Happy Disability Pride! Here, Have a Flag!

July 9, 2023 7:50 PM

The Disability Pride Flag represents everyone with a disability, and the design reflects inclusion This piece explains what the flag means, has some links out to the history of the making of the flag, and is available in both audio and text formats
posted by Bottlecap (9 comments total)

Nice! Another site I'm on has been adding Pride flags. I've asked them to add this one as well.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:59 PM on July 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

That’s awesome! I’m glad this article includes the updated flag and the reasons for using the less saturated colors and straight lines. I love that it’s getting out there.
posted by Bottlecap at 10:35 PM on July 9, 2023

Why are the stripes slightly skewed and off center? Perhaps I’m missing an obvious point?
posted by apathy at 2:35 AM on July 10, 2023

Happy disability pride month!

The artist explains the diagonal lines here, linked in the main article:

Diagonal lines have been traditionally used in the flags of former colonies, to represent breaking free from colonial powers (empire nations tend to have flags dominated by horizontal and vertical lines). And Disabled people’s lives have long been ‘colonized’ by the medical, religious, and educational establishments.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:37 AM on July 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

The diagonal is self-explanatory enough but the placement of the stripes is a little strange. You'd expect the white stripe, the middle one, would intersect with the corners of the flag, but it's all shifted a bit to the "south" of that.

However, Googling around, I don't think that's part of the flag design, I think it's just how it happens to be presented in the linked blog post. It seems like the main thing is having the five diagonal stripes on the brownish-gray background. People don't even seem too concerned about the angle of the stripes.

I guess there is a competing flag that is the same colors of stripes, but in a lightning-bolt kinda pattern, on a black background. I think this one is better.
posted by mellow seas at 6:14 AM on July 10, 2023

However, Googling around, I don't think that's part of the flag design, I think it's just how it happens to be presented in the linked blog post.

Yep, that's it. Look at the version atop the reddit thread (posted by Magill). The white stripe goes from corner to corner (but does seem a little off in the bottom right, so hashtagshrugemoji).
posted by Etrigan at 6:39 AM on July 10, 2023

I guess there is a competing flag that is the same colors of stripes, but in a lightning-bolt kinda pattern, on a black background. I think this one is better.

The designer explained why they changed this on reddit:

"it turned out that original design was dangerous because as the image scrolled, it created a strobe/flicker effect. Therefore, I and several people with visually triggered disabilities (some of whom wished to remain anonymous) have collaborated to come up with this new design, shown above. The colors have been muted and rearranged to reduce eye strain, and each stripe also has a slightly different level of brightness (brightest in the center and darkening outward), so that even those with some form of color blindness can distinguish the stripes."
posted by mcduff at 6:58 AM on July 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thanks for sharing. I really like this design. As someone who is a part of the disability community, I still have a tough time with the 'pride' part of it, but I think that's mostly my own internal ableism. *shrug*
posted by hydra77 at 4:18 PM on July 10, 2023

> Diagonal lines have been traditionally used in the flags of former colonies, to represent breaking free from colonial powers (empire nations tend to have flags dominated by horizontal and vertical lines).

I don't mean to derail a conversation, so I hope it's okay that I'm posting this comment now. I've never heard this about the lines but I don't know anything about flag design theory. Is this... true? It sounds a bit like the "the 13 folds of the flag mean this" urban legend.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:35 PM on July 11, 2023