Happy Canada Day!

Today is the beginning of Disability Pride Month, in honor of which I want to tell a brief story.

In 2016, an artist with cerebral palsy named Ann Magill proposed a disability pride flag. These flags had been common among LGBTQ+ groups for quite some time, and Magill wanted to create a similar symbol to unite disabled people The original version featured five colored stripes (symbolizing physical disabilities, neurodiversity, emotional and psychiatric disabilities, sensory disabilities, and undiagnosed and invisible disabilities), in a zigzag or lightning bolt pattern, on a black field, representing mourning for “ableist violence, rebellion, and protest.”

Its reception was not universally positive. Some people rejected it at first sight. People with vision-related disabilities didn’t appreciate the stark contrast between the black and the stripes, and found the zigzag particularly jarring. The overall sharpness of the image was enough to cause physical discomfort to some of the very people it was meant to represent, including people with migraine disorders or those prone to photoepilepsy. The shades of red and green were also especially confusing to people with the most common form of color vision deficiency.

See, here’s the thing that makes it a great symbol for the disability movement. Ann Magill took that feedback. She didn’t get outwardly defensive. She didn’t write a big long post about how much work she’d put into it and how people should just shut up and appreciate it. And she didn’t point to other disabled people who liked it and say reasonable minds can disagree.

Ann Magill took that feedback, and she used it to redesign the flag. Out went the zigzag, and with it the black strokes between them. The offending colors were tweaked. And the black field became charcoal gray, to soften the overall look.

That’s a disability rights story, right there. You make stuff you think people will like. The community responds with the problems they encounter with it. You learn new aspects of the lived experience of disability. And then you swallow your ego and work it out. No complaining about your “original vision” or your “integrity” or your “competing priorities.” When someone says you’re harming them, your priorities take a back seat.

I have never encountered a designer or an accessibility professional who has known how to see around every corner and anticipate every user’s need and use case. What makes people good at this work is the ability to listen, absorb, and respond to the feedback they receive, even when it means they can’t get exactly the pixels they ordered. When it comes to this flag, taking user feedback and responding to it resulted in a better, more universal, more representative product. Something to remember.

That’s all. Stay cool, east coast.