Since July is officially Disability Pride Month in the United States, we’re paying tribute to the community by taking a deeper dive into the history of the event, why it matters, and how you can make a difference in the daily lives of people with disabilities. Understanding the design and history of the disability pride flag also provides greater insight and awareness about the community. We’re here to look at both, create a deeper understanding of how disability pride evolved, forms of discrimination against the community of people with disabilities, and how technology supports them.
What is Disability Pride Month and Why Does it Matter?
Over 1 billion people comprise the global disability community, the most expansive and diverse minority group globally. People with disabilities are represented by all ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and socio-economic brackets.
With our social responsibility to better our world and ensure inclusivity, we can all commit to celebrating the diverse backgrounds of people with disabilities in finding common ground. That is the essence of Disability Pride Month. Let’s take a deep look at the history behind this celebratory month to understand how and when Disability Pride Month was established, the story behind the disability pride flag, and why this is a momentous event that’s recognized globally.
Disability Pride Month: Celebrate a Universal Cause
People with disabilities have faced social stigmas and judgment for centuries. Logically the development and establishment of disability pride month is closely intertwined with the civil rights movement. This year’s Disability Pride Month marks the 33rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), culminating decades of unwavering commitment by disability rights advocates.
Disability Pride is intersectional, recognizing how society treats people with disabilities, while reflecting on how other marginalized sectors within the community are also treated, including women, people from various ethnic and racial backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQ community. Disability pride month and representation of the community within the disability pride flag, its design, and disability pride month colors advocate for integration that ensures barrier-free accessibility for everyone.
The Disability Pride Flag: History & Meaning
The disability pride flag and disability pride month colors are a unique and direct representation of the community, focusing on inclusion, similar to the LGBTQ pride flag. The original disability pride flag was designed by Ann Magill, featuring a brightly-colored lightning bolt on a black background.
With the feedback that the disability pride flag colors could negatively impact people with epilepsy, Magill redesigned the flag with muted colors symbolizing the diverse facets of daily life for people with disabilities.
- Charcoal gray background: In memory of the victims of ableist abuse and violence, including children or those killed, suicides, or individuals who suffered from negligence.
- Diagonal band: Cutting across the barriers blocking people with disabilities from full participation, integration, and inclusion in society
- Red stripe: Physical disabilities (chronic pain/fatigue, mobility impairment, loss of limbs)
- Gold stripe: Neurodivergence (autism, ADHD, dyslexia)
- White stripe: Undiagnosed and invisible disabilities
- Blue stripe: Psychiatric disabilities (depression, PTSD, anxiety, etc.)
- Green stripe: Sensory disabilities (hearing loss, visual impairments, etc.)
The Disability Pride flag is now available in the public domain and is seen in Disability Pride Month parades worldwide, with disability pride itself having entered the world stage, as you’ll learn from the insights that follow.
Disability Pride: A Global Phenomenon
The first Disability Pride Parade was in Boston on October 6, 1990. Over 400 people marched, wheeled, or drove to Boston Common to show people to acknowledge that disability is part of the human experience. While the first Disability Pride Parade was a success, it took a while for communities in other cities to host respective parades.
Chicago has the longest-running series of Disability Pride Parades, starting in 2004. Other major U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo, have organized at least two Disability Pride Parades since 2012. The movement has also spread across the Atlantic, with Brighton, England, hosting its first event in 2017.
Disability Pride Month symbolizes that people with disabilities are also people with abilities—that they’re proactive members of society, working tirelessly to break down all barriers that stand in the way of full inclusion. Fortunately, numerous major U.S. cities are hosting 2023 celebrations you can attend.
Notable 2023 Celebrations Include:
- New York: Disability Unite Festival
- Pennsylvania: Disability Pride PA
- Illinois: Disability Pride Parade
- Missouri: FestAbility: A Celebration of Disabilities
The ADA: Impact on Disability Pride Month
Our global population is gaining awareness and celebrating people with disabilities, the diversity of experiences, and integration in society. Signing of the ADA provided a rallying point for the community to demand full inclusion in society. The ADA lays out provisions for increased accessibility to physical infrastructure, while also encouraging employers to ensure work environments accommodate individuals with disabilities – from wheelchair ramps and special treatments, to service animals. The civil rights of people with disabilities are also protected within the ADA, in efforts to prevent discrimination in the workplace and overall.
With the dedication of activists advocating for people with disabilities, a public campaign that forefronted the critical rights of the community led to the establishment and implementation of the ADA and its laws. The Capital Crawl was a catalytic event on March 12, 1990, uniting roughly 1000 members of the community of people with disabilities, with any mobility aids they depended on, like wheelchairs, set aside. Participants literally crawled or moved within their capacity up the steps of Capitol Hill to make a clear and dramatic statement, demanding that the U.S congress pass the ADA. In July of 1990, the bill was passed.
More recently, the ADA is interpreted to include digital accessibility, a critical element of user experience to ensure inclusion of anyone engaging with online environments and digital assets.
What is Ableism?
