You may have seen our Disability Pride Month celebrations happening on social media, so we wanted to take the time to explain what we're celebrating.

Disability Pride Month is a national celebration in the month of July. It's a way of honoring the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in July 1990. The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities.

The goal is Disability Pride Month, aside from celebrating, is to end the stigma around disabilities and instead focus on the fact that disability is a natural part of human diversity.

Just like other celebratory months, there is a Disability Pride Flag. The flag was created by Ann Magill, a woman with a disability, in 2019. Each color in the flag has a meaning attached to it, including the background color.

Black: the background represents the disabled people who have lost their lives due not only to their illness, but also to negligence, suicide and eugenics

Red: physical disabilities

Yellow: cognitive and intellectual disabilities

White: invisible and undiagnosed disabilities

Blue: mental illness

Green: sensory perception disabilities

Sometimes the flag is seen with the colors in a lightning bolt shape. This shape symbolizes the non-lateral lives that many people with disabilities live, often having to adapt themselves or their physical routes to get around an inaccessible society.

At Marcfirst, we've been celebrating Disability Pride Month by celebrating our uniqueness, which is the theme for the month this year. You can celebrate at home by joining in our celebrations, like our parade, reading books by authors with disabilities, watching shows about disabilities, like Crip Camp, and practicing people first language!