Cripping Digital Storytelling: Disability, Accessibility, and Celebrating Difference

Abstract

The authors report findings from an 11-month research study where disabled adults created digital stories about life-stage transitions related to employment, post-secondary, and community living. While results about transitions have been published elsewhere, this article focuses on the online digital storytelling process as experienced by disabled adults. It begins with a brief description of crip theory and its relationship to disability. Next is an overview of the research design: a two-phased process where 13 post-secondary disabled youth were trained as digital storytelling peer-facilitators, and subsequently co-facilitated a series of digital story workshops over 8 months involving 34 disabled participants. Peer-facilitators and participants completed pre- and post-workshop surveys. Responses were analyzed guided by crip theory and content analysis. The second half of the article reports on survey findings which indicated several themes: disability pride, centering disability perspectives, the importance of crip time, and the need to consider community connection. It ends with a discussion and considerations in designing and replicating accessible online digital storytelling workshops to remove ableist barriers, amplify community, and ultimately celebrate difference.