Disability Covid Chronicles Web Collection
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Abstract
Disability Covid Chronicles, a project compiled from 2020-2024 by New York University's Center for Disability Studies, aimed to document experiences of chronically ill and disabled people during the COVID-19 pandemic. The web collection contains their website; archived websites of other COVID-19 archive projects and disability resources; and their research, also known as fieldnotes. The fieldnotes include artwork, news articles, opinion pieces, social media posts, petitions, event listings, videos, photographs, art exhibitions, government documents, and toolkits.
Historical Note
Disability Covid Chronicles was a project created by New York University's Center for Disability Studies, to document life for chronically ill and disabled people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mara Mills, Harris Kornstein, Faye Ginsburg, and Rayna Rapp coordinated the project from 2020-2024, compiling digital materials for research for their book How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic. The Disability Covid Chronicles project considered disability to include "neurodivergence, aging, illness, mental disability, injury, and addiction," and those that might not use the term "disabled."
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into three series:
Series I: Disability Covid Chronicles
Series II: Resources
Series III: Fieldnotes
Scope and Contents
The Disability Covid Chronicles Web Collection (December 2020-October 2025) is made up of archived websites created and compiled by the Disability Covid Chronicles as part of the research for How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic and also to document the experiences of disabled and chronically ill during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2024. Materials featured as "fieldnotes" include press releases on COVID-19 guidance during the pandemic; news articles about COVID-19 and Long COVID; social media posts; government documents; survival guides for people facing higher risk of COVID-19 or triage discrimation; videos; podcasts; publicity websites related to documentaries; recaps of virtual events; art exhibitions; and artwork. Other topics documented in the research include masking messaging; government watchdogs related to COVID-19; mutual aid; protest resources; subway accessibility; COVID-19 testing; wastewater and COVID-19 postivity tracking; vaccination; experiences of quarantine; remote work; unemployment; caregiving; and medical rationing. They also documented websites on "disability experiences including incarceration, low wage and essential work, maternal mental health, anti-Asian violence, senior centers, migrant detention centers, Long Covid, public schools, the MTA, blindness and digital accessibility, arts workers, and the Black Lives Matter protests." Alice Wong's work as disability rights activist during the COVID-19 pandemic is also well documented in the collection. Although the project was national in scope, many of the websites focus on the disability community in New York City. The majority of the collection focuses on COVID-19, but there is some materials related to the mpox outbreak in 2022-2023.
Users should be aware that materials in the collection discuss suicide and violence against disabled people. Materials in the collection also include ableist language, which has been maintained to convey the meaning and reclamation of the language by creators of the material.
Subjects
Conditions Governing Access
Open to researchers without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Preferred Citation
To cite the archived websites in this collection: Identification of item, date; Disability Covid Chronicles Web Collection; TAM 857; Wayback URL; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Websites were selected by Shannon O'Neill through the use of Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. The accession number associated with this collection is 2025.079.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Due to technical or privacy issues, archived websites may not be exact copies of the original website at the time of the web crawl. Certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. Other parts of websites that the crawler has difficulty capturing includes Javascript, streaming content, database-driven content, and highly interactive content. Full-Text searches of archived websites are available at https://archive-it.org/organizations/567.
Take Down Policy
Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.
If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.
If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to special.collections@nyu.edu.
Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.
About this Guide
Processing Information
In 2025, the Disability Covid Chronicles website was added to the web archives, as well as all websites linked to and featured on the Fieldnotes and Resources pages. Websites were assessed for quality assurance and efforts were made to capture missing embedded materials (videos or attached Google documents and pdfs) in websites and any websites that experienced content drift/redirection since it was added to the website by the creators of Disability Covid Chronicles. An example of content drift in this collection includes the change of URL from twitter.com to x.com. Descriptions were supplied to most websites, but titles were retained from their website. The abbreviated name for Coronavirus disease 2019 is used as COVID-19 and Covid-19 interchangeably by the creators of the websites, which is maintained throughout the finding aid.
