Honoring Alice Wong’s far-reaching legacy

Alice Wong (1974-2025) was many things to many people: storyteller, cyborg, disabled Asian American activist, a troublemaker, night owl, and much more. Her legacy is far reaching, and Wong shared that, “technology, accessibility, and a hard-core will to live shaped (her) into a cyborg oracle ready to spill some hot truths.”

Wong was born to Chinese immigrants who moved from Hong Kong to Indianapolis, Indiana, and was the oldest of three daughters. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when she was 2, which weakened her muscles over time, and doctors told her parents that she wouldn’t live to the age of 18. By the time she was 14, she had developed severe scoliosis. Wong used a walker, then a manual wheelchair, and eventually, a power wheelchair along with a non-invasive ventilator (BiPap), and a mask over her nose attached to a tube to stay alive.

Ableism conscripted me into activism. Other people have the luxury to opt in and out of activism like earning extra credit for a project, but not me.
-Alice Wong, "Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life"

In her writing, Wong discussed how sociology gave her a framework to channel her anger into being an advocate for others. She also wrote about how being born with a disability required her to become an activist “just for the fact of living and existing in a nondisabled world.” 

Wong moved to San Francisco for graduate school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she founded the Disability Interest Group. She served as a key member of the university-level advisory group that advocated for policies and procedures to support the needs of disabled students, faculty, and community members. She advocated for accessibility features across campus buildings, such as adding wheelchair-accessible elevator buttons and text telephones for people with hearing disabilities. Her work also informed several initiatives at the Disability Resource Center, including the integration of disability-related curriculum into health sciences, displays of disabled artists’ work, and efforts to reduce physical and digital barriers. 

San Francisco was Wong’s home for many decades and the place where she founded Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying digital media and culture through the stories of people with disabilities, in their own words and on their own terms. “I really wanted to capture these stories because it’s not really about the big names,” Wong shared with Longmore Institute Director Catherine Kudlick as part of the fifth annual Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies. “It’s about everyday people. But that to me is a form of activism, is to really amplify our lived experience.” Today, this project has hundreds of essays, interviews, and posts that highlight disability thinkers.  

Wong was involved in many initiatives including co-founding the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter with disability advocate Tiffany Yu and being a co-partner in #CripTheVote, which is committed to engaging voters and politicians about disability issues in the United States. During the pandemic, Wong advocated for the care of disabled people, particularly mask wearing in and out of health care settings and prioritizing high-risk people younger than 65 to be eligible for the first round of vaccines in California.

Wong’s writing was prolific, unabashed, and honest. She wrote from her own perspective and brought in other experts to discuss disability justice in everything from the classroom to podcasting. In addition to her activism and storytelling, Wong will be remembered for many things including her love of all things science fiction. She talked about her love of nerd culture in media and books, and often mentioned Sightglass Coffee, her favorite neighborhood coffee shop.

Wong died and “became an ancestor” on Nov. 14, 2025, sharing that she had run out of time and that her relationships, particularly with her friends and teachers, gave her a way to “fight (her) way out of miserable situations into a place where (she) finally felt comfortable in (her) skin.” The fight isn’t over, and Wong hoped that her story would be one of many that are being told about disabled people, writing, “I’m honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future.”

In her memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, Wong shared a few questions to ponder, starting with, “What is your story, and how do you want to share it with the world?” And secondarily, “Who is missing in the spaces you inhabit, and why? What can you do beyond being a ‘good ally’ to advocate for access through actions and practices?”

If you want to continue to support Wong’s work and legacy, read her memoir, a title inspired by the fact that Wong was never supposed to reach 48 years of age, her fourth year of the Tiger. You can also check out the anthologies she edited: Disability Visibility and Disability Intimacy.