The Accessible Icon Project redesigns the decades- old International Symbol of Access. Unlike the previous icon, in which the wheelchair user looks passive and ready to be pushed to a destination, (the new one shows a person in forward motion—(a “driver” in charge of his or her own fate. The designers introduced their version in a street-art campaign, printing it on stickers and pasting it( over older accessibility signs in the Boston area. The redesign has now been officially adopted by some businesses and institutions, and even by such cities as Maiden and Burlington, Massachusetts, and El Paso and Austin, Texas. New York City uses a modified version, with the figure hailing a cab, to denote its accessible taxis.
Gallery label from This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good, February 14, 2015–January 31, 2016.