The project’s long-term impacts include contributing to the local historical record of the pandemic as well as to present-day public narratives, thereby supporting more diverse and inclusive stories by and with people with disabilities. Perhaps even more importantly, the project builds a network between community media and the disability community that will persist beyond the pandemic.
Additional impacts can be inferred from feedback collected through formal project evaluation:
- Collaborators from both community media and disability organizations expressed gratitude for the time and resources to explore connections with one another.
- Community media collaborators said they gained enduring knowledge around inclusive language and issues unique to the disability community.
- Interviewees said they had the opportunity to share their stories on their own terms, with appropriate access, and this in turn allowed others to see stories they would not otherwise see.
- Editors said they felt that access to the full transcripts of interviews was invaluable and that they would have been unaware of many of the issues contained in the interviews without the project’s support.
Impacting the people with the power to shape community stories is a primary strength of the project that goes beyond the collection of oral histories.