Grants talk:IdeaLab/Wiki Loves the Disabled

Comments

Hi Celestinesucess, thanks for your idea about extending our base of contributors to those who are disabled. It sounds like there are two general goals to your project:

• Getting more disabled persons to contribute to Wikipedia
• Creating and improving Wikipedia article content on disabled persons.

I'd like to suggest that you focus on one of these goals for this project if you want to carry it out. You've also written that you want to work with the Girls Education Initiative of Ghana. Of the two, which goal would the organization be better able to help you achieve? If the organization has connections to groups that represents disabled persons, the former might be better to focus on. If the organization has access to information about disabled persons, the latter might be better to focus on in this project. If you're not sure right now, that's OK-- I can help you figure it out a little more. Let me know if you want to chat. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:37, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello I JethroBT (WMF) The Girls Education Initiative of Ghana(GEIG) is a non-governmental organization that provides educational support for girls in Ghana who are at the Junior and Senior High School level. GEIG has connections to groups that represents disabled persons. So it will be convenient to go with the first goal. However, If we recruit these disabled young girls, they would love to write articles about notable disabled people who inspire them and hence my reason for the second goal. With the outlined reason, do you still suggest I go with just the first goal? And yes, I am interested in chatting,thank you.--Celestinesucess (talk) 10:12, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Celestinesucess, this seems like a brilliant idea to me. Which category of disabled persons are you looking at? Physically challenged or people with moderate to severe intellectual disability? If you like to focus on the physically challenged persons, what category? The blind, crippled, deaf and dumb? My understanding is that you can't subject this set of people to the same Wikipedia training or workshop. For example, you can't train the blind the same way you will train a cripple or deaf and dumb. Who are the resource persons in your community that are knowledgeable in training the blind or deaf and dumb for example ? I'll like to suggest that you focus on one disabled group. Maybe you should focus on the cripples for a start and if you will be interested in the blind, that's also fine. I know a remarkable editor, User:Graham87 on the English Wikipedia who is actually blind. Please, get in touch with him if you will be interested in the blinds. Graham may put you through on some things. With kind regards. Wikicology (talk) 18:48, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@Celestinesucess: Thanks for your reply, I understand the situation a little better. Given what you've said about GEIG and its connections to other groups, I agree that both goals are feasible in this project. I'll follow up with you either on your talk page or via e-mail where we can talk more about what your next steps are and where I can help you out. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Is there even a problem?

Disabled people are the minority in the population, and as such you would expect them to be an equal minority on Wikipedia. There is no need for discrimination -or any kind of correlation between being disabled and not being a wikipedia editor- for this to be the case. Even if you encounter more disabled people in your daily life than on wikipedia, that may just mean that you surround yourself with an abnormally high amount of disabled people. Even if the set of all Wikipedia editors has a lower ratio of disabled people than the general population, this needn't be active discrimination.

If disabled people take more time and effort to train than normally abled people, then resources could be more efficiently spent training normally abled people. If a disabled person really wants to, I'm sure they can still edit wikipedia without being catered to specifically, albeit requiring more effort.

Most importantly, if the set of all wikipedia editors ends up having a higher ratio of disabled people than the general population due to policies and efforts like this that specifically recruit them, that would be (is?) discrimination against normally abled people.

Now, if you can demonstrate that disabled people less likely to be Wikipedia editors than they otherwise would be due to discrimination, then efforts should be made to combat that, so can you present evidence that they are? Illiteration (talk) 03:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Illiteration. That kind of evidence or justification simply isn't necessary to run this project. A fundamental part of Wikimedia projects is that anyone can contribute to or support them. Volunteers interested in supporting projects through outreach work are free to work with many different kinds of groups. Such groups are often in a position to identify gaps in coverage in specific topic areas on our projects. Furthermore, the prospect of an outreach project to invite and train disabled persons to contribute, and to encourage improvement of topics related to disabled persons, is not actually discriminatory toward anyone. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)