Change Makers: A Podcast from APH

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022

May 12, 2022 American Printing House Episode 52
Change Makers: A Podcast from APH
Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022
Show Notes Transcript

 On this episode of Change Makers, we are celebrating the 11th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Thursday, May 19. We’ll learn about the importance of accessibility awareness and how to make your social media more accessible.  After that, we'll learn how to advocate for yourself in the workplace.

Podcast Guests (In Order of Appearance)

  • Jeff Fox, Narrator
  • Sara Brown, APH Public Relations Manager
  • Tai Tomasi, APH ABIDE Director
  • Abby Pullis, APH Digital Engagement Manager
  • Sassy Outwater-Wright,  Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually impaired Executive Director

Additional Links


Jack Fox:

Welcome to Change Makers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or visually impaired. Here's your host.

Sara Brown:

Hello, and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APHS public relations manager, Sara Brown. And today we are celebrating the 11th Annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day. That's on Thursday, May 19. We'll learn about the importance of accessibility awareness and how to make your social media more accessible. After that, we're gonna learn how you can advocate for yourself in the workplace to talk more about GAAD.

Abby Pullis:

I have APH's ABIDE Director Tai Tomasi. Hello, Tai Tomasi, and welcome to Change Makers.

Tai Tomasi:

Thank you so much for having me

Sara Brown:

For those who don't know. Could you explain what ABIDE means and its mission?

Tai Tomasi:

Sure. So ABIDE stands for Accessibility, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality. And the mission of ABIDE is to incorporate all of those areas into APH and into the field. So helping internally at APH with accessibility efforts, whether that is helping to make sure all of our web content is accessible, helping with document accessibility. Helping to make sure we acquire the right software that is the most accessible available, and, um, helping to make that software even more accessible so that all of our employees have a, an accessible experience. Um, and then also helping the field of the education, uh, the education field for the blind and visually impaired to, um, improve accessibility as well. And the same thing with belonging., Uh, especially in this remote environment... This hybrid working environment, it's important that employees have a sense of belonging and, um, that plays into accessibility... Because certainly when things are not accessible, uh, people do not feel a sense of belonging. So we wanna really usher that in and continue pushing that effort forward. Um, same thing with inclusion, inclusion, um, and diversity and equality. So we wanna make sure that we have a diverse workforce that we are promoting diversity and equality and, uh, in the field of blindness and visual impairment education, and also in, within the American Printing House for the Blind itself.

Sara Brown:

Talk about the importance of global Accessibility awareness day and why people should be more aware?

Tai Tomasi:

So Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a great time for us to refocus on access, access, culture and Accessibility. Um, in our community, there has been a lot of controversy over how digital accessibility is done. Um, there are certainly issues with usability and web content accessibility guidelines. Um, we've had a lot of controversy over different types of digital overlays that have not been adequate solutions to help with digital accessibility. So we want to take the opportunity for Global Accessibility Awareness Day to really refocus our efforts on finding solutions and on helping people with advocating, uh, with other businesses and vendors, to make sure that we have accessible, uh, digital products.

Sara Brown:

How does GAAD help break barriers, whether it's in daily life or in the workplace?

Tai Tomasi:

So by educating, um, people about accessibility of web resources and digital, uh, content... Uh, we can improve the experience of employees, uh, of every person with a disability. And, uh, what that takes is really centering the disability experience... Talking more about usability. Um, you know, sometimes the web content accessibility guidelines are not enough. Um, that something might be compliant with those guidelines, but it might not be usable to a given user with a certain. So, um, we need to take the time to listen to the community and to center those comments and, uh, continue making sure that people with disabilities are at the forefront of those efforts.

Sara Brown:

And how can one turn awareness into action.?

Tai Tomasi:

So one of the best things we can do to go from awareness to action is to educate ourselves about what accessibility needs are. And again, turning to the disabled community. Talking about what access and usability really means is important. And that requires companies and individuals who are working on accessibility to educate themselves about those needs by coming to the community and learning from the resources that we can provide. And APH's ABIDE will be putting out quite a few social media posts with some simple tips on improving digital accessibility in the month of May.

