The Clarity of Social Accessibility

It's really nice to be here. I'm very happy to be here. And I want to thank Thomas Logan, Ben Ogilvie, of course, and the very special Meryl Evans. Hello, Meryl!

And everyone, the whole Accessibility NYC team, and of course all of you who are here in person and online. I am a 71 year-old white male, without hair and without much hair. I'm wearing pants and a shirt and shoes and socks. I am here with my best feature, my yellow lab guide dog, Inga, from GDB who is wonderful.

And I may have lured you here or you may have been lured here under false pretenses. This is... I know this is a digital accessibility world, and I am definitely a digital accessibility civilian. My brother, my late brother, John Slatin, was a digital accessibility pioneer, person, whatever.

And you may know his name. Affiliated with AccessU, the wonderful conference learning week hosted by Knowbility.org every May, coming up next week in Austin, Texas. And I highly recommend it. So we're here to... I'm not, as I said, not here to talk about digital accessibility too much.

I'm here to talk about something we all want. We all came here on our own, for our own reasons, but we're here with a united purpose, which is we want and need access. We want access to physical places and digital spaces. At any point, on any given day, we are stymied by a situation, a condition, a construct that we know is flawed, that we know could be addressed, could be fixed.

We see the obvious solutions. But those obvious solutions typically aren't recognized by people who could address them because they don't even recognize us. And they don't recognize the issues because they don't recognize us. So what I'm here to talk about is social accessibility.

I think recognition equals social accessibility and vice versa. And that's what I'm going to talk about. But first of all, I'd like to provide a little context. Personal context.

So apologies to anyone who already knows me, much about me. But I'll do what I can to keep it short. So I was born legally blind and became functionally blind in my mid to late 40s. I'm blind due to retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration.

I entered my adulthood just a few blocks from here on the Bowery. I was a painter. Painted. Went to graduate school at Hunter College.

Became a painter. And I only learned that I had RP at the end of my first year of college.

And I found out that although I had always known I was extremely blind, I was extremely nearsighted. I hadn't known that I had only had a 10 degrees of vision as opposed to a normal 180 degrees. And that's when I learned that not only did I have that, it was probably going to go away at some point. But at that point, I'd already started painting, and I resolved to just give it as long as I could.

So I did. And I, you know, painted for another 15 years or so. But along the way, I just could see less. Less color.

Less clarity. Smaller field. And so in my early 30s, I turned to reporting. I became a journalist.

I wrote for Usual Suspects.

My beat that I just fell into pretty much was architecture and design. With commercial real estate. Real estate development. Real estate finance.

And I did that for the next 25 years. And I give the slide up. The next slide. The next slide is the article.

Okay. I just do this to show off. I was running a newsletter in the early 2000s. And I wrote an article about something.

The man who's our current president did. I didn't like it. I said some things. Things about it.

And as he used to do when he printed out the article. Scribbled on it. Told me I was a real loser. And mailed it to me.

And so I keep it in a very cheap frame. Very cheap plastic frame. And I've been doing that for, you know, for 20 years. There wasn't, you know, I didn't switch to a plastic very recently.

So that was my beat. So, by the way, I started using a white cane in my early 30s about the same time I became a journalist. And then I got my first guide dog when I was 49. Inga is not 20 years old.

So she's my fourth dog.

And I also, I learned about macular degeneration after cataract surgery when I was in my early 40s. And I started using a dog because I got hit by a yellow cab in mid-20s. And I thought, time to get a dog. And I haven't been hit by a cab since.

So when I was writing about commercial real estate, and you can go to the next slide. I may have missed a slide. But anyway, you can go to the next slide, which should be the entrance of the Cooper Hewitt Museum.

And I generally avoided writing about accessibility. And unless it was part of the story, part of the real estate story. This is a story. This is because I used to say, I chose to be, to work in the mainstream, to have a career in the mainstream.

I'd say, I don't want to be a professional blind person. That is, work in the world of blindness as a professional. I wanted to work outside of that. So I did write about the renovation of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in the old Andrew Carnegie Mansion on 91st Street.

