Keith Armstrong

Keith Armstrong (7 April 1950 – 7 May 2017) was a disability activist whose efforts contributed towards the Disability Discrimination Act, and an artist and photographer whose images documented protests and everyday life for disabled people in the UK.

Early life Armstrong was born in South Africa in 1950 to parents who had met during World War II. His father died just before his birth, and at six months of age, Armstrong contracted polio. His family moved to the UK and Armstrong attended the Ormerod School, then later Hephaistos School. He then studied at the National Star Centre for Disabled Youth. He was involved in the Campaign for Accessible Transport and the Disabled People's Direct Action Network. When he was arrested with fellow protestors for blocking New Oxford Street, the case was thrown out because the court did not have ramp access for wheelchairs and he could not attend his own trial.

In 1983, Armstrong became the first member with a disability on the London Transport Passenger Committee. He was a committee member of Camden Dial-a-Ride and eventually became chair of the London users association. Armstrong campaigned for Parliament to improve accessible bus provision, and travelled the UK and abroad to study transport systems. including tenants rights groups, in efforts to Save the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital for Women in the 1970s. He ran for election to Camden Council's Somers Town Ward.

Seeing struggles for rights as connected, Armstrong also campaigned for peace (he compiled a disability special issue of Peace News in December 1976), Digital Camera World magazine recognised Armstrong's significance and noted that his images were particularly powerful because unlike many photojournalists, his vantage point was both within the crowd of protestors and from a wheelchair.

Commemoration Armstrong's work and archive is part of the National Disability Movement Archive and Collection at the Bishopsgate Institute. The Bodleian Libraries Special Collections also hold a box of his collection.