Alice Wong, Writer and disability activist, Dies

Chloe Veltman reported Saturday for NPR Alice Wong, 51, died of an infection at a San Francisco hospital. Her death was confirmed by friend and fellow activist, Sandy Ho.

Wong enjoyed a sizable online presence with a number of followers, as she was a co-founder of the #CripTheVote movement in 2016, which Veltman describes as “a nonpartisan online movement [that] facilitates discussions about disability issues between voters and politicians.” Moreover, Wong started the Disability Visibility Project and published her best-selling memoir, titled Year of the Tiger in September 2022.

“Alice Wong was a hysterical friend, writer, activist and disability justice luminary whose influence was outsized,” Veltman reported Ho said of Wong in her email message. “Her media empire, the Disability Visibility Project, left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape of our country. The legacy of her work will carry on.”

I was saddened to hear the news Wong had died. As I said on X, we knew each other through social media—in fact, Wong told me a couple times in the past she “loved” my work—but, despite residing in the same city, never had the opportunity to meet in person and converse with more depth. I follow her on social media and found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of her opinions, particularly the plastic straw bans around the country. Advocating for disability justice—whether it be Wong’s work or my own brand of tech journalism—is a an oftentimes frustrating, lonesome, downright Sisyphean task—but Wong’s legacy reverberated for so many, and the rest of us in the disability community will surely miss her wise words. Wong’s last post on X was itself mournful, as she commented on last week’s news that Teen Vogue was shuttering its political coverage and, thusly, Wong’s popular Disability Visibility column.