The Disabled Influencers Defeating Stigma Online

Becoming an online personality can be challenging, especially when social media isn’t completely accessible for you. I spoke to three disabled rising TikTok stars…

Sam’s Story –

The background:

Sam Egerton-Kemp (@thedeafchef), 23, who was born deaf, is a pastry chef from Hampshire who uses his social media to teach sign language.

The story:

My story weirdly begins with Strictly Come Dancing. I was sitting at home, watching it with my family on television when I saw Rose Ayling-Ellis. She was a talented and incredible dancer. When I realised she was also deaf, I filled with a huge sense of pride. It’s not very often you see deaf stars on television or even social media.

It was wonderful to see somebody like me, minus the magnificent dancing skills, on the screen.

In that moment, I knew I had to follow suit. I wanted to make others feel the way she made me feel, so I did it. I crawled out of my comfort zone and dived into the world of TikTok and Instagram.

My plan was to post educational videos every single day to teach my audience about British Sign Language. The more people that know sign language, the more included deaf people will feel.

I never imagined my channel would take off, not in a million years. Yet, here I am now, with over 67,000 followers on Instagram and 18,000 on TikTok. It’s truly a dream come true.

After a couple of months, I received a message on Instagram from a parent, telling me how their deaf son had a fear of speaking, until one day he chose to address his class and said: “I watch a man on my mum’s iPhone who teaches a signing every day and I love watching him.”

When the teacher told his mum, her face flooded with tears. She was overjoyed that he overcame that stage fright and shared his love of signing with his peers.

After receiving that message, I realised what I was doing was actually making a difference. I’ve never felt prouder of anything in my entire life.

It is so important that people with disabilities understand that just because you may be different in some way, you are still capable of doing anything you set your mind to.

During my first year at catering college, those around me would question how I was to survive in this type of job due to my disability, but that was never going to stop me.

I pushed myself and worked hard to overcome any difficulties I was due to face in the kitchen and changed all my tutors' and fellow students' minds. I made them think ‘wow, he can do this.’

If I can do it, you can too.

Toby’s Story -

The background:

Toby Addison (@blindtobes), 20, from North London, is a new TikTok star who became blind at the age of 16 due to a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

The story:

There I was, sat in the front row at a Russell Howard stand-up comedy gig back in late 2021. During a segment of the show, called ‘The Spotlight’, comedian, Aaron Simmonds, came on and began making a joke about his disability, cerebral palsy.

Everyone cheered, apart from me apparently. That was when he chose to single me out.

Pointing at me, he said: “You didn’t cheer mate.”

My girlfriend elbowed me so that I knew it was me he was addressing. He then continued to ask questions about myself in an attempt to make me the butt of the joke.

This was when he asked: “What’s your favourite disability?”

I didn’t need words to respond to that. I sat there, chin up, and held my white cane in the air. Smug as a bug.

“Wow. There’s a room of 300 people, and I managed to pick on the only blind guy.”

The comedian was stunned.

The crowd roared.

That was my rise to fame. After a clip of the show went viral on TikTok I decided to make my first ever video, with my girlfriend's help, to answer questions people had about what happened.

That video somehow attracted 590,000 likes and received 3.7 million views in total. It was madness, I got so lucky. I never imaged it going viral. At most, I had hoped a few people would get some of their questions answered.

Most people questioning the show speculated that it was all staged, but it definitely wasn’t.

The disbelief continued, with comments including: “If he’s blind how did he pick up his cane? It’s fake” and “he’s not blind, his eyes move.”

That kind of scepticism online is extremely invalidating.

Thankfully, I am good at ignoring ‘hate’ comments. However, sometimes people will make nasty comments about my girlfriend and that does affect me. Why would you target someone with rude or unnecessary remarks for no reason?

Due to the swarm of comments I had, claiming I was faking my disability, I decided then that I was going to start my mission to raise awareness for the blind community online.

I started making videos centred around how I do things as a blind man. How does a blind man play football? How does a blind man go to the gym? How does a blind man make his dinner?

I had never really considered these before, since they had just become my way of life, but sharing information like this really started gaining traction online and was raising awareness in a positive way.

My biggest achievement so far was reaching 40,000 followers. It happened so quickly. At first, it was quite daunting. I had never really used social media before, at all, and then I suddenly had all of these people interacting with me, but I loved it.

Three months later, I have 160,000 followers on the platform and my life has completely changed. Social media is now my entire life, it’s my hobby, my career and what I love to do.

Hands down the most important thing for me is to spread awareness and tackle these misguided and misinformed opinions that people have about the blind and visually impaired.

If I lost my following today and started from scratch, I’d still keep doing it. I’m very lucky to have the following I have but I don't do it for the numbers or the potential money I could get out of it.

I do it to make sure that awareness is getting spread in the right way.

Frasier’s Story -

The background:

Frasier Cheng-Binns (@deaffrasier), 27, is a British-Singaporean TikTok creator and graphic designer based in Australia.

Born profoundly deaf in both ears, Frasier received his first cochlear implants at the age of two.

The story:

I launched my TikTok channel in March of 2019 with the aim of making people laugh.

Comedy is what it has always been about, with a bit of dark humour added into the mix.

Three years later and I have an audience of 500,000 people which is pretty surreal but pretty cool at the same time. It’s hard to really picture that amount of people being interested in just you.

My content has remained similar over time, but I try to use more of my graphic design and tech skills now to interpret my humour in a slightly different way, whether it’s through skits featuring myself, or animated videos.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML3X91Ne/?k=1 (An animated TikTok by @deaffraiser: ‘Last night I had a dream’)

Where there’s a large fan base, there’s also ‘haters’ in the comments trying to drag you down. I often receive offensive comments about my disability or my Asian heritage, but I try hard to not let them bother me too much.

Dark humour is my coping mechanism. I often respond to any negative or inconsiderate comments with a comedic comeback, or I mock them. People who leave these kinds of comments are attention seeking and it’s not worth getting upset over.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML3XrkcJ/?k=1 (One of Frasier’s videos reacting to insensitive comments on his TikTok: ‘JuSt A jOkE!’)

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Image credits: Top right - Sam Egerton Kemp. Middle right - Toby Addison. Bottom right - Frasier Cheng-Binns