Disability Pride Month: Disability Pride Flag Raising and Reception
Tuesday, July 1 2025 at 3:30 PM PDT to
Tuesday, July 1 2025 at 5:00 PM PDT
Flag Plaza & Kaiser Borsari Hall 122 (Event Space)
Description
We are kicking off the celebration of July as Disability Pride Month by raising the disability pride flag on the University flagpole! Join us on Tuesday, July 1 at 3:30 PM at Flag Plaza. After raising the flag, we will move to Kaiser Borsari Hall Meeting Room 122 at 4:00 PM to socialize and share some food. All are welcome to attend!
—
Disability Pride Month is celebrated every July and is an “opportunity to honor the history, achievements, experiences, and struggles” of the disabled community (The Arc, 2024). This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed July 26, 1990, the landmark legislation that broke down barriers to access and inclusion in society (The Arc, 2024). 2025 also marks the 52nd anniversary of the 504 Sit-In and passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the first federal civil rights protection for disabled people (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, 2024).
For Disability Pride Month, the Disability Access Center and Disability Outreach Center, in collaboration with the Neurodiversity Inclusion Collaborative and Disability Employee Resource Group, will have a variety of events and programming throughout July for students, faculty, and staff including the Disability Pride Flag Raising and Reception, Neurodiversity Inclusion Collaborative Meeting, Disability Employee Resource Group Reception, and Disability Pride Social Media Campaign. The Western Libraries will also be highlighting books in a Disability Pride Display throughout the month!
—
The Disability Pride Flag, designed by Ann Magill, a writer with cerebral palsy, is the symbol of the disability pride movement. The original Disability Pride Flag, which featured brightly colored zigzagging stripes over a black background, was created by Ann Magill in 2019. Ann Magill had “attended an event for the 20th anniversary of the ADA and was disappointed that it was confined to the basement and grounds of an independent living center — instead of out in public. The experience motivated her to create a Disability Pride Flag” (Columbia University, 2023). As she explained in an interview on The Accessible Stall podcast, "My first design idea was to make the stripes zigzag, to represent how disabled people have to maneuver around all the barriers we face. We have to go this way and then we have to go that way, and then we have to go this way and then we have to go that way. And that’s how we move through the world." However, it came to Ann Magill's attention that “when viewed on a phone or computer screen, the design was causing symptoms for individuals with visually triggered disabilities including seizure and migraine disorders” (Ballard, 2023). The redesigned version of the flag, created by Ann Magill in 2021 in collaboration with several people with visually triggered disabilities, softens the colors and made the stripes straight instead of zigzagging. The order of the stripes was also changed to accommodate people with red-green colorblindness (Magill, 2022).
The visually safe Disability Pride Flag features a muted black background with a diagonal band from the top left to bottom right corner, made up of five parallel stripes in red, gold, white, blue, and green. Each element of the flag carries meaning for the disabled community:
- Faded Black Background: Represents "the anger and mourning over the eugenics and the neglect that disabled people have to fight against,"
- Six "Standard" Flag Colors: Represents that the disabled community “is pan-national, spanning borders between states and nations,”
- Red Stripe: Represents physical disabilities,
- Gold Stripe: Represents neurodivergence,
- White Stripe: Represents non-apparent disabilities and undiagnosed disabilities,
- Blue Stripe: Represents emotional and psychiatric disabilities,
- Green Stripe: Represents sensory disabilities, including d/Deafness, blindness, lack of smell, lack of taste, audio processing disorder, and all other sensory disabilities (Magill, 2022).
Raising the Disability Pride Flag brings visibility to the disabled community. It serves as a reminder that people with disabilities are an integral part of our society, including at WWU. The flag symbolizes pride for the accomplishments and contributions of disabled people, including our disabled students, faculty, and staff. As we celebrate Disability Pride Month, let the raising of the Disability Pride Flag over WWU serve as a reminder of our past and celebration of the present while we work towards a more accessible future.
—
Accessibility:
AA/EO. Accessibility Statement: This event is intended for all participants including those with apparent or non-apparent disabilities. For disability accommodation(s) (such as ASL interpretation or TypeWell transcription), please contact disability.outreach@wwu.edu. Advanced notice is appreciated and sometimes necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.
WWU Flag Plaza is on South Campus Drive located between Wade King Student Recreation Center and the Academic Institutional West building. Standard-height armless chairs with a backrest will be provided as a seating option at Flag Plaza.
KB 122 is in Kaiser Borsari Hall. Kaiser Borsari Hall is on East College Way located between the Communications Facility building and Sehome Arboretum. It is about 0.2 miles from Flag Plaza to Kaiser Borsari Hall. Kaiser Borsari Hall is an ADA accessible building. The north and south entrances have automatic door openers. Standard-height armless chairs with a backrest will be the primary seating option provided at KB 122 in addition to a few bar-height armless chairs with backrests. Kaiser Borsari Hall has accessible restrooms. All restrooms in this building are all-gender restrooms.
Seating information is accurate to the best of our ability but subject to change.
Please refer to the Campus Map and select the ‘Accessibility’ filter for information about the nearest accessible doors, elevators, walkways, routes, and parking spots.
Masks are strongly encouraged and will be available upon request. Help protect our community by wearing a mask.
There will be an air purifier that has four-stage hospital-type filtration with a true HEPA filter inside in KB 122.
Please refrain from wearing scented products such as perfume, cologne, and fragrant personal care products while attending this event as they can trigger serious health issues for those with fragrance allergies and/or chemical sensitivities. We appreciate your cooperation in making this area accessible! For more information, visit the Accessible Spaces: A Fragrance-Free Toolkit.
—
Image Description:
Banner for Disability Pride Month. Graphic has muted black background. The text reads, "July is... Disability Pride Month." The text is off-white except for the word 'Pride' with the color of each letter presenting the colors in the disability pride flag: red, yellow, white, blue, green. In the bottom left corner is a white oval with text in black that reads, "AA/EO. Accessibility Statement: These events are intended for all participants including those with apparent or non-apparent disabilities. For disability accommodation(s), please contact disability.outreach@wwu.edu. Advance notice is appreciated and sometimes necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs." In the bottom right corner is the DOC logo and the WWU logo.