Mission, Vision, and Values

Mission

The original mission of ProtestAccess was to provide post-production accessibility for social justice content. This means we added captions, transcripts, and visual descriptions to this content. This way, people with sensory disabilities (like d/Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and visually impaired people) could be involved in the movement. This also helps English language learners understand English content more easily. Now, ProtestAccess is sharing how we do this with a blog so anyone can do it too! In doing this work, ProtestAccess is committed to centering disabled BIPOC at all times.

Vision

ProtestAccess strives for a world in which we don’t need to exist because accessible media is the standard.

Values

  • Access
    • Everything we do, needs to be done with access in mind. That includes everything from the service we provide to communication among volunteers. This is the core value.
  • Equity
    • We know that equality is not enough. Different people need different things, and those differences are to be valued and respected.
  • Lateral decision-making
    • No one volunteer is more important than any other. We all rely on each other to make decisions for the organization.
  • Neurodiverse community
    • We all have different brains, and all of our brains deserve to be respected and accommodated.
  • Anti-bias
    • We actively notice our biases and work to lessen them. We know it isn’t possible to be truly neutral. We understand that taking a “neutral” position can promote harmful biases.
  • Justice and advocacy that centers disabled BIPOC
    • Disabled Black Indigenous People of Color are at the forefront of our minds in all our work. The work we do is for them above all else.

Our History

Social media is very valuable to social justice movements because it allows tons of information to be shared very quickly. For example, anyone with a phone camera can record pictures and videos of police brutality and authoritarianism. Then, they can post that content to their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. These pictures and videos can bring attention to a topic that the mainstream media often skews or ignores. 

ProtestAccess began in early June, 2020. Across the USA and the world, there were many Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd. When protests against police brutality were often met with more police brutality, brave protesters did record. They got involved. They helped and protected one another. Many people only learned about that side of the movement from videos posted on social media. 

Unfortunately, much of what is shared on social media is also inaccessible to many people.  Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, Visually Impaired people, and others were all excluded from discourse. ProtestAccess was started by a small group of Children and Siblings of Deaf Adults, communication access service providers, and others involved in Deaf communities. They started writing transcripts of the videos that they were seeing on Twitter. That way, their friends, family, and anyone else would have the information they needed to get involved.

From there, Protest Access grew in a big way. We added visual descriptions for Blind users and turned our transcripts into captions. We also extended our reach to Facebook and Instagram. What began as a group chat on Twitter became a formalized system of volunteers. At our peak, we had over 100 people around the world donating their time. We made over 600 pieces of content accessible, ranging from videos to memes. We strived to bridge the access gap and make sure everyone is included in the conversation.

ProtestAccess Now

This movement is far from over, but requests for captions, transcripts, and descriptions have gone down. Rather than stop activity, we shifted our focus to education. To create a world in which we don’t need to exist, we must share our resources. That way, anyone can more easily set up their own mutual aid groups for accessibility. So, we created the ProtestAccess Blog to share what we learned and how our organization works. We hope this blog will help make accessibility the standard across social justice movements (and beyond).

Press

Articles

Blog Posts and Resource Lists