• previous post
• next post

•  RSS, Disability Field News
•  RSS, Hope House News

Facebook is a great equalizer for people with disabilities

September 8th, 2010

By Glen Chapman, AFP

Sally Harrison is developmentally disabled, but on Facebook the 35-year-old woman is just like anyone else.

Victor Tsaran scours the Web at lightning speeds and loves his touch-screen iPhone in seeming contradiction to the fact that he is blind.

Internet gadgets and software are creating a virtual world of equality and opportunity for a large segment of the population once marginalized due to physical or mental impairments.

“It is not about being able to do everything; it is about being able to do what you possibly can given your condition and the technology available,” said Tsaran, a project manager at Yahoo! ‘accessibility lab.’

For Harrison, Facebook was part of transition that took her from highly-supervised confines of a group home to getting a job and moving into her own apartment.

“She started to blossom after that,” said Lisa Giraldi, executive director of Pacific Diversified Services (PDS), an organization devoted to ‘true community inclusion for adults with developmental disabilities.’

“For Sally, it has been fantastic.”

Facebook privacy controls were set tightly and Harrison’s family signed on as “friends” and watch over her at the online social networking service.

Harrison told AFP on Friday that she has 83 Facebook friends and tries to check her online profile daily.

“It has helped me a lot,” said Harrison, who grappled with low self esteem when she was first taken on as a client by PDS.

“It is important to me because I get to connect with friends I haven’t seen in a long time.”

Read the rest of the article.