Frank Bowe | Won rights for deaf, 60

Frank Bowe, 60, a deaf professor who helped win civil rights protections for the disabled and advised Congress on how to better serve people with disabilities, has died.

Mr. Bowe, a Hofstra University special-education professor, had been battling cancer, one of his daughters said. He died Aug. 21 at a hospice in Melville, N.Y.

Mr. Bowe, deaf from childhood, was the first executive director of the American Coalition of Citizens With Disabilities, helping to direct the 1977 sit-ins that led to federal enforcement of the first major law to bar discrimination against the disabled.

The law required federally funded institutions to make it possible for the disabled to access services and public places. - AP