For decades, disability rights history has been shaped by a loud, courageous collective group of activists. They have coordinated sit-ins, protests, and grassroots organizing that have led to years of advocacy. These actions have led to landmark legislation, including the ADA. The movement is alive and strong today, being pulled forward in the last few years by a new wave of disability activism. This new activism does not require a physical megaphone, gathering, or march.
It starts with a phone, a camera, and someone willing to share their lived experience.
Across the various digital social media platforms, podcasts, blog sites and communication channels, disabled content creators are transforming the way society understands disability. Their voices, stories, humor, and everyday experiences are reaching millions - often faster and more effectively than traditional advocacy channels. In many ways, these creators are the new front line of the disability rights movement.
Visibility is a form of advocacy - representation matters, self-representation is revolutionary.
Disabled creators are rewriting narratives by showing life from the inside, not as a medical case or a charity story, but as a full human experience. Their content often shows what rarely makes it into mainstream media:
- The nuance of chronic illness
- The creativity of access hacks
- The cultural beauty of Deaf and disabled communities
- The honest truth about discrimination or inaccessible systems
This everyday visibility normalizes disability in a way that no public awareness campaign ever could. When people watch a disabled creator talk about their morning routine, review adaptive tech, or share a candid moment, it chips away at decades of stigma.
Digital platforms give power back to disabled individuals - traditional media has long filtered disability storytelling through non-disabled decisionmakers. Digital platforms changed that.
Disabled Creators can now:
- Control their own narratives
- Tell messy, complex, joyful stories
- Build community on their own terms
- Challenge stereotypes directly
- Reach global audiences without gatekeepers
The shift is empowering and political. It restores ownership of identity and experiences to the people who live it.
Humor, honesty, and humanity break down barriers. While documentaries and advocacy organizations play a role, everyday creators bring the uniquely powerful component of relatability.
A disabled creator using humor to talk about mobility aids can teach more in 30 seconds than a corporate training video teaches in an hour. A Deaf creator explaining caption accessibility invites empathy and action. A chronically ill creator sharing the ups and downs of a flare day gives non-obvious disabilities a way to be seen.
These are micro-moments of education and create an opportunity to understand someone's lived experience.
Online communities are becoming support and power networks - disability culture thrives in community. Online spaces are becoming hubs where people share resources, encourage one another and organize.
Creators often spark:
- Hashtag movements
- Access-awareness campaigns
- Calls for inclusive policies
- Disability Pride discussions
- Collective demands for better accessibility in the community, workspace, tech, and media
In many ways, these communities mirror the grassroots organizing of the past. They now just happen digitally and globally, with an incredibly powerful impact.
Their impact reaches beyond social media. Disabled creators influence:
- Workplace inclusion
- Accessibility standards
- Product design
- Media representation
- Political advocacy
- Disability employment conversations
Companies, educators, and policymakers are listening. When creators speak up about inaccessible hiring processes, biased technologies, or ableist policies, those messages get amplified far beyond their channels.
Their lived experience becomes data, their presence becomes pressure, their voices become catalysts for change.
Disabled storytelling is expanding what “Disability Rights” means. Today’s movement is broader than ever.
It includes:
- Disability justice
- Intersectionality
- Mental health
- Neurodiversity
- Chronic illness
- Aging and disability
- LGBTQIA disability experiences
- Cultural and linguistic diversity, such as Deaf and signing communities
Creators are showing that disability is not a monolith, it’s a spectrum of stories, identities and strengths.
This evolution is reshaping not just policy conversations; it is expanding cultural understanding.
Advocacy rooted in authenticity: disabled creators are a powerful force sharing knowledge and lived experiences, they don’t always set out to be activists. They are living their lives openly and being transparent about the social constraints and barriers that exist today.
The disability rights movement didn’t end with the 504 sit-in or the signing of the ADA. It is constantly evolving. Disabled content creators are building the next chapter each time they post a video, create a post, or share an honest moment of their lived experience.
They are educating. They are advocating. They are shifting culture. They are proving that disability is not something to hide - it is something to share, to celebrate, and to empower.
Creators to Watch:
- Squirmy and Grubs Shane and Hannah Burcaw - relationship vloggers changing the way society understands disability.
- Imani Barbarin @crutches_and_spice - disability rights activist and writer
- Jo “Footless Jo” Beckwith @FootlessJo - below-knee amputee creates content on disability, mental health and chronic pain
- Jessie Owen - @ItsWheelyJess - quadriplegic mother of twins
- Amber & Nevan Hart @AmberandNeven - spinal cord injury awareness
- Lucy Edwards @LucyEdwardsOfficial - British influence and journalist who is blind, covers accessibility and adaptive tools and her personal experience
- Annie Segarra (Annie Elainey) @TheAnnieElainey - Queer, LatinX, disabled and chronic illness (EDS)
- Jessica Kellgren-Fozard @JessicaOutofTheCloset - Deaf and Disabled Activist
- Catie Osborn Catieosaurus @Catiesaurus - Neurodivergent, mental health, relationships
- Spencer West @Spencer2TheWest - life hacks, disability awareness and humor
- Hermon & Heroda @Being_Her - Deaf twins creators
- Tiffany Yu @ImTiffanyYu Content creator, exploring what it means to be disabled & live well
Our blogger today is Leah Lobato. Leah is the Business Relations Coordinator for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, an ADA Coordinator (ADAC), and a member of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center Advisory Committee.