When they renovated in 1995 to add a ramp to their Main Street. And that was the main entrance. So that the then director, a wheelchair user named Dianne Pilgrim, could get in the museum by herself without having to be carried up the stairs. So I thought that was important.

So, I, as a writer, I traveled a lot. I went around New York City a lot. I went to conventions and conferences. And all along the way, I began to realize what a, what a hard time.

Of course, I had a hard time with physical spaces and digital spaces. But what I really had a hard time with, what really frustrated and obstructed and angered me, was what seemed to be the, the cluelessness and ignorance of the people in guest experience and social service, customer service, or in even professional settings who I encountered. Who really didn't understand or know anything about disability. Hadn't met someone with a disability.

Or if they had, didn't know what to do. And this just continued. And I got more and more frustrated about it. And then in, around the same time I wrote that article about Trump, I was, I was, I was going to, next slide, the building at 666 Fifth Avenue.

It's now called 660 Fifth Avenue because someone was afraid of the old address. I don't know.

And actually it's, I think it's now owned by Jared Kushner. But anyway, I was going to that building before he was on the scene to interview the, the, the developer of the building. It was called the Tishman Building. And it was owned by, the man was John Tishman.

And my guide, Doug and I, and so I stayed approached the door, the main doors, which is big blank of revolve, big bank of revolving doors. And I started to walk through the door, generally with the dog. And suddenly someone years. Yelled, stop.

You can't bring that dog in here. And I hear running shoes really fast. And then a click at the bottom of my feet, at my feet. And I was frozen in a wedge in the door, like a slice of pie, apple pie in a display case.

And, you know, we had negotiations. He got through.

And, you know, that was one. Then several years later, I was going. With my guide dog to Eataly, which had just opened at the time. Big Italian kind of.

Super, super grocery Tyria at the corner of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue. And I'd already been there a couple of times with my dog. And they had someone, they had an information desk at the front because it was so big and complex. He needed information.

That person had always found me someone to guide me through the store. Help me make my purchases and get out, et cetera. Well, I got there. Same woman was at the information desk.

And she said, I'm sorry, but our lawyers have told us not to let you in. I said, you and your dog are a liability. You're a liability to our store, to our customers, to our staff, and to our goods. And you can't come in.

So that was the moment I chose to leave. To become a professional blind person.

And I decided to dedicate myself to social, driving social accessibility, which I didn't call it then, that then. But it's what I understood to be the difference between those other accessibilities, which is that it involves people. And basically, if people don't understand accessibility, getting them to do physical work, getting them to do physical and digital accessibility is going to be that much harder. Okay, that's pretty much what I want to say.

But no.

That covers it. But no. So those two examples that I just told you are basically examples of the chasm that exists between what the design regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and those of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can do. What it can't do, it can't fill those guidelines.

It's up to us, really, to figure out how to fill them in. And what's the next slide? Give her a card. Okay.

Well, this is about exclusion. These puzzles, which to me show exclusion, were given to immigrants at Ellis Island around the turn of the 20th century. And if you couldn't do them, then you couldn't come and be a citizen of the U.S. They were cognitive puzzles.

And I just thought that was kind of appropriate. And I think there's a lot of stuff in here that's older. And, you know, I think we're sitting here, whether we have disability or not, we've come through a lot. But these slides, most of which are from, all the rest of which are from the Museum of Disability History, which I'll tell you more about later, and which there are flyers about somewhere, I think, around where the foot is.

And I recommend everyone go see it. But anyway, so that was that. And then what's the next slide? There's another slide right after that.

Okay. This is, is Kevin Gotkin here by any chance? No. Well, this is from the pandemic.

And it refers to how we are going to fill in that gap. And this was the product of people getting together on Zoom, people with disabilities, people, queer people, queer disabled people, queer disabled people of color, and people who don't belong in any category, any of those categories, getting together and trying to, and not just trying to, but making something happen, doing something that made them feel with themselves and feel like they are creating something, they were creating something.

And so sometimes we can't, and we'll see this as a theme, we can't wait around for others to do it for us, of course.

So there's that chasm of... of...

what we can, what we can't do and social accessibility and accessibility. Accessibility is fundamental. It's not incidental. And it's that way because our lives are not incidental.

