The McBurney Disability Resource Center was established by University of Wisconsin Madison faculty member James Graaskamp, Dean of Students Paul Ginsberg, and Assistant Dean Blair Mathews in 1977 to provide effective accommodations to disabled students and to works towards an inclusive campus environment. Prior efforts to study the problems of disabled students began in 1960 with the founding of the Rehabilitation Committee, renamed the Disabled Persons on Campus Committee in 1976. In 1973 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act protected individuals with disabilities against discrimination from federally funded programs, including the University. The first accessibility projects on campus focused on the needs of wheelchair users and included adding ramps to parking lots and reconfiguring restrooms and elevators. In its early years McBurney Center staff and student volunteers provided services including proxy registration, disabled parking permits, textbook taping, alternative testing, library support, advocacy training, counseling, peer support groups, and more. The center also published SPECTRUM, a newsletter which featured articles by disabled students about their experiences and news about programs and services for disabled individuals on campus. In 1982 the Disabled Persons on Campus Committee shifted its focus to the development of McBurney Center programs and policies. Demand grew quickly, with a 532 percent increase in requests between fall 1981 and fall 1985. During 1986 McBurney implemented a public awareness campaign and expanded its physical facilities to include tape recording studios and a computer room. Yet the center's limited staff (2 people in 1983) and funding limited its ability to achieve its goals.
The McBurney Center grew over the course of the 1990s, with a new emphasis on the growing population of students with learning disabilities, a narrower constituency of students, not faculty and staff, and new responsibility for services on the departmental level. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act created new standards and regulations for higher education institutions that ensured the rights of disabled individuals on campus. Campus accessibility projects continued from adding braille tags to elevators to the implementation of a campus paratransit service. Meanwhile, disabled student activists formed ABLED (Access Builds Lasting Equality for the Disabled) in September 1990. Among other activities, the organization lobbied for the passage of Senate Bill 336, which authorizes school boards give foreign language credit for courses in American Sign Language. In 1990 the Department of Therapeutic Science planned to cancel the sole ASL class at the university, but students responded with a petition. Later that year the Psychology and Special Education department announced they would offer ASL and the university approved it as a foreign language. The next year ABLED worked with the Wisconsin Student Association to organize Disability Pride Month, which included workshops, art exhibits, a disability simulation for administrators, and more. McBurney's services reached 1,301 students from 1992-1993. In 1994 law student Brigid McGuire took direct action for accessibility by cutting her desk in half with an electric saw to make room for her wheelchair, an event which received significant press coverage, although her lawsuit against the university was ultimately unsuccessful. The center continued to serve a diverse group of students throughout the 2000s, and expanded its accessible technology offerings, internship opportunities, and presentations across campus.
