Thread by @elizejackson

I’m sounding an alarm here. Please pay attention. Microsoft is partnering with the World Bank to extract data (and labor) from disabled people, while failing to center disabled people in policy decisions about how that data will be used. Help me demand answers to two questions:

https://twitter.com/worldbank/status/1537510356930678791

1. How many unaffiliated disabled people were a) in the room at all, and 2. How were their insights taken into account when this ‘Data Hub’ was being workshopped?

I’m telling you, if we don’t hit the brakes on this ASAP, it’s going to further marginalize a lot of disabled folks under the guise of bridging the disability divide.

https://twitter.com/elizejackson/status/1537839702581059591

Thank you @Wolven for your guidance on this.

Microsoft and the World Bank are working “in collaboration with the Disability Data Initiative at Fordham University.” I’d never heard of it before, but I’m concerned by this acknowledgement in their 2022 Disability Data Report.

The editors are the Fordham Professor who created the Disability Data Initiative and her research fellow. How is there going to be any oversight if she’s using her acknowledgement section as an asterisk?

Seems to me the disability divide falls between about us and without us which is exactly what this project perpetuates. The tell happens when it says it offers “information on persons” rather than “to persons.” Definitely not for us.

Before Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer claims this is disabled-led because she's boss, I need to point out her evasive response to a reporter asking about companies getting it wrong. What does she expect companies are going to do with this data?

https://twitter.com/elizejackson/status/1537596283837456384

In this Forbes article, Flurrie claims that Microsoft will "start holding community meetings during which people can offer feedback" and that "having that community insight is really our first and top priority right now"

https://twitter.com/steven_aquino/status/1537553031318806528

In response to this, I encourage you to read this #DisabilityDongle paper, written by @alexhaagaard, @FractalEcho, and myself, in which we describe the inherent power dynamics embedded in the expectation of feedback from unaffiliated disabled people. blog.castac.org/2022/04/disabi…

Furthermore, community... ok, end of thread.

https://twitter.com/elizejackson/status/1534546720343920640