And our lives are lives of value. And so often, the way we are dealt with as people with disabilities are, as people with... Little or no value.

So... and what's the next slide? Aha! Well, I'll get to that.

Yeah, it's always a fun subject. So, you know, I've been... well, one of the things about... I talked about social accessibility and recognition and I think, you know, one of the big words people like to use is inclusion.

And I'm not a big fan of inclusion and I'll tell you why. It can apply in some situations, but inclusion to me is the illusion of an empathetic offer to step inside a boundary set by another. In other words, someone else said, we're here now, you come join us. Well, guess what?

We're here already. So to invite us to be at our own selves is kind of disingenuous. I think that's a really important distinction. And I think recognition and social accessibility are at the heart of that distinction.

Now, we happen to be in a pretty fortunate place in some ways. We are... there are more... we are more and stronger than ever as a community, the disability community.

There are more of us than ever. We are better educated. We are more employed and more employable than ever. We have more wealth than ever.

So why is it taking so long for all this to happen? And where is the disconnect between our efforts and the efforts of our allies? And I think it then goes back to this world where we live. Where does this all come from?

That the world doesn't recognize us? That the world sees us with lesser value? Well, we have to look back and think about what disability was thought of originally, historically. You know, was it people with disabilities were people who couldn't contribute to food gathering, food making, food hunting, etc.

So that was a very, very, very difficult time to be someone with a disability. And guess what? That's still present in every culture, including this one, where people are just discarded. And, you know, there are the people who basically said, well, let's divide people with disabilities into there are basically two groups.

There are superhumans, you know, the guys who conquer mountains, conquer oceans, and foretell futures. And then there's the miserable creatures who are just a burden to their families and to society. And what do we do about them? So, again, it's about getting past that and reframing that, reframing the perspective on that.

And how do you reframe the perspective? Well, I used the word empathetic earlier and I used the word inclusion earlier. I said we're not about inclusion. And now I'm going to say, guess what?

We're not about empathy. And that may be a surprise.

Empathy, to me, is a it's a fog. It's got its own it spews its own fog. You know, if you, a common tool, and I come at this, I've been teaching a course this semester on a course called Accessibility as a Foundation for Well-Being-Oriented Design. And a professor came to me and said, we want you to teach this course with a co-professor at the New York Institute of Technology.

And, you know, you can bring in blind folds and earplugs and bring in wheelchairs to class so people can know what it's like to have a disability. And I thought about that. And I thought, you know, that's disability tourism. And basically what it does is it's a false positive.

It gives someone a sense of this is what it's like but no experience but only perhaps the most terrifying experience. Oh, I can't do this. I can't do that. There's no sense of living with it, being with it.

And I think it just deprives the experience, the person who's experiencing that empathetic virtual empathy, it deprives them of the experience of using their own mind to think about what it's like, which I think is more powerful than trying something on and taking it off again and saying, okay, I did that. Now I know. Of course you don't know. I read a wonderful paper by Cynthia Bennett and Daniela Rosner.

And it's Cynthia's birthday today. Hi, Cynthia. She's happy birthday. She's a researcher at Google now.

At the time she was working on her PhD at the University of Washington. And the paper is called The Promise of Empathy. And in it she talks about, they talk about how designers would work with, invite people with disabilities to consult with them, but then discard, would only consult them and then discard them as consultant and return to themselves as designers. And what they designed would inevitably make the posit the people with disabilities as non-designers and posit the designers as people without disabilities.

And so the eventual product would have the benefit of neither, really. And in the end the people with disabilities, whatever they had to offer, that's left behind. I think that's true in so many situations where, and I know, and I'm sure anyone who goes on a website knows that they constantly, uh, trying to figure out a way to get past something that's not working and someone will say, well we hired people with disabilities to test it, but we didn't fix what they told us to do.

Oh, by the way, there were slides and there was a slide about eugenics and as, you know, you may know, eugenics was a big thing in America, of course in America and Germany. There was a lot of togetherness about this in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and there was a distinct movement to improve the race by weeding out people with disabilities and actually disabled people were among the first group gassed by the Nazis.

Which is unfortunate.

