Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site ⓘ

The museum collections for Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site number approximately 9,000 artifacts and include furniture, tablewares, artworks, books, carriages, sleighs, and many personal items associated with the Roosevelt family. About 40 percent of the collections are on permanent exhibit in President Roosevelt's home. Objects in storage are available for research by appointment.

Fala's Navy Coat. Among presidential pets, FDR's Scottish Terrier, Fala, is perhaps the most famous. Fala and his White House antics were frequently subjects of the press and often referenced by Roosevelt himself. In a speech delivered to the Teamsters Union on 23 September 1944, FDR addressed a malicious rumor that he had ordered a U.S. Navy destroyer to the Aleutian Islands to retrieve the misplaced Fala. Fala did, however, accompany President Roosevelt at sea on occasion. Fala was present with FDR and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill somewhere in the Atlantic aboard the U.S. Cruiser Augusta on 9 August 1941. Both men traveled in secret (FDR was on a ten-day "fishing trip"). The result of this meeting was the Atlantic Charter, a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II. The adherents to the Atlantic Charter signed the Declaration by United Nations in 1942, which became the basis for the modern United Nations.

Members of FDR’s cabinet attend a performance by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. The concert demonstrates how the experience of Black Americans impacted the Roosevelts their tactics to advance civil rights. Library of Congress photo.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the first presidential library, he hoped future generations would travel there to understand the extraordinary times through which he and his generation were passing. Those times included the Great Depression, the New Deal, and, eventually, a second World War. The era also included the seeds of the modern civil rights movement, a movement influenced in direct and indirect ways by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s lives before, during, and after their twelve years in the White House. How they evolved on the issue of race in America was in large part shaped by their relationships (both political and personal) with African American leaders, as well as by the Black members of their household staffs in Hyde Park, Washington, D.C., and Warm Springs, Georgia. Those remarkable figures are the focus of a new study that the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site commissioned from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

In his rise to the presidency, FDR would be pressed to divulge where he stood on matters of race by the executive director of the NAACP Walter White. Republican Herbert Hoover’s dismal tenure in the White House gave FDR, candidate for the Democrat ticket, an opening to Black voters, who were suffering from four years of the Depression, but remained loyal to the Party of Lincoln. Roosevelt faced a major challenge right away. The New Deal era had its own versions of Black Lives Matter and debates over gun safety: chiefly, the scourge of lynching and the wariness of President Roosevelt to take it on directly for fear of alienating more powerful interests who held the keys to sweeping economic reforms he hoped to push through Congress. FDR tried to convey how, though he was horrified by the brutality of lynching, his hands were tied politically. Eventually, a gap would open between FDR and Eleanor over the gruesome and deadly practice.

While FDR felt constrained, ER would go public in an increasingly vocal way. The racial fallout over ER’s Arthurdale, West Virginia, homestead experiment was a perfect example of New Deal racial injustice that altered ER’s thinking. It also would spark her evolution from an employer of Black domestic employees to an advocate of equal rights and a partner of Black activists. Though the Black press called out FDR for his failure to act on racial injustice and inequality, it also zeroed in on the fact that twenty-three out of the Roosevelts’ twenty-five White House household staff members were Black. Among them were the couple Irvin (“Mac”) and Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) McDuffie, FDR’s personal valet and a maid, respectively. Several profiles of the staff ran in the Black press, and Mac was interviewed on the record for at least one of them. He attested that FDR thought only in terms of “Americans,” not with the labels Black and white. “We feel like one large family,” said Lizzie McDuffie, who was the only member of staff FDR allowed to clean his room. Lizzie would establish herself as an effective ambassador for the Roosevelts in Black communities across the country when FDR ran for reelection in 1936 and 1940.

Personal testimonials like those from the McDuffies were part of an effective communications strategy, revealing FDR’s political dexterity in appealing to African American voters through the Black press while placating the conservative white southern base of his party on the level of policy. It became a precedent future presidents would follow, even as the delicate political bargain between northern liberals and southern white Democrats rapidly disintegrated over the question of civil rights.

