The British parliament's Blind Persons Act received royal assent, becoming the first first disability-specific legislation to be passed anywhere in the world.

The Blind Persons Act 1920 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, since repealed. It provided a pension allowance for blind persons aged between 50 and 70, directed local authorities to make provision for the welfare of blind people and regulated charities in the sector. The act was passed in response to pressure from the National League of the Blind (NLB) who claimed many of their members were living in poverty. The NLB carried out a series of strikes and protests including the 5–25 April 1920 blind march. The Blind Persons Act was first debated on 26 April and received royal assent on 16 August. The pensions provisions were superseded and repealed by the Old Age Pensions Act 1936 and the remainder of the act by the National Assistance Act 1948, it remains in force in Ireland. The act was the first disability-specific legislation to be passed anywhere in the world.

Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.