Podcast Transcript Febuary 24th 2023

What is advocacy, especially in the realm of accessibility?

Hello everyone!

I am Jolene MacDonald from Accessibrand, and I’d like to welcome you to the second season and the 7th episode of our podcast “Why Access Matters”.

This episode will not only cover the question about the connections between accessibility and advocacy but also will cover lots of thought-provoking topics about accessibility. So I hope you will stay with me till the end!

[Music]

Accessibility and advocacy! Two concepts that mean so much to many, and that make up the foundation of our podcast as we advocate for a more accessible world!

But as always, here’s a little something to reflect on and ask yourself: What would be your first thought if you heard that a “non-disabled” or able-bodied person was advocating for accessibility and sharing the stories and experiences of people with disabilities?

[Music]

Hello again everyone!

I am Jolene MacDonald from Accessibrand, and I’d like to welcome you to the second season and 7th episode of our podcast “Why Access Matters.”

Since June 2022, “Why Access Matters” proudly and happily brings you thoughts and talks about accessibility every last Friday of each month, and we invite you to listen to our first season on your favorite podcast platform.

All of our episodes are standalone talks, but each of our guests bring their own valuable, unique perspectives and thoughts to the topic, concept and necessity that is accessibility, and we encourage you to listen to all of them!

Now that you’ve thought about my first question, let me also ask: Do you feel that everyone -disabled or not – has a responsibility to work toward or push for an accessible world and society for all? Why or why not?

[Music]

To better understand how important it is to break down barriers and also to address that everyone –including non-disabled people- can and should do their part towards a more equitable and accessible world, I spoke to Cam Beaudoin, who is the founder of “Accelerated Accessibility.”

Cam describes his vision & mission in this way: “Many organizations struggle with disability inclusion. I help teams recalibrate that conversation, leading to better adoption and increased acceptance throughout the organization.”

In our conversation, which you will be hearing very soon, he spoke not only as a disability inclusion advocate and social media influencer in accessibility, but also shared his own story with me about how he, as a non-disabled person, entered the Accessibility sphere in the first place.

[Music]

Jolene MacDonald

Hey, how are ya?

Cam Beaudoin

I’m good. How are you?

Jolene MacDonald

Good. I’m so excited for you to be with us today. Cam, first question we have is how would you like to introduce yourself today?

Cam Beaudoin

Oh man. I’m a professional speaker on disability inclusion and accessibility, host of Normalize It. A fair- a show that maybe, you know, you’ve been on it, I think.

Jolene MacDonald

Yes, I was. Thank you again for having me on that. It was a great opportunity and I think it was a really great experience and you have a lot of viewers tune into that on LinkedIn as well.

Cam Beaudoin

Can you believe it now? I was looking at the show data and I had it aggregated and I have over 12,000 people, unique visitors who’ve now watched the show, which is huge. Which is huge. I’m blown away by the community.

Jolene MacDonald

That’s amazing. Well, I’m so excited to hear about that, so that’s a great opportunity to lead us into the next question. So, you’re an influencer who brings attention to the connections of work, disability and accessibility. I think, in fact we don’t really have a lot of influencers. I think there’s a few, but you seem to be popping up all over the place. How does that feel for you? And we’d like you to tell us about your experience and how it feels when you look back. So basically, what’s the progress been and has the response been?

Cam Beaudoin

So, it’s still very weird to me because I’ve always been a leader from the back kind of person. I don’t want to be the one in the limelight. I will take the limelight, but I don’t want to be any limelight. And I think this is the first time anyone’s called me an influencer because I’m not sure what I’m influencing yet. But the idea that someone once told me that she said,” Cam, what you do is you invite people to the table and because you look like a white guy, what happens is that other white guys look at you and they say, hey we want to listen to that guy. And then people in the disability- disability community say, well, he’s our voice at that table, and he invites us to that table.” So, when someone told me that, I felt very- like, that was the space that I occupy in this industry. So yeah, on stage or when I’m giving a speech to a group of people, I recognize that I am able-bodied and I am able to speak about this because of my experience and finding people out there who have stories or who have lived experiences and shining the light on them and saying, “Hey, give me your story and how do you see this industry going and where do you see this industry going?” That, I think, is the superpower that I try to bring here.

