Accessible Icon Project

The Accessible Icon Project is an ongoing work in design activism, begun in 2010. Founded by Sara Hendren and Brian Glenney, the work started as a guerilla street art campaign: placing a clear-backed sticker on top of parking signs depicting the International Symbol of Access. As street art, the work was intended to use the language of graffiti—unsanctioned, informal public expression—to pose questions about disability in the built environment and in democratic societies: Who is able, and who is disabled? What do inclusive streets, architecture, schools, workplaces, and economic structures look like?

Since its inception, educational institutions, private companies, cities and townships, governmental organizations, hospitals, and—most importantly—individual activists all over the world have appropriated the new icon for their own purposes. (And since the icon is in the public domain, free for use by anyone, it appears in all kinds of places far beyond the founders’ reach!) The Accessible Icon Project has become an activist design campaign that begins with a question about icons and representation. But its animus is a much more ambitious wish to see socio-political structures become materially, meaningfully inclusive: through grassroots work and official policy, by organized efforts and by single acts.