Wheelchair movement pushes more active view of people with disabilities
It started as a guerilla graffiti movement to change not just the wheelchair icon but also they way we see people with disabilities.
Brian Glenney, a graffiti artist and philosophy professor at Norwich University in Vermont, and a friend noticed a more active looking wheelchair symbol at his local Marshalls store in 2010 — the arm of the person was back to push the wheel, which had small lines indicating movement next to it.
"This is cool. This helps us kind of disrupt our view of people with disabilities and help us reimagine this, but we don't want a corporate one, we want one for the people," Glenney said.
Glenney is at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg tonight to talk about his guerilla campaign to change wheelchair signs and why his image should be adopted everywhere.
In his image, the person in the chair leans forward with one arm up, clearly representing motion.
"So if you want to emphasize something when you're writing a document, you boldface it, you italicize it. We essentially did that with the old international symbol of access, moving forward, italicized, in motion, right — active," Glenney said.
After he spent years putting his own stickers showing the new icon over the old symbol, two U.S states have adopted it.
"New York and Connecticut [adopted] the symbol full scale, and in adopting the symbol, they also changed the language from the word 'handicapped' to 'reserved' or 'access space,'" Glenney said.
Nanaimo, B.C., is the only Canadian city so far to adopt the new symbol, but other communities are petitioning to change their symbols, Glenney said.
It is not without controversy, though.
Glenney admitted there are some within the community who say the new icon does not represent them.
"Like if you have visual deficits or auditory deficits, if you have very very significant disabilities, you're not mobile, they feel it's ableist," Glenny said.
Glenney said they make a good point and their objections provide an opportunity to continue to re-examine the ways we think about people with disabilities.
However, Glenney said, symbols aren't meant to represent; they are mostly there to act as guideposts for wayfinding.
The free public lecture is Friday at 7:30 p.m at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Grant Avenue.