Jolene MacDonald

I think just leading into that too is, how’s the progress of the response of the community or society been to all of your efforts and what kind of feedback are you getting?

Cam Beaudoin

So, I get pretty positive feedback. I mean, I like to say that, you know, I always have room to grow and there’s always space to grow in. What is advocacy, right? I think that once upon a time, we all tend to think of advocacy is when you go to Times Square and you put a soapbox on the ground and you start speaking from a soapbox and you start to ad- but then advocacy can actually be whatever you want it to be. It can be something as a grassroots movement of trying to find people who want to donate money for a cause. It can be opening up a GoFundMe account for a family member who has recently contracted cancer or a disease, or it can be inside your own organization and saying something along the lines of what accessibility is important? I think we should make a movement or we should celebrate something like Global Accessibility Awareness Day and let’s have a day where we can celebrate that. So, advocacy can really be whatever you want it to be. To me, I have a show and I host that on LinkedIn because that’s where I find my audience is. And there’s other creators on LinkedIn too who are doing some fantastic things as well. So, advocacy I’ve learned can be whatever you want, whatever you want it to be, as long as you, and you can totally make it yours.

Jolene MacDonald

So, it’s not on the list, but I, I’d love the audience to hear about how you got started in this, because you mentioned you’re able-bodied, so how did you get into the disability and advocacy space for accessibility?

Cam Beaudoin

So, I used to be a developer for a large organization. And it’s funny because as a lot of people realize that the accessibility projects are usually not handled by the “best developers.” And I say that in air quotes, it’s usually the senior engineers are the ones that they put on the really complex tasks and then accessibility gets thrown into the juniors. Well, I was that junior and I remember waiting for logins. I had to wait six weeks for logins for the project because this is before Covid, and it took them forever to do these kinds of remote work things and VPN and stuff like that. So, I read the web content accessibility guidelines, can you believe it? It was something like -a lot of reading- 90 pages. It was a lot of reading, but I became the expert. I became the person in the organization who, later on, that specialty became the main reason people came to talk to me.

So anytime there’s a project within the company that had something to do with accessibility, even if it was just something along the lines of, we will check for accessibility or we’ll help developers, I became the go-to person. And for large organizations, you’re going to get- if you start to specialize in something like this, people are going to come to, you’re going to become the known person for accessibility. But it really wasn’t until I met my friend who, who’s blind. And what he did is he was kind of like the touring accessibility coach or teacher. So, he would go and teach teams about accessibility and things like that. And my boss, who was an ex-consultant, kind of- these types of guys, A type personality, they think they know everything. He walked right up to my friend and stuck his hand in his face and said, “Hi Tom, my name’s Jim” and he . And the thing is, when you’re a salesperson or consultant, turned manager, he had that idea of who’s going to flinch first? I got my hand out, who’s flinching first? I died of embarrassment. I ran back to my desk and went on YouTube and typed in how to shake a blind person’s hand. And it was amazing because I’d never, even though I was the guy for accessibility, I’d never actually met a user who uses assisted technology who would use the technology that I was building. I was purely working out of what the guidelines show. And as you and I both know; the guidelines are not everything. The guidelines have a lot of good stuff, but there are some big gaps in there that just cannot be kind of what, put on paper? Or exceptions or things like that? So it was through him that I learned that this is so much more about people. And that’s what started my idea of, I’ve went to go speak at CSUN, the CSUN Accessibility Conference, as well as I hosted Global Accessibility Awareness Day in the organization, went on to do consulting and just grew from there. But that was definitely a pivotal moment in when I started to say, this is about the people, this isn’t about the tech.

