Online spaces have been crucial for disabled people to:
- Find others with similar experiences
- Share information about benefits, access, and survival
- Organize campaigns and mutual aid
- Rest, vent, and laugh together
This page offers ideas for where and how to look, rather than endorsing specific platforms.
- Reddit – Subreddits for specific conditions, disability in general, benefits, and assistive tech.
- Discord – Servers run by disability communities, game groups, student orgs, and mutual aid projects.
- Mastodon / federated social media – Instances focused on disability, chronic illness, and leftist organizing.
- Facebook groups – Still widely used for local disability organizations and parent networks.
- Instagram, TikTok, YouTube – Creators sharing lived experience, education, and humor.
Contributors are encouraged to add platform-neutral descriptions of spaces (for example, “anonymous Q&A space about benefits in X country”) without doxxing individuals.
¶ Safety and boundaries
Online spaces can also carry risks:
- Medical misinformation and cure scams
- Harassment, trolling, and ableist comments
- Racism, transphobia, fatphobia, and other oppressions
- Abusers using disability communities to find targets
Some tips:
- Lurk first to get a feel for the culture.
- Check whether moderators are transparent and responsive.
- Be cautious about sharing full names, locations, or medical documents.
- Remember you can leave or mute spaces that harm you.
¶ Making and maintaining community
Online connection can be real and deep. People:
- Build long-term friendships and chosen family
- Organize local meetups or mutual aid from an online starting point
- Collaborate on zines, art, research, and campaigns
At the same time, it’s okay if your capacity to engage changes. Community should make your life more livable, not more exhausting.