Idk how many people know about it, but July is disability pride month! It’s a moderately new celebration to the world, since it started in the US.

The first disability pride day was held in Boston after the signing of the ADA in 1990. It started as one day and became a month long thing about 2015.

Here, protests began around the ITV telethons for funds for disabled charities in 1992. Disabled activists blocked access to the studios as a result of the growing feeling of being made to be a spectacle and object of pity rather than functional members of society.

Disabled civil rights groups held protests and demonstrations which eventually led to the passage of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in 1995 after 14 unsuccessful attempts at similar legislation throughout the early 1980s and mid-1990s.

Due to the many shortcomings of the DDA and continual campaigning, the Equality Act replaced it in 2010.

There’s more info on the history of disability rights in the UK here if you’re interested in a longer read.

Disability Pride (to me) means that I’m proud of everything I can do, and that I have both abilities and disabilities. It means that my disabilities don’t make me lesser, and that I deserve the same rights and opportunities as anyone. That my value as a person isn’t measured in how productive I am, and that I deserve opportunities to contribute, participate in society at large, and be supported as I need (because a society should take care of its ill and elderly).