Jolene MacDonald

Yeah, I think that’s really what we’re all about, is about the people because there’s lots of great tech out there. And while it’s essential to the journey of accessibility, it still doesn’t create all the answers and people are forgetting about the actual users and engaging them in the project. So that’s really our focus. So, it’s cool to hear that that’s really what changed you because there’s so many people out there that are in the tech side are doing accessibility, but they’re still not getting people with disabilities involved in the project, which is, nothing for us, without us. That’s really where it stems to. So that’s pretty cool how you started that journey. So, thanks for sharing that part with us.

Cam Beaudoin

Because there’s- and if I could just add as well, there’s so much that you just can’t cover if you just focus on technology. I, I remember someone coming to me once, she was saying, “We want to handle user experience, but we only want to do it from an assistive technology point of view.” And I’m like, I don’t know how you’re going to do that. That is so far beyond- like, really somebody with a mobility issue- how, like the assistive technology is so customized to how that person experiences the world. Right? And if have- if you’re an amputee, you’re generally not- you don’t have any barriers to technology mean by and large, that’s a very broad statement, but it’s just not the same. So once I really started to learn that universal design matters in the fiscal space and in the digital space and there, there’s just so much more here than just let’s just put alt text on image.

Jolene MacDonald

And it’s so much more than just websites, which is most people think it’s just dropping something onto your website and go, oh yeah, it’s great. The little popups and everything we don’t talk about though. But it’s so much more than that. It goes beyond a website. It’s your emails, it’s your content, it’s the visuals that you’re using. So, I mean, the list goes on and on.

Cam Beaudoin

Absolutely. Yeah

Jolene MacDonald

I’m sure we could talk- I know with last time we met, we talked forever, but I think one of the other things we like to ask every guest is why is accessibility essential for society and not just for people with disabilities, you could specifically relate that to technology, but can you give us some thoughts on that?

Cam Beaudoin

Well, I’m going to talk about a report that I once read on cognitive load. Okay, what is cognitive load? It’s like how much we can handle in our minds a-at one time, how much can we put in there? So, in high stress scenarios, your cognitive load is quite high. You’re trying to think of this stressful scenario, and this is something that’s very- that’s talked about usually with for people whose first language is in English or maybe somebody with cognitive disabilities. But what really drove this home for me was an example of, imagine if there was a poison control website. You don’t want somebody who has a high cognitive load to be hunting around for your phone number. And if you do, like imagine if your child has swallowed, I’m not sure, some kind of bottle of something underneath the sink. And if you’re going hunting, “I got to go to the contact link and, oh wait, no, that wasn’t it, I need to click on the phone number and I got to scroll down.” < There’s no time for that> There’s no time for that! And so what do you want is to have the phone number in big, bold letters on the front page to say, have you swallowed something? Call poison control, right? Like that. And that to me is a perfect example of what, of why accessibility is so essential for society. I could talk about the specifics or convince somebody to, due to people with cognitive disabilities, we need to have this link here. Or I can say, poisoning control phone number should be on the front page because people will die if it’s not. And it’s such an obvious example. That’s a curb cut effect, which I know that probably a lot of listeners have heard of before. Curb cuts being the ramps as you go down curbs allows people who have strollers or with mobility issues to be able to get up on the curb without any problems. So, I would - I use that example quite often where it’s essential for society because man, it helps everybody understand. It just helps everybody when you build or design or create things with more people in mind.

Jolene MacDonald

Yeah, I think it’s been different seeing how much the physical environment has acknowledged that, but not the digital environment. How late to the game the digital side is. Even for myself, I had been a graphic designer for so many years and didn’t know anything about accessibility until the birth of my daughter, who has dwarfism, and later for me. But the requirements for digital accessibility are just as important as physical requirements and not just the bare minimum, because it means that everybody is entitled to an equitable experience regardless of disability, race, gender, language, or anything like that. So , thanks for sharing that. I think it’s important for people to not just think about, oh, I’m not going to do that because I don’t have any clients that are blind. It’s way more than that. It’s so much more than that.

