Is there some sort of well-known symbol that denotes paralysis? Google has failed me.
It’s okay if someone has to be told what it means, but once they know, it should make sense to them.
(And I am NOT using the wheelchair symbol. It would be really tacky to use that in this case.)
The best thing I can come up with is a lightning bolt. I’m not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me.
If there is no recognized symbol, I’ll gladly take suggestions. (Mods–If it gets too IMHO-ish, please move it.) The symbol should be easy to draw.
Thanks in advance.
A lightning bolt would be a bad choice; everywhere I’ve seen it, it indicates ‘dangerous electricity’.
Ideally, it would be something as unambiguous as the War Amps’ symbol showing an amputation. The problem is that a paralysed person doesn’t necessarily look different; the difference is in action, or lack thereof. And things like, say, a walking person with a red circle and stripe would mean that one is not allowed to walk, not that one can’t.
I should have mentioned that the symbol is to be used on markers for a game, so that kind of confusion won’t really be an issue.
ETA: Unfortunately, I can’t use anything that might seem like it’s making fun of actual paralyzed people. I’d love to see that website, though.
What about a green traffic light inside a red barred circle? That should be pretty easy to figure out and remember. Greenlight= go Red barred circle = no, combine them= no go = paralysis.
Perhaps a silhouette of a person in a chair with a obvious discontinuity between the head and shoulders that doesn’t look as if the sign is ‘decapitated person’.
Something like the break in the leg of the disabled European vet in an earlier post.
In the first pokemon game 10+ years ago, the symbol used to be two lightning bolt sorta zigzags that were parallel to the figure. That’s what I still associate with Paralysis to this day.
