0:00:00.4 Amanda Selogie: Welcome back listeners. Happy July. We have our little summer break that we take where we replay for the month of July our favorite episodes. Each of them are with a guest. Actually one is a solo. It was our Live From The Boos conference which probably is our favorite one of the four but they're all really good. We hope you enjoy it and we will talk to you in August and get you ready for the 24-25 school year. Enjoy.

0:00:36.1 Vickie Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:40.1 AS: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:51.1 VB: Each week we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:56.5 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:01:06.1 VB: Welcome back friends. Hello. We are excited to be back. We have a part two with the guests that we are excited to dive deeper as the school year came to a close and summer and as we talk about getting into this new school year we love diving deeper with our guests and getting more information about how schools and organizations can be more accessible for kids so we're really excited to talk to Michael again. Thank you for coming back to the podcast.

0:01:39.0 Michael: Thank you. My pleasure. Glad to be here.

0:01:43.3 AS: This was an easy part too for us, because we didn't get through as as much as, we wanted to, but that's quite all right. When the listeners last left us, we had gotten through the first part of your life and we wanted to bring you back on because we wanted to have a really thorough discussion. And how we met you was through accessiBe. So do you mind kind of walking us through how you ended up there later in life, or maybe not later in life? How did, accessiBe about?

0:02:14.1 Michael: Well, sort of later in life. Well, So I've been a public speaker since right after September 11th, and I travel and speak talking about the lessons to learn from September 11th, as long as other lessons about leadership and trust and teamwork. And one of my favorite talks is something called Moving From Diversity to Inclusion. And it's entitled that because when you talk usually about diversity, and you talk to the So-called experts, they say that diversity usually deals with sexual orientation, gender, and race, but it doesn't include disabilities. And when I ask them about that, oh, well, that's in social justice. No, it's not. It is a topic that needs to be discussed and you always leave us out, even though 25% of all Americans, according to the CDC, have some sort of disability. And I would wager that later this year when National Disability Employment Awareness Month comes along, you won't find the television studios and the TV shows talking about disabilities like they did about Black History Month, like they do about women, like they do about indigenous people in the United States, or Pride Month.

0:03:27.3 Michael: Because they're afraid to talk about disabilities, even though the reality is disability doesn't really mean a lack of ability. And of course, the knowledgeable experts say, well, of course it does, because it begins with dis. I say, yeah, you're absolutely right. It does begin with dis and so does disciple. So does discern. So does discrete. So does discrete mean a lack of Crete? No. Disability Is a term that actually fits everyone in society. And the reason it does is because all of you, people who can see are light dependent. Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb for you back in 1878. But what is the light bulb? According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's a reasonable accommodation to give light dependent people the ability to function in the dark. And that's what it is. Make no mistake, your disability is still there. It's just covered up because we've made providing light on demand such an all pervasive thing. But disability is a characteristic that everyone has. It just isn't the same for, everyone. It's different, but it's still a characteristic we all have.

0:04:30.4 AS: Yeah. Do you think people are afraid simply because they don't have the tools to speak about it? I mean, you put it so eloquently, you know, the definition of, a light bulb, but, you know, we see the gamut, right. Of individuals that come on behalf of their children. Some are in denial, some are overprotective. It spans the range. But it, is difficult for us when we are dealing with somebody on the other side, particularly a school district person who just either refuses to accommodate the child or just like, does not think the child has a disability. I wonder where that fear maybe of the unknown, is that what it is? Why are people afraid to talk about disabilities?

0:05:14.8 Michael: Well, it's a lot of different things, but it really does often come back to fear or a lack of education. Look, until the 1980s, people with disabilities couldn't buy life insurance because the insurance companies said we were a higher risk. And finally it took a blind man, named Jim Omvig, who talked to an insurance company representative who, and Jim said, you guys base everything that you do on mathematical models and statistics and actuarial and evidentiary data and so on. So, do you have the proof that people with disabilities, like blind people, are a higher risk, simply because they're blind. And the guy said, Yeah, absolutely. Well, six months later, they still hadn't been able to produce it. And Jim finally said, it doesn't exist, does it? Exactly. Well, we haven't found it. And the answer is, it's all about societal prejudice.

0:06:02.4 Michael: It is all about a lack of education, and it's a fear. Oh my gosh. I might become blind someday. Well, yeah, you might. And you, might become a politician and become dumb right away too. But that's another story. I think every...

0:06:18.1 AS: It's based on a lot of assumptions.

0:06:18.2 Michael: I think politicians all take dumb pills, but.