No one exacerbated this fracture among the White House and white southerners more than Eleanor Roosevelt herself, who only increased her advocacy of African American rights during these years. African American civil rights leaders applied intense pressure before and during the United States’ official entry into the war to end Jim Crow discrimination in the defense industry and military. The key figure here was A. Philip Randolph, founder of the most powerful Black union in the nation, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Politically, FDR needed the support of Randolph’s union, and the support of labor more generally. Randolph pushed FDR to the brink on the subject, vowing to organize and lead a March on Washington unless the president signed an executive order banning Jim Crow in the mobilization effort. This political chess match was the most dramatic example in FDR’s entire tenure of Black activists successfully lobbying the president to act and negotiating with him backed by their own fair share of political leverage—leverage that threatened to expose the nation’s racial hypocrisies at a time when FDR was trying to hold the moral high ground in his struggle for his celebrated Four Freedoms and against fascism. At the same time, Black journalists at the Pittsburgh Courier announced the launch of their “Double V Campaign” to hold the administration to account as it sought to project democratic values abroad while bowing to Jim Crow at home.

Eleanor Roosevelt carried on her work for many years after FDR’s passing in 1945. Living until November 1962, she witnessed and participated in the heroic phase of the civil rights movement. As events began to accelerate in the mid-1950s, ER heralded the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating the nation’s public schools (most of the justices were FDR appointees). With America’s so-called Second Reconstruction underway after years of seeding during the New Deal and war, ER lent her support to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-1956 and met with Rosa Parks, E. D. Nixon (a longtime ally of A. Philip Randolph), and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Her reach across generations was expansive. As the decade turned and the nonviolent civil rights movement expanded, ER would stand in solidarity with the Freedom Riders attempting to integrate interstate bus lines in the South. No first lady had ever been so outspoken—in word or action—on civil rights. Advancing into old age, ER lived long enough to see the fruits of her advocacy, as well as FDR’s, in the courts and in the formation of future leaders during the New Deal and World War II who would play important roles in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Walter Francis White (1893 –1955) was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1929 until 1955. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He criticized FDR's political silence over Southern Democrats' blocking of anti-lynching legislation. Learn More

Through the power of education, her political activism, and civil service, Mary McLeod Bethune (1875 – 1955) dedicated her life to supporting racial and gender equality throughout the United States and the world. Bethune had a tangible impact on the New Deal, ushering African Americans into federal positions and convening the Federal Council on Negro Affairs.

Irvin (1882 – 1946) and Elizabeth (1881 – 1966) McDuffie, FDR's valet and maid, respectively, had a uniquely close and personal relationship with President Roosevelt and became unofficial liaisons between the White House and the Black press. They also kept Roosevelt apprised of issues affecting black people across the country. Personal testimonials like those from the McDuffies were part of an effective communications strategy, revealing FDR’s political dexterity in appealing to African American voters through the Black press while placating the conservative white southern base of his party on the level of policy. Learn More

Marian Anderson (1897 – 1993), rose from her working class, South Philadelphia neighborhood to become one of the leading contraltos in the world. In 1939 the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) refused to let her perform at Constitution Hall because she was African American. A political outcry ensued, including from Eleanor Roosevelt, and resulted in a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where thousands came to hear her sing.

A. Philip Randolph (1889 – 1962) founded the powerful Black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He served in FDR’s Black Cabinet and, with America’s entry in the War, led efforts to integrate the US military and increase African American participation in the broader national defense effort. In 1963, together with Bayard Rustin, he organized the historic March on Washington.

A pioneering civil rights activist, Pauli Murray (1910 – 1985) earned law degrees from Howard and Berkeley and was the first African American to earn a JD from Yale. A prolific writer of prose and poetry, legal theory and history, Murray co-founded the National Organization for Women and, in 1977, became the first Black woman Episcopal priest.

Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968), pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated his life to non-violent forms of civil rights protest. He led demonstrations all over the South, including the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he was also the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize. King’s “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington came to define the civil rights movement. On April 4, 1968, he was assassinated on the balcony of the Memphis, Tennessee motel where he was staying.

Franklin D. Roosevelt is an icon of disability history. But that was not always the case. Early biographies of the president focused on his personal and political life, and treated his disability as just another obstacle overcome on his path to the White House. Two themes emerged among these early retellings of his experience with polio and paralysis—that FDR "conquered" disability, or that his personal struggle with it made him especially attuned to the nation's suffering during the Great Depression. This remained the predominant disability narrative for nearly four decades.

In 1985, a new narrative emerged, portraying FDR as a political figure who hid his paralysis from the American public through acts of deception because, we were told, the public would not knowingly elect a person with a disability. This represented a turning point in how historians and the public understood FDR. No longer omitted or marginalized, disability was understood to be a central and influential experience. However, the deception narrative has remained so entrenched, that a more complete, nuanced understanding of living with disability has been overlooked.

In more recent years, the emergence of disability studies has encouraged fresh perspectives. Disability is not only a state of health; it is also a social construction—an interaction between the features of a person’s body and the social or environmental barriers they encounter. The absence of ramps and elevators, lack of access to education and employment, and commonly held prejudice are examples of disabling barriers.

This interaction between body and environment is evident in FDR’s story and at Hyde Park—the ramps and handrails at the Big House (Springwood), the swimming pool at Val-Kill, architectural details and landscape features at Top Cottage, and FDR's customized wheelchairs. Ramps at the White House and U.S. Capitol, modified automobiles, architectural innovations at Warm Springs, and even the train car and airplane used by the president, all illustrate how FDR created an environment to mitigate the effects of a world that was not designed for people with disabilities.

Many of the barriers and prejudice that FDR and others faced remain prevalent in our world today. But with the passage of legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the continued efforts of disability rights activists, and greater public awareness, disabling barriers are decreasing.

The history of FDR and others who live with disability challenges dominant medical and pathological views. Often misunderstood as helpless or victims of illness and injury, people with disabilities have acted to alter this stigmatization. Their history is everywhere in American history. Disability experiences are present in the history of immigration, labor, war, social reform, politics, education, and popular culture. The life of FDR as a disabled person intersects all of these stories. At the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, we are re-thinking the meaning of FDR and disability in American culture.

The National Park Service’s Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program places recent humanities PhDs with National Park Service sites and programs across the agency. The Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site will host one of fifteen Mellon fellowships funded for 2023-2025. This fellowship will support our efforts to reconsider the interpretation of disability history at the park. Disability material culture and accessibility at historic sites will be a focus of the fellowship. The fellowship program is generously supported by Mellon Foundation in partnership with National Park Foundation and American Conservation Experience. Meet our Fellow

While we once saw FDR’s wheelchairs only as a symbol of overcoming dependency, deficiency and loss, we might now explore them as symbols of creativity and empowerment for an individual who wished to be the architect of his own identity.

People who live with disabilities often rely on things that help them navigate both natural and man-made barriers. These objects can reveal stories of struggle, emotion, exclusion, and human innovation. Learn more

Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882. He was the son of James Roosevelt and Sara Delano Roosevelt. His parents and private tutors provided him with almost all his formative education. He attended Groton (1896-1900), a prestigious preparatory school in Massachusetts, and received a BA degree in history from Harvard in only three years (1900-03). Roosevelt next studied law at New York's Columbia University. When he passed the bar examination in 1907, he left school without taking a degree. For the next three years he practiced law with a prominent New York City law firm. He entered politics in 1910 and was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat from his traditionally Republican home district.

In the meantime, in 1905, he had married a distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. The couple had six children, five of whom survived infancy: Anna (1906), James (1907), Elliott (1910), Franklin, Jr. (1914) and John (1916).

