Hey Twitter, where are all the verified disabled people?

It was on 9 June when Twitter passed judgement on my notability and authenticity: “unfortunately, your request to verify your account has been denied.” The so-called ‘blue tick’, long sought after by many users on the platform, was on offer to accounts again after Twitter recently re-opened applications, but alas, it was not to be bestowed upon me on this occasion.

There are moments where it feels a little egotistical of me to complain that I didn’t receive a tiny blue icon which classes my journalism and campaigning as “notable”, but when you spend time listing your previous achievements and successes, only to receive a short rejection email, it’s understandable that someone’s pride may be somewhat dented by such a brief dismissal.

As disappointing as it is, I’ve had to march on, hoping that the 30-day countdown before I can apply again goes as quickly as possible.

I had already written about my hopes that impersonation would be an important factor for consideration when it comes to verification (after another account chose to impersonate me once I called out ableism), but in a Twitter Space on 4 June, an employee from Twitter’s trust team revealed that “impersonation is not something we’re taking into consideration”. This is despite the fact that this act of malice is often deployed against marginalised creators.

Up until this point, this article may read as an exercise in self-pity, except it soon became clear that I wasn’t the only disabled person who had had their verification request rejected. Dr Amy Kavanagh, a visually impaired activist and a good friend of mine with more than 28,000 followers, tweeted on 3 June: “Feeling disappointed that @Verified denied my application hours after submission. I provided MULTIPLE instances of news coverage over the last 6 to 12 months and referenced my #JustAskDontGrab campaign, a hashtag used thousands of times.

“But all of that dismissed in an afternoon.”

Viewing this tweet, in isolation, as evidence that Twitter’s verification system is unfairly dismissing disabled influencers would be ill-advised, and several outlets did turn down my pitch on this issue – no doubt because it is, at the moment, purely anecdotal.

But even so, Amy isn’t the only prominent disabled person to have had their application rejected. There’s a long list:

