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Alice Wong, an author and organizer who founded the Disability Visibility Project, died at 51 of an infection at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), according to activist Sandy Ho; her family remembered her as “a fierce luminary in disability justice.” Wong’s work focused on naming and dismantling ableism while amplifying disabled people and culture through media and community organizing.
Born in 1974 to immigrants from Hong Kong and raised near Indianapolis, Wong was diagnosed at birth with muscular dystrophy and described being one of few disabled and Asian American students in her schools. She earned a bachelor’s from IUPUI and a master’s from UCSF, then worked there for more than a decade as a staff research associate. In 2014 she launched the Disability Visibility Project with an oral history collaboration inviting disabled people to record their stories with StoryCorps; the project grew into a broader hub for disability culture.
Wong’s public voice addressed policy and daily life: she argued against bans on drinking straws, called for masking in health care settings, wrote and edited widely, and co-founded the nonpartisan #CripTheVote in 2016 to connect voters and officials on disability issues. She also engaged national institutions—attending a White House ADA anniversary via telepresence robot in 2015 and serving on the National Council on Disability from 2013 to 2015—while mentoring others and building durable advocacy networks.
After medical crises in 2022, Wong communicated through digital text-to-speech and published her memoir Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, where she embraced the complexity of living “tethered to equipment, technology and electricity.” Friends described her humor, art, and generosity; she spoke of joy, interdependence, cooking for her parents twice weekly, and caring for her cats, Bert and Ernie—proof that community care and culture were central to her life as well as her work.
Read the Full Article: Disability rights activist and author Alice Wong dies at 51.
By: Chloe Veltman