Roosevelt was reelected to the State Senate in 1912, and supported Woodrow Wilson's candidacy at the Democratic National Convention. As a reward for his support, Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913, a position he held until 1920. He was an energetic and efficient administrator, specializing in the business side of naval administration. This experience prepared him for his future role as Commander-in-Chief during World War II. Roosevelt's popularity and success in naval affairs resulted in his being nominated for vice-president by the Democratic Party in 1920 on a ticket headed by James M. Cox of Ohio. However, popular sentiment against Wilson's plan for US participation in the League of Nations propelled Republican Warren Harding into the presidency, and Roosevelt returned to private life.

While vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick in the summer of 1921, Roosevelt contracted poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis). Despite courageous efforts to overcome his crippling illness, he never regained the use of his legs. In time, he established a foundation at Warm Springs, Georgia to help other polio victims, and inspired, as well as directed, the March of Dimes program that eventually funded an effective vaccine.

With the encouragement and help of his wife, Eleanor, and political confidant, Louis Howe, Roosevelt resumed his political career. In 1924 he nominated Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York for president at the Democratic National Convention, but Smith lost the nomination to John W. Davis. In 1928 Smith became the Democratic candidate for president and arranged for Roosevelt's nomination to succeed him as governor of New York. Smith lost the election to Herbert Hoover; but Roosevelt was elected governor.

Following his reelection as governor in 1930, Roosevelt began to campaign for the presidency. While the economic depression damaged Hoover and the Republicans, Roosevelt's bold efforts to combat it in New York enhanced his reputation. In Chicago in 1932, Roosevelt won the nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for president. He broke with tradition and flew to Chicago to accept the nomination in person. He then campaigned energetically calling for government intervention in the economy to provide relief, recovery, and reform. His activist approach and personal charm helped to defeat Hoover in November 1932 by seven million votes.

The Depression worsened in the months preceding Roosevelt's inauguration, March 4, 1933. Factory closings, farm foreclosures, and bank failures increased, while unemployment soared. Roosevelt faced the greatest crisis in American history since the Civil War. He undertook immediate actions to initiate his New Deal programs. To halt depositor panics, he closed the banks temporarily. Then he worked with a special session of Congress during the first "100 days" to pass recovery legislation which set up alphabet agencies such as the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) to support farm prices and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to employ young men. Other agencies assisted business and labor, insured bank deposits, regulated the stock market, subsidized home and farm mortgage payments, and aided the unemployed. These measures revived confidence in the economy. Banks reopened and direct relief saved millions from starvation. But the New Deal measures also involved government directly in areas of social and economic life as never before and resulted in greatly increased spending and unbalanced budgets which led to criticisms of Roosevelt's programs. However, the nation-at-large supported Roosevelt, and elected additional Democrats to state legislatures and governorships in the mid-term elections.

Another flurry of New Deal legislation followed in 1935 including the establishment of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) which provided jobs not only for laborers but also artists, writers, musicians, and authors, and the Social Security act which provided unemployment compensation and a program of old-age and survivors' benefits.

Roosevelt easily defeated Alfred M. Landon in 1936 and went on to defeat by lesser margins, Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944. He thus became the only American president to serve more than two terms.

After his overwhelming victory in 1936, Roosevelt took on the critics of the New Deal, namely, the Supreme Court, which had declared various legislation unconstitutional, and members of his own party. In 1937 he proposed to add new justices to the Supreme Court, but critics said he was "packing" the Court and undermining the separation of powers. His proposal was defeated, but the Court began to decide in favor of New Deal legislation. During the 1938 election he campaigned against many Democratic opponents, but this backfired when most were reelected to Congress. These setbacks, coupled with the recession that occurred midway through his second term, represented the low-point in Roosevelt's presidential career.

By 1939, with the outbreak of war in Europe, Roosevelt was concentrating increasingly on foreign affairs. New Deal reform legislation diminished, and the ills of the Depression would not fully abate until the nation mobilized for war.

