Last week I was fortunate to receive corrective surgery on my disabled arm, a remnant of an injury from over 9 months ago. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, changing all of our plans, it understandably delayed non-essential medical procedures like the one I needed.
July 2020 marks 30 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Twelve years ago the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) came into effect, which was the first United Nations (UN) human rights treaty of the 21st century, and also the UN convention with the largest number of signatories in history on its opening day.
As I recover, I am reflecting on what these mean for my friends and colleagues with disabilities, including disabilities that are permanent or longer-term than my own.
We have made progress through high-level decisions and cultural shifts. For example, plans for people with disabilities are now included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Global Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. Yet there is much more to do – we still have not achieved universal access, and people with disabilities are being disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple ways.
It is more crucial than ever to mitigate barriers like these during a pandemic, where online access to quality information and essential activities can directly influence health outcomes.
Here at Meedan, the Digital Health Lab is working to address "viral misinformation that facilitates the spread of a particular health outcome or disease," also called a "misinfodemic," by increasing access to expert-sourced information about COVID-19.
Meedan’s efforts to increase access include avoiding jargon to make information readable by the general public, providing a glossary with simplified definitions of scientific terms, translating information for non-English speakers, and disseminating information across diverse media channels. In this process, we cannot forget to include people with disabilities. Leaving out people with disabilities means hurting a significant proportion of humanity: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1 billion people experience some form of disability. Additionally, the ADA and CRPD require making online content, services, and systems accessible to people with disabilities.
Equality under the law does not automatically translate to equity in everyday practice. We have to do the hard work of building the inclusive world we’d like to see, and we need to continuously work on addressing ableism and centering disability justice. Meedan’s Digital Health Lab is striving to increase access to COVID-19 information for all, including people with disabilities, and we invite you to join us.
Resources:
ADA Best Practices Chapter 5 Website AccessibilityFederal Social Media Accessibility Toolkit HackpadW3C Accessibility Standards Overview
Dr. Jessica Huang currently serves as a Pandemic Response and Recovery Fellow with the Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, while working as a consultant for the COVID-19 Expert Database with Meedan’s Digital Health Lab. She is grateful to be part of the Boston Inclusion Community convened by Partners for Youth with Disabilities. Previously, she was an instructor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s D-Lab, where she collaborated on design projects in sustainable development, global health and humanitarian innovation across five continents. She holds a Doctorate of Public Health from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a Master’s in Learning, Design and Technology from Stanford University.
Last week I was fortunate to receive corrective surgery on my disabled arm, a remnant of an injury from over 9 months ago. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, changing all of our plans, it understandably delayed non-essential medical procedures like the one I needed.
July 2020 marks 30 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Twelve years ago the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) came into effect, which was the first United Nations (UN) human rights treaty of the 21st century, and also the UN convention with the largest number of signatories in history on its opening day.
As I recover, I am reflecting on what these mean for my friends and colleagues with disabilities, including disabilities that are permanent or longer-term than my own.
We have made progress through high-level decisions and cultural shifts. For example, plans for people with disabilities are now included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Global Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. Yet there is much more to do – we still have not achieved universal access, and people with disabilities are being disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple ways.
It is more crucial than ever to mitigate barriers like these during a pandemic, where online access to quality information and essential activities can directly influence health outcomes.
Here at Meedan, the Digital Health Lab is working to address "viral misinformation that facilitates the spread of a particular health outcome or disease," also called a "misinfodemic," by increasing access to expert-sourced information about COVID-19.
Meedan’s efforts to increase access include avoiding jargon to make information readable by the general public, providing a glossary with simplified definitions of scientific terms, translating information for non-English speakers, and disseminating information across diverse media channels. In this process, we cannot forget to include people with disabilities. Leaving out people with disabilities means hurting a significant proportion of humanity: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1 billion people experience some form of disability. Additionally, the ADA and CRPD require making online content, services, and systems accessible to people with disabilities.
Equality under the law does not automatically translate to equity in everyday practice. We have to do the hard work of building the inclusive world we’d like to see, and we need to continuously work on addressing ableism and centering disability justice. Meedan’s Digital Health Lab is striving to increase access to COVID-19 information for all, including people with disabilities, and we invite you to join us.
Resources:
ADA Best Practices Chapter 5 Website AccessibilityFederal Social Media Accessibility Toolkit HackpadW3C Accessibility Standards Overview
Dr. Jessica Huang currently serves as a Pandemic Response and Recovery Fellow with the Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, while working as a consultant for the COVID-19 Expert Database with Meedan’s Digital Health Lab. She is grateful to be part of the Boston Inclusion Community convened by Partners for Youth with Disabilities. Previously, she was an instructor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s D-Lab, where she collaborated on design projects in sustainable development, global health and humanitarian innovation across five continents. She holds a Doctorate of Public Health from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a Master’s in Learning, Design and Technology from Stanford University.