And what's the next slide? Because I think there's a better one coming up. What kind of is this? Exactly.

Again, this is an artist. This also is a combination of taking the abolitionist movement of the last century and the world of disability and arts that we have now and not just the last century, I'm sorry, last several centuries, and saying okay, we have this situation. We can't wait for others to fix it. Again, it's the same situation.

So if I'm ringing a bell over and over again, it's because it's a good bell to ring.

And then after that.

Okay, well this just dates back to the HIV-AIDS epidemic at its height.

And early on in that movement, which led to, along with death, led to a lot of disability.

The disability community and the HIV-AIDS community weren't exactly partners. But over time, they realized they had much more in common and were better off working together. And so the message silence equals death is very much at home in the Museum of Disability History on this screen and with us here. So I just wanted to include that.

Next. Mouthstick. Okay, mouthstick is just another example of... is a different example.

An example of if we can make it happen, let's do it ourselves of creating a mouthstick through which quadriplegics can type, can make themselves understood, can do many, many things they couldn't do without it. So it's just a tool, a simple, very, very simple tool that's that is now part of the world that wasn't through making something happen that wasn't there before. Next.

Okay. So the blue bench, I mean, everyone's doing it now. This is an artwork. This is in the last slide we're going to get is similar to this.

These were these are artists. Finnegan Shannon is working today somewhere. I'm not sure where, but it says I'd rather be sitting. And I think it's true.

And I think it's part of the it's a resistance to the world of grind of you must do this. You must behave this way. You must work this way. Conformity, whatever you have it.

But I'd rather be sitting. And if you agree, please take a seat. So anyone who's doesn't agree, you can stand up. But and after we sit, what happens on the bench?

Is it the InvaCar? Yep. Okay. So this is from the Museum of Disability History.

And to me it's a wonderful expression of the contradictions in accessibility and empathy and sympathy and ability. And accessibility. The InvaCar, catch the name car for invalids is what it was. Invalid car.

I mean, or invalid car. This car and various versions of it were produced post World War II in the UK for returning veterans. I think it's a beautiful little construction. It looks beautiful in a kind of mid-century modern way.

These were given to veterans. I'm sorry, not given. These were loaned to veterans. They were, the state retained ownership of these and loaned them to veterans.

They had a couple problems. Like a very high center of gravity so they tipped over. And they were prone to other accidents.

yeah. And they didn't have room for storage of anything. You couldn't travel with anyone. You couldn't bring anything.

Nothing could fit. Maybe a cup... I don't know. I'm sure they did not have cup holders.

But they got dinged up a lot. But they were very popular and as many as 70 to 80,000 were on the streets by the mid-70s. But then they just... A couple things happened.

Wheelchairs became better designed. Power wheelchairs came along. And people liked to get together with other people. So you know, you can't get together with someone if you're both in your own little individual car.

You can't really talk. But if you're in wheelchairs you can. And then there was this patronizing thing about you can't own them. We'll take them back when we want.

They're ours. So you're a tool of ours too. So here was I guess a well-intentioned effort to do something that would work and I'm sure some great design minds went into it. And yet I'm sure some great design minds of people with disabilities were not consulted because maybe some of those problems would have not happened.

So I just thought this was instructional to include. And now I'm going to show finally the last slide, or the next to last slide is the exhibit at the Museum of Disability History. This is on I think for quite a long time. I think at least until October.

The Museum of Disability History just reopened. It was launched in Buffalo many years ago and then closed down. It was closed for eight years. And just reopened in February in Long Island at something called the Viscardi Center which is another history.

Anyway. And the design is beautiful. As you can see, it's not chronological. It's broken into 14 themes or portals that explore the relationship of disability to individuality, to society, to institutions, to arts, to education, etc, etc.

And just there's a lot to explore. I do urge you to go to the museum but you can also download the app Bloomberg Connects and tour through everything that it has. On display, overall, there are about 150 objects, I think, including videos, etc. But the museum has a collection of 8,000 objects.

So, it's a great thing. And as I said, there are some handouts in the back of the room. And just basically, I started working on this presentation and I wasn't including any of that. And I was just talking about social accessibility, recognition, to empathize or not to empathize, to include or not to include.