When Hitler attacked Poland in September 1939, Roosevelt stated that, although the nation was neutral, he did not expect America to remain inactive in the face of Nazi aggression. Accordingly, he tried to make American aid available to Britain, France, and China and to obtain an amendment of the Neutrality Acts which rendered such assistance difficult. He also took measures to build up the armed forces in the face of isolationist opposition.

With the fall of France in 1940, the American mood and Roosevelt's policy changed dramatically. Congress enacted a draft for military service and Roosevelt signed a "lend-lease" bill in March 1941 to enable the nation to furnish aid to nations at war with Germany and Italy. America, though a neutral in the war and still at peace, was becoming the "arsenal of democracy", as its factories began producing as they had in the years before the Depression.

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, followed four days later by Germany's and Italy's declarations of war against the United States, brought the nation irrevocably into the war. Roosevelt exercised his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, a role he actively carried out. He worked with and through his military advisers, overriding them when necessary, and took an active role in choosing the principal field commanders and in making decisions regarding wartime strategy.

He moved to create a "grand alliance" against the Axis powers through "The Declaration of the United Nations," January 1, 1942, in which all nations fighting the Axis agreed not to make a separate peace and pledged themselves to a peacekeeping organization (now the United Nations) upon victory.

He gave priority to the western European front and had General George Marshall, Chief of Staff, plan a holding operation in the Pacific and organize an expeditionary force for an invasion of Europe. The United States and its allies invaded North Africa in November 1942 and Sicily and Italy in 1943. The D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches in France, June 6, 1944, were followed by the allied invasion of Germany six months later. By April 1945 victory in Europe was certain.

The unending stress and strain of the war literally wore Roosevelt out. By early 1944 a full medical examination disclosed serious heart and circulatory problems;and although his physicians placed him on a strict regime of diet and medication, the pressures of war and domestic politics weighed heavily on him. During a vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, he suffered a massive stroke and died two and one-half hours later without regaining consciousness. He was 63 years old. His death came on the eve of complete military victory in Europe and within months of victory over Japan in the Pacific. President Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of his estate at Hyde Park, New York.

Home to the 32nd and longest-serving president of the United States, Springwood reflects much of Franklin D. Roosevelt's personality and values. FDR returned to Springwood often, drawing on his roots here to renew his spirit during times of personal and political crisis. These walls bear witness to lively and somber discussions that profoundly shaped our nation and the world.

The original house was built about 1793 and later renovated into an Italianate style villa about 1850. The Roosevelts undertook a substantial enlargement and redesign of the house, transforming it from an Italianate villa into a Colonial Revival–style mansion. The enlargement, completed in 1916, accommodated Franklin and Eleanor's growing family while creating a more formal and stylish residence that reflected FDR's political aspirations.

A room-by-room look at some of the principal rooms in the President's house and the treasures within.

Unable to get here in person? Now you can tour the house from wherever you are with a virtual tour available in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.

Find the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the architecture, design, and how the Roosevelts lived in the house.

The Home Garden, nearly two acres in size, was a central part of life for the Roosevelt family. Franklin D. Roosevelt grew up working and playing in the garden, as did his children and grandchildren; this garden remained important to him long after his childhood. In his 1939 speech at the cornerstone laying for the presidential library, FDR reflected fondly on enjoying the sun-ripened harvest of the garden nearby. He recounted, “Half a century ago a small boy took delight in climbing an old tree, now unhappily gone, to pick and eat ripe Seckel pears. That was about 100 feet west to where I am standing now. And just to the north, he used to lie flat between the strawberry rows and eat sun-warmed strawberries—the best in the world.”

FDR hoped that the American people would reflect on his presidential achievements in the context of his upbringing, and the Home Garden was clearly an important piece of that upbringing. Growing up in this garden shaped FDR’s ideals of sustainability, land stewardship, and his support of the grow-your-own movement in the 1940s. The Home Garden was not just an important piece of FDR’s childhood; it shaped the lives of his children and the legacy of his presidency.

