Zukas, Hale

Biography

Hale J. Zukas was born on May 31, 1943 in Los Angeles, California. While attending UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s, he joined the Rolling Quads, a group of severely disabled students in the Cowell Residence Program who had organized themselves to advocate for the rights of students with disabilities. Zukas became one of the founders of the Physically Disabled Students Program (PDSP) on the Berkeley campus, and in 1971, he graduated with a B.A. in mathematics.

In 1972, Zukas and others founded the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley. He was CIL's first coordinator of community affairs and remained in that position until 1982. During this time, he became an expert on benefit programs for disabled and elderly people, particularly Supplemental Security Income and In-Home Supportive Services. Zukas also became a leading advocate for the elimination of architectural and transportation barriers, especially on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the San Francisco Bay area.

In 1983, Zukas joined the World Institute on Disability (WID) in Oakland, California, as a public policy analyst, later becoming WID's Director of Research. Through his work at WID, Zukas has become an internationally recognized expert on such issues as personal assistance services, accessible mass transportation, the elimination of architectural barriers, and disability- related statistics. Zukas became the vice chair of the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board in 1983, where he had been a member of the Standards, Research, and Technical Assistance Committee since 1979.

Zukas consults for several agencies and organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration. He is the author of Attending to America: Report of the National Survey of Attendant Services Programs in the United States (1987), CIL History (1976), and various reports and articles.

Source: The ABC-CLIO Companion to The Disability Rights Movement by Fred Pelka, ABC-CLIO Inc.: Santa Barbara, California, 1997, p. 340.