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  Twitter: Remaking the Persona of the Physically Challenged

by Guest Poster on July 3, 2009
  By Carmen R.  Gonzalez of Healthcare Communications Group.  
Follow her
at crgonzalez.
  American novelist James Baldwin once said, "An identity would 
seem to be
>rived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his
experience." The same can be said of those with physical 
disabilities
who are using Twitter as their stage to create newfound 
identities,
unconstrained by their bodies' limitations.  Intrigued by how 
Twitter has
empowered people to find their voice and gain acceptance and
recognition, I offer a brief overview of the new frontier being
established on Twitter by these communities.
  Connecting to the World
  One of the more dramatic uses of Twitter by those with limited 
mobility
involves University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering 
doctoral
student, Adam Wilson, who has designed a powerful communication 
system.
His technological feat allows people with ALS, brain-stem stroke 
or high
spinal cord injuries to chat on Twitter.  (Read here to watch a 
video
about his invention.) Wilson's computer interface allows people 
with
mobility restrictions to select letters that flash on the 
computer
screen with their thoughts.  Brain waves are detected by his 
system using
an electrode-wired cap.  Still in its infancy, this technology is 
planned
to enter clinical trial soon.  While it is a slow-going process, 
as most
users can select ten characters a minute, it offers a means to 
freely
converse with the outside world without anyone knowing that the 
sender
is disabled.
  Yearning for a wider social playground, Glenda Watson Hyatt, 
a.kdda.  The
Left Thumb Blogger (@GlendaWH) and author of the popular 
DoItMyfBlog,
joined Twitter's ranks.  "Working from home can be lonely and 
isolating
at times, but Twitter provides me with much needed water cooler 
chatter,
so I no longer feel like I'm working in a vacuum," says Hyatt.  
Given her
steady blogging stream and active life, it is hard to describe 
Hyatt's
cerebral palsy as a physical challenge rather than a speed bump.  
Using
only her left thumb, Hyatt can keep up with the pace of Twitter's
140-character conversations, while its direct messaging features 
have
become her preference over email.  She has observed Twitter 
benefiting
others with physical challenges too, e.g.  serving as a listening 
tool by
people with hearing impairment to monitor the Twitterstream at a 
recent
Successful Outstanding Bloggers Conference, to gain a better 
sense of
what presenters were talking about.  "It's not quite the same as
real-time captioning, but it's a helluva lot cheaper!" she says.
  Advocacy For and By the People
  In a novel example of combined social media and activism, 
students at
the University of Minnesota decided to take matters into their 
own hands
when the problem of handicap parking abuse was raised.  A writing
instructor, John A.  Hatcher, challenged his students to come up 
with a
solution.  They gathered their laptops, a map of the campus and 
their
trusty new application, Twitter.  (Read here to get the details 
of their
project.) They canvassed the campus for parking violations and 
recorded
their findings through Twitter messages flagged by the hashtag
#umdparking.  The students then wrote about their findings and 
submitted
their article to the campus newspaper, encouraging readers to 
check out
their results on Twitter The students then connected with a 
university
student group dedicated to advancing disabled community issues.  
While it
is unknown if the university leadership has decided to add more
disabled-parking spaces, the simplicity and power of this 
experiment is
testament to the new opportunities afforded by Twitter.
  According to Pat Ramsey, founder of the technology consultancy 
firm
Slash25, who spoke recently at AccessU, a conference dedicated to 
the
disabled community, says, "Twitter is another channel where the 
disabled
may be heard.  This technology gives access not ordinarily 
available."
Ramsey promotes greater accessibility with social media tools 
among
those with limited mobility, yet notes there are significant 
barriers to
participation, including software incompatibility.  "Aggregators 
like
Tweetdeck are impossible to use because their controls and fields 
aren't
recognized by the interfacing software," he observed.  Ramsey 
added that
without applications like AccessibleTwitter and McTwit, many in 
the
disabled community would be not able to use Twitter at all.
