What is Disability Pride Month and How Can I Celebrate?

After the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, the first Disability Pride event was held in Boston on July 26th. Since then, it has grown into a month of education, action, and pride across the world. Disability Pride Month aims to dismantle internalized ableist ideals, educate the community on disability’s natural place within the human experience, and advocate for a more inclusive world. 

Below, you will find a few quick facts about Disability Pride, the meaning behind the flag design, and some actions you can take to support and celebrate the disabled community this July, and every month after.

Quick facts:

• Disability/disabled is not a bad word

• Pride as a form of resistance: Disability is a natural part of human diversity and something one can embrace; AND this does not negate the challenges that exist simultaneously. Disability pride can balance complex feelings of celebration and strain.

• Anyone can become disabled at any time

• Not all disabilities are visible

Disability Flag:

The disability pride flag was originally a lightning bolt of its current colors, but after feedback from the disabled community in 2021, it was changed to the diagonal lines we have today, as the lightning bolt shape was visually triggering/harmful to some members of the community. Each color represents:

• Black: Honors disabled lives lost to abuse and other unjust violence

• Green: Sensory Disabilities

• Blue: Emotional/Psychiatric Disabilities

• White: Invisible and/or Undiagnosed Disabilities

• Yellow: Neurodiversity

• Red/Pink: Physical Disabilities

How to celebrate Disability Pride Month:

• Listen to disabled voices by following them on social media, reading books/articles written from lived experience, listening to those within your own circle, etc.

• Support disabled-owned small businesses (see last year’s post with some suggestions here)

• TAKE ACTION! Call your reps, elect officials who support the disabled community, keep up to date on the increasing number of threats to disability rights we are continuing to face.

• Attend a Disability Pride event

• When planning events, creating content, teaching others, etc. consider how you can make your contributions more accessible (i.e. high color contrast in visuals, captions/descriptions for online content, wheelchair accessibility, etc.)

-Mikaila Vieyra, LPMT, MT-BC

Identity of the author*: white, neurodivergent, queer, cis-woman.

*Why do we include this? Intersectionality is the way that the various identities we hold (race, gender, sexual orientation, dis/ability, etc.) impacts the way that we experience and perceive the world. How/what we take in from the world impacts how/what we put into the world. Though we are committed to consistently engaging in reflexive practices to explore our explicit/implicit biases, we share the identity to be transparent on what perspective this blog post is coming from.