The lawyer and campaigner Caroline Gooding, who has died aged 55 of breast cancer, played a crucial role in bringing about the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) and, four years later, the Disability Rights Commission. The act established for the first time powerful, wide-ranging rights for disabled people across virtually all sectors of British society, and the commission aimed to help ensure those rights in practice.
Caroline had a stroke in her early 20s, after which she became active in the disabled people's movement. She was working for Radar, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, now Disability Rights UK, when the Conservative government introduced the Disability Discrimination bill, and worked closely on it with government officials and parliamentarians, and with the disability movement, employers and unions.
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