July is Disability Pride Month. The month celebrates the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990. The month features colorful and meaningful banners to commemorate the occasion. The new disability flag, unveiled by creator Ann McGill in October 2021, shows five straight diagonal flags in five colors on a dark background. The flag is an updated version of the disability pride flag unveiled by McGill in 2019. Zigzag line flag.
According to the CDC, one in four people of all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and religions have a disability, making the disability community the largest minority group in the U.S. Yet, society holds many negative assumptions about disabilities and people with disabilities.
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Flags can raise awareness and are symbols of solidarity, pride and acceptance. The LGBTQ+ flag and the Juneteenth flag, which represent different sexualities, are good examples.
Likewise, “it’s so important for other people with disabilities to know they can be proud of who they are,” says Apraxia Foundation founder Jordan Levan. “If we can embrace who we are, then we can move towards the disability pride that our flag represents.”
What are the origins of the Disability Pride flag?
McGill once attended the ADA’s 20th anniversary event, but was disappointed to find that the event was confined to the basement and grounds of the independent living center, rather than in a public space. This experience inspired her to create a disability pride flag. McGill’s original design featured a zigzag motif to represent people with disabilities creatively overcoming barriers.
But the zigzag design creates a strobe effect on computer and phone screens that can worsen symptoms for people with seizures and migraines. So McGill worked with people with photosensitivity and those in the disability community to modify the flag, releasing an updated version in 2021 that’s more accessible.
What does the Disability Pride flag mean?
The flag’s design has evolved to be more inclusive of a variety of disabilities. The revised flag features stripes that represent solidarity between the various disability sub-communities. The straight stripes represent crossing the barriers faced by people with disabilities and are arranged diagonally to evoke the notion of light cutting through the darkness. The parallel stripes run from the top left, known as the canton or place of honor, to the bottom right corner or fly, which represents the larger world. McGill says the diagonal contrasts with the vertical walls and horizontal ceilings that isolate people with disabilities.
For Levan, the purpose of the Disability Pride flag is to send the message that there’s nothing bad about having a disability. “Diversity is a beautiful thing and we all have something different to offer, and that’s shown in the different colours of the flag,” he says.
What do the colours of the disability flag represent?
The disability flag was designed to incorporate all six colors of the international standard flag to show the breadth of the disability community. McGill changed the motif to straight lines and repositioned the colors toned down in the latest version. According to his Reddit post, the warm and cool colors are grouped separately on either side of a white band to “reduce the chance of flicker when scrolling online, reduce nausea triggers for migraine sufferers, and separate red and green stripes for those who are color blind.”
They also changed the colors, giving each color a different brightness, radiating from the lightest color in the center to the darker tones of the outer stripes, making the stripes easier to distinguish for color-blind people and in grayscale. Finally, the black stripes between the colors were removed.
“The latest design of the Disability Pride flag is significant in that it uses different colours to represent different disabilities, highlighting different experiences and identifying the diversity of the disability community,” Levan said.
From top to bottom, the colors symbolize:
Green represents sensory disorders. Blue represents emotional and mental disorders.
White represents invisible and undiagnosed disabilities. Gold represents neurodiversity. Red represents physical disabilities.
The stripes are painted on a faded charcoal black background and commemorate and mourn disabled people who have died as a result of ableism, violence, negligence, suicide, rebellion, disease and eugenics. The dark background also represents anger and protest against the injustices meted out to the disabled community. According to a statement from the creators, the color black also links to the Jolly Roger pirate flag, a common symbol of rebellion.
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