The point being that, to me, the basic point is recognition and social accessibility underpin any efforts to create digital and physical accessibility. Today, architects very little about architectural accessibility is taught in school, design schools, other than as something you have to do after you do your design. Okay, you've got to make it accessible. Instead of accessibility as a driver of design, physical or digital design, it's got to be a driver.

The way light and form or legibility and operability and perceivability and robustness and all that good stuff. If it's not there at the start, it's not going to be there at the finish. And just like the Cooper Hewitt, it's going to be much more expensive to renovate than it is to put it in at the start. And so the museum...

I'm sorry, so disability history and the history of accessibility share a lot of... share the same path. They share the same barriers. They're overcoming the same things.

And working with the same challenges, but making inroads. And yes, there is it's so important to do something that's not being done. Go ahead and do it yourself. Don't wait.

And that means working with other people. Explaining, you know, what I do when I'm not doing this is I work with organizations to explain what is disability? What is accessibility? Why do we need this?

What's happening now? How can you... what do you not want to do to someone who is in a wheelchair? Don't pat them on the head.

You know, that kind of thing. But... and it's not people say, oh, you do etiquette. No, it's not etiquette.

It's not at all. It's awareness. It's recognition. It's individual... it's dignity.

You know, it's just... it's living. Disability is living. Living is accessibility.

It's all one and the other. The final slide, and what I really... I didn't figure out how to make it possible for us to listen to this, but this woman, whose name is Tricia Hersey, she has what she calls The Nap Ministry. Because like sitting on the bench, resting... she says resting is life.

Go home and rest. That's also part of this resistance to the grind, to being told to do something, forced into a way of looking at things, and if it's not the way you want to, do it how you want to, or don't do anything. And that works too. So, that's it.

Thank you.

Peter, thank you very much. We'll take some Q&A, and we'll go back and forth here in the room and online. Let me run the mic back real quick. I've got a first question.

Just a second.

Yes, sir. Hi, Sir Peter. My name is José. I'm wearing a black polo shirt and black jeans.

A lot of wild hair and a bit of a growing beard. I really appreciated the history that you shared on disabilities. And this is kind of a what-if question. So, you had mentioned in your talk about not really being in the activist side of things on the disability front until it got personal.

Yes. Is there any part of you that regrets not having done that sooner? And what would have changed if you had done it from the beginning? Thank you.

That's...

You haven't been in my mind lately, have you? So, yes. Yes. Yes and no.

I mean, naturally I'm proud of what I did. I lived as a painter. I wish I had understood more about my disease. I wish I had.

If I had a regret, it's that I didn't pursue art as a person with a disability. And I actually wrote my graduate thesis on an exploration of abstraction and tactile art by the blind. And that was in 1979. Anyway, whatever, I didn't.

Other people are doing that now very much. And I'm really thrilled about that.

I do think about what I could or would have done, but I also think about how... I'm not sure I've said this, but I learned that my pediatric ophthalmologist had diagnosed me when I was six. Never said a word to anyone in my family, or anyone other than another eye doctor. So I think what tools would I have had in those very important twelve years that I didn't have.

And you know, yes, I probably would have been much more... very overprotected by my parents in ways that I wasn't. And there's no going back, so that's just what it is. And I...

So I'm glad I'm here now. How about that? I'm glad I'm here now. Appreciate that question.

Um, from online, first off, Meryl says howdy back. Howdy, yo! She always says howdy, so I say yo. Um, what are your thoughts or recommendations about increasing awareness of non-apparent or invisible disabilities?

Of non-apparent? Non-apparent or invisible disabilities. I like the word non-apparent. First I'll break that down.

I like that because invisible or hidden imply shame. And so non-apparent is just not apparent. Um, I think... Um...

I think a lot more has to be thought about. I feel like there are a lot... When I talked earlier about growth in the community, that's certainly a community that's both stepped up and I think a lot of um... institutions somehow have...

Like with all disabilities, they have a conflicted understanding of what to do. Um, they want to do. They don't want to deal. They're frightened about it.