Sara Brown:

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Tai Tomasi:

Again, I'm looking forward to that refocusing on access culture and making sure that we are putting people with disabilities at all levels of businesses and at all levels of accessibility discussions and prioritizing those needs. And I appreciate that Global Accessibility Awareness Day gives us a platform to refocus our efforts in the community and talking with people with disabilities about those efforts.

Sara Brown:

Thank you, Tai, for joining me on Change Makers today.

Tai Tomasi:

Thank you.

Sara Brown:

Now we're turning to something I'm sure everyone knows about.... Social media. But did you know there's a proper way to do it, to make it more accessible for all? We have APH's Digital Engagement Manager, Abby Pullis here to talk about accessible social media. Hello, Abby, and welcome to Change Makers.

Abby Pullis:

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Sara Brown:

Can you talk about the importance of accessible social media?

Abby Pullis:

Social media is part of our everyday life. It's where we go to learn about the news. It's where we connect with our families, our friends, people who live, you know, far away in our hometowns. Um, we connect with other professionals or we connect with people in our shared communities for our hobbies. Um, if it's not accessible, then we are leaving a whole group of people out. Uh, we're not giving access to this community resource that we all rely on.

Sara Brown:

And what are some of the devices people might be using to access social media?

Abby Pullis:

For users with low vision, there is magnification software that can either be downloaded to their desktop computer or often is native within the, the device itself. Um, a lot of smartphones have accessibility like that built in, and they're able to change the background color or text contrast and colors, uh, to give themselves the, the most comfortable reading experience based on their visual impairment. For people who are blind, it's the same thing, but with voiceover technology, they can either download that technology to their desktop computer o r laptop computer, or it comes native with their device, like with a smartphone,

Sara Brown:

For those who are blind or have low vision. How does inaccessible social media impact their experience?

Abby Pullis:

Inaccessible social, specifically missing alt-text on pictures, uh, really leaves people wondering what the point of a post is. We rely on photography or graphics. So often when we're posting on social media and it's often quite encouraged by the platforms to include a photo, um, that if we're not using descriptors to let people know what's in that photo context is lost. So it would be like looking through a scrapbook, but all of the pictures have been taken out. So you can say, oh,"first steps." But like, without that kind of emotional appeal of the photo, you lose a lot of context. Um, another example would be, uh,"it finally happened!" Would be the text that's included, but if the picture has no description, then you don't know if it's a proposal, a graduation, a first home, uh, you, you really lose the, the emotional impact and the important update.

Sara Brown:

So as APH's Digital Engagement Manager, talk about the process you go through when posting the social media to make sure a post is accessible.

Abby Pullis:

I try to keep in mind from the get, go, how this is going to, uh, impact all of our readers, um, and not just remediate a social media post to make it accessible after the fact. So when I'm coming up with a campaign or coming up with just even a single post keeping in mind, uh, what's going to make the best experience, um, for our sighted and blind readers.

Sara Brown:

And how can we take action as posters to improve the social media experience?

Abby Pullis:

I think people get a little overwhelmed when they think about trying to make their social media accessible, because they don't know what that entails... And they're afraid that it, that it means, you know, going behind the scenes and doing some sort of like coding or, or going through a whole bunch of extra steps that are, are beyond their technical expertise, but it's really quite easy. Um, there are some simple tips, uh, and ways that you can make your day-to-day social media experience, um, accessible for all of your friends and family and, and readers and people who are interacting with you. Um, the first and most obvious one would be including alt-text behind your photos. Um, so instead of including an image description in the text post, um, you can go in and this is true for Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, you can go in and you can add that alt-text underneath the image. And that way it's not taking up extra character count in your posts, because we know a lot of these platforms have limited character counts. Um, and some tips for writing that alt-text would be to include those key and important details without getting too lost in the, the minutia. You know, you don't need to, to reference the color of every person's shirt, unless that means something to the photo. Uh, I like to think, you know, what's the,"what's the call to action with this photo?""What am I wanting you to feel or think?""How does this photo add to the story of the post that I'm making?" So if it matters that your student is graduating from college and they're in a cap and gown, you may wanna say what color that cap and gown is because it represents the university they're graduating from, but if you're blowing up candles at a birthday party and the person in the background is wearing your red shirt, it's probably not necessary. So I think it's okay to kind of balance that, that those key details with that emotional language. Another way to bring social media accessibility into your day-to-day life would be to look at the way that you use hashtags. Uh, the first tip is to put your hashtags at the end of your social media post, as opposed to incorporating them in the text when possible. Uh, when screen readers come across that content. Sometimes they, because all of the letters are ambushed together, they misinterpret that content and it doesn't read the way that you i ntend i t to. U m, and another tip is to use capitalization within your hashtag or as a lot o f people call it CamelCase where you make sure that the first letter of each word within the hashtag is capitalized. U m, it helps the screen reader parse what that word is. And it also is a better reading experience for s ighted people as well. U h, it makes it a lot easier when you're skimming through your, you know, Twitter, as you're thumbing through, you can read those social media hashtags a little bit easier because you can see the individual words within the hashtag. And then lastly, I would say with graphics or with photography, especially from a business, we often create event hashtags or taking photography, uh, that with the intent of posting it, making sure we're keeping in mind, um, contrast, uh, that there's enough contrast or that we're really intentional with our contrast. So that users with low vision, um, can tell what's going on in the image and that that also has to do with graphics, making sure that we're using good contrast on our text and also keeping our text fonts in mind. Sometimes that really beautiful scripty-scrolly font is actually really difficult to read for anyone who has, um, low vision or, or even people who aren't technically on the, the low vision spectrum, but are just glasses wearers, even.

