You're listening to the BBC World Service and now witness history.

All this week we've been looking back at milestones in the lives of disabled people from around the world.

Because November 2020 marks 25 years since the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK,

which made it illegal for employers and service providers to

discriminate against someone because they were disabled.

Nicky Fox reports on the campaigners who helped to change the law.

1995 was a year of protest and eventually change for disabled people in the UK.

Traffic was halted in Central London this morning during a protest by a group of disabled people. Some handcuffed themselves

to buses, others simply got out of their wheelchairs. They were protesting about what they

claim and government delaying tactics which threatened to block a parliamentary bill which would improve their civil rights.

They say it's the start of a campaign of civil disobedience.

Before the passing of the Act, disabled people had virtually no legal protection from discrimination.

You can turn disabled people away from pubs, clubs, restaurants, simply on the grounds that you're a disabled person.

I remember talking to a group of activists at that time

and we decided that we were really living in a physical apartheid.

That's Baroness Jane Campbell.

Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy as a baby.

She was initially given just two years to live.

She's used a wheelchair all of her life and often needs a ventilator to breathe.

In 1995, she was at the forefront of the campaign for equality. She remembers the challenges disabled people

like her faced when she was growing up in the 1960s and 70s.

Life was pretty tough. I mean I went to a special school, you know, in those days

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