People are frightened of it. I didn't talk about what I call the contagion response. That's all I'll get back to. But I think basically we have to talk about it more and you know, when I started my business I didn't include non-apparent disabilities.

And I used the excuse that I don't know... didn't know about them. Well, of course, it's easy to learn about them. And so, quite some time ago I started including them.

But I'd rather bring someone in who lives it to talk about it. And that's what I do. But I think that we as a community um... have to do our best to...

If we are not there we have to stretch out and think and ask people we know Oh, you know... What do you want us to know? How do you want us to help? How do you want us to get out of the way?

Um... And just... Let's recognize Let's recognize that it's there. And the point of all of this is to recognize that people with non-apparent disabilities are living their life as they live their lives.

Just the same way we do. And it's not about, oh, if only they thought this or... You know, these... Those are such red herrings and such...

But I think the whole world thinks that way. If only, if only, if only. And... There's no if only.

So... I don't know if that addresses your question. They can chime in if they have follow-ups. Actually, I'd like to add something.

I'd like to add something that just... In one of my training sessions, I brought in um... an actor named Imani Russell. I think that's...

And...

She was... She and her colleague, her name was Becky... Becky Liefman, now it's Becky Baer. Um...

Her buyer. They were talking about non-apparent disabilities. And Imani said, you know, people talk about the autism spectrum. She said, I prefer to see it as a pie.

Because if it's a pie, if there's a spectrum, there's highs and lows. And ups and downs. If it's a pie, all slices are equal. And I just...

I thought that was great. So we're going to share it. Nice.

Any... Oh, yeah. Here we go. Hi, Peter.

My name is Sam. Sam? Yes. Nice to see you.

You too. Short brown hair, blue t-shirt khakis. I'm curious. You mentioned that you don't like the phrase inclusion or empathy.

What do you think about belonging?

Uh...

I'm agnostic. I... Um... I think...

I prefer it to inclusion. But it... It came about, you know, first there was diversity, then there was diversity and equity, then there was inclusion. Then belonging came along.

And it was trying to rewrite something. Trying to... It's trying to address the problem with inclusion without really understanding what the problem with inclusion is. And I think the same is true with diversity.

Being diverse from what? Who's declaring diversity? I think equity... I think equity and recognition would cover it.

But I'm not... Or equity and belonging are also better. But... Because what we are seeking really is equity.

So... Yeah.

Hi, Peter. I'm Xian Horn. And I have cerebral palsy. And I just want to thank you, first of all, especially as New Yorkers, to evangelize about rest and sitting is really important.

I will say as an aside, too, that I think that a lot of times benches are often overlooked as an accessibility feature. In a city where we're trying to... And I have a problem with this, trying to keep out people that loiter or homeless folks. That to me does not...

We're not exactly welcoming people in that way. I wonder to dovetail on Sam... I have a second question also. But to dovetail on Sam's point about belonging, something that I use instead of inclusion is deep integration.

Because I think a lot of times people are invited into the room but they're not necessarily utilized or woven into the fabric of what's happening there. So I'm wondering what you think of that. I think that's great. As someone who's felt disintegrated in many places.

So I think that's... You know, the thing is as... So before I was a reporter, to support myself when I was painting, I worked as a proofreader and copy editor. So I used to take apart words all the time.

And to me that... All of these words have their pluses and minuses. They're not interchangeable. But they are like...

I think you have some agreement here. Yeah. You know, things that are... I love that you want to say what you want to say.

That's how you think of it. And I think that's perfectly wonderful, actually. Thank you so much. And I guess my second question is a more technical one.

You talked about the lawyer that spoke to the shop that you frequented to tell you that you were no longer welcome. Yeah. What year was that? I was unclear about the timeline.

2012. Oh my God. So I was thinking it was pre-ADA. So that's why I wanted that clarification.

2012. And if you were standing within a block or two blocks, you would have heard me screaming. As we should. I'm glad.

But it didn't make a difference. Oh my gosh. I'm very sorry that that happened. But thank you for everything.

That was a wonderful presentation. Thank you. And on the other side, the person who locked me into the revolving door was a security guard. And that, to me, that shows that the weakest links and the people who don't know, who don't get the training they need, they're just, you know, just shoved into a place, really.

