Famous People with Disabilities

Disability touches nearly every field of achievement. Helen Keller, deaf and blind from infancy, became a bestselling author and campaigner. Michael J. Fox kept acting and built one of the most effective medical research foundations in the world after a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Alex Zanardi went from a career-ending crash to four Paralympic gold medals. Their stories are proof that a disability does not set the limit on what someone can do. Here are 15 people with disabilities whose work changed their fields, and what their stories can teach the rest of us.

Quick Facts

• About 1.3 billion people, or 1 in 6 people worldwide, live with a significant disability (World Health Organization).
• Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person in the United States to earn a bachelor’s degree, graduating from Radcliffe College in 1904.
• Nick Vujicic was born with no arms or legs in 1982 and now speaks to audiences in more than 60 countries.
• Alex Zanardi won four Paralympic gold medals in handcycling across the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games, after losing both legs in a 2001 racing crash.
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded more than $3 billion in Parkinson’s disease research since it was founded in 2000.

15 Famous People with Disabilities

1. Ralph Braun

Ralph Braun was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age six and used a wheelchair for most of his life. In the late 1960s he built himself a motorized cart and, when that was not enough, engineered a lift to load it into a van, creating what is considered the first wheelchair-accessible vehicle in the United States. He founded the Braun Corporation, now BraunAbility, in 1972, and it grew into the world’s largest manufacturer of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Braun spent his career arguing that mobility, not charity, was what disabled people needed, and the Obama administration named him a White House “Champion of Change” in 2013.

2. Helen Keller

An illness before her second birthday left Helen Keller both deaf and blind. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, taught her to communicate through touch, spelling words into her hand, and Keller went on to graduate from Radcliffe College in 1904, the first deaf-blind American to earn a bachelor’s degree. She spent the rest of her life writing and touring the world as an advocate for disability rights, women’s suffrage and labor rights. Her memoir, The Story of My Life, has never been out of print.

3. John Hockenberry

A car accident when he was 19 left John Hockenberry paralyzed from the chest down. He went on to a long career in broadcast journalism, reporting from war zones and Congress for NPR and Dateline NBC, and won four Emmy Awards and three Peabody Awards. His memoir, Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence, is widely read for how directly it describes navigating a physically inaccessible world.

4. Nick Vujicic

Nick Vujicic was born in 1982 with no arms or legs, a condition called tetra-amelia syndrome. Bullying and isolation as a child led him to attempt suicide at age 10. He later found his footing as a speaker, founded the nonprofit Life Without Limbs, and now travels internationally sharing his story with audiences that include students, faith groups and corporations. He has written several books and appeared in the short film The Butterfly Circus.

5. Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left one leg thinner and shorter than the other, and at 18 survived a bus accident that fractured her spine, pelvis and leg and left her in pain and partly bedridden for the rest of her life. Much of her recovery took place in bed, where she began to paint, often in self-portraits that confronted her physical pain directly. She remains one of the most recognized painters of the 20th century, and her work is still studied for how openly it depicts disability, identity and the body.

6. Elton John

Elton John has spoken publicly about living with epilepsy earlier in his career, alongside struggles with addiction that he has also discussed openly. Across five decades he has released more than 30 studio albums, been knighted for services to music, and had his life dramatized in the 2019 film Rocketman. He has used his visibility to support HIV/AIDS research and other public health causes through his own foundation.

7. Andrea Bocelli

Andrea Bocelli was born with congenital glaucoma and had limited vision from infancy. He began piano lessons at age six, and at 12 a blow to the head during a football match caused a brain hemorrhage that left him completely blind. He kept playing and singing, earned a law degree, and later built one of the best-selling recording careers in classical crossover music, performing with orchestras and artists around the world.

