This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

There is a beauty to a universal standard.

The idea that people across the world can agree that when they interact with one specific thing, everyone will be on the same page,

regardless of language or culture or geographic locale.

If I'm in Belgrade or Shanghai or Sao Paulo, or that this floor is slippery, that the emergency exit is over there, and that that

substance is poisonous and I should not eat it. The group behind those

internationally recognized logos is called ISO. The International Organization for Standardization.

Standardization.

That's reporter, Lauren Ober.

And one of the most recognizable ISO symbols is the International symbol of access.

That's the formal name of the blue and white logo

with the stick figure in a wheelchair.

Around the world, you see the international symbol of access everywhere. Parking spaces, on buttons

that operate at automatic doors, in bathrooms, and on seats on the bus or at movie theaters.

Anywhere where there's an indication of special accommodations made for people with disabilities.

Prior to the late 1960s, there was no universally agreed upon accessibility icon.

Everyone used a different symbol if they bothered to use one at all.

But in the 1960s, the disability rights movement started picking up steam.

In 1968, a group now called Rehabilitation International

announced a design contest to create an international symbol of access.

The logo would have to be readily identifiable from a reasonable distance, self-descriptive,

simple, unambiguous, and practical.

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