And if you don't get to those folks, and you don't get to the top notch, you have to get buy-in from the top and the bottom. That's where you're going to make a difference.

All right. We did two in-room back-to-back, so I'm going to do two online back-to-back. And that might be our time for the evening. We'll see.

You draw a line between empathy and recognition. How do you train designers to operate from recognition when empathy is the dominant framework in most design education? I tell them to forget about empathy, and to use their insight, to use their mind, and I mean, if you want to use the word empathy to think about it in a different way, it's not about mimicking the way someone thinks. It's about putting yourself and maybe replacing, you know, the great replacement theory.

Oh my God. Laughter Oh, help me. That's a good term. Me too.

No, it's... empathy is like the start. It's like, it's just a little tiny bit. And you can't say, oh, I can imagine being blind.

It's, oh, you can't see anything. But, you know, where's that going to get you? To dig deeper. It's really to dig deeper than whatever is in your knee-jerk thought of being empathetic.

Um, to, you know, I hear people want to do dining in the dark. I hear people cheat all the time. They lift up their eyeballs. You know, what's the point?

Um, so, no, it really is, to be serious, it really is to go deeper than that. Um, I don't have the exact answer, but I just think empathy is a, um, a short uh, short circuit. It's a, not a short circuit, it's a shortcut. A shortcut.

Like the woman who took the subways to win the marathon.

I know, it's a shortcut. You're not going to really get there. You're not, you have to do the work. And so that means, okay, what does it really mean?

It means hire someone with a disability.

That's you. Hire someone with a disability. Find out if there's someone in your office who really has a disability and doesn't feel like sharing, because what a double-edged sword that is. If you share, then you can get your accommodation, but you also can get uh, people can look down on you, whatever.

Um, it's so if you don't, it's so difficult, so get your designer to understand disability from within their own organization.

Um, last one, and then for folks in the room, hang out and chat with Peter more after we sign off on the live stream, but I'll do one more from online. Many people without disabilities might avoid interacting with individuals with disabilities because they're unsure how to act. How can we encourage more meaningful interactions? Gosh.

So nice simple question for you at the end. Well, I mentioned earlier the contagion response, um, which is a favorite phrase of mine, uh, and just to quickly say what it is, it's that feeling. He said, they're uncomfortable. They feel they might catch it.

Well, they catch what you have. Can you catch a disability? Well, in fact, historically, yep, polio, uh, contemporarily, measles, um, disability is, it can be contagious. Of course, it mostly isn't anymore, but it can be.

But somewhere that's evolutionary, it's in there. Um, but most disabilities are genetic, or they're trauma-related, or other causes that, you know, other than a communicable disease. The point is, the point is, again, the same as with your designer. It's your friends, your colleagues.

You can even ask the question, or you can say to someone, do you know anybody who has a disability in your family? Or, um, in the work I do, I will say that to a roomful of people at the start. And of course, I will say, please, you know, this is everybody, please share. We're all here to learn together.

Uh, no, no question is wrong or anything. Everyone will go, yes. And then afterwards, a couple people will come up and say, my uncle, is deaf, and I don't know what to say or do with them. And, um, so, it is astounding that here we are, and it's still so fraught at such a personal level because it is, along with age, it's the monster that people fear.

And I think the best way for us to communicate that it's not something to fear, it's something to live in, and that our lives are of equal joy and despair. Not greater, just equal. Um, that's the message to say. It's just that from our perspective, it's not horror.

It's not terror. It's getting up in the morning like everyone else and going to bed. So, I think that's the message. And I think just it's not special.

I mean, sometimes we want it to be. And I think that's a dichotomy we have to deal with as a community. We want not to be special. We want other people not to think of us as special, but sometimes we want to be special.

And that's, um, or to know what we've done, how we're doing. But, you know, the truth is everybody wants to be special and wants you to know how much, how well they did today despite all the shit that they're doing. Part of my trench. Whether you have a disability or not.

So, I guess it's just, again, to say that our experience is their experience is our experience, etc. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. I think that's the time we've got for Q&A.

And, uh, again, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts. Thank you all for coming. And...