Memorial
November 18, 2025
Honoring Alice Wong: A Fierce Luminary in Disability Justice
Easy Does It Emergency Services joins the disability community and allies across the nation in mourning the loss of Alice Wong, a visionary activist, writer, and advocate who passed away on November 14, 2025, at the age of 51. Alice’s life and work transformed the landscape of disability rights, leaving an indelible mark on culture, policy, and community.
Born in Indianapolis to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Alice was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at birth and told she would not live past 18. Defying those predictions, she not only lived but thrived—earning a master’s degree in medical sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and dedicating her life to dismantling systemic ableism and amplifying disabled voices. [kqed.org]
In 2014, Alice founded the Disability Visibility Project (DVP), an initiative that began as an oral history collaboration with StoryCorps and grew into a powerful media platform celebrating disabled culture through storytelling, podcasts, and social advocacy. Today, many of these narratives are archived in the Library of Congress, ensuring that the lived experiences of disabled people remain part of our collective memory.
Alice’s literary contributions include editing Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century and authoring her acclaimed memoir Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, which blended humor, vulnerability, and radical insight. Her work challenged stereotypes and reframed disability as a source of creativity, resilience, and joy.
Beyond writing, Alice co-founded #CripTheVote, a nonpartisan movement engaging voters and politicians on disability issues, and served on the National Council on Disability under President Obama. In 2024, she received the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for her groundbreaking advocacy.
Alice Wong’s legacy is one of visibility, autonomy, and justice. She reminded us that disabled people must speak for themselves—and that nobody speaks for us. Her vision was clear: a world where accessibility is not an afterthought, but a foundation; where disabled lives are valued, celebrated, and free from systemic barriers.
At Easy Does It Emergency Services, we honor Alice’s memory by recommitting to her principles of dignity, representation, and care. Her work inspires us to continue building a community where every person, regardless of ability, can live safely and independently.