Prolific

An online participant recruitment platform used in academic research that allows researchers to screen and recruit participants based on demographic criteria including disability status. Prolific and similar platforms (such as Amazon Mechanical Turk) have been increasingly used in accessibility research for their convenience and scale. However, concerns remain about the verifiability of self-reported screening criteria, the representativeness of platform user populations, and the potential for participants to misrepresent their characteristics to access studies. Some researchers use these platforms as a starting point and add additional verification steps.