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United States Rikki Poynter is a content creator, activist, and public speaker advocating for deaf awareness and accessibility, leveraging her platforms to inform and inspire.
Rikki Poynter discussed her experiences as a Deaf YouTuber, web accessibility, and a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook in a Q&A for 'Faces Behind the Screen' series.
Rikki Poynter is recognized as a prominent deaf activist, content creator, and YouTuber known for her advocacy related to deafness, accessibility, and closed captions.
Rikki Poynter is listed as a deaf YouTuber and activist who gained popularity in 2014 after posting her first video on deaf culture.
Rikki Poynter contributes as a disabled content creator, writer, public speaker, and accessibility consultant, sharing her journey with deafness and advocating for accessible content.
Rikki Poynter is highlighted for her #NoMoreCRAPtions Movement, bringing awareness to important issues related to online accessibility, captions, and mental health.
Poynter formerly wrote articles for DTV News, a news channel providing accessible content for the d/Deaf/HoH community.
Poynter serves as the social media specialist and blogger for Deaf Women in Film, supporting deaf women within the film industry.
Poynter contributes video content to Ai-Media, a service that provides live captioning, closed captions, transcripts, and audio description.
Rikki Poynter was born on July 16, 1991, in Kirchheimbolanden, Germany. She later became a naturalized American citizen. Poynter was diagnosed with hearing loss at age 11, a condition genetically inherited from one of her parents. She describes her hearing loss as severe in her right ear and moderate to severe in her left ear. She was raised in an oral environment by a German deaf mother and an American hearing father, attending mainstream schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. Poynter has noted these school years were challenging due to a general lack of accommodations. In her early twenties, Poynter began to actively engage with the Deaf community and started learning American Sign Language (ASL) in 2015, marking a significant turning point in her personal and public identity.
Poynter began her YouTube career in 2010, initially creating makeup tutorials. By 2014, she shifted her content to focus on deaf issues and accessibility, aiming to produce more beneficial and meaningful videos. This rebrand led to her becoming a prominent voice in the deaf community, known for advocating for improved closed captioning and raising awareness about audism and other challenges faced by d/Deaf/HoH individuals. Her advocacy gained significant traction with the launch of the #NoMoreCraptions campaign in 2016, which highlighted the inaccuracies of automatically generated captions and encouraged content creators to manually caption their videos. This campaign successfully drew attention from mainstream media outlets like ABC News, BBC News, and the Huffington Post, and influenced high-profile YouTubers, including Tyler Oakley, to adopt better captioning practices.
Her activism extends beyond YouTube to public speaking engagements and educational initiatives. Poynter has led workshops at VidCon (2015, 2016) on Deaf culture and closed captioning, and participated in panels at Buffer Festival (2015, 2016) discussing science, education, and women on YouTube. She also established the website ‘Deaf Poynters’ to further disseminate information and personal stories about Deaf culture and rights. Additionally, Poynter contributes to DTV News and works as a social media specialist and blogger for Deaf Women in Film, advocating for #DeafTalent in the media industry. Her work includes collaborations with organizations like Ai-Media, providing video content to enhance accessibility services.
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