Sylvia Walker

In 2000, Walker received the Keeper of the Flame Award from the NAACP in honor of her work with black disabled youth. Walker died on February 6, 2004, in New York City due to health complications.

In 1995, Walker cofounded the American Association of People with Disabilities along with Bob Dole and Justin Dart Jr. In that same year, President Bill Clinton appointed Ronald W. Drach and Walker as vice-chairs of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities after Walker had served on the subcommittee on employee disability concerns starting in 1987.

The work of Walker and her team at the Howard University Research and Training Center contributed to the drafting and passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act which was signed into law on July 26, 1990 by President George H. W. Bush.

Prior to the 1990s, the disability rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s focused around forming a communal disabled identity and finding empowerment through the ideas of the independent living movement. Unlike the federally funded HUTRC, independent living activists rejected the ideas of federal disability policy claiming that it made disabled people dependent on the government and thus made assumptions about their capabilities. They argued that government social programs like Social Security excluded disabled people who were deemed unable to work. Walker identified this same problem in her own work and sought to create programs where people with any kind of disability, regardless of the severity, could be prepared for suitable employment in the field of their choice. Walker's own work with the HURTC reflects some of the goals of the independent living movement which included creating a network of centers for disabled people to learn self-advocacy and determination as well as create a united disabled community with a political voice.

The Howard University Research and Training Center opened in 1988 with a $2.2 million grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research within the U.S. Department of Education. Under the direction of Walker, the center focused on work regarding disabled minorities, as people of color make up a significant percentage of the total disabled population of the United States. Upon analysis of this demographic information, Walker and her team focused their research and program development efforts on updating and providing service models for rehabilitation, which specifically address the needs of people of color, particularly lack Americans. The HURTC also works to create job training for disabled minorities and conducts employment research in order to inform Congress on policy decisions.

She wrote her doctoral dissertation on disability studies in Ghana where she traveled multiple times in the 1970s. She described her research in Ghana as "combining [her] specialization in administration and the education of persons with disabilities with [her] knowledge of comparative and international education". This interest in international education continued when she conducted multiple training programs and research trips throughout South America and Africa.

Sylvia Walker (July 18, 1937 - February 6, 2004) was a disability rights activist and professor with the School of Education at Howard University.