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Purpose And Platform: Accessibility Influencers
Many individuals with disabilities say they just want outsiders to see an authentic portrayal of their daily lives, from their hurdles to their humor. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram are providing distribution and control of their stories in ways once unimaginable—and allowing people with disabilities the chance to reach audiences once unheard of.
The below disability influencers and advocates power change in ways no gadget could. Whether through hilarious videos, insightful posts or high-profile writing, creators can provide the ultimate insight and edutainment—not just for their community, but for the vast population of non-disabled people who want to learn.
Jordyn Zimmerman is autistic and was nonspeaking until she used an iPad, her first effective communication tool, at age 18. She has been a prominent advocate for the use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) in the decade since. "When we cannot expressively say what we think, ask questions, refuse something, or share a story, it creates an internal silence," she says. Once she found her voice, Zimmerman rapidly found her way onto a national stage: she has presented (often as the keynote) at 69 conferences, schools and businesses, reaching 30,000 people. She was featured in the 2021 film This is Not About Me and has written op-eds for The New York Times. She chairs the board of the nonprofit CommunicationFIRST and has served on the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. Her firm, Accessible EDU Consulting, works with schools, educators and families to provide inclusive and challenging educational experiences for students with disabilities.
Where once people with nonverbal dyskinetic cerebral palsy (meaning they can't speak or normally control their limbs) stayed in the shadows, social media has given the public once-unimaginable views into their everyday experiences. No one leverages this opportunity more than Brad Heaven, a spectacularly joyful Montreal native whose 323,000 followers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms watch him control his iPad with his eyes to shop online, conquer Las Vegas, and play Rocket League with his head, knees and elbows. 'Gaming is a great social aspect and can allow people to see what your personality is without seeing your disability,' Heaven says through an artificial speech device. Heaven's videos have been watched more than 64 million times.
A former Goldman Sachs employee, Tiffany Yu brings business savvy to disability advocacy. She was left partially paralyzed and with PTSD after a car crash that killed her father when she was a teen. "About 15 years ago, I took a look around. I had been disabled for over 10 years and I didn't have a community,' she says. 'I didn't know how to self-advocate. I knew how to hide." Instead, she took action. Yu created Diversability, an online community for people with disabilities. She recently published the book The Anti-Ableist Manifesto, and produced the 300-part Anti Ableism social media series, which has covered new research, provided insight to her Instagram audience on what has been estimated as a $18 trillion disability market, and advised viewers on disability-related language to avoid common micro-aggressions. Salesforce worked with Diversability to train administrators with disabilities. Yu also runs an organization that has awarded one hundred $1,000 micro-grants to projects in 15 countries. She serves on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games advisory group on workforce development, and the NIH National Advisory Board for Medical Rehabilitation research.
Based in London, Dhanda is a go-to accessibility consultant for dozens of major companies such as LinkedIn, HSBC and Unilever, where she addresses accessibility across products, customers and employees. She was crucial in the development of adaptive clothing for Primark and Fred Perry; worked with Virgin on a marketing campaign featuring a wheelchair user; and advises the United Kingdom government's disability unit on the accessibility implications of proposed laws and national policy. 'One thing doesn't meet anybody's needs,' says Dhanda, who has brittle bone disease and frequently must use a wheelchair. 'It's a massive ecosystem—you can't do one without the other. Everyone needs to be on the same track for real accessibility to be achieved.'
Speaker and activist Margaux Joffe founded the website Kaleidoscope Society—and later, Minds of all Kinds—after her ADHD diagnosis. While a head of product at Yahoo, she proposed creating an employee group for neurodivergent employees, the tech industry's first. It grew rapidly, and Joffe moved into accessibility full time. She asked about getting photos of people with disabilities on Yahoo! sites, but creators told her they relied on Getty Images, one of the world's largest image banks. So she pitched a partnership between Getty and 17 disability organizations to create a new collection to showcase people with disabilities, write guidelines on how to represent disabilities for 200,000 photographers, and research how people with disabilities want to be represented—in routine situations, as it turned out. "A lot of [disabled] representation is two sides of a spectrum, either pitiful or heroic," she says. "Images of people in a fake wheelchair in a dark corner looking sad, or people with disabilities as superheroes." The new images have been downloaded by 5,000 businesses for use in advertisements, web pages, social media and other content.
Hannah Aylward (L) and Shane Burcaw (R)
Studio Twelve:52
For so long—and still—the conventional media has portrayed disabled people through lenses of challenge and inspiration. How about fun and adventure? Marriage and fertility problems? Those everyday subjects are the focus of Squirmy and Grubs (a.k.a. Hannah Aylward and Shane Burcaw), who invite millions of subscribers on YouTube and other platforms into their everyday life, and how Burcaw's spinal muscular dystrophy—he is in a wheelchair and cannot control his arms—usually, but not necessarily, impacts it. From scary amusement-park rides to how Burcaw 'got 30% bigger!' (through better nutrition), their videos entertain and alter perceptions, but also have led to real-life change. (After Burcaw profiled how he couldn't sign up for TSA Precheck because the camera was too high and his arms couldn't reach the fingerprint scanner, TSA updated hundreds of enrollment centers with accessible equipment.) But their videos—which have been viewed more than 760 million times—are ebullient and downright hilarious, like the one where they read and cringe at each other's journals. 'The general goal is to improve how society views disabilities,' Burcaw says. 'Our life is not a tragedy.'
Lucy Edwards' videos have been viewed more than one billion times—but never once by her. Blind since she was 17, Edwards' massive audience of 2 million followers goes beyond fellow low-vision people, who get tips on how to navigate hotel stairs and apply makeup, but also sighted people, whom she invites into her world and answers questions they would otherwise be afraid to ask. (Like, 'What does a blind person see?') Based in the United Kingdom, Edwards is far more than a social-media influencer—she does segments for BBC, models for Procter & Gamble's Pantene hair products, and was the face for Mattel's first blind Barbie doll, complete with fashionable cane and clothes with different tactile textures and velcro to make them easier to dress. 'That play and that moment of imagination,' Edwards says, 'is being given to young vision-impaired kids who were basically pushed out from being able to imagine different worlds.'
During times of disaster, people with disabilities experience more challenges and are frequently left out of emergency communications and plans. For example, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal government froze the zone around the Twin Towers and then realized its communications and alternate transportation weren't accessible—so they called on Marcie Roth, then at the National Council on Independent Living. "I found myself providing guidance and technical assistance to the White House on what happens for people with disabilities and disasters," she says. It's been her focus ever since, as a leader at the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Barack Obama, on the United Nations Secretary General's Early Warnings for All global initiative (which plans on assuring every person on earth access to early warnings by 2027), and as executive director of the World Institute on Disability, which among other strategies uses 1,500 disabled testers to determine whether systems are accessible.
