Expressive Writing

A therapeutic writing practice, formalised by James Pennebaker in the 1980s, in which individuals write about emotionally significant or traumatic experiences for short, repeated sessions. Decades of empirical evidence link expressive writing to measurable benefits in physical health, emotional regulation, and immune function. For accessibility, expressive writing interventions need modality adaptations for users with motor, cognitive, vision, or communication disabilities — for example, speech-to-text, pictographic or sign-language video journaling, or AI-scaffolded prompts for users with aphasia, intellectual disability, or limited literacy. Recent HCI research explores generative AI and conversational agents as accessible scaffolds for expressive writing among users with disabilities, mental-health conditions, and communication barriers.