Should I Share This Inspiring Story About Disability? A Checklist

TL;DR: Usually, no.

NOTE: If you're new here, welcome! When I write about accessibility, you will find that I use the terms "people with disabilities", "PWD", "the disability community", and "disabled people" interchangeably. This is something I deliberately do to challenge our institutional insistence on "person-first language."

The other night I was dismayed to see several people I follow on social media sharing, liking, and "loving" the same new viral story about a PWD. These stories are great for the people and their families, when shared personally and on their terms. But then, sometimes the stories are picked up for likes and shares, and go viral  by playing into the abled narrative: disabled people don't just live their life and enjoy new experiences for their own sake; they exist to teach everyone about how grateful we should be to be able to do something they can't.

I was so confused as to why, after so many posts, conversations, and shared links, that people close to me still didn't get it. Didn't think critically about this story and whether they should share it before hitting "share post." Didn't think about the lived experience of PWD before deciding that the person featured existed to teach the world about gratitude. I wondered what I was even doing here. I wrote a FB post about it, then deleted it almost immediately, thinking about the fights I didn't want to have.

I slept on it and decided to write this post instead.

This, of course, is not just about that one post. I've also seen posts across groups and Twitter threads where library staff share their sweet stories to keep us all going-- and some of these happen to specifically mention the fact that the person they were helping was disabled, or "looked" disabled. Occasionally these posts are called out in the comments, to be defended as "I just wanted to share a story." Members in groups tag mods who assert that it's the job of disabled members to educate other members, that everyone is "still learning." (if you're serious about learning, there is a Facebook group-- here-- that exists for PWD to volunteer their time to answer questions). As if Google doesn't exist. As if we're not all information professionals.

So I decided to make checklist about whether or not to share stories about disability you find "inspiring", particularly if you are an abled person.