  That's where groups like Abilityationet (@AbilityNet) take 
their cue in
helping people keep pace with technology, no matter their age, 
health
condition, or disability.  Located in the UK, Abilityationet has 
harnessed a
broad array of social media tools, including Twitter, to "expand 
digital
inclusion for the disabled," says David Banes, Director of 
Development.
With the advent of applications like AcccessibleTwitter and 
McTwit,
Banes does not see as many barriers to Twitter participation as 
before.
Rather, "there is a great deal of sharing of new information on
technology-z with the use of Microsoft Surface (the new tabletop
desktop)- and other key issues on Twitter," says Banes.  He notes 
that as
the disabled become more familiar with Twitter, they are adding 
new
applications to expand its functionality and are "shaping their 
own
community."
  One person already shaping her community's identity is blogger 
Sandi
Wassmer (@sandiwassmer), owner of Copious Ltd., a digital agency 
in the
UK.  Sandi, who is visually impaired, wanted to advance the work 
of
Action for Blind People, a charity providing support services for 
blind
and partially sighted people.  She decided to blog for the 
organization,
writing on all aspects of living with a disability-from the 
practical to
the sublime.  Unexpectedly, she has learned that, "my musings 
seem to be
hitting home pan-disability," she says.  By promoting her blog on
Twitter, she has expanded traditional views of what visually 
challenged
people can do and demonstrated first-hand that all people have 
more in
common than what our physical differences indicate.
  Spreading the Word
  Unsurprisingly, one of the most popular uses of Twitter by 
disabled
community groups is to share resources, scientific research, and 
legal
rights-related news and contacts.  Melissa Loe, Communications 
Director
for the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities (@TxCDD), 
has
harnessed the power of Twitter to, "help more people comddabled 
or not-to
become connected with resources, services, support, and other
information they might not know exist."
  The same is true for organizations such as The Autism News
(@theautismnews) which reports legal rulings on behalf of those 
with
autism and their caregivers.  Likewise, the U.S.  government has 
its own
web site for people with disabilities (@Disabilitygov) promoting
information about disability programs, services, laws, and 
benefits.
  Sharing success stories of resilient individuals who overcome 
their
disabilities is commonly performed by support groups and 
associations,
as shown here by United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Houston
(@Empower4All):


Plus, solidarity among the disabled is communicated through 
promotion of
anniversary events and other gatherings.  For example, the 
Paralyzed
Veterans of America Chapter 1946 (@PVA1946) encouraged 
remembrances of
their fallen military brothers and sisters over the 2009 Memorial
Holiday.
  Part of why Twitter is so successful is because "it is purely
text-based," says Internet broadcaster and IT executive Jonathan 
Mosen.
Blind from birth, Mosen was an early Twitter adopter and uses the
platform to promote his radio show, while also leveraging it for
advocacy.  Mosen tells a story involving an international treaty 
in the
works on material development standards for the disabled 
community,
noting that there was resistance from the U.S.  to such 
guidelines.  Once
that piece of political news hit the Twitter fan, he said, "a 
hashtag
was created (#sccr18) for all to comment upon and thus began an
organizing movement directed at the White House." The effort paid 
off.
"Before you knew it, the White House announced that it would back 
down
and not impede the progress of the treaty's development," he 
says.  While
such immediate grassroots activism is assisted by Twitter, Mosen
cautions, "the challenge remains to make Twitter as user-friendly 
as
possible for those who aren't tech-savvy." He believes that 
innovations
like JAWS and TwInBox are improving accessibility, so the trend 
is
moving in the right direction.  Interestingly, Mosen has even 
taken to
acting as an ersatz program debugger, rooting out incompatibility 
issues
and suggesting solutions by connecting with technicians via 
Twitter.
  Fundraising Through Community Building
  Just as disease-oriented groups like the American Cancer 
Society
(@AmericanCancer) have created Twitter profiles to advance their
organization and provide awareness on treatment and prevention, 
so too
have philanthropic groups for various physically disabled 
communities.