Cam Beaudoin

I love that. I love that actually when customers- when people come and say like, “Well, I don’t have any clients with disabilities.” Nice, oh, really? Let’s talk about your client. How do you know that information? Maybe the reason you don’t have any clients with disabilities is because your technology’s not usable by that market segment of people. The argument just breaks down the more you ask questions in those scenarios. But I love what you said by the way, I just want to go back a second. When you mentioned that the phys- the digital space hasn’t caught up with the physical space, and I have a theory why that is. Can you imagine in the sixties when curb cuts started to happen? And I guarantee, I guarantee you, that there was somebody somewhere who built a curb without a curb cut in it. And there was some government official who came by and said, that’s not to code anymore. And he went, oh, darn it. And he had to redo the curbs. He had to repour the concrete. I guarantee it. I think that’s just because technology moves so fast. We don’t have those hard and set rules of I’m making a curb and this is a crosswalk. I’m going to put up some curb cuts here.

Jolene MacDonald

And for the new generation of people who are working in the digital space and technology, it needs to be integrated into the school systems, like into post-secondary. They need it as one of their core pieces because we’re not going to start changing the way we do projects if we don’t learn it from the beginning. Like I said, right now, for a lot of people, they were already working. They’re not learning it in school, but some of them are now. So, I’m seeing it trickle in, which is great. But I think that’s the biggest thing is, we need to get across is that accessibility isn’t just for the disabled community. It is for everyone.

Cam Beaudoin

Absolutely.

Jolene MacDonald

It, it’s really that simple. But hopefully we can get that across more often to everybody.

Cam Beaudoin

Yeah. I heard something really interesting recently about Gen Z who is just starting to enter the workforce in their- just graduating now and things and Gen Z are looking to work for and purchase from organizations who have proper ESG - Environmental Sustainability and Governance goals. And if you are not a, an organization who cares or thinks about these types of things, do you have DEI goals or DEIA, including accessibility? If you’re not thinking of those things, the generation that is coming up in the workforce now does not want to work for you and does not want to buy from you. So, these are things that just based on the generational changes that are happening, you’re missing out. You are just plain simply missing out.

Jolene MacDonald

Not to mention all the extra income that could come in if you make small changes.

Cam Beaudoin

Tiny, small habits.

Jolene MacDonald

Well, that’s a great topic. I wish we could talk about it all day. But I think one of the things we also talk to everybody about because there’s people who don’t know about accessibility, I’m sure that are tuning in, is what is your message to people who don’t know about accessibility? And of course, there’s some people who are afraid of it,

Cam Beaudoin

Right?

Jolene MacDonald

What would you say to them? I mean, you probably do that now in your job. What’s your spiel?

Cam Beaudoin

So, I always say we tend to take accessibility one of two ways. It’s either we’re going to change the entire organization, we’re going to do it all. And then you realize that accessibility is a way bigger thing than just what we mentioned before, alt text and labels and checkbox, checkbox, checkbox, right? It’s, it’s a transformation that your organization will have to go through. But I’m telling you something, just like your legal department still needs to update their knowledge on the latest laws, employment laws or what have you, just as your accounting department needs to know the latest tax codes and regulations like that, this is something that will always be changing over time and updating. So, we shouldn’t be afraid of it just because it’s something that’s unknown. And if you’re someone who’s listening who does not know about accessibility and you’re afraid of it, or maybe this is the first time you’re even hearing about it, then you’re lucky because there’s a lot of people who’ve already made those mistakes, right?