Sara Brown:

So you said we're supposed to put our hashtags at the end, but sometimes there's a character limit. And then you have to put your hashtags in the actual text. What's the best practice when you're up against the character limit?

Abby Pullis:

I would say it's a best practice to put hashtags at the end. Uh, when you are on a character count that is often kind of difficult. And you know, when you're attending a conference, a lot of times those conferences will have an acronym that they're using and that's their hashtag. And so, you know, if you're, if you're limited for characters and you need to put that hashtag up in the top, that's fine. I think a bigger issue is when people use kind of long hashtags, ironically, within the text, um, to be quirky or playful, and those don't read as well. I think, you know, if you're trying to say I'm at"#APH 2022" for our Annual Meeting, uh, that that's okay.

Sara Brown:

During my time here at APH. One thing I've noticed is while using my, so my personal social media is more people are putting image descriptions in social posts. As the digital engagement manager. How does that make you feel when you see people being more cognizant of their posts and the making sure they're accessible?

Abby Pullis:

I think it's wonderful. And I think that it's one of those situations where we often learn that, uh, things that are accessible for one group of people, uh, end up serving a much larger audience and actually it's universal design and not just, uh, a, a feature for a single group of people. And, um, if we can create our posts from the beginning in a way that meets the, the largest audience and then speaks to the broadest group of people, then we're really being, you know, um, the best stewards of whatever we're trying to communicate that we can be.

Sara Brown:

So let's touch on office software real quick. And one thing I've noticed is when I do alt-text in different programs, it'll automatically generate a description. Can you talk about the generated image descriptions on various platforms?

Abby Pullis:

AI generated descriptions, um, while it's wonderful to give some context in place of no context, it's definitely preferable to nothing. Um, really doesn't take the responsibility off of the poster because they're often wrong and they don't give that, you know, compelling description that I think most photos are intending to evoke when they're posting. I think, you know, think about the intent of the photo that you're posting and that will lead you to the kind of alt that you wanna include. Um, I've seen a lot of alt-text, you know, when I go to, to add-alt text to the posts for APH, I see that generated, um, alt-text that, you know, Facebook or whoever is supplying and it's often like"potentially," or like"possibly an image of a person outside." And it's like, oh, well, it's actually a"photo of a proposal at the grand canyon." Those are like, you know, that's a really a big gap in knowledge there that's, uh, being missed. So I would say that while it's a great step, you know, that's tech companies taking responsibility for trying to make their platforms more accessible and that's awesome, but it's still up to the individual poster to take that step and, uh, add that flavor to their social media posts.

Sara Brown:

And social media. Isn't the only place where you do alt-text. You can also do it again on office software. So talk about, you know, alt-text and word documents and PowerPoints and emails?