This garden and the rest of the Springwood estate were managed by FDR’s mother, Sara Roosevelt, and maintained by gardener William Plog. The produce in this garden fed the Roosevelt family and their staff. The Roosevelt farm was a prime example of gentleman farming in the Hudson River Valley. The farm did not aim to produce a profit, but rather to exemplify land husbandry to nearby residents.

When the Roosevelts originally bought this property, the vegetable garden occupied a small bed in the present-day rose garden and gravesite. Although they were only a family of three, the garden expanded continuously throughout their time at Springwood, even after FDR’s departure for school and James Roosevelt’s death in 1900.

The Home Garden was an integral part of Roosevelt family life. Frequently mentioned in letters between the Roosevelts, it was clearly important not only as a source of food, but as a part of their home—a part they made an effort to enjoy no matter where they were staying. When the Roosevelts weren’t living at Springwood, they would have produce shipped from their garden to wherever they were—to their property in Campobello, to New York, and to FDR at school in Massachusetts.

In 1948, the Home Garden was replaced with a parking lot for both the National Historic Site and the Presidential Library. This lot improved public access to both sites—a pressing concern at the time—however, it did so at the cost of an important piece of Roosevelt history. It was not until 1975, when the park acquired the Bellefield property to the north of Springwood, that the park could begin to consider relocating visitor parking and reestablishing the original Home Garden.

The National Park Service and the Presidential Library broke ground for a new Visitor Center in 2001, and demolition of the parking lot began in 2002. The restoration of the Home Garden was begin in 2016 as an official National Park Service centennial project with substantial support from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Hyde Park Foundation. Restoring the Home Garden remains an ongoing project as park horticulturists work to restore the soil structure and nutrients.

The current vegetable garden is designed to replicate the Roosevelts’ garden with as much historic accuracy as possible. Minor adjustments are introduced to ensure its health and accessibility, including deer fencing around its perimeter and porous pavement paths. In addition, although the heirloom vegetable varieties grown in the garden today remain the same as during the Roosevelts’ time, they are cultivated using modern organic practices. Bug traps, black biodegradable film, white row cover, and kaolin clay are all examples of these modern strategies used to address common garden pests.

The Home Garden is maintained through the support of volunteers who help plant, maintain, and harvest the crops. Produce is donated by the park's philanthropic partner, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Hyde Park Foundation, to Dutchess Outreach in the city of Poughkeepsie. In addition to being a food resource, this garden is used for a variety of educational programs, and is free and open for the public to enjoy. Visit our volunteer page for more information about how you can participate.

This article was prepared by Meg Ritzau, Vassar College Community Engaged Learning Fellow.

Wheelchairs have long been a part of the human experience. Though rare prior to the mid-nineteenth century, evidence of wheelchairs is as old as antiquity. In the United States, wheelchairs were known in the late 1700s, but they became more common during and after the Civil War to serve the needs of wounded soldiers. By that time, they were made in furniture factories and the variety of designs is evident in surviving catalogs published by the New Haven Folding Chair Co., the Smith Rolling Chair Co., and others. Wheelchairs were also fashioned by coach makers, furniture makers, and blacksmiths. People with disabilities and family members also crafted their own wheelchairs, based on models they may have seen at nineteenth-century expositions, descriptions published in books and articles, or by virtue of their own invention. For example, in her Domestic Receipt Book published in 1865, Catherine Beecher describes how one might create an invalid chair by adapting a rocking chair. By the 1880s, patented attachments could be purchased to convert any ordinary chair into a wheelchair. The rise of invalid hotels, spas, and sanitariums that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century expanded the market for wheelchairs. The rich history and development of the wheelchair demonstrates and challenges the many ways we understand the meaning of disability and how people with disabilities created, modified, and used technology to participate more fully in society.