『The Accessibility Advantage』のカバーアート

The Accessibility Advantage

The Accessibility Advantage

著者： The Blind Blogger Maxwell Ivey
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Advocating for more accessibility for and inclusion of people with disabilities through communication & collaboration instead of compliance & shame.Maxwell Ivey マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • Inside the American Council of the Blind: My Conversation with Michael Babcock

    Inside the American Council of the Blind: My Conversation with Michael Babcock
    2026/09/19
    Hello again, I hope you have had a good week. On this episode, I caught up with an old friend, Michael Babcock, who is now the Membership Engagement Specialist for the American Council of the Blind. Michael has been blind since birth and has spent 26 years working with assistive technology, dating back to when he was 10 or 11 years old and first started troubleshooting his way around the internet. We hadn't recorded together in about a decade, so this conversation was overdue in more ways than one. On With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen On Podcast Players Teaching as a Way of Learning Michael's approach to assistive technology has always been hands-on. He described a habit that's shaped his whole career: whenever he figured out how to solve a technical challenge, he'd immediately go teach someone else how to do it — not just to help them, but because teaching something forces you to understand it more deeply. He was talking and teaching about accessibility, in his words, "before I knew accessibility was a thing." He doesn't have formal professional training in the field, but he considers his lived experience more valuable than credentials the kind of knowledge that only comes from actually hitting a barrier yourself, like reaching the final step of booking an expensive flight only to find the credit card field won't accept keyboard navigation. How ACB Is Structured Michael walked through how ACB is organized: local chapters feed into state and regional affiliates, which feed into the national organization. ACB currently has around 62 or 63 affiliates nationwide, including 45 state affiliates and 18 special-interest affiliates built around specific communities groups like ACB Teachers, ACB Radio Amateurs, ACB Diabetics in Action, ACB Families, the Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America, and the Independent Visually Impaired Entrepreneurs affiliate. If someone reaches out looking for a local connection and there isn't a chapter in their state, ACB will help match them to a special-interest group instead, based on what they're already interested in or used to do before losing their vision. ACB Community: Daily Connection Born Out of COVID One of the most valuable resources Michael described is ACB Community, a program that grew directly out of the isolation of March 2020, when blind and visually impaired individuals suddenly lost the informal support of neighbors, caregivers, and everyday outings all at once. What started as one or two calls a week on a conference line has grown into something remarkable: since 2020, ACB Community has held more than 29,000 events, averaging around 100 events a week, running from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern, seven days a week. Membership isn't required to participate anyone can join an event, and anyone can propose to host one, as long as the content stays family-friendly. Events range from Braille instruction and technology discussions to cooking shows, religious services, and even a weekly community karaoke night. ACB relies on around 150 volunteers to keep things running smoothly, including trained hosts who moderate conversations and make sure everyone is treated respectfully. Michael also walked through the structure of ACB Community's daily schedule email in detail and I made a point of flagging why that mattered beyond ACB Community itself. The email uses clear heading levels, consistent formatting, larger bolded headings, and specific font and color choices drawn from ACB's own low-vision guidelines. That's not just good practice for an email blast it's a direct, practical example of the same heading structure and formatting principles that make websites navigable for screen reader and screen magnifier users. Advocacy Made Accessible ACB's advocacy work happens on two fronts. Accessibility consulting and compliance services, led by Colby Garrison, work directly with organizations to identify and fix accessibility barriers in their websites, apps, and tools. Separately, ACB's advocacy platform lets anyone member or not contact their legislators about federal legislation using a "Speak For" tool. The letters come pre-written, so all a person has to do is fill in their information, review the message, and hit submit. Michael said he's used the tool over a dozen times himself and regularly gets real, substantive follow-up responses from lawmakers' offices, not just form replies. Free Wills and Audio-Described Entertainment Two other ACB programs stood out. ACB covers the cost of a fully accessible online will-writing tool, available to anyone regardless of membership. And the Audio Description Project, accessible at ADP.acb.org, functions like a searchable, accessible programming guide for audio-described content across streaming platforms, cable, and over-the-air TV tracking more than 14,000 described titles. ACB also hosts an annual awards gala recognizing outstanding work in audio description. AI, Just Try It Michael shared a story from ACB's national ...
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    51 分
  • Digital Accessibility as a Right: My Conversation with Mellissa Green