Jolene, I’m sure that lots of people who’ve been in the industry for a long time- 15 years ago, it was even harder to get involved into accessibility than it is now. We’ve got tools and there are lots of great books on accessibility or inclusive design or universal design, or what is it really to have a diverse workforce? But really, when I start to talk to someone who is not really knowledgeable about it, I really reinforce the fact that “Start small, start so small, start tiny, tiny, tiny.” And it doesn’t matter if you’re someone who’s listening, who you’re trying to convince your boss to care about accessibility, you know, got to start with some really small and easy wins. And whether that’s just putting or checking your email for accessibility, if anyone uses Outlook who’s listening, it’s got an accessibility checker inside, you just click a button and it checks it. And if that’s the small win that you can get, if you can convince your team, or if you can convince your HR department, whoever it is, to just click that button before they send something, then that is a conversation starter. And that starts to show your employees who may have disabilities as well, who are just not talking about it, that safe space is coming, or that people are starting to care in the organization. So don’t be afraid of it. Start really small. That’s my message there.

Jolene MacDonald

And I think we see a lot too on social media about progress over perfection. You talk about that a lot. And there’s people out there that absolutely attack people right away, because I’m always afraid of it. If we put something out and we’re not perfect, but nobody’s perfect and you do your best, I think we need to be accommodated - not accommodated - maybe acknowledged is the better word for doing whatever we can do. And I think that’s one of the big things. And there’s still that divide between whatever country you’re in with your laws. “Oh, I don’t have to comply” versus complying. Even those, obviously, we target clients that have to comply because it’s a hard sell for people who don’t because they’re not seeing the good end result. But what about those people that don’t have to comply? What do we say to them? Because we want everyone to do it regardless of the law.

Cam Beaudoin

Absolutely. I really like to lean into those business benefits of caring about accessibility. We’ve talked about a few of them already but, and I’ve been attacked- by the way, going back to the whole thing of I know I have posted something, or I’ve said, what are the business benefits of targeting a market segment like this? And I’ve been slammed for that on social media before because the perception is we want to monetize people with disabilities, but that’s not the angle. The angle is how do we show people whose attention currently is only about, “Well, I have to care about shareholders,” or “I need to make my company profitable,” or something like that. If that’s the type of person who’s listening or is you’re speaking to in your professional advice, well then all they can hear at that moment is, what’s my return on investment in doing this kind of thing?

And what I think us as accessibility professionals, we should not shy away from that conversation. We should learn how to have a business conversation around accessibility. We should learn how to have, “This is the immediate return investment that you’re going to, we talked about it briefly, right?” “Oh, I don’t have any clients with disabilities.” “Well, maybe that’s because , your website doesn’t work for people with disabilities. Maybe it’s because somebody with a screener cannot use it and they don’t want to purchase from your website. So spend the money, make your shopping cart. We can talk about the real basic stuff. Just make your product listing pages and your product pages and your shopping cart accessible at least to get people over.” Because I remember hearing a story about someone whose grandmother was blind, but she used a screen reader, and she wanted to purchase toys for her grandkids, and she had seven grandkids. And it was like, whatever toy website was not accessible. And I’m like, “That is your client market right there, but you just lost a sale and that data is not going to show up.” So having our industry acknowledge that there are business reasons for doing this and getting comfortable with that conversation, it has to be more than just “This is the right thing to do.” Because at the very beginning, businesses are not ready to have that conversation. It’s not the only thing to have. That’s a later conversation. But to start off with, I love talking about ROI. Yeah. . Yeah. Here’s the business reasons of doing this.

Jolene MacDonald

Yeah, there’s so many reasons. I think not only is it a good thing to do, it’s the right human thing to do. But there’s lots of financial benefits from it and with search engine and things like that. But again, it’s not just for one community. It’s really for everyone. And it’s just going to benefit you down the road. Cause at every point in our lives, we’re going to experience disability, whether we want to admit that or not. I think that’s one of the things I see. And of course, for me, my passion became when I experienced it personally for me, and then not just me before my scenario, but with my child. And I’m seeing that now, you know, you could be in an accident tomorrow and boom, your life is completely different.

Cam Beaudoin

Absolutely.

Jolene MacDonald

I would love to see people’s passion ignited before they face those realities, But I mean, baby steps are better than no steps. So, we’re always happy to hold people’s hand. And I think that’s the big thing. It’s not all or nothing. You can start small.

