ActVirtual: Making Public Activism Accessible

Abstract

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.