#HandsOffMyADA

Abstract

Twitter continues to be used increasingly for communication related advocacy, activism, and social change. This is also the case for the disability community. In light of the recently proposed ADA Education and Reform in the United States, we investigate factors for effectiveness of sharing or retweeting messages about topics affecting the rights of people with disabilities. We perform a multifaceted study of the #HandsOffMyADA campaign against the proposed H.R.620 bill to: (1) explore how communication via Twitter compares to previous disability rights movements; (2) characterize the campaign in terms of hashtags, user groups, and content such as accessible multimedia that contribute to dissemination of campaign messages; (3) identify major themes in tweets and responses, and their variation among user groups; and (4) understand how the disability community mobilized for this campaign compared to previous Twitter initiatives.