Cam Beaudoin

Right? Well, I’m amazed at how many organizations now are even just posting their accessibility statements or having accessibility at the bottom. I consciously choose for my business to not purchase from companies that don’t have an accessibility statement, right? Like between what I need to procure a video service or something like that to post, I don’t know, video links or something. I choose to go for an organization that has an accessibility statement, and even though the accessibility statement- or it has a VPA write- a voluntary product accessibility template…I almost lost it there.

Jolene MacDonald

Too many acronyms, not plain language.

Cam Beaudoin

Oh man Even though their VPA is full of violations, they’re admitting to it. Right? They’re conscious about it too. And I think that more and more people who are just even curious or want to know what that is, or large organizations who are procuring from companies like that, this is the trickle down, top-down effect. Government wanted it first. A large- like, universities and colleges were next. And large organizations, of course who are in Canada beholden to some of the laws we have here for accessibility. You know, what- And everyone that they procure from. I know what all the large banks here in Canada, they’re now choosing to only procure from companies that have accessibility statements when they can, right? I mean, if there’s comparable and that is something that wasn’t happening five years ago, but it’s happening now. So, what now happens to those companies who have been procured from these big banks? Well, they’re going to make their tools accessible. And so, then the next person who purchases from them automatically gets the benefits of an accessible software piece of software.

Jolene MacDonald

As well. And they’ve all been integrating diverse supplier programs for the most part too. We’re a diverse supplier under shadow to IWSCC, which [is] another acronym, but it’s Inclusive Workplace Supply Council of Canada. A lot of the banks and the bigger orgs are partnering with companies and organizations like that because we’re having more opportunities as disabled owned. Now IWSCC is disabled and veteran-owned companies, but it’s great opportunities for everybody all the way around. And the little guys get more opportunities too. So it’s a great question to lead in or comments to lead into our next question. So, we were saying before, we’re kind of referring to our previous question about social media. I know that is part of your job, your helping accessibility and diversity advocates to strengthen, I’ll say their influence, but what’s your advice to the younger generation of people with disabilities for them to share their own stories? What would you- any advice or commentary on that?

Cam Beaudoin

Sure. Well, I’d say get on TikTok and start sharing. I’ve seen a plethora of creators out there who are just- okay, look, I’m colorblind, all right, you want to know a good story? And I saw this guy, he has over a million followers on let’s say either Instagram or TikTok. And all he does is he pours paint and tries to guess the color. That’s it. That’s his whole gig. It’s his thing. And what a great thing because he’s now sharing with the world, this is what it is to be colorblind. I don’t know if that’s purple or blue. And then he just shares that story. And what a great way to start to bring awareness to what it is to have a lived experience. So, sharing on social media, you don’t have to get out there and do a full podcast or a whole show.

You don’t need to go and speak on stage if that’s not for you. Create a “lunch and learn” at your workplace. You can host a group of people and no share with them. This is what it is to have anxiety, truly have anxiety, and this is what I experience when I do something, and this is how I would prefer us meet. If you could just send the agenda an hour before we meet instead of two minutes before we meet. Because I know there’s people who have anxiety, who are not able to handle situations like that, especially in a workplace environment where they just get called up, “Hey, could you go come up in the front of the room and share what it is?” and sends ’em into terrors, right?

Jolene MacDonald

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I think since Covid has happened too, anxiety has shut up from people that didn’t even identify as having any sort of neurotypical or a neurodiverse sort of tendencies. Covid has just expanded that to no tomorrow, and it’s been hard for me to see some of the struggles. We have a lot of co-ops and other students, and they love the fact that we’re not in person. We’re all online. We’re a completely remote company, or that they have the option of many of the students that I’ve met over the years or younger students just coming out and starting the workforce, they want hybrid because a lot of them have suffered like the cognitive load and the hybrid and not wanting to come to terms with dyslexia or that they have autism or something like that, that this is just given them whole new potential. But I encourage them to share their experiences, especially within our group. I mean, it’s a safe place here, You can’t do that everywhere. But the biggest question I get is how do I talk about it? How do I disclose? And that’s a different question and answer for everybody depending on their personality, I think. But I encourage everyone I’ve met is talk about it so people know.

