July is Disability Pride Month.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed on July 26, 1990, to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. Following this legislation, Boston held the first Disability Pride Day event in July 1990 and Disability Pride Month was born.

Since then, Disability Pride events have been celebrated in the month of July in cities including Los Angeles, New York City, San Antonio, Madison, Wisconsin, Brighton, UK, and Charleston, South Carolina. The list of participating cities continues to grow.

So how can we as a community celebrate and elevate Disability Pride this July? How can we work together to change the outdated perception that these two words don’t and shouldn’t belong together?

A great start is by sharing the Disability Pride flag!

Disability Pride flag.
Created by Ann Magill

The meaning of the flag.

The Disability Pride Flag was created by Ann Magill, a disabled woman, and each of its elements symbolises a different part of the disability community.

  1. The Black Field: this field is to represent the disabled people who have lost their lives due not only to their illness, but also to negligence, suicide, and eugenics.
  2. The Colours: each colour on this flag represents a different aspect of disability or impairment.

Ann Magill redesigned the flag in July 2021 based on feedback from the disabled community that, when viewed online (especially while scrolling), the original lightning bolt design created a strobe effect, and posed a risk for people with epilepsy and migraine sufferers. Several people in the Disability community collaborated on Tumblr and came to a consensus on a new design that’s more accessible to everyone.

To find out more about the history and the Disability Pride Flag, head to our article on Disability Pride Month.

Get involved.

Post about Disability Pride.

This July, we want YOU to get involved in Disability Pride Month by sharing the flag along with what Disability Pride means to you.

What are you proud of? How does your disability make you unique? Why do you think Disability Pride is important?

Share one of our Disability Pride Flag posts and let us know.

Update your profile picture.

For the month of pride, why not update your profile picture to include the Disability Pride flag? Use one of our profile picture overlays and help us spread the word.

Use our Disability Pride Month Face Filter.

In a world first, we’ve created a face filter for Disability Pride Month using the iconic flag design. We hope you have fun testing this out – please help us by sharing it far and wide!

Try out the face filter.

Hashtags.

Share what Disability Pride means to you, along with the hashtag:

#DisabilityPrideMonth

(Please remember to use camel case for all hashtags to make them more accessible.)

Tag us in your posts.

We’d love it if you could tag us in your posts so we can see them too! Throughout July we will be posting extensively across our social media channels so remember to follow us and share, like and comment on our posts.

You can find us on:

Accessibility.

It’s important to make sure your social media posts are accessible to everyone in the community.

What to do:

Make sure you include alternative text image description when posting on social media so that your content is accessible to everyone – especially people who use screen readers.

If you’re planning to share a video, you should also make sure that it’s captioned.

How to do it:

Find out how to add alternative description to images on:

Need more help?

For alternative text best practice, take a look at the excellent guidance from hootsuite.

Happy Disability Pride Month!