Digital media platforms have been one of the key tools to help people with disabilities organize and tell their stories without the filter of traditional media.
WATCH: How social media influencers are changing the conversation about disabilityThe award-winning entrepreneur is CEO of her own loose-leaf tea brand and cafe. Her business was endorsed by one of her personal heroes, who happens to be one of the most famous people in the world. Lindsay-Noel is also a motivational speaker, and perhaps most importantly, she’s part of a wave of disabled social media creators who are confronting stereotypes and telling their stories unfiltered for the first time.
But it was true. Winfrey had found Lindsay-Noel, and wanted to add Cup of Té to her coveted list of “favourite things.”“Having grown up being obsessed with Oprah and still am, it was a dream come true. It was ‘pinch me.’ It was full circle. It was my mom’s greatest dream. It was everything all wrapped into one.”
Determined to overcome his disability, West moved to Toronto to take a job with a non-profit. In 2012, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a couple of friends to raise money for clean water in East Africa. He was literally sitting on top of the world. “So it was me unlearning and re-learning what disability justice is and what that looks like, and then understanding how I play a role in either perpetuating a negative narrative or how do I share my learning in real time and also help break down some of those barriers?”
“Institutionalization is just one way that we try to keep disability out of the public eye, and try to relegate it into the home or into private spaces, into medical spaces, to try to protect, perhaps, the rest of the population from anxieties that disability awakens.” Lindsay-Noel is also on the government of Ontario Premier’s Council on Equality of Opportunity, where she consults on accessibility issues.She showed us some of the accessibility issues she encounters every day in her neighbourhood.
If she tried to descend the ramp without help, she’d fall forward, out of her wheelchair. And if nobody was there to hold her shoulders, she’d be forced to take a more dangerous path.Lindsay-Noel has a growing fan base, more than 100,000 followers on TikTok alone, where she explains the myriad barriers in everyday life for people with disabilities. And she says if the feedback is any sign, the message is getting through.
There is still a lot of work to do before disabled people are represented in media and pop culture at a rate consistent with their numbers. Afound that only four per cent of video productions included disability themes or attributes, which is less than a quarter of disabled people’s share of the population.“There’s a couple of reasons why I’m not in favour of non-disabled people playing disabled characters,” Preston says.
“There was suddenly this opportunity to get out from behind editorial processes and financial restrictions that are placed on media production, for independent random people to start putting their word out into the mass audience and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a story to tell. Are you interested? Do you want to read it?’ And we see through from jumping from blogs up to social media, the answer is absolutely yes.
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