Large-Scale Anonymized Text-based Disability Discourse Dataset

Brandon Palonis, Samantha Jane Dobesh, Selah Bellscheidt, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Yudong Liu, Yasmine N. Elglaly

Abstract: The involvement of individuals with disabilities in online discussions related to disability and accessibility is a critical area of study. While previous research has qualitatively examined the participation of individuals with disabilities on social media platforms, large-scale analysis of social media content by people with disabilities has been an underexplored area. This paper presents a pioneering large-scale study of disability communities on Reddit. We developed an anonymized text-based dataset that consists of 1.5 million comments posted on three subreddits: r/disability, r/Blind, and r/ADHD. Using topic modeling, we analyzed the dataset and identified eight highly-coherent common categories and their associated keywords across the three subreddits. We contribute an Anonymized Disability Discourse Reddit Corpus (ADDReC) of 1.5 million comments that feature eight disability discourse categories.