Symbolising disability for autistic people

I've seen various comments on Twitter, website articles and even petitions against the use of the wheelchair as a symbol of disability. This is the symbol:

I get their logic. 

There's been attempts to make the symbol more progressive and reflect that disabled people are capable mobile people:

But not everyone who is disabled requires the continuous use of a wheelchair or indeed at all.

In the UK, disability is defined as someone who has substantial and long-term physical or mental impairments that impact normal day to day activities. Certainly that doesn't mean that anyone who meets this definition found in the UK Equality Act 2010 requires a wheelchair.

I'm autistic and my cognitive profile certainly has no impact on my mobility.

So the argument goes that the wheelchair logo is outdated because many disabilities are invisible and the logo does not capture this. This can be a problem for disabled people who are perceived to not require certain facilities such as a disabled toilet because they do not appear to be disabled from a casual uninformed glance. Both logos fosters the view that to be disabled one requires the need of a wheelchair. I would suggest that the media drive in some parts to create suspicions in the public of those people claiming to be disabled hasn't helped.

It seems like one cannot use a disabled car parking space without someone checking to see if the user is either using a wheelchair or crawling on hands and knees as if a limb is unusable. Any hint of fitness or good health casts concerns that the person is abusing the benefit system to avoid work. Whilst there are cheats in the system, the attitude that one's disabilities must be obvious to require certain facilities is narrow-minded and outdated. Disabled people can have a difficult enough time without being scrutinised by ignorant factions of the general public. Such unwanted aggression can put many off from even leaving the house. 

I don't personally require the use of disabled parking spaces or disabled toilets but I do understand that it is mortifying to be judged by people when one uses disabled facilities if the disability is not visible. There are stories of abusive notes being left on people's cars, which is a huge knock to one's self confidence, which is often already low. The change of logo would symbolise a inclusive acknowledgement of all disabilities.

I can appreciate that the use of such adaptive facilities are not always about mobility. A carer might not physically fit into a standard toilet cubicle to administer the care a person needs. The disabled toilet gives that additional space. An autistic person may be easily spooked by a shopping experience and their carer needs to shepherd them into the shop quickly. Close proximity to the shop might limit the possibility of the disabled person running off. There's so many different reasons that go beyond simply walking.

However I can see too that some autistic people who take things literally might have a strong aversion to using a disabled toilet as they may not feel the toilet is aimed at them. I can see that for those that require the facility but do not recognise their entitlement to it because if their interpretation of the logo may be challenging for the carer. But there will be autistic people who don't need carers but find going out overwhelming. All that chatter in a ladies toilet, coupled with bright lights, queuing, toilets flushing and hand driers can be intolerable. A disabled toilet limits that level of stimulation. Yet for high functioning autistic people, I know for me, I don't see myself as disabled to the degree where I want to use disabled toilets. Sometimes I am happy with the general ones, particularly when they are quiet. It hinges on my tolerance levels.

But I have issue with those who want to change the disability logo.

Whilst I think a better logo would be a great idea, the key is to what?

The point is that everyone knows the current symbol regardless of where we are in the world. If we start to create a new more inclusive one, that level of recognition will be gone and it is going to take a long time to get that up to the success of the current symbol. I also struggle with what could replace it that would not only be inclusive of all disabilities, be international in the sense of no words included and not be so abstract that it becomes meaningless.

If anyone has a suggestion of a better symbol, I am all eyes. I will happily take a look but I think the problem is not the symbol but the understanding in which as a society we fix to it. Our world is full of symbols. When I save a document in Microsoft Word, I am clicking on a picture of a floppy disk but I have no floppy disk in my computer. I don't believe that I am limited to saving to only that 1.44MB medium. What we need is education to teach people that disability is more about a person who is in a wheelchair and static, relying on others to move them about. I wouldn't like to jump too heavily into the alternative wheelchair symbol discussion because I am not a user of a wheelchair but from my viewpoint, the new symbol made me think of someone who is into wheelchair racing. I am not sure that is a helpful either because obviously there are many users of wheelchairs who aren't going to be into that sport or indeed capable of it.

I believe rather than getting too heavily fixated on the symbol itself because designing a better symbol is incredibly problematic, we need to be focusing on widening the definition of disabilities so that disability isn't synonymous with needing a wheelchair. To do so, that starts with education.