Abby Pullis:

Alt-text really lives outside of social media. I think that's a really popular place, um, that we're talking about alt-text a lot, but you can add alt-text to your word documents, your PDFs, your PowerPoints, anything that you're, you know, communicating, you can add it to your emails. And I think that's really important to consider, um, not just what you're saying with your public voice, but what you're also communicating on a one-on-one level. Um, for example, if I were to make a PowerPoint and send it to, you know, a cited coworker for them to review, it may end up being viewed or passed along to someone who needs those accessibility features. And because I didn't bake them in at the beginning now, maybe the person that I've passed it along to needs to add the alt-text to send it on to the next person. And they may misconstrue my intention for including some of those photos or not know their best practices around that. So I think it's just, you know, uni, good universal design considers all people and, and you know, their, in the origination of the content. And, and I try to keep that in mind when, when doing any kind of campaign for APH, uh, and I think we should all do it when we're doing our, our social media or our writing, our word documents.

Sara Brown:

What's out there for a person to learn how to make their social and work materials more accessible?

Abby Pullis:

There are a lot of great resources for accessibility. Um, we have some blogs on our website that specifically talk about, uh, accessibility with social media, uh, with links out to the individual, um, social media platforms, where they describe the process for, you know, putting social, you know, alt-texts up on their social media, um, for word documents and things like that. You know, there are a host of resources. We've done some, um, blogs on those. We also have, uh, an Accessibility Hub that, uh, is run by our ABIDE team that has a lot of information on just those basic business things, you know, like word documents and things like that, accessible PowerPoints, et cetera. So you can find all that kind of information there. I would definitely, you can start with us, but there are a lot of, uh, great allies in the field creating this kind of content as well, trying to educate, you know, not just the people within the field itself, but you know, uh, the whole world.

Sara Brown:

And is there anything else you'd like to say?

Abby Pullis:

I would say that it's, it's easy to be accessible, um, and, and once you start doing it, it really becomes such a natural practice. Uh, and, and, you know, a lot of us are thinking like, okay, well, I'll definitely make sure that my business or my organization or my school is being accessible because they have a really broad reach, but I would encourage you to also make your own social media accessible on a personal level. Uh, you might find that, um, you reach a new audience or, or you are accessible. Uh, you don't realize that you're blocking people from, from enjoying your content, uh, by not including those kind of details that, that make a more usable experience for people.

Sara Brown:

Thank you so much, Abby, for joining me today on Change Makers.

Abby Pullis:

Thank you for having me. This was, uh, a lot of fun.

Sara Brown:

Now we have Executive Director of the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Sassy Outwater-Wright. Hello, Sassy, and welcome to Change Makers.

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

Thank you for having me.

Sara Brown:

And do you care to share the many, many things you do at the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

Sure. I can share.<laugh> the many things I do. That's a, a good way of putting it. Um, I do everything from helping to teach assistive technology. Um, for people through MABVI, we use accommodation of qualified instructors and blind volunteers who are assistive technology users, themselves, who want to help older adults who are just stepping into this, um, process of losing their eyesight. We do, um, as many instructional hours of, of partnership as they want to do to feel comfortable using the technology as older adults. Um, we do orientation and mobility instruction for people with intellectual and developmental disability plus blindness. We do adjustment counseling and peer support services for people who want to talk to someone who's been through losing their eyesight before and, um, want some mental health support going through that adjustment. Um, we do volunteers to help older adults who have a task or younger adults who have something that they wanna do, like go to the gym or get out and do some fitness, uh, routines and want some sighted assistance with that. And, um, then we also do various other things, community advocacy efforts partnering up with age friendly, um, movements in local communities and support groups throughout the state. And then we have occupational therapists who are cross trained, so they can help older adults who are dealing with declining eyesight, but also might have other things going on, such as, uh, stroke recovery, or brain injury or other things that oftentimes just a company old age. Um, and we want them to feel like they have some medical health support as well with our occupational therapy team. So we do a lot at MABVI, but we put it all into the community, rather than having someone go into an institutional setting. And we do it either in home or in local senior centers to everybody.

