Hello! Whether you’ve been following ProtestAccess since 2020, you’re just joining us now, or somewhere in between, we’re glad you’re here with us at the ProtestAccess blog. As we launch the new phase of ProtestAccess, we want to share with you more about the intentions of this blog, why this work is important, and what you can expect from the blog going forward. 

Why we’re writing a blog

ProtestAccess began in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. We started as a few people informally and rapidly transcribing videos from protests that were shared on Twitter. Over time, we grew into a network of over 100 volunteers participating in a structured process to produce transcripts, visual descriptions, and captioned videos. Our mission was to provide post-production accessibility for images and video related to Black Lives Matter and social justice in general. You can learn more about our history on the About page. 

However, as time went on, we began receiving fewer requests for accessible content. Since its earliest days, we have worked toward a shared vision: “ProtestAccess strives for a world in which we need not exist because accessible media is the standard.” Since we were receiving fewer requests, did that mean that we no longer needed to exist? 

We wish that we could declare this vision a reality. We wish that we lived in a world where all media, and social justice-related media in particular, is accessible to everyone. But unfortunately, any internet user who uses transcripts, visual descriptions, and/or captions will tell you that the second half of our vision has not come true. Just because we received fewer requests does not mean that we live in the accessible world we envision.

ProtestAccess organizers and volunteers remained fully committed to our mission to provide accessibility for social justice content. But the transcription, description, and captioning services we were providing were not the best way for us to fulfill this mission anymore. So, instead of closing down the organization, we decided to rethink our work. 

When we discussed different ideas about the future of ProtestAccess, we considered what the strengths of our organization are and what we have been able to contribute to the movement. In the first few years of our work, we have developed detailed standards for making content accessible, grounded in digital accessibility best practices, communication accessibility ethics, and the leadership of disabled BIPOC communities.

We have also developed workflows and operational policies that helped keep our organization running consistently, even in times where we had an influx of new requests or new volunteers. We continued to revise these standards, policies, and procedures over time. We learned a lot about access work, organizing, and following the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, as written by Patty Berne and Sins Invalid. Instead of using what we learned to make content accessible, what if we shared what we learned so others could do the same? 

And with that shift, the ProtestAccess blog was born! 

Blogging as mutual aid

Even though we’re no longer providing post-production accessibility to social media content, we think that a blog is another way of working towards the core of our original mission and purpose. A big part of that is because we believe that, as both a content producer and a blog, ProtestAccess is fundamentally a form of mutual aid. 

In Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), Dean Spade defines the three key features of mutual aid. The third feature of mutual aid projects is that they are “participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors” (p. 16). When ProtestAccess made content accessible, our volunteers were participating in collective action. By writing a blog, we’ll not only continue to do that but also provide resources for folks across our movement to do the same. 

While most people know about ProtestAccess because of the transcripts, descriptions, and captions we worked on, the blog will also cover ways that our organization operated. We think sharing this information is also an important part of this mutual aid project. Many of the structures that we put in place, and many aspects of the culture that we worked to create, were based on qualities of mutual aid groups. However, Dean Spade notes that a problem many mutual aid groups face is that “we dive right into the work, very concerned about how many people our project is helping, but fail to create good internal practices for our group to be strong and sustainable” (p. 65). By sharing our internal practices — what worked and what didn’t — we can help other groups avoid this problem. 

However, we think it is important to be clear that ProtestAccess’s work does not provide all kinds of accessibility at all times for all people. We focused on transcripts, visual descriptions, and captions. These kinds of accessibility also required us to learn about some other kinds of accessibility, such as content warnings. But there are so many kinds of accessibility that we did not provide, even though they are just as necessary.

We encourage other individuals and groups to share their own learning about other kinds of accessibility. Dean Spade writes, “Scaling up our mutual aid work means building more and more mutual aid groups, copying each other’s best practices […] It means intergroup coordination, the sharing of resources and information, having each other’s backs, and coming together in coalitions to take bigger actions” (p. 40-41). We look forward to coordinating with others who are committed to making accessibility the standard. 

Even though our work will change, it is important to us to keep our work going. Dean Spade writes, “We need groups and networks that do not disappear after the peak of the crisis, but instead become part of an ongoing, sustained mobilization with the capacity to support people and keep building pressure for bigger wins” (p. 33). In 2023, there is less attention on Black Lives Matter and other social justice organizing, but the crisis that our movement is responding to has not disappeared or been solved. With a blog, we are attempting to make the work of ProtestAccess ongoing and sustainable. 

Why this work is important to us

The ability to participate in social justice activism, organizing, advocacy, and general discourse should not be limited to non-disabled people only. 

Accessible content should not be limited to only those who have the ability to pay for costly accessibility services for individual use. 

The right to accessible content should not be limited only to those who have the privilege and institutional knowledge to request it, and it should not be provided based only on the discretion of institutions. 

The ability to create accessible content should not be limited only to those with advanced technical skills, and it is the responsibility of everyone to participate in creating accessible content in ways that match their own strengths and access needs. 

We believe that social justice movements should be accessible to everyone — and that when social justice movements are accessible to everyone, the movements are better for it.

We believe that individuals and groups in the social justice movement can learn to make their content accessible and can make accessibility a standard part of their work.

We believe, as stated in the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, that this work should follow the lead of those who are most impacted — which is why our work centers disabled BIPOC and why we believe other groups, even those who already have some knowledge about accessibility, can do the same.

And we believe that actualizing these beliefs can help our movement work towards the world we envision. 

What you can expect from us

Going forward, our posts will cover practical topics related to providing post-production accessibility for images and videos. (Because this type of accessibility was where ProtestAccess focused, we’ll start here, but we hope to expand into other areas of accessibility, too.) We’ll share how-to guides and other resources that guided our work. We’ll also cover topics related to the policies, practices, and workflow of our organization.

We plan to publish a new post each season. We are working on setting up a way for the blog to publish posts by guest contributors. In the meantime, if you want to write a post for the blog, please send us your idea through our contact form.

We hope you will join us, and we welcome feedback and questions at any time. We’ll meet you back here in the summer! 

In solidarity,

The ProtestAccess Blog Team

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All quotations from: Spade, D. (2020). Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). New York: Verso.