Leveraging Participation: Supporting Skills Development of Young Adults with Intellectual Disability Using Social Media

Young adults with intellectual disability are keen users of social media. However, there is little understanding about how their skills and participation in social media might be leveraged to support further skills development. Employing a participatory approach through workshops with eleven participants and interviews with eight parents, we investigated what skills young adults desire and how they might be able to leverage their participation in YouTube and Facebook to develop these skills. We found that young adults want to develop social skills of such as playing sports or learning languages, but that leveraging social media participation to do this goes beyond their typical use, and requires both collaborative support and accessible design. Based on these findings, we propose and discuss a collaboration-in-the-loop framework that integrates support through personal networks and an accessible user interface design. We conclude with a reflection on designing to leverage participation, interests and competencies to support people with intellectual disability.