Friends - Social media for people with disabilities or neuropsychiatric disabilities, 2012

People with disabilities or neuropsychiatric disabilities often have different and narrower interests than the average population. Such interests can be cultivated on the web. It is well known that relatives and support personnel are often hesitant to let people with disabilities or neuropsychiatric disabilities use the internet and to engage in social media. In many cases it does not seem as carers and support personnel have thought of the joy and benefit these groups might have to use such media to a greater extent, regardless of computer competence and IT comeptence. In these groups, it is often difficult to make social contact face to face. Social digital media can be of vital importance to these individuals opportunity to make new contacts. Presumably the friendships via social media could lead to contact in other ways (such as email, SMS, phone and possibly meetings). It is also a democratic right to be included and to participate. Another aspect is that it can be difficult to meet others with the same special interest for a person who has a particular narrow interest. There is perhaps only one other person in the country who are as deeply interested in one particular airline personnel. Then social media is a fantastic tool for associating with peers, regardless of where you live.

With the FRIENDS project we want to help people with disabilities or neuropsychiatric disabilities to get more friends who they can communicate with via social media and, hopefully, by extension, also in real life. We will identify opportunities for the use of social media for individuals with cognitive challenges, particularly with regard to security, privacy and accessibility. We want to create, run, and test a small, sheltered online community: FRIENDS. We will investigate and document how such social networking sites can be managed and handled editorial for it to actually being sheltered and safe.

For further information about "Friends - Social media for people with disabilities or neuropsychiatric disabilities, 2012", please contact the principal investigator.