Disability Pride Month, the disability pride month colors and flag celebrate humanity, the community of people with disabilities, and their contribution to society. Ableism at its core is a systematic means to dehumanize people with disabilities, creating stigmas that members of the community are inferior or less capable than anyone else.
While an increasing number of organizations are expanding their labor force to be inclusive for people with disabilities and impairments, recognizing the fight for advocacy and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), some companies still pass judgment and may not recruit individuals from the community.
Sadly, ableism has often been compared to ideologies like nazism, or adversity faced by the LGBTQ community, and ableism often crosses over various forms of oppression including sexism, racism, homophobia and more. Using words and language that pass judgment on people with disabilities is a significant part of ableism, from emphatic expressions like “you retard!” to “I’m talking to you, what are you deaf?” These are both extreme, but common colloquialisms that intentionally or unintentionally drive ableism.
Being aware of how we speak verbally and with our body language is a critical means to fight ableism and advocate for inclusion of all people with disabilities.
Honoring This Special Month & the People it Celebrates
1. Educate Yourself About Ableism
As discussed, Ableism is a belief system that assumes people with disabilities need fixing. As a result, it devalues and discriminates against this critical population group.
Learn The Appropriate Terminology: Two phrases often describe people in the disability community: disabled people and people with disabilities. So, which one should you use? Always use “people with disabilities” because they’re people first. By contrast, the phrase “disabled people” identifies a person by their disability, which may be considered impolite and demoralizing. In other words, a person isn’t a disability—they have a disability.
Read Up on the Subject: Awareness and education aren’t possible without research, and reading books is a crucial way to understand disability pride better. See recommended reading below.
- “Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens” (edited by Marieke Nijkamp)
- “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century” (edited by Alice Wong)
- “Haben: The Deafblind Woman who Conquered Harvard Law” by Haben Grima
- “Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body” (by Rebekah Taussig)
- “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” (by Samantha Irby)
- “The Pretty One” (by Keah Brown)
- “The Silence Between Us” (by Alison Gervais)
2. Embrace & Integrate Digital accessibility
With the evolution of digital transformation, an increasing number of assistive technologies are available to help make your website and digital assets inclusive of everyone, most notably, people with disabilities. Enhancing digital accessibility can also help your company comply with the ADA, WCAG, and all other web accessibility laws. Above all else, this technology enables you to empower people with disabilities with access to an equitable web and digital experience.
3. Participate in Disability Pride Month
What’s the best way to embrace disability? Find the parade or celebration near you and join the fun! Whether you have a disability or not, this is a beautiful opportunity to help create a more inclusive world.
Here are a few notable events that may be near you:
- New York: Disability Unite Festival
- Pennsylvania: Disability Pride PA
- Illinois: Disability Pride Parade
- Missouri: FestAbility: A Celebration of Disabilities
Covid 19 & Disability Pride Month: Impact & Significance
When the global Covid 19 pandemic affected the lives of thousands of individuals worldwide, many organizations representing people with disabilities paid tribute to those who lost their lives, or were physically and mentally affected by the disease.
Sources indicate that an estimated 60% of individuals who died from the coronavirus were people with disabilities. Lack of healthcare resources that often resulted in negligence and the inability to take precautionary measures to protect and prevent infection or exposure to the virus led to these high rates of contraction and mortality within the community of people with disabilities. And as a result of lockdowns, many people with disabilities or impairment were unable to access critical treatment of conditions.
In July 2021, a range of organizations dedicated their recognition and celebration of disability pride month with a special commemoration of those affected by Covid 19 and the global pandemic that took the lives of countless individuals.
Honoring Disability Pride Every Day
Disability pride month may only happen once annually, but we should embrace its message every day. It’s a blueprint for promoting inclusivity through raised awareness and empathy for our fellow human beings. It implores us to promote physical and digital accessibility for people of all abilities. And that’s a principle all businesses and individuals should be proud to support.
UserWay: Disability Pride & Digital Accessibility
At UserWay, disability pride starts with enhancing digital accessibility for organizations globally. UserWay’s AI-powered assistive technology ensures the Internet is more accessible for everyone, including people with disabilities. Let’s take pride in helping our fellow citizens thrive in the digital world. Learn how working together with UserWay can help you achieve this essential goal with its solution ensuring an inclusive, engaging, and interactive user experience for everyone.
Common FAQs
What’s The Main Purpose of Disability Pride Month?
Disability Pride Month is a day that embraces and honors people’s uniqueness by increasing visibility and awareness of the positive pride people with disabilities feel. For people with disabilities, this celebration inspires self-approval and champions every type of disability. In addition to the celebratory day, Disability Pride Month also helps encourage public conversations about disabilities and their related challenges.
When Does Disability Pride Month Take Place?
People celebrate Disability Pride Month every July. It’s an opportunity for everyone to celebrate, raise awareness and highlight voices during the month (and beyond) with our
What Are the Origins of Disability Pride Month?
Disability Pride began as a celebration in Boston in 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law. Subsequently, it evolved into a month-long celebration culminating in 2015, 25 years after the ADA was signed.