disability pride month - "we want a life like yours"

2024 Theme: “We Want a Life Like Yours”

Disability Pride Month is celebrated every July and is an opportunity to honor the history, achievements, experiences, and struggles of the disability community. 

This year theme reflects the disability community’s dreams for life experiences that they are too often denied. 

People with disabilities are the largest and most diverse minority group within the population, representing all abilities, ages, races, ethnicities, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. Because at least 1-in-4 adults in the United States has some type of disability, it’s no surprise that a movement of “disability pride” is emerging and  rapidly expanding. 

Disability is far more than just the physical and/or mental effects on the body. Disability is much more than the pills that you take or the specialized physicians that you see to manage a condition. It’s a part of who you are. 

Here’s what the disability pride flag represents:

• Black: The black background, which is more so like a faded charcoal base, ignites the mourning of disabled persons victimized by ableism or lost to disability fueled violence, abuse/negligence and death. 
• Diagonal band: The light, connected band of stripes cut straight through the darkness. The slanted formation is a symbolic contrast to the vertical walls and horizontal ceilings that resonate with feelings of isolation  among some members of the disability community.
• Multi-colored: The disability pride flag includes all six standard international flag colors to denote that the disability community is wide-reaching and on a global scale.
• Green: This stripe signifies sensory disabilities, including blindness,  deafness, lack of smell, lack of taste and other sensory conditions.
• Blue: This stripe represents those with psychiatric disabilities, such as anxiety, depression and other mental disorders.
• White: This central stripe connects to persons with invisible disabilities and/or undiagnosed conditions.
• Gold: This stripe signifies those with cognitive and intellectual disabilities and other neurodivergence.
• Red: This final line denotes persons with physical disabilities.

Ways to be a disability ally during Disability Pride Month and beyond

Attend a Disability Pride Event in NYC:

Disability Unite Festival

Come together with friends and family virtually on this website, or in-person at the Central Park Naumburg Bandshell in New York City to celebrate community, and commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Hire People With Disabilities:

Right now, 85% of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are unemployed. Many of them want to work and have skills to contribute. Among those who are employed, people with IDD are working fewer than 13 hours a week on average and less than one-fifth of them are getting workplace benefits.  

Combat ableism: 

Ableism s defined as discrimination against disabled people; and/or the tendency to regard people with a disability as incomplete, diminished or damaged, and to measure the quality of life with a disability against a nondisabled standard. 

Put people first and educate yourself 🖤