About Us by Peter Catapano

Author:Peter Catapano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2019-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

A Symbol for “Nobody” That’s Really for Everybody

ELIZABETH GUFFEY

I was 12 years old when I first encountered the blue wheelchair symbol. I still remember sitting in our family car on that hot Southern California afternoon in 1975 as my mother pulled into the department store parking lot. Something was wrong. The cars were all parked in the wrong places. Then, as we drove near the store’s front door, we saw a new set of neatly painted blue and white lines on the pavement, and a little wheelchair symbol stenciled on each space. The rest of the parking lot was filled, but these spaces were all conspicuously empty.

I especially remember the comments that came after the new spaces arrived. “It’s such a shame,” our neighbor told my mother one day. “It used to be if you arrived early enough you could count on getting a parking space in front of the store. Now nobody can use them.” Later I wondered, who is “nobody”?

I was born with cerebral palsy. At that point I had never used a wheelchair, but as soon as I saw that figure, I knew instinctively that it was a friend and an ally. Whatever my neighbor or other people said, the little figure was whispering a message of inclusion directly to me.

To this day, I have a complicated relationship with wheelchairs. I did not use one at all until my 40s, when I first visited the New York Maker Faire in Queens, N.Y., and my wheelchair use remains peripatetic. Even so, I’ve long recognized this symbol as a kind of lifeline that allows me to participate in and contribute to larger society. Like many disabled people, I was born with a body that allows partial mobility. As a child, I used heavy braces and special orthotic shoes, and I’ve always found it challenging to merely move across a room. I fall frequently, and my injuries have included concussions, broken teeth and sprained limbs. Despite these setbacks, the symbol has guided me through places, and pointed out spaces that are safe.

In August 2018, the “wheelchair symbol,” formally known as the International Symbol of Access, turned 50. It’s an occasion worth celebrating.

The original symbol was conceived by Susanne Koefoed, a Danish design student during the turbulent summer of 1968—a year now remembered for social upheavals like the resistance in Prague, the strikes in Paris and the raised fists of black American athletes at the Mexico City Olympics. In the student-led design workshop in Stockholm that she was attending, Koefoed planted the seed for another sort of revolution when she came up with an idea for common signage to guide disabled people to accessible facilities. She drew a schematic wheelchair.

The icon spent a brief childhood in Sweden in the months after this workshop, where it could be seen around traffic intersections in Stockholm’s center and at the city’s new international airport. That same year, the symbol was adopted by the well-connected nonprofit organization Rehabilitation International. Global in reach, and with deep

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