0:06:22.7 AS: Yeah. Right.

0:06:23.7 Michael: But the reality is that there is a lot of fear. There's a lot of lack of education. And the, so-called knowledgeable experts won't include us in the conversation. I've been to conferences that deal with disability, or excuse me, with diversity and so on and out of a multi-day conference, I was the only person who was there who talked at all about disabilities. No one else did. It is just that there is so much fear and they think they have hotter buttons to deal with.

0:06:50.6 Michael: Well, you know, we're not gonna go off and blow up buildings or anything like that. But the reality is that blindness isn't my problem. It is societal attitudes. And as more technology is developed, it does become easier for me to do things. But it became easier to do things when the technology of the light bulb was developed. It became easier for all of you. So, you know, it is an issue. And the reason I mentioned all of it and brought it up in, answering your question, was, so I talked about a lot of things like that for 22 years. Talked a lot about the lessons we should learn about emergency preparedness and so on. And in fact, last year an article was written about me by a, police person in Arizona. And the article was written because he attended a speech where I spoke in 2014.

0:07:45.5 Michael: Nine years later, he's writing the article. How often did you find a speaker who is so well remembered that a guy writes an article about him nine years later?

0:07:55.7 AS: Seriously.

0:07:57.3 Michael: So enough bragging. But, the point is that I did that for 22 years, and I talked about getting out of the World Trade Center and remaining calm. But I realized as the pandemic began that I never talked to people about how they could learn to control fear, how they could learn to be more observant and recognize the reality that fear can be a very powerful tool to focus you, rather than you be blinded or paralyzed or overwhelmed by fear When something, horrific happens, like the World Trade Center, you can certainly Learn to deal with that. And so the reality is that as all that began, and the pandemic happened, I decided, oh, I've gotta talk to people about overcoming their fear.

0:08:43.8 Michael: And I'm not gonna say not be afraid, but rather I'm gonna say, use that fear as a powerful tool to help you. So I began writing a book. I worked with a woman named Carrie Wyatt Kent. 'cause I like to collaborate when I write. And we wrote a book called Live Like A Guide Dog, true Stories from a Blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity, and walking in Faith. Thunder Dog. My original book was The Story of a Blind Man, his Guide Dogs in the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. But anyway, the book is gonna be published in August of 2024. And it is available, it will be available wherever you can find books, including on Audible and other things like that. And it'll be available in all forms wonder. So it'll be accessible. So it's gonna be cool.

0:09:27.3 Michael: But it's all about learning to control fear. And I again, mention that because I believe that a lot of the issues we face with disabilities and so on is all about fear. The Gallant polling organization in the 1980s and 1990s did a lot of surveys about people's fears. And one of the top five fears for many years was blindness. Not even all disabilities, but blindness. So we really need to step back and not go along with our prejudices, but learn reality. And so I like to teach people about that. And on October of 2020, I was on a website and there was a little message that came across my screen reader that said, put your browser in a screen reader mode. And at that time it said, press alt one, now it's a button. But it said, put your browser in a screen reader mode.

0:10:17.1 Michael: And I went, what the heck is that? I've never seen it before. And I pushed it. And the website, which I had used before suddenly became much more accessible than it ever had been. And I went, oh my gosh, what is that all about? So I investigated and finally discovered that it was actually a product from a company called accessiBe, A-C-C-E-S-S-I-B-E. And what accessiBe does, as I learned, I decided to become a partner and sell it. But in 2021, the founder called and said, no, we don't want you to be a partner. We want you to join the company because we need to learn more about blindness and disabilities and so on. We think there are other ways that you can help us. And that also led to the Unstoppable Mindset Podcast. I think we talked about last time, Unstoppable Mindset where inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet.

0:11:08.7 Michael: But I joined accessiBe. AccessiBe. Uses very much some AI tools to create what's called a widget that sits up in the cloud somewhere. And I don't know if it gets bored sitting up in the cloud, but it gets a lot of use. So it's okay.

0:11:24.8 VB: Yeah, it does.

0:11:26.2 Michael: And what the widget does is if you subscribe, and for most websites, you know, that are simple and so on, it's like $490 a year. The widget and the technology will go look at your website and it will look at what's accessible, what could be made accessible, and sometimes what it can't totally do, although it tries, and it does that in conformance with something called the Web Content accessiBe Guidelines, which is something that the World Wide Web Consortium created. And those are the things that are used to make websites or the rules that are used to define what a website has to do to become accessible not only for blind people, but for people with other disabilities.

