By Lyndsey Pere
On Monday, March 19th the WLA hosted HLS alumna Kristin Fleschner to speak about being an advocate for people with disabilities and how she uses socials media to get her message across.
Kristin emphasized the importance of working intersectionally between marginalized groups and of using social media and visual tools to advocate for the disabled community, as 65% of all people are visual learners. Kristin explained how visual learning allows for people to resist labels by helping to break down inaccurate stereotypes.
Kristin also spoke about how she uses her guide dog Zoe’s Facebook page to spread news and raise awareness of timely issues that the disabled community is dealing with and how speaking through Zoe’s page made it easier for her to talk about disability. Through Zoe’s social media platforms, Kristin is able to reach thousands of people within 24 hours of important issues happening in the disabled community.
Kristin stressed how just as the blind community makes their social media pages accessible to the sighted community, so too the sighted community should do the same for them by including photo descriptions in their social media posts. This is especially important because, as Kristin explained, a greater percentage of the blind community (as compared to the sighted community) use social media for everyday tasks such as clothes shopping, as this is easier for them then having to travel far.
Thanks to Kristin and Zoe for coming back to HLS to share their story!
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