Browsing by Author "Li, Hanlin"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    #accessibilityFail: Categorizing Shared Photographs of Physical Accessibility Problems
    (ACM, 2016-10) Li, Hanlin; Brady, Erin; Department of Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Social media platforms are existing online spaces where users share their daily encounters, providing a large dataset of photographs of inaccessible environments. We analyzed 100 posts from Twitter and Instagram that describe accessibility problems. Our findings suggest these posts are helpful to locate, identify and communicate accessibility problems, and provide design ideas for potential assistive technologies. We suggest design implications using social media posts to improve physical accessibility.
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    ActVirtual: Making Public Activism Accessible
    (ACM, 2017-10) Bora, Disha; Li, Hanlin; Salvi, Sagar; Brady, Erin; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Technology-mediated public activism has grown popular in recent years with the high uptake of social media. Facebook and Twitter have become venues for activists to participate in online activism, or organize offline activism events. However, due to accessibility barriers in physical environments and accessibility issues in social media, people with disabilities continue to face challenges when they engage with such social movements. We interviewed 22 disabled activists about how they used technology to mediate civic engagement and barriers they faced. We present preliminary findings from these interviews and describe a potential solution named ActVirtual, a mobile platform for accessible activism. Our future work will include implementing and testing ActVirtual with users to make online and offline activism more accessible.
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    Slacktivists or Activists?: Identity Work in the Virtual Disability March
    (ACM, 2018-04) Li, Hanlin; Bora, Disha; Salvi, Sagar; Brady, Erin; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Protests are important social forms of activism, but can be inaccessible to people with disabilities. Online activism, like the 2017 Disability March, has provided alternative venues for involvement in accessible protesting and social movements. In this study, we use identity theory as a lens to understand why and how disabled activists engaged in an online movement, and its impact on their self-concepts. We interviewed 18 disabled activists about their experiences with online protesting during the Disability March. Respondents' identities (as both disabled individuals and as activists) led them to organize or join the March, evolved alongside the group's actions, and were reprioritized or strained as a result of their involvement. Our findings describe the values and limitations of this activism to our respondents, highlight the tensions they perceived about their activist identities, and present opportunities to support further accessibility and identity changes by integrating technology into their activist experiences.
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    Working Toward Empowering a Community: How Immigrant-Focused Nonprofit Organizations Use Twitter During Political Conflicts
    (ACM Publications, 2018) Li, Hanlin; Dombrowski, Lynn; Brady, Erin
    In the digital age, social media has become a popular venue for nonprofit organizations to advocate for causes and promote social change. The 2016 United States Presidential Election occurred amidst divisive public opinions and political uncertainties for immigrants and immigration policies were a frequently-contested debate focus. Thus, this election provided an opportunity to examine nonprofit organizations' social media usage during political conflicts. We analyzed social media posts by immigrant-focused nonprofit organizations and conducted interviews probing into how they managed their online presence and social relations. This study finds that these nonprofit organizations adopted three key strategies to support their target community: 1) disseminating content about immigration-related issues and policies; 2) calling for participation in collective endeavors to influence the political climate; 3) engaging in conversations with outside stakeholders including political actors, media, and other organizations. We use empowerment theory, which has been used widely to study marginalized populations, as a theoretical lens to discuss how NPOs' social media usage on Twitter reflects their endeavors to bring information and calls to action to immigrant communities. We, then, present design opportunities to amplify the advantages of social media to help nonprofit organizations better serve their communities in times of political upheavals.