Swipe Left To Delete was a two-day webinar on digital gender-based violence, organised by Point Of View on December 17th and 18th, 2020. On Day 2 of the webinar, a panel explored feminist notions of sexual consent & data protection with Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project, what digital violence looks like for women with disabilities with Nidhi Goyal of Rising Flame, & mental health + counselling as an intervention for people facing digital GBV with Sonali Gupta, psychologist & author.
On this panel, Nidhi Goyal, spoke about the specific ways in which women with disabilities are vulnerable to violence. She focussed on our need to unlearn our biases and build better accessibility in the world to remove the existing invisibility of disabled women in digital spaces. She spoke about the experiences of disabled women on a spectrum of online -offline, physical – digital, public and private spaces – present all around us which needs us to recognise how disability and violence against women with disabilities presents itself in the digital world. She addressed the ways in which children with disabilities who have deformities have been used either as comic relief in memes or are bullied in these spaces because of their deformities.
She also made connections about the ways in which digital violence plays out for women with disabilities and referenced our pertinent research on COVIDs impact on disabled women and how now more than ever, we need to build awareness on accessibility and therefore an accessible world.