Inclusion & Disability Awareness – Summer 2023

Posted on by Pathfinder
Image of a child's artwork on sheets of paper lying on a wooden desk. On the artwork are colorful pencil drawins of diverse childre with and without disabilities. Text on the image says, "INCLUSION & DISABILITY AWARENESS Summer 2023." Pathfinder compass is replacing the letter O in the word "inclusion."

Disability inclusion means understanding the relationship between how people function and how they participate in society and ensuring everybody has the same opportunities to participate in every aspect of life to the best of their abilities and desires. In an effort to effectively spread awareness and foster inclusion, each month we commemorate and share Disability Awareness information, resources, and celebrations.

 

Remastered image of the Disability Pride Month flag with green, blue, white, gold, and red diaganol color blocks going down the center of the image. Text on the image says, Disability PRIDE." Pathfinder's branded graphic is on the top right of the image on a dark colored background.July is Disability Pride Month! We are celebrating people with disabilities, their stories, and their community, and reclaiming visibility in public, interacting fully with disabilities out in the open, rejecting shame and ableism. Disability Pride Month is held in July to recognize the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990. There’s a colorful and meaningful banner to commemorate it. The disability flag, unveiled in October 2021 by its creator Ann Magill, shows a straight diagonal banner of five colors on a dark background.

The flag’s design has evolved to become more inclusive of diverse disabilities. The flag  displays stripes to represent unity amongst several communities. The straight band of stripes is positioned diagonally to showcase cutting across barriers that people with disabilities face and to evoke the concept of light cutting through the darkness. The parallel stripes are placed from the top left, known as the Canton or place of honor, to the bottom right corner, known as the Fly representing the wider world. The diagonal is a contrast to the vertical walls and horizontal ceilings that keep people with disabilities isolated.

The disability flag was designed to include all six standard international flag colors to signify that the disability community is wide-reaching. The warm and cool colors were grouped separately on either side of a white band to “lessen the chance of a flicker effect when scrolling online, lessen a nausea trigger for those who suffer from migraines and separate the red and green stripes for those with color blindness.” The colors each have different luminosity and radiate from the brightest in the center towards darker shades in the exterior stripes which help people with color blindness distinguish the stripes, even in grayscale.
The design of the flag is said to highlight multiple experiences and identify diversity in the disability community with different colors representing various disabilities. The pattern from top to bottom is as follows:
  • Green is for sensory disabilities.
  • Blue represents emotional and psychiatric disabilities.
  • White stands for non-visible and undiagnosed disabilities.
  • Gold is for neurodiversity.
  • Red represents physical disabilities.

The stripes are displayed on a faded charcoal black background which commemorates and mourns people with disabilities who have died due to ableism, violence, negligence, suicide, rebellion, illness and eugenics. The dark background also represents rage and protest against the mistreatment of the disabled community.

It is obvious that a lot of thought and CARE went into creating a flag that would represent the disability community, and we wave it proudly!

 

Resource: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a43876914/disability-pride-flag/

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We can’t believe it’s already July, and so much has been done to bring awareness to the diagnoses, resources, tools, and experiences of the disability community. With so many awareness days and monthly celebrations during Summer, we wanted to share a compiled list of them all. Here’s what we celebrated in the month of June:

Here’s what we celebrate during the month of July:

If you need resources for any of these please feel free to contact us at 1-800-640-4636 or visit our website at TNPathfinder.org. Don’t forget to follow us on social media @TNPathfinder as we post some informative content about these important dates!