I’m pissed…and here’s why.
Last week I was pissed. FURIOUS.
It felt silly to be that mad. The reality is… I’m tired of minimizing my needs.
Do you want to know what set this off?
I was invited to attend a webinar exclusive, and I was super excited that I was able to attend! I logged in. Dropped a hello in the chat box…
As soon as the host started talking, I realized I was having trouble understanding her. Typically my zoom calls tend to have the closed caption (CC) button enabled, and…
I couldn’t find the CC button. I started sending messages directly to the host/panelists, calling it out in the chat, sending an email to the team. I was doing ALL THE THINGS to see if it could be resolved quickly.
This was barely acknowledged during the webinar.
I was mad. Like seriously, I’m glad y’all had fun on the webinar. But I sat there for 30 minutes understanding only 50% of what was being said, and just felt like I couldn’t be happy with all the new features coming because I didn’t have the same access as everyone else.
This is what I think should’ve happened. They’re a company, they’re about humans. And they know me. The hosts should’ve stopped the webinar for a few minutes. Made an announcement and let all the attendees know that captions aren’t working, so they need a couple minutes before getting started.
Every workshop, webinar, or event I am attending, I’m very much looking at things with an accessibility lens. It’s not as if I go in with the intention of finding all things that are wrong, I just can’t help it. I can see small things that can be improved upon.
All these little things I teach, really just improve the experience for so many people. The simple things like:
Not centering your text, especially long blocks of text in emails. LIke why?
Making sure your email blocks aren’t just images, but actual text
Using headers properly
Making sure your brand colors meet the color contrast standards when you’re using 2 of them together
Having captions on your zoom account (or any video call platform) enabled
I’m tired of this. I don’t feel like I’m asking for much.
SERIOUSLY this is not hard at all. None of this is hard.
Now that’s not to say, that I myself could improve some things with my business from an accessibility lens. Please know that I am the ONLY person responsible for all the things from creating content, research, social media, talking with possible leads, building out my email funnels, editing videos. I am doing it all by myself (plus a group of folks cheering me on). I also recognize that there are so many of you doing it all by yourself too.
I’ve met hundreds of people over the past 6 years while being in business for myself. I’ve heard so many different versions of “oh what you’re doing is so invaluable. It is so needed.”
Here’s the thing, y’all…
You’re doing a whole lotta talking, but are you actually doing the thing? Are you putting in the work?
You’re most definitely not walking the walk.
Have you tried lip reading? It’s HARD AF.
Y’all are privileged with the fact that I can speak.
I also acknowledge that I am very privileged to be able to speak.
I can almost guarantee you if I traded places with one of my friends who doesn’t speak at all, and you were to interact with her. You’d be stumbling over yourself.
Y’all are privileged that I can hear to an extent.
But captions make a world of a difference to me, I don’t have to try as hard to understand folks.
I challenge you to go without sound for a day. Go without listening, and see how much of the world is accessible to you as a deaf person.
I’m also tired of people saying that they love what I do but don’t pay me for it. I get invited to speak all the time inside private memberships. There was this one group consulting program where I did a customized workshop. I should’ve pushed back and said, I need to get paid for this. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the members paid her $15,000 each. And I didn’t get paid ONE single penny.
Pay me what I’m worth.
Now I want to shift gears just for a moment. There’s this thing that happens among disabled people where we have to justify making changes in order to be accessible is a benefit for everyone.
Hope Hoffman (_thehopetheory_) wrote, “It gets tiring seeing posts like ‘ways everyone benefits from accessibility.’ Because what’s happening is an attempt to justify to the oppressor why they could have a stake in the equity of the oppressed. Why can’t it be enough justification if accessibility did only benefit disabled people?”
Am I, along with all the other disabled people, worth less than those who are able bodied?
I’m guilty of trying to show to people that when you do something that would make things easier for B, but it also benefits C, D, and M. Why can’t it just benefit B?
There’s too much of this happening out there.
I’ll be honest, I’m nervous about this piece.
I wrote it the day the webinar happened. I was mad, but I let it sit.
The next day, I rewrote it and made it “nice.”
I asked a couple people to read it. One said, “this is not you. You need to go back and share what you originally wrote.” So I did.
I’m blunt. I’ve been known to “insert foot in mouth.” I try to tell it like it is. I don’t want to be negative all the time. But sometimes to get people to “wake up,” we have to scream it out loud.
No more excuses. It’s 2024. It’s not that hard to be accessible. Just do it.
Turn on your captions. And start learning what it really means to be accessible.