Cam Beaudoin

Yeah, I want to add there too, because I want also to anyone who might be listening, don’t ever feel pressure though too. Share if you don’t feel like there’s a lot of people who say just are okay with not sharing too, and that’s okay too. Yes. Encourage to share. And you brought up about when to disclose, especially in a workplace that’s really difficult, especially in large organizations, when you don’t know your boss very well, you don’t know your peers very well, high pressure or high stakes environments, sales environments or call center environments or things like that too, where you have very strict deadlines or targets or things like that, and you know, don’t feel pressure that you need to share, but finding out what the accommodations are in your workplace is a good place to start too.

Jolene MacDonald

Yeah, I think that’s the hardest part. I get asked that question so much. I’ve been self-employed for almost 20 years, so I don’t know how to answer that. For me, it’s easy based on my personality and my situation, but I never know how to answer others in that. But I would agree, you don’t feel pressure to do it. But I think having media to share those experiences, when my daughter had a TikTok account, she’s 11 now, and she was sharing her journey about having dwarfism in her emotions. She was so much happier. Well, unfortunately she got banned because of the age, even though it was my account, all of a sudden, her outlet disappeared. So, we still, we’d like to try that again, but you mean only share what you want to share, but the idea of being able to share that journey and people can understand your emotions through the music and the dance or the talk or the captions, it was a huge boost for her. So, I certainly love to see other creators sharing their information. But we’re talking lots, but we’re almost at the end. And I wanted to know if you had anything else important that you would like to add. I mean, everything’s important in my opinion about accessibility, diversity, inclusion, but is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

Cam Beaudoin

Just one thing, and there’s one thing that in our industry we’re experiencing a lot of these days, and I read about it in blogs or I read about it on social posts or when I go to a conference, I hear people talk about it, and its advocacy fatigue. People are so tired having to repeat themselves over and over and over again to their boss, their coach, their leader, their teacher, they’re whoever about the fact that they have a disability and that it feels like they’re just exhausted, especially people who are in our profession, in our specialty as advocates or as leaders in the space. And to those people, I’d say that there’s a lot to be gained by learning about where somebody else is in their journey about accessibility. So, one of the talks that I give quite frequently is about speaking up and speaking out, and how do you actually get your boss to listen?

And picking up a book on communications is really, really helpful. I- we talked about starting small, so your boss may be at only 10% knowledge about what accessibility even is. Or maybe they’re struggling with their own way of understanding what disabilities are, and maybe they’re doing it out of ignorance or maybe they’re doing it out of personal or internal shame or things like that. So, understanding that where someone else is and starting from there and working your way up is going to be very helpful. Or I’ve seen lots of people move- move the needle when they take it from that direction.

Jolene MacDonald

Yeah, definitely. When I talk to people, I think, I admit myself when I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos, you don’t think about it as disability, but as it progressed, and I struggled, and I even saw the example I had to lead for my own children is that disability isn’t a bad word. In society, we’ve sort of created this thing that we’re less than or we can’t do things, we’re all just as great as the next person. So sometimes we have to do things differently and encouraging people to open their eyes about being flexible and giving opportunities where opportunities lie, and just being proud of who you are, regardless if we’re different or not different, and however you want to put that. So, I really appreciate always talking to you, Cam. It’s always so enlightening. And is there anything else you want to add? I know that you have lots of shows coming up!

