DS,TU Shopping Report: Message T-Shirts

Holiday shopping season is soon to be upon us, so maybe now would be a good time to check out some t-shirts with disability-conscious messages for young and old. I was paging through the Syracuse Cultural Workers catalog yesterday and found this one (at far right, caption is "Childhood is a Journey, not a race") which would be great for any kid (or maybe a favorite teacher). Another one from the same catalog (logo second from the right, says "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same") wouldn't be for everyone, but on the right snarky teen it would be wicked. SCW t-shirts are union-made, 100% cotton (some of the garments are specifically labeled organic cotton).

The Nth Degree is always a great source for disability-themed t-shirts, with themes like "Take me to my least-restrictive environment," "I am, therefore I matter," and "Feisty and Non-Compliant" (shown at right). Most of their t-shirt logos are also available as pins and stickers, and some are available in other formats, too.

Other sources...NoPity Shirts has the ever-popular "Keep Staring, I Might do a Trick" shirt, among many others--they let you put any logo on any color shirt, in case that's helpful; Disabled and Proud makes a t-shirt with that slogan in Spanish ("Discapacitado y con Orgullo," at right); Apparelyzed has parking sign parodies, and some interesting stylized figures with wheelchairs (including "Just Another Family"--in which one of the parent figures is on wheels).

This listing is only scratching the surface, a few starting places in a niche that's getting too big to call a niche. And who knows, someday your disability rights t-shirt could be in the Smithsonian--it wouldn't be the first.