disability trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Disability history is full of firsts that most people never learn: the fifteen-year-old who invented braille, the veterans' games at a British hospital that grew into the Paralympics, the 25-day sit-in that forced the US government to enforce its own law, and the students who shut down a university until it hired a deaf president. This quiz covers those stories alongside the ADA and Capitol Crawl, ASL and Gallaudet, guide dogs and white canes, the wheelchair symbol, the curb cut effect, the UN convention, and figures from Helen Keller and FDR to Judith Heumann, Marlee Matlin and Temple Grandin. It is written for disability awareness events, classrooms and workplace training as much as for trivia fans. About a third of the questions are easy, a third are medium and the rest will stretch people who work in the field. Every answer is checked against a reference page for the law, event or person.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law on July 26, 1990?
George H. W. Bush
Senator Tom Harkin delivered part of his introduction speech in sign language so his deaf brother could understand.
Q 02Under the ADA's employment title, employers with at least how many employees are covered?
15
Employment agencies, labor unions and joint labor-management committees are covered too.
Q 03What did ADAPT activists famously do on March 12, 1990, to push the ADA through Congress?
Left their wheelchairs and dragged themselves up the Capitol steps
ADAPT organized it as part of a "Wheels of Justice" march.
Q 04The Paralympics grew out of a 1948 sports competition for British war veterans held at which hospital?
Stoke Mandeville
It opened on the same day as the London Olympics; the first Games recognized as Paralympics were in Rome in 1960.
Q 05Which German-Jewish neurologist founded the games that became the Paralympics?
Ludwig Guttmann
He was knighted in Britain and is regarded as the founding father of organized sport for people with disabilities.
Q 06Which city hosted the 1960 Games now recognized as the first Paralympics?
Rome
Some 400 athletes from 23 countries took part; since Seoul 1988 the Paralympics have followed the Olympics in the same city.
Q 07The name "Paralympic" was originally a portmanteau of "Olympic" and which word?
Paraplegic
As other disability groups joined, the name was reinterpreted as "parallel" to the Olympics.
Q 08How many raised dots make up a full braille cell?
Six
Louis Braille based his code on Charles Barbier's "night writing" and presented it in 1824, aged fifteen.
Q 09How was Louis Braille blinded as a child?
An accident with an awl in his father's workshop
He was three; infection spread from the injured eye to the other.
Q 10Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing after an illness at what age?
19 months
She met her teacher Anne Sullivan at seven and became the first deafblind American to earn a college degree, at Radcliffe.
Q 11Which 1959 play, later a film, dramatized Anne Sullivan's teaching of Helen Keller?
The Miracle Worker
William Gibson wrote it; Keller's own autobiography, The Story of My Life, appeared in 1903.
Q 12In which year was Gallaudet University, the first institution for higher education of deaf students, founded?
1864
It began as a grammar school for deaf and blind children and remains the only university designed entirely around deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Q 13What did the 1988 student protest known as DPN at Gallaudet University achieve?
Q 21The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is observed on which date?
3 December
The UN has promoted it since 1992, after declaring 1981 the International Year of Disabled Persons.
Q 22Who founded the Special Olympics, first held in Chicago in 1968?
Eunice Kennedy Shriver
About 1,000 athletes from the US and Canada competed at Soldier Field; the movement now spans 172 countries.
Q 23Who became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God?
Marlee Matlin
At 21 she was also the youngest Best Actress winner ever.
The appointment of I. King Jordan as the school's first president who could not hear
The board had picked a hearing candidate, Elisabeth Zinser; after eight days of protest the students won all four demands.
Q 14American Sign Language emerged in 1817 at a school in which city?
Hartford, Connecticut
The Hartford school, co-founded by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, blended a European sign system with local ones.
Q 15ASL is most closely related to the signing of which country?
France
About 58% of modern ASL signs are cognates of the old French system; there are 200 to 300 sign languages worldwide.
Q 16The 1977 Section 504 sit-in in San Francisco holds what record?
Longest sit-in at a US federal building
It lasted 25 days; the Black Panther Party helped feed the occupiers.
Q 17Which activist, known as the "Mother of the Disability Rights Movement", helped organize the 504 sit-in?
Judith Heumann
In 1970 New York had denied her a teaching license, claiming she could not evacuate students in a fire.
Q 18The wheelchair International Symbol of Access was designed in 1968 by a student from which country?
Denmark
Susanne Koefoed's stick figure was adopted by Rehabilitation International in 1969.
Q 19The Seeing Eye, the oldest guide dog school in the US, was founded in which year?
1929
Morris Frank, a blind 19-year-old from Nashville, named his dog Buddy and every dog he had afterward.
Q 20The first guide-dog training schools were set up during World War I in which country?
Germany
They were meant to help veterans blinded in combat; a 1927 Saturday Evening Post article spread the idea to America.
Q 24Which 2021 film about the hearing daughter of deaf parents won Best Picture?
CODA
It was the first streaming-service film to win, and Troy Kotsur became the first deaf man to win an acting Oscar.
Q 25What does the acronym CODA stand for?
Child of deaf adults
Emilia Jones plays Ruby, the only hearing member of a Massachusetts fishing family.
Q 26Ed Roberts, father of the Independent Living movement, was the first wheelchair user to attend which university?
UC Berkeley
He had polio and slept in an iron lung at night.
Q 27The "curb cut effect" describes what?
Accessibility features benefiting far more people than intended
Ramps built for wheelchairs are now used by anyone with a stroller, cart or suitcase.
Q 28The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in which year?
2006
It came into force in May 2008 after its 20th ratification.
Q 29Rosa's Law, signed by Barack Obama in 2010, replaced which term in US federal law with "intellectual disability"?
Mental retardation
It was named for Rosa Marcellino, a nine-year-old girl with Down syndrome from Maryland.
Q 30At what age was Stephen Hawking diagnosed with motor neurone disease?
21
He went on to hold Cambridge's Lucasian chair for 30 years and keep A Brief History of Time on the bestseller list for 237 weeks.