8. Alex Zanardi

Alex Zanardi raced in Formula 1 and CART before a 2001 crash in Germany cost him both legs. Two years later he was back in a car, racing with hand controls in the World Touring Car Championship, where he won races into his late 40s. He then turned to handcycling and won four Paralympic gold medals across the 2012 and 2016 Games. In 2020 a cycling accident during a relay event left him with severe brain injuries, from which he has continued a long recovery.

9. John Nash

The mathematician John Nash, whose work on game theory won him the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1959. He spent years in and out of treatment before what he and his colleagues described as a gradual remission, after which he returned to research and teaching at Princeton University. Sylvia Nasar’s biography and its 2001 film adaptation, A Beautiful Mind, brought his story, including the years he lived with untreated psychosis, to a wide audience.

10. Lenín Moreno

A 1998 shooting during a robbery left Lenín Moreno paraplegic. He went on to serve as Vice President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2013, where he championed disability rights and helped expand services for disabled Ecuadorians, work for which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. He was elected President of Ecuador in 2017, serving until 2021.

11. Aaron Fotheringham

A series of unsuccessful hip surgeries left Aaron Fotheringham using a wheelchair from early childhood. As a teenager he began riding skate parks in his everyday chair and, in 2006, landed wheelchair sport’s first backflip, a trick many able-bodied athletes had never attempted. He has spent the years since touring as a professional wheelchair motocross and skate athlete, pushing what audiences expect a wheelchair to be able to do.

12. Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox built his career on Family Ties and the Back to the Future trilogy before being diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease at 29 in 1991. He kept the diagnosis private for years before going public in 1998, and in 2000 founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. It has since become the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research in the world, having funded more than $3 billion in studies into causes, treatments and a cure.

13. Sudha Chandran

A car accident in 1981 led to the amputation of Sudha Chandran’s leg. A classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer since childhood, she learned to dance again on a Jaipur foot prosthesis, a story later dramatized in the Indian film Mayuri. She went on to a long career as a dancer and television actress in India.

14. Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali, one of the most celebrated boxers of the 20th century, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984 at age 42, three years after retiring from the ring; his doctors linked it to the repeated head trauma of his boxing career. He remained a public figure for the rest of his life, lighting the Olympic cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Games and continuing to advocate for humanitarian causes despite the disease’s effect on his speech and movement.

15. Marlee Matlin

Marlee Matlin lost most of her hearing at 18 months old, the result of a malformed cochlea. At 21 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Children of a Lesser God, becoming both the youngest woman to win the award and the first deaf performer to win an Oscar. She has continued acting in film and television, including The West Wing, Switched at Birth and CODA, and has long advocated for closed captioning and greater representation of deaf actors.

What These Stories Have in Common

None of these people succeeded by working around their disability alone. Most of them needed something the world had to provide: a teacher trained to communicate with a deaf-blind child, a wheelchair lift that did not yet exist, a foot prosthesis, a research foundation, a stage that made room for a blind pianist. Talent and persistence mattered, but so did access. That is the throughline from Ralph Braun’s van lift to a modern website: removing a barrier does not just help one person clear it, it opens the door for everyone behind them.

If you run a website, that same principle applies directly to your own users. A blind visitor using a screen reader, a visitor with low vision who needs higher contrast, or someone who cannot use a mouse are all navigating barriers you can remove. Run a free scan with AccessBell to see how your site holds up, or read about the financial support and grant programs available to people with disabilities today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people in the world live with a disability?

About 1.3 billion people, or 1 in 6 people worldwide, live with a significant disability, according to the World Health Organization.

Who was the first deaf-blind person to earn a college degree?

Helen Keller. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, the first deaf-blind person in the United States to earn a bachelor's degree.

What disability does Michael J. Fox have?

Young-onset Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in 1991 when he was 29. He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000, which has since funded more than $3 billion in Parkinson's research.

Why does representation of disability in the media matter?

Seeing disabled people succeed in sports, science, politics, music and film challenges the assumption that disability limits what someone can achieve, and it normalizes disability for audiences who may never have thought about accessibility before.