    Digital Accessibility as a Right: My Conversation with Mellissa Green
    2026/09/17
    Hello again, I hope you are having a good week so far. On this episode, I sat down with Mellissa Green, a digital accessibility advocate and host of the podcast Uniquely Abled: Disrupting Disability. Mellissa was born with retinopathy of prematurity and has been blind since birth. We swapped a lot of stories from our early years navigating assistive technology, and talked candidly about what it takes to break into digital accessibility work without a traditional professional background in it. On With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen On Podcast Players A Trip Down Assistive Technology Memory Lane Mellissa and I spent a good chunk of the conversation reminiscing about the technology we grew up with from four-track cassette tape recorders and Perkins Braille typewriters to dedicated notetakers like the Keynote and the Braille'n Speak, back when getting anything printed off of them was its own ordeal. Mellissa didn't get access to JAWS until after she graduated high school, since it hadn't been released yet when she started using computers. Before that, she used an early computer simply to transcribe her Braille homework for teachers. Breaking Into Accessibility Without a Traditional Background One of the most honest parts of our conversation was Mellissa's description of trying to break into digital accessibility work. When her family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, she learned that some universities were looking for people with digital accessibility skills — but she felt she only had her lived experience to offer, not formal training. I pushed back on that framing hard: lived experience navigating assistive technology every single day is not a lesser qualification. It's knowledge no textbook can teach. Mellissa eventually took training through a program called Abler, which taught her the formal system for auditing websites things like how to write specific, actionable feedback to a web developer instead of just flagging that "a button isn't labeled." She learned to identify exactly which button, and to specify exactly what the label should say instead. The Trouble With Accessibility Overlays We got into a conversation about accessibility overlays those widgets that promise to make a website accessible at the click of a button. Mellissa has run into them on her own web host, and while she's had more success with them than I generally have (my experience is usually an echo and a slower browser), we agreed that overlays are, at best, a starting point rather than a real substitute for addressing accessibility at the back-end level where it actually counts. Where "A Blue Green Galaxy" Comes From I was curious about the story behind her website's name, the same way people are often curious about "The Blind Blogger." Turns out there isn't a deep hidden meaning Mellissa simply likes the colors blue and green, and writes interplanetary culinary thrillers and other science fiction on the side, which inspired the "galaxy" theme. Speaking Through Toastmasters Mellissa is a member of VIP Online Toastmasters, a group specifically for people who are blind or visually impaired. She recently gave a talk there on audio description, drawing on conversations she'd had with people actually working in the field, including audio describer Roy Samuelson and Joel Snyder of the Audio Description Project. One detail from Samuelson stuck with her: the audio description field itself needs more diversity, with more people of color and more women doing the describing. Uniquely Abled, Not Disabled Mellissa explained the philosophy behind her podcast's name: rather than framing disability as something someone simply "has," the idea is that everyone has unique abilities some people are born with a disability, some acquire one later in life, and some experience a temporary one. Recognizing that spectrum is part of what her training helped clarify for her, beyond what she already understood from lived experience alone. Accessibility Is a Right, Not a Privilege Mellissa closed with the philosophy that shapes her whole approach to this work: accessibility isn't a privilege reserved for people with disabilities, it's a right that benefits everyone. She used a clear example someone who doesn't speak English needs an accessible, translatable website just as much as someone using a screen reader does. Her advice to businesses and developers was direct: if you want as many people as possible to use your product or shop your site, you need to put yourself in the position of the many different kinds of people who might visit it. About Mellissa Mellissa Green is a digital accessibility advocate who was born with retinopathy of prematurity and has been blind since birth. She hosts the podcast Uniquely Abled: Disrupting Disability and is an active member of VIP Online Toastmasters, a Toastmasters group for people who are blind or visually impaired. Mellissa believes accessibility is a right, not a privilege, and works to help websites and ...
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    46 分
  • Visible and Invisible Disability: with Jennifer Chassman Browne and Dr. Arielle Dance

