These Women are Bringing Disabilities Education to YouTube

YouTube continues to grown overtime as a platform where millions of creators upload thousands of videos each day. From Tag Videos to Short Films, YouTube provides a space for creators of all kinds to share their work with the world. However, it can become hard to find new creators with the overwhelming amount of content that exists on the website. With March being International Women’s History Month, what better time to highlight some of the amazing women on YouTube that are making content about disabilities, educating others on their experiences, and making online content more accessible to others.
Annie Elainey:
Annie is a queer lifestyle blogger and writer who creates content that gives audiences a glimpse of how Ehlers-Danlos impacts her life in a number of ways. Annie also creates videos that touch on body image, the LGBTQ+ community, and occasionally posts some amazing musical covers that are sure to put a smile on your face. Annie is a passionate advocate for proper representation for disabled people in a number of fields and works to shed light on invisible disabilities, their importance, and how it’s often related to limited representation of disabled people in the media. You can also find Annie at VidCon in Anaheim this year where Annie will be a featured creator.
Rikki Poynter:
Rikki describes herself as a “25 Year Old Deaf Vlogger” in her channel description, but her work online stretches far beyond a simple identifier. I first came across one of Rikki’s videos nearly a year ago where she talked about the importance of captions on YouTube Videos, which inspired me to start putting captions on to my own videos. In Sept 2016, Rikki launched an online campaign called #NoMoreCraptions that aimed to raise awareness about the inaccuracy of automated captioning on YouTube, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines of Closed Captioning, and why “jokes” are inappropriate in captions, since millions of people depend on accurate captions. If you are looking to learn more about the deaf community, Rikki’s channel is a perfect place to start, especially if you are a Pokemon fan!
Continue onto the Huffington Post to read more about the other women bringing disability education to YouTube.