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Designing Disability explores the conceptualisation of disability and access through the context of the International Symbol of Access (ISA). The ISA was commissioned as part of a competition organised by Rehabilitation International in 1968, and Susanne Koefoed, a Danish graphic design student, produced the winning design. The ISA was endorsed by the International Organisation for Standardization in 1969, and adopted by the United Nations in 1974. It has been widely disseminated and it is a feature in many public buildings and spaces. The ISA depicts a wheelchair user and it is simple in conception and form. The original intent of the ISA was to indicate accessible facilities in buildings and the broader built environment, but it is a controversial symbol that, for some, is based on a reductive and essentialist conception of disability that reinforces caricatures about disabled people. The symbol appears to be a …