Segway gone wild.
Via Daily Mail:
Critics have hit out at a redesigned sign for handicapped access – saying the new symbol does not represent all disabled people and is ‘political correctness gone mad’.
The current handicapped sign, a stick figure sitting upright in a wheelchair, has been recognized as the International Symbol of Accessibility by the United Nations since 1974.
However, a street art project started in 2009 which reworked the symbol to show the figure in a more active pose has since gained traction, and is now starting to replace the old sign across the U.S.
New York state adopted it last year and Connecticut could soon become the second state to do so, while cities such as Phoenix and El Paso, Texas, are also on board.
The updated symbol, designed by Sara Hendren, then a grad student at Harvard, and Brian Glenney, a philosophy professor at Gordon College in Massachusetts, was supposed to promote a more positive view of people with disabilities.
However, the changes have sharply divided opinions among the disabled community.
Elizabeth Guffey, a disabled professor of art and design history at State University of New York at Purchase, said: ‘On the face of it, it seems like a really positive step to take.
‘When you start thinking about it more fully, it brings up more questions.’
Guffey, who currently writing a book on the symbol’s history, said the backlash has been most pronounced in the UK, where some view it as American political correctness gone mad.
Others, like Cathy Ludlum, disability rights activist from Connecticut, say the new design is insensitive towards people with serious disabilities.
Ludlum, who has a neuromuscular disorder and controls her motorized wheelchair by using three fingers, said: ‘The old symbol leaves everything up to the imagination.
‘The new symbol seems to say that independence has everything to do with the body, which it isn’t. Independence is who you are inside.’