Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

Alice Wong (1974-) is an Asian American disability rights activist. Wong is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She was born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a neuromuscular disorder that results in progressive muscle wasting (the loss of skeletal muscle mass). As a result, she uses a power chair to assist with ambulation and a non-invasive ventilation device to assist with breathing.

Wong holds a BA in Sociology from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and an MA in medical sociology from the University of California-San Francisco. She is a decorated expert in the field of disability activism. From 2013-2015, she was a presidential appointee to the National Council on Disability. Currently, she is an advisory board member for Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California (APIDC). She holds a number of awards, including the first-ever Chancellor’s Disability Service Award (2010).

Most notably, Wong is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project (DVP), an ongoing multimedia project and digital community dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing disability media and culture. DVP was founded in 2014, and since then, it has served as a repository for more than 100 oral and written histories from disabled contributors.