1. 1. Dr Amy Kavanagh: Visually impaired activist and founder of #JustAskDontGrab
   2. Dr Hannah Barham-Brown: Disabled campaigner and deputy leader of the Women’s Equality Party, a registered political party in the UK
   3. Kate Stanforth: Model, dancer and activist
   4. Justin Yarbrough: Blind freelance journalist and accessibility expert
   5. Brandon Cole: Award-winning blind accessibility advocate and video game consultant
   6. Grayson Schultz: Disability activist and sex educator
   7. Charis Hill: Disabled writer, speaker, and activist
   8. Rikki Poynter: Deaf YouTuber and campaigner
   9. Marin Kayden: Autistic activist
   10. Gui Fernandes: Deaf YouTuber
   11. Dan Malito: Disabled gamer
   12. Katie Pennick: Accessible transport campaigner
   13. Angharad Paget Jones: Accessibility consultant
   14. Faith Martin: Disabled journalist
   15. Teona Studemire: Disabled queer writer and Twitch streamer
   16. Wonder Cripple: Disabled activist
   17. Peter Morley: Disabled patient advocate
   18. NASCAR Sammy: Autism advocate
   19. Shona Louise: Disabled writer, photographer and theatre blogger
   20. Ellis Palmer: BBC journalist
   21. Anna Czaman: Disability activist
   22. Alan Chaulet: Chief Operating Officer at wheelchair crash-test company All Wheels Up.
   23. Alim Jayda: Hard of hearing presenter, actor and sign language interpreter
   24. Jennifer Kretchmer: Disabled producer, actor, bestselling author, tabletop game designer and streamer
   25. Robin Wilson-Beattie: Disabled sex and reproductive health educator
   26. Lucy Dawson: Disabled model and activist
   27. Tony Government: Disabled activist
   28. Silver: Disabled creator
   29. Ana: Deaf content creator
   30. MysticMoon: Disabled designer
   31. Clinton Lexa: Accessibility Product Manager at Ubisoft
   32. Chris Robinson: Known online as DeafGamersTV, Chris is a Deaf accessibility reviewer and consultant
   33. Dermot Devlin: Founder of the disabled rights and disability blog, My Way Access
   34. Emma Vogelmann: Policy advisor at the disability charity Scope, freelance writer and disability consultant
   35. Cristina Serråo: Lived Experience Ambassador in NHS England and Improvement working on bringing coproduction to forefront of healthcare.
   36. Tanja Kollodzieyski: Disabled blogger and literary scientist
   37. Jen Southall: Deaf professional athlete and accessibility advocate
   38. Katherine Kampko: Disabled model, actor, activist and inclusion consultant
   39. Tiara Mercius: Disability activist and juris doctorate (JD)
   40. Gabe Cazares: Disabled accessibility advocate
   41. Kayle Hill: Disability advocate and writer
   42. Courtney Craven: Founder of Can I Play That?
   43. ‘Autistic Science Person’: Autistic neuroscience graduate
   44. Sabrina Epstein: Disabled person working in public health policy
   45. The Autisticats: A group of autistic activists
   46. Matthew Broberg-Moffitt: Autistic kid lit and cookbook writer
   47. Tara Voelker: Xbox Accessibility Program Manager
   48. John Loeppky: Disabled freelance writer
   49. Mark Webb: Disabled speaker
   50. Suswati Basu: Former ITV and Channel 4 News journalist
   51. Cara Lisette: Mental health blogger and eating disorder campaigner
   52. René Brooks: ADHD campaigner
   53. Shannon Dingle: Disabled author
   54. Dr Zoë Ayres: Mental health advocate
   55. Darrell Bowles: Accessibility consultant
   56. Robert Kingett: Freelance journalist and advocate
   57. Kaitlyn Yang: VFX supervisor
   58. Rachael Rose: Disability advocate
   59. Dr Liz Powell: Disabled psychologist, author and speaker
   60. Brianne Benness: Chronically ill podcaster and #NEISVoid founder
   61. Morénike Giwa Onaiwu: Disability, race, gender and HIV justice advocate and writer
   62. Zipporah: Disabled queer writer
   63. Sara Gibbs: Autistic author and activist
   64. Syreeta Nolan: Disabled writer
   65. Veronica Lewis: Visually impaired blogger
   66. Laura McConnell: Autistic and dyslexic writer, keynote speaker and radio presenter
   67. Haley Moss: Autistic author and attorney
   68. Margaret Gel: Disabled writer
   69. Paul Amadeus Lane: Accessibility consultant and TV and radio personality
   70. Antonio I. Martinez: Disabled gamer
   71. Morgan Baker: Deaf game developer and accessibility advocate
   72. Melly Maeh: Accessible gaming campaigner and blogger
   73. Luke Sam Sowden: Blind blogger
   74. Lauren Deluca: President and executive director of Chronic Illness Advocacy and Awareness Group (CIAAG)
   75. Ben Canham: Autistic advocate and YouTuber
   76. Dax Everritt: Disabled blogger
   77. Sarah Boon: Autistic blogger
   78. Alicia Jarvis: Digital accessibility specialist, researcher and strategist
   79. Craig Ceecee: Disabled meteorologist
   80. Kathryn O’Driscoll: Disabled spoken word artist and poet
   81. Sarah Kurchak: Autistic author
   82. Wille Zante: Deaf writer and journalist
   83. Natasha Lipman: Chronically ill blogger and journalist
   84. Johnnie Jae: Disabled journalist, speaker, podcaster and advocate
   85. Gemma Stevenson: ICU World Champion, freelance broadcaster and journalist
   86. Lelainia Lloyd: Disabled artist and writer
   87. Amy Gravino: Autism sexuality advocate, consultant, author and international speaker
   88. Lydia Wilkins: Disabled journalist
   89. Kay Barrett: Disabled poet and cultural strategist
   90. Siena Castellon: Autistic neurodiversity advocate
   91. Karli Drew: Disabled activist and copywriter
   92. Hannah Hodgson: Disability activist and poet
   93. Autistic PB: Autism advocate and mental health activist
   94. Carlyn Zwarenstein: Freelance journalist and writer
   95. Allison Wallis: Freelance journalist and activist
   96. Rachael Gass: Commissioner on the DC Commission on Persons with Disabilities
   97. Tom Byford: Founder of @LGBTDisability
   98. Dr Kara Ayers: Disabled professor, researcher, writer and speaker
   99. Ashley Hubbard: Freelance journalist and ADHD activist
   100. Karen Kaiser (a.k.a. The Muslim Hippie): Mental health blogger and advocate
   101. Zemen Sarah Berhe: Black and disabled mental health activist and chemist
   102. Punteha van Terheyden: Disabled British-Iranian journalist
   103. Jade Bryan: Award-winning filmmaker and activist
   104. Elsa Sjunneson: Deafblind professor, historian, media critic and author
   105. Dani Donovan: ADHD artist, TikTok creator and public speaker

