Disability+Activism+Section

=Disability Activism and Social Media - An Overview=

It can be easy to focus on the flaws of social media when it comes to accessibility. The automatically generated captions on YouTube videos are laughably bad, and trying to navigate most social media sites with a screen reader can be challenging. In spite of their accessibility issues, social media sites have become a vehicle for disability activism, and they have become places where those who are often considered outsiders can find community.

Social media offers a community for people with disabilities, as well as their parents and caregivers. Parents of children with disabilities are often their greatest advocates, and social media has allowed them to push for improved visibility and representation. Facebook groups allow people with disabilities to maintain friendships with other people facing the same challenges around the world, and offer parents a place to share successes and frustrations. These communities are not easily built outside of the Web, but flourish online.

Disability activism has found a home in social media because of its relative ease of use. For people with physical disabilities like mobility issues, getting to a community meeting could seem like an almost insurmountable task. Groups like the Disability Visibility Project allow people with disabilities to share their histories and experiences online. They also host topical Twitter chats, which allow participants to discuss issues of importance to them. Twitter hashtags have allowed people will disabilities to actively protest things like welfare cuts and encourage toy makers to make dolls with assistive technologies. Disability activism via social media gives those who have traditionally been marginalized a voice on an increasingly global stag e. The importance of that voice cannot be understated.


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