FLYING THE FLAG

BY KATIE CAMPBELL Exploring the origins of the Disability Pride flag, and its deeply meaningful design

uly was Disability Pride Month, an opportunity like many other Pride celebrations to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions and identities of some one billion disabled people worldwide, as well as recognising the continued struggle against stigma and ableism that disabled people continue to be subjected to. The celebrations began in America to celebrate the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990, which finally afforded disabled Americans legal protection against discrimination in all areas of public life, including employment, schooling and much more. The first Disability Pride Day was held in Boston, Massachusetts, on 6 October 1990, and saw a turnout of over 400 people march from the City Hall to the Boston Common public park, setting the scene for the parades that would be held annually in Chicago, New York City, and a host of other American towns and cities beginning in the early 00s. The festivities have even made their way over to the United Kingdom, where Disability Pride Brighton held their Pride parade for three consecutive years beginning in 2017; unfortunately, it seems to have been limited by the current global pandemic. With all of this in mind, you may have seen people posting the Disability Pride Flag on their Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook: a lightning bolt of several stripes tearing through a black background. The flag was designed by Ann Magill, a disabled New Yorker who noticed that no flag existed at the time to express disability pride.

On her blog - where she kindly waives all copyright claims to her design, meaning anyone can use its public domain design - she explained that she had attended a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but was disappointed to find that the celebration was a short, generic affair that was confined to the basement of an office building, not a joy-filled party as she had been expecting and hoping for. Six years later, in 2016, she woke to the breaking news of the Sagamihara stabbings in the Tsukui Yamayuri En care home, Japan, where 19 disabled people were killed and 26 injured in an act of ableist barbarism. At this point, she decided that instead of wishing there was a flag, she would create one herself.

The first Disability Pride Day was held in Boston, Massachusetts, on 6 October 1990, and saw a turnout of over 400 people march from the City Hall to the Boston Common public park

Ann’s original flag featured a zig-zag of five colours, each separated by a strip of black, cutting across the flag diagonally. She posted it online, and before long, tens of thousands of people on social media sites Reddit and Tumblr had seen the flag. Unbeknownst to Ann, this original design had a slight problem: its heavily saturated colours and zigzag shape could cause a strobing effect when it was seen while scrolling, which posed a risk for people living with epilepsy and those who experience migraines. Knowing that this worked in contrary to the inclusive nature of the flag, Ann and a group of anonymous helpers worked to make the flag more accessible. In October 2021, she released the updated version of the flag - again, into the public domain - with desaturated colours and straight diagonal bars in place of the zig-zag pattern, and asked that people move only to use the latest version of the flag, which has been redesigned with people’s safety in mind. In her own words, from the post she used on Reddit to reveal the redesign of her now widely-recognised Disability Pride Flag, here’s Ann’s own breakdown of the flag’s symbolism:

“Having All Six "Standard" Flag Colours: signifying that Disability Community is pan-national, spanning borders between states and nations.

“The Black Field: Mourning and rage for victims of ableist violence and abuse

“The Diagonal Band: ‘Cutting across’ the walls and barriers that separate the disabled from normate society, also light and creativity cutting through the darkness

“The White Stripe: Invisible and Undiagnosed Disabilities

“The Red Stripe: Physical Disabilities “The Gold Stripe: Neurodivergence “The Blue Stripe: Psychiatric Disabilities “The Green Stripe: Sensory Disabilities”

If you’d like to learn more about Ann Magill’s design process, or what inspired her to create the Disability Pride Flag, she was recently featured on a fantastic episode of The Accessible Stall podcast, which we cannot recommend highly enough. Find out more at theaccessiblestall.com.