Cam Beaudoin

Oh yeah. So, I’m pretty excited. So tomorrow, I’m not sure when this is going to broadcast, but have- find me on LinkedIn. All right. Cam Beaudoin [B E A U D O I N]. I’m sure you’ll have the spelling of that. People get all hung up on my on the spelling of my last name, but find me on LinkedIn. I host a live show every Friday at noon Eastern. Some people coming on the show, I’ve got people talking about ADHD entrepreneurship. I’ve got the Chief Accessibility officer of Canada coming on the show. I’ve got the < That’s, that’s awesome.> Yeah. Director of Accessibility at Microsoft coming on the show. And what’s really interesting is, like I said, I try and come at it from a business tilt so that if you are struggling at communicating the values and importance of accessibility to people within your organization, maybe come have a listen, have a look and maybe you’ll get something from it.

Jolene MacDonald

Well, we’ll make sure to drop your details on the podcast listing as well on our website. So, thanks again for joining us Cam, it’s always great to see you and hopefully we’ll be chatting again soon.

Cam Beaudoin

Awesome. Great. Have a great day, Jolene.

Jolene MacDonald

Thanks. You too.

[End of the interview]

Why Access Matters: A podcast by Accessibrand (thoughts and talks about accessibility)

Hello again everyone!

I am Jolene from Accessibrand, and I want to thank you for listening to the 7th episode of “Why Access Matters.”

You just heard a conversation that I had with Cam Beaudoin, who is the founder of “Accelerated Accessibility.”

Please take a moment to reflect and think on some of the things he said and answer some questions for yourself:

Recalling how he had to google how to shake a blind person’s hand, Cam remarked on the shift in his perception, saying “It was amazing because even though I was the guy for accessibility, I’d never met a user who uses assisted technology and would use the technology that I was building. So I was purely working out what the guidelines show. And as you and I both know, the guidelines are not everything… that was definitely a pivotal moment in when I started to say, this is about the people, this isn’t about the tech.”

Has anything similar happened to you? If yes, how did you handle it & what did you learn? Please share your story with us!

Cam also shared this metaphor for accessibility: “Imagine if your child has swallowed some kind of a bottle of something underneath the sink… the poisoning control phone number should be on the front page because people will die if it’s not. And it’s such an obvious example [and] I use that example quite often where it’s essential for society because it helps everybody understand. It helps everybody when you build, design, or create things with more people in mind.”

Is the prospect of creating an accessible website and/or product too much for you? Are you worried that it will eat up a lot of money or time?

Consider this perspective: How many people would be affected by the lack of access and lower quality of life when a product or place is not accessible?

If you are struggling with how to make your products, programs or media accessible, please reach out; we would be happy to help!

Lastly, Cam remarked: “I heard something really interesting about Gen Z who is just starting to enter the workforce … Gen Z are looking to work for and purchase from organizations who have proper environmental sustainability and governance goals. And if you are not an organization who cares or thinks about these types of things, do you have DEI goals or DEIA, including accessibility? If you’re not thinking of those things, the generation that is coming up in the workforce now does not want to work for you and does not want to buy from you.”

Do you agree with these values? Have DEI or DEIA goals but don’t know how and where to start?

We and our colleagues and partners, including Cam, can help with your Accessibility Plans. Contact us today!

[Music]

Send us your thoughts, ideas, and any feedback you have to our email, to Jolene [at] Accessibrand.com, or in the comments at our Apple Podcast page and Castbox, or under our posts on social media; we love when people connect there, and you can find those in the description box of our episodes.

[Music]

Well, we’ve reached the end!

I am Jolene MacDonald from Accessibrand. Thanks for your patience and time in listening to me, my colleagues and our special guest, Cam Beaudoin, in our 2nd episode of the 2nd season of “Why Access Matters” and the 7th episode to date.

The next episode will follow every last Friday of each month, but until then, please:

Send us your thoughts and ideas!
Follow our podcast in pod catchers like Apple Podcast, Google, and Spotify or any other platform you listen to podcasts on,
Follow our fabulous guest on LinkedIn,
Don’t forget to introduce us to your friends, family and network!

Please consider checking out our website if you need any accessibility services and would like to utilize the valuable lived experience and expertise of persons with disabilities. You can visit our website at: www.accessibrand.com.

Why Access Matters: A podcast by Accessibrand (thoughts and talks about accessibility)