Organisations are also affected, such as:

• Open Style Lab, a New York-based non-profit which works to make style accessible to everyone, and worked on a disability-friendly deodorant with Unilever.
• Can I Play That?, a website dedicated to accessibility reviews of video games.
• CreakyJoints.org, a digital community offering support to millions of arthritis patients and caregivers.
• Deutscher Gehörlosen-Bundn (German Federation of the Deaf), the national association for deaf people in Germany.
• Transport for All, a UK-based pan-impairment organisation with a focus on making travel accessible to disabled and older people.
• CommunicationFIRST, a US-based non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting individuals who “are unable to rely on speech alone to be understood”.
• Special Needs Jungle, a non-profit organisation which offers “resources, training and information for parents and carers of children and young people with special needs and disabilities”.

I’m sure there’s more people and organisations I have failed to pick up on. If that’s you, reach out to me on Twitter, and I’ll get you added.

Since first publishing this article, some handles may have changed and links have broken. Only a limited number of people have now been verified:

1. Matthew Cortland: Chronically ill and disabled writer
2. Pete Wharmby: Autistic writer and speaker
3. Rebecca Cokley: Civil rights activist
4. John Pring: Disabled journalist and editor of Disability News Service
5. Dr Frances Ryan: Disabled Guardian columnist and journalist
6. Liam O’Dell: Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner
7. Izzie Jani-Friend: Disabled journalist and campaigner
8. Justin G: Disabled activist
9. Sara Luterman: Disabled journalist

Twitter is aware of this in some regard. One employee, speaking in an unofficial capacity, has already voiced their frustrations, and the social media platform plans to roll out a voluntary demographic survey “to better understand if our verification process is fair and unbiased”.

A Twitter spokesperson tells me over email: “Having a fair, equitable verification process is a priority and we strive to be consistent in how we’re assessing verification applications based on our policy criteria […] We’re working to introduce a voluntary demographic survey in the near future and will have more to share soon.”

Amid speculation that some applications could be processed automatically, the spokesperson went on to confirm that “trained agents” review each application against Twitter’s “official policy”. Of course, they couldn’t comment on individual cases, but shared common reasons for rejections, such as:

• Their official website input doesn’t link to qualifying website (Wikipedia, blog post or personal website are not considered qualifying)
• The email address to confirm authenticity in the application should be not be a personal email address
• The official website that the person uses in their application doesn’t link to a website referencing the applicant’s name and/or Twitter account
• News articles that reference the person are not from verified publications

There’s also the matter of timings. When I applied, I was told the process could “take up to seven days”. It actually took a couple of weeks, but people have been rejected in a matter of hours. Why?

The spokesperson got back to me once again: “If an account is not qualified based on some of those common reasons [shown above] (such as submitting a personal email address to confirm authenticity for example), then that can be the cause of a shorter response time to their verification application.”

Yet disabled people are arguing that they did meet the criteria, and with the number of rejected disabled accounts rising, more and more people are beginning to suspect bias, even before Twitter has rolled out its voluntary survey to help identify any instance of this happening.

With thanks to Poppy Field (@P0ppyField) for her support with this investigation.