The Special Olympics (@SpecialO) and its related chapter 
organizations
across the United States have set up shop on Twitter, promoting 
their
fundraising events while also connecting with supporters.  By 
encouraging
their fans to retweet their messages, they created their own 
viral
marketing campaign on the fly.


Crowdsourcing
  While it is common for business people to network on Twitter, 
it is a
positive sign of autonomy and confidence for disabled 
community-based
folks to stake out the same for their audience.  In one recent 
experience
by Abilityationet, two disabled entrepreneurs polled their 
followers to
determine the likely success of their software idea, dedicated to
assisting physically challenged persons.  The community responded 
clearly
that the idea would not be profitable since similar software 
already
existed on the market for free.  "That was highly valuable 
information
that saved these business people countless sums of money," says 
Banes.
  Gaming for All
  Beyond the world of business, trendsetters are expanding access 
across
the realm of digital technology, and those opportunities include 
gaming.
Assistive technology provided by purveyors such as OneSwitch
(@OneSwitch) bridge the link between people with cerebral palsy 
and
other mobility disorders to the gaming frontier.  This company 
has a
variety of tools that make popular games/ccsoles easier for 
disabled
individuals to control, including Playstation 2.  As described by 
Barry
Ellis on the OneSwitch web site, "I like the thinking that a 
person is
disabled by their environment rather than their condition."
  The Road to an Improved Twitter
  One of the most common refrains from active Twitter users with 
physical
challenges is that Twitter's most serious flaw is not necessarily 
about
technical accessibility, but about its general reach.  Pratik 
Patel,
President and CEO of EZF-IRE, which provides IT tech solutions 
and
support to non-profit organizations, thinks that, "Twitter has a 
larger
problem about general accessibility to the platform." Patel notes 
that
Twitter hasn't done a very good job of explaining its technology 
to
people, and while that may give flight to one's imagination, it 
prevents
ordinary users "from understanding what the implementation 
actually
does."
  As a blind user, Patel relies on TwInBox as his plug-in that 
integrates
Twitter into his Microsoft Outlook application.  Given his 
technical
background, Patel has high expectations for Twitter that include 
greater
transparency with developers, to make the program more robust.  
He also
sees an opportunity for Twitter to highlight clients that are 
accessible
to the disabled community on its home page, rather than featuring
celebrity profiles as it does now.  Hyatt chimes in with her
recommendation for Twitter to provide for adjustable font sizes, 
to
assist the visually challenged.
  Some of Twitter's biggest accessibility issues could be more 
easily
resolved by lending a helping hand to developers.  One software 
engineer,
Jamal Mazrui, created a program called McTwit to assist visually
challenged persons to gain access to Twitter.  Relying on his
understanding of the Python computer language, and every resource 
he
could scout in the library, Mazrui built an extremely robust 
application
with features that are not found elsewhere (e.g.  using a hot key 
to
generate a list of the followers of one person).  Ordinarily, 
when
Twitter users send tweets, the application they are using is 
indicated
at the bottom of their message, such as Twitterfeed, Tweetdeck, 
and
others.  Unfortunately, Twitter's new authorization rules aren't
compatible with McTwit, so there's no mention of McTwit on 
Twitter
messages issuing from it.  The irony here is that few people who 
could
actually benefit from it are aware of McTwit, and by hiding its 
name, it
remains a secret.  Mazrui, who is blind, also advises how Twitter 
could
make its program easier to use by visually challenged persons:
Judiciously use headings so screen-reading equipment can more 
easily
navigate page content.
  Essentially, Twitter has the ability to champion full 
participation
among all users, even those whose bodies are challenged.  Despite 
its
shortcomings, Patel makes clear that, "Twitter has allowed my 
natural
voice to emerge." How tweet it is.
Copyright 2008-2009, TwiTip


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