♫ propelling music ♫
Tom: I'm constantly seeing people, you know,
all over the U.S. seeing my work.
And what I get from it is,
most of them have never seen anything like it.
I'm known for my work for the ADA
and that little bit of history that we have for the culture.
Unfortunately,
there's not very much graphic history on that
and so I feel it's up to me
to make sure that it stays there.
For a lot of people the expressions of empowerment,
especially on young people with disabilities,
will keep me doing it for awhile.
Until I can't do it anymore.
A young kid, I remember him turning over a page
and here was a picture of a hundred wheelchairs
going down a - from above - going down a street
and he just turned to me and said,
"I didn't know there were over a hundred people
in the whole world that used chairs!"
Because he never saw them,
that's what you believe, you know.
On the next page,
we had a demonstration in San Francisco.
Time magazine called the ADAPT group,
"wheelchair warriors."
So here's this little kid,
finally seeing that there are more than just him
and then seeing in the next page,
"I can become a wheelchair warrior!"
Just completely threw him a curveball, you know?
One of the things I loved about photos is,
left to another generation, they can interpret it.
What I see back then,
even though a lot of it is still there
and powerful in my way,
they need to find their power and empowerment
through what is happening today.