Sara Brown:

So we're talking about GAAD on this podcast and it's all about access and awareness. How do you engage a business and advocate for what you need?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

Right now, we're in a really, really sensitive time for, uh, disability rights in terms of digital accessibility, because digital accessibility in most context is not actually under the ADA yet. Um, except the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And only in some instances for employment, it is really solidly in the ADA. Um, and so right now it's, it's, it can go to court and then you're waiting for a non-disabled person or a group of people to decide what happens to your rights. Um, and we've seen that come up a couple of times in over the past 12 months with the CVS case that went to the edge of the Supreme Court and then the LA community college case that went to the edge of the Supreme Court. So our civil rights and our ability to say"you're discriminating against me," even if that discrimination, uh, isn't intentional, that hangs in the balance. And so a lot of times, um, disability advocates have said, have said in the past"asking doesn't work." Um, and yet lawsuits and legal litigation right now are putting our Civil Rights in jeopardy as well. Right now our, our Civil Rights really are kind of on an edge. And so I'm a huge fan of self-advocacy... Asking a business... Letting the business know this is not accessible to me. Um, and I'd like to work with you to help it become more accessible. Um, and that does not mean that the disabled person has to do the lifting. That means that the business has to be willing to hear that something's not accessible and look at what they can do, and it doesn't have to be cost prohibitive. It doesn't have to be a civil litigation. It doesn't have to be a lawsuit. It doesn't have to be anything but cooperation and learning what works. Um, it's an educational process and then it's an implementation process. And so we're, it, it starts with an ask, even though the, the community is really resistant to the ask. I think we also need to be aware of it continuing to let nondisabled court systems handle our rights is also a problem too.

Sara Brown:

Can you talk about Access Culture?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

Access Culture is many things to many people it's still kind of coming up, but it is it's what's coming. It is the idea that we can participate in our own access needs and drive our own access needs and lead our own access needs. And that accessibility, uh, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are an amazing set of technical standards, um, and guidelines that we can use to check whether something is accessible or not by most people's definition. Um, but there are disabled people who aren't getting their needs met through WCAG yet. Um, there are people who want culture of Accessibility and want to not have it be a pass fail thing. They want it to be a discussion. They want it to be a,"this is what WCAG says, but according to my disability, this might work better for me." They want accessibility, digital accessibility at a company, or at a, a place to become a, a conversation that can be a little bit more individualized, a little bit more ingrained in the culture of the company, um, and a little less stigmatized and a little more common place. Um, we want broad inclusion and belonging and accessibility. Isn't the end of that conversation. It's the beginning. Accessibility is the first foot through the door, but people are wanting what I call the"whole damn pie experience." We don't wanna be handed a little bitty slice of pie. We want the whole thing. Um, and we wanna be a participant in that conversation. And that's what Access Culture is. It's, it's a culture of belonging and inclusion that starts with accessibility and goes beyond that to fully include and, and allow us to belong in our own experiences at work, in our entertainment, recreation, and our healthcare, all of it.

Sara Brown:

What is the role of advocacy in the digital accessibility life cycle?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

That's a tough one more and more and more. It seems like we're getting kind of stepped to the side by processes, by company processes, by both the attorneys who handle our cases in some instances, and that the, uh, accessibility field we're getting put into just the role of tester. Very few of us are in the role of developer designer, company, CEO, C-suite groups, uh, attorneys, ourselves who handle these cases. There are some disabled attorneys who handle these cases, not a lot, and there are not a lot of disabled leaders coming up and, and pushing. There are a lot of disabled advocates who sign onto laws and sign into things and participate, but we need leaders. We need space to grow our own leaders, to support them, to allow them, to learn, to allow them to lead. And, um, we need space for us to be able to talk to businesses rather than businesses fearing us because of lawsuits. Um, we need those lawsuits to compel compliance. Absolutely, but it doesn't have to be a negative process. Disabled people don't have to be used to do it in these troll lawsuits that needs to stop and things where businesses are able to kind of step aside from doing, um, making their sites accessible, because it's just gonna be an audit repeat process. We need to change how we provide digital accessibility, overlays... Not the answer. Manual remediation and audit and repeat... Not the answer what's next... We need to be at that table, leading that discussions to what comes next. And there are very few in this industry who are firing up that conversation, stepping to the table and getting involved in the leadership. I see a lot of changing hands of accessibility companies. I see a lot of litigation happening and disabled people don't know about it as a community until the last hour before something heads to the Supreme Court and endangers our rights. We can't keep doing this in siloed spaces. We need to do it out in the open with the community, deeply involved in space for new leaders to learn how to lead, to step up and to be given space, to lead and confidence from the community and with the community to lead in the community.

