Digital Me: Tackling Disability Hate Crime with Your Voice Counts
Digital Voice’s innovative Digital Me programme allows vulnerable people to tell their powerful stories to decision makers. Participants create digital avatars of themselves, allowing them to talk about their experiences safely, anonymously and honestly.
This year’s lockdown meant a rapid remodelling of our plans to ensure that the people involved could engage fully, in a safe and enjoyable way. In Your Voice Counts, we found a partner that was willing to adapt to the very challenging circumstances. Your Voice Counts is a charity that supports people with learning disabilities, autistic people and people who are at risk of exclusion due to disability, illness or other challenges. Their Digital Me project brought into sharp focus the often difficult and distressing experiences that people with disabilities face in their daily lives.
“This piece of work we did with Digital Voice was incredibly powerful. We are acutely aware here at Your Voice Counts of the exploitation people with Disabilities, in particular Learning Disabilities can experience in society and the impact it has on their lives. To be able to highlight, showcase and elicit such difficult and challenging experiences and present them in such an engaging way was absolutely amazing and we are so proud of this video. The way Digital Voice used the animation brought a different energy to the space and obviously helped the people in the video feel at ease when sharing their personal stories.”
Lindsay Henderson, Head of Communities, Your Voice Counts
What DigitalMe does so effectively is uncover these unheard stories and give them a platform, they become an advocacy tool. Alongside the launch of the film we held an online panel event featuring a diverse group of speakers including disabled people and their advocates, representatives from transport, local authorities and policing, and the MP for Blaydon Liz Twist. Also in attendance was an audience of more than forty health, community and disability professionals and volunteers, carers and people with lived experience of disabilities and disability hate crimes.
“We now use the video as a tool to educate other people we work with in order to keep them safe from future hate and mate crime. Thanks again Digital Voice for yet another successful partnership venture!”
