On the Early Web, People With Disabilities Found Community and Autonomy

By Melanie Ehrenkranz

Growing up in rural Oregon, Erin Lauridsen didn’t have a lot of contact with blind people like herself. She recalls there being one other blind person in her town, but they were much older and, unlike Lauridsen, had lost their vision later in life. So when her family got dial-up internet during her high school years in the late ‘90s, she said the first thing she did was find other blind students online, people she could relate to who were already out in the world living their lives. She read their stories. She got to know them.

Read more at Gizmodo