Sara Brown:

How is digital accessibility changing for the end user and how can end users take back the position of leadership in that cycle?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

That's a really good question. Um, disabled end users, those who, who are using the websites, there are more and more tools coming out that allow us to participate in our process of accessing something. Um, and it's reporting that you're having a difficult experience. Companies can't do something unless they know about it. And, um, you know, having a situation where a lawsuit is the only answer. Isn't the only answer that we have today, having discussions with businesses, having discussions with consumer organizations, calling digital accessibility companies and saying,"I'm having this issue. How can I figure out if it's a user error or a bug?" That's the classic first step? Is, is it a user error because you're not completely familiar with how to handle digital accessibility, um, or is it a bug? And there is something wrong in the code. And nowadays where code comes from different sources on a website, it's not just one person developing the code. It might be a widget that somebody installed on their website. It might have come from another company and they're just clicking and pointing to build their website. It gets even harder to pin down what's going wrong and how to fix it. So having social media groups, when you can ask the group, is anybody else experiencing this issue with this browser and this screen reader when they visit this website or troubleshooting as a community together, um, I'm seeing a lot of tech groups have people come together and bring websites to the group and say,"let's all go together and experience this. And maybe someone has a workaround. Nope, it's a bug. Let's report it to the business together." Many of us have tested it. Let's, let's let them hear that this is a problem. Bigger businesses need to step up. Um, when something is called out on a bigger platform, they need to, they need to acknowledge it. They need to fix it. They need to not duck that responsibility. They need to treat us like any other customer group and, and fix the issues that are brought to their attention and, and do that very publicly with accountability to us. Um, and this can, this can change. It doesn't have to be settled behind the scenes in a courtroom with, um, you know, covers and, and the community constantly just calling out negative things. This can become a collaborative conversation. If businesses are willing to make it one and disabled, people are willing to call out something without, um, fear and without(inaudible) involved and without shame involved and without anger and with a, an eye towards solutions. And, um, I look at the work of a lot of people who are going toward negotiation, settlements that does something, lawsuits do something they're all valid ways of handling this, but so is self-advocacy and community building and community solutions with the businesses, especially the local ones where we show up in person and might have to order something online, too. Um, getting to be known as a human being and advocating for access as just any other customer does carry a lot of, of gravity and we need to use it.

Sara Brown:

Is there anything else you would like to share about GAAD or digital accessibility?

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

I just wanna see us change and have some positive discussions about digital accessibility in 2022. I think we're having a lot of negative, a lot of fear based and shame based and money based conversations about Accessibility and while fear, shame, and money are motivators. They're not things that lead to belonging, inclusion, leadership of the disabled community for the disabled community. Um, where are those discussions? I wanna see those be the things that are making waves on Twitter in 2022. I wanna see accessibility companies, not just putting us into roles of testers, but putting us into C-suites seats. Uh, say that five times fast at 7:00 AM, C-suite seats.<laugh>, um, I wanna see disabled leaders holding those positions and finding pathways up to those positions in terms of support, um, development, mentoring, understanding, capability, capacity, and educational opportunity. I wanna see more tech, um, apprenticeships opportunities being available to people, not just in testing... In UX, in design. There's no reason that a disabled person can't be doing their own code and handling these things and that we can't be teaching ourselves how to code for ourselves of ourselves. Nothing about us without us. It's time for that to take its rightful place in the digital accessibility discussion in 2022. And for this to stop being a negative anger, shame, and money driven thing, and to start being a community, building social justice thing, um, time for us to take the reins and, and drive this thing home. It's our turn now.

Sara Brown:

Sassy. Thank you so much for joining me today on Change Makers.

Sassy Outwater-Wright:

Thank you for having me. Um, I love stir things up in a, in a positive direction. So hopefully something I said helps somebody find their voice and step forward and say,"I wanna seat at that table. I wanna lead."

Sara Brown:

And thank you for listening to this episode of Change Makers. For those interested, I've put links to the Global Accessibility Awareness Day website in the show notes, as well as the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired and additional links on how to make your social media and your, your office work more accessible. So be sure to check out the Show Notes and as always be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.