    Visible and Invisible Disability: with Jennifer Chassman Browne and Dr. Arielle Dance
    2026/09/12
    On this episode, I had the pleasure of talking with two remarkable women: Jennifer Chassman Browne, a lifelong educator and author currently finishing her book See Us Know Us: Profiles of Disability, and Dr. Arielle Dance, an award-winning children's book author, poet, and disability advocate. Both women are contributors to Jennifer's book project, and our conversation ranged from the very different experiences of visible versus invisible disability to storytelling as a tool for advocacy, to what real allyship actually looks like. ON With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen On Podcast Players When a Disability Becomes Visible Later in Life Jennifer was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at six years old, at a time when almost no support systems existed for children with the condition. For most of her life, she was able to keep it largely hidden — managing medications, braces, and doctor's appointments privately while the outside world saw only her professional accomplishments as an educator and school leader. That changed in her 40s, when her disability became physically visible. She described the shift starkly: the same people who once reflected back her competence and expertise now approach her first by asking if she needs help — as if her capability had changed overnight, when nothing about her had changed at all except what people could see. Finding Community Through Access Needs Dr. Dance's path looked different. Diagnosed with endometriosis at 15 and living with an evolving list of chronic conditions including fibromyalgia and past blood clots, she described herself as someone whose disability is invisible to most people who meet her — she still dances, still shows up, and still "looks fine" to the outside eye. Her real entry into the disability community came in college, when a lack of air conditioning in her dorm (a serious issue for her as an asthmatic) landed her in disability housing. That single accommodation opened the door to a whole community of students who taught her she could request the things she needed — extensions, extra time, whatever her situation required — language and permission she'd never had before. Jennifer, by contrast, grew up without that kind of community at all, and didn't find one until she sought it out as an adult. Both women agreed on something important: disability isn't only about diagnosis, it's about encountering a world that wasn't built to include you — physically, procedurally, or socially. Storytelling as Advocacy Jennifer explained that See Us Know Us grew directly out of her disability advocacy and DEI training work, where she noticed something consistent. People connected far more with personal stories than with statistics or policy arguments. The book combines narrative biographies, professional portrait photography, and original poems built from deep, focused conversations about each contributor's lived experience with disability — a three-part structure designed to help readers see the whole person, not just a diagnosis. Dr. Dance's own writing is similarly personal. She's working on a novel and an essay anthology inspired by her grandmother, who died of breast cancer at 34 — before Dr. Dance ever had the chance to meet her. She also writes for the disability advocacy organization Diversability, where she works to amplify stories from across the disability community, including many experiences she'd never encountered before joining that work. The Fight to Keep — and Expand — Access Dr. Dance was direct about the current moment: much of her advocacy work right ˆnow is focused on protecting hard-won gains from Section 504, the ADA, and the Olmstead decision, rather than only pushing forward. She pointed to real threats to in-home support services and the qualifying thresholds tied to them — support that many people depend on simply to get out of bed, get dressed, or show up for remote work. On the employment side, she talked about how outdated job requirements — like a "must be able to lift 50 pounds" line dating back to 1953 — can disqualify capable candidates for tasks that rarely come up and could easily be handled by someone else on a team. She also advocates for giving every candidate interview questions in advance, framing it not as an accommodation but as basic fairness: you wouldn't ask someone to take a test without telling them what's on it. Dr. Dance also shared advocacy work from her role at the American Cancer Society, where her employee group recently helped push out research on delayed cancer screenings for disabled patients — often due to inaccessible equipment like mammography machines that can't accommodate a wheelchair, or providers who simply lack the equipment to perform an exam safely. Accommodations That Already Help Everyone One of the most memorable moments of our conversation was Jennifer describing a training session where she asked a room full of people whether they used closed captions ...
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    1 時間 12 分
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