0:12:13.1 Michael: Like if you happen to be a person with epilepsy and you go to a website that uses accessiBe That has blinking elements on it, that could have cause you to go into a seizure. You can use an accessiBe profile and stop those elements from blinking. Or if you are a quadriplegic and you use a puff and sips stick, which is also something, I'm not using a puff and sips stick, but I also don't have the opportunity to use mice like quadriplegics don't. And so accessiBe allows for some mechanisms to make websites more usable with a keyboard, then they otherwise might be. They label links, they do a lot of things. Is it perfect? The widget is not. Although accessiBe has grown a lot, they also have a new tool called Access Flow that is used to help website developers determine how to fix those things that the widget can't do.

0:13:04.3 Michael: If you go to my website, you will see, and you won't see it unless you activate accessiBe, I should, let me rephrase that. I won't hear about it unless I activate accessiBe. Okay. But I'll hear this thing that says a picture of a man sitting on a park bench holding a dog with his eyes closed. Now technically that's accurate, although I still don't know whose eyes are close, the dog or the person, the problem is, what I want it to say is Mike Hinkson hugging Rozelle sitting on a park bench or something like that. But it doesn't know how to do that. So technically it's accessible, but it's not as usable as I, the marketer who owns the website want it to be. And there are reasons why it can't be made more accessible, because accessiBe doesn't know where to go find pictures that would identify the man as Michael Hinkson and the guide dog is Rozelle.

0:13:58.8 Michael: Because for example, you can't go to Facebook and see pictures and say, oh, that's who that is. Because Facebook says they own all the pictures that are on their site. And so the result is you just can't go grab that information. So over time, other technologies will come, but what the widget does is it looks at websites for people who subscribe, and it will do a lot to make those websites more inclusive. Like it did with that website I mentioned that I found in October of 2020. It labels links. If you go to a lot of websites and you look around with a screen reader, you'll hear various times it says Link, link, link, link, what that really is, this Facebook link, Twitter link, LinkedIn link, Google Link, and Instagram link and so on. They don't label them, but the links are recognizable by sighted people because they're the same. They're uniform.

0:14:52.1 AS: The Icon.

0:14:52.5 Michael: And so with those icons that everybody knows accessiBe can look at those and say, oh, that's Facebook. Oh, that's Instagram. Oh, that's TikTok. And it will label the links. It will go in and look at things. And where somebody doesn't do the right thing to make a menu accessible accessiBe will do that. So it's an inexpensive way to do a lot of the work. And depending on the complexity of the website, it may do all the work or it may not. But the bottom line is that it will make a significant difference almost any website. And it's getting better every day as the developers work with all the input that comes in when somebody writes and says, oh, my website isn't working right, there's a problem. I had somebody contact me two years ago and they said, I go to this website and I want to do something on it, but when I try to go into the shopping cart, accessiBe doesn't do it.

0:15:46.1 Michael: And I went, oh, that's interesting. And so I went to the website and accessiBe didn't do it. So we made sure that accessiBe learned about that. And within a few days, the shopping cart problem was fixed. But why is that relevant? Because unlike with manual coders who, when they work on a website, they have to work on that website. What accessiBe developers do with the widget is they fix the problem in the widget. And so anyone who uses that shopping cart, or who may use that shopping cart in the future, suddenly have a working shopping cart because accessiBe is scalable. And so there are hundreds of thousands of people who use the product now. And every time something gets fixed, it becomes better for everyone, not just one person. So accessiBe brings a lot of value that wasn't there before.

0:16:43.1 AS: Oh, yeah. And I mean, just even the attention to detail with the different adjustments, accessibility adjustments, I know that there's one for, you know, ADHD friendly profile. So it tries to make it more focused, fewer distractions that I know a lot of people could use, whether or not they have ADHD and other one that, that really stood out to us...

0:17:05.4 Michael: So what does it do to make it so that you're less distracted?

0:17:05.4 AS: So when I went on and I used it on our website, it actually just really focused in on the text more. 'cause we have a lot of colors. Yeah. And that's like a lot of times if you have running pictures or something like that, it'll just kind of be their block. Not necessarily block them out, but kind of fade them just so that the text, because that's what we want, you know, you to focus on that, that's what, you know, the entire website kind of focuses on. The other one that I was gonna say, but I hadn't tried that, I hadn't turned it on, was the cognitive disability profile. That one, I hadn't used that button just because the ADHD one caught my eye. But just those two alone, I mean, with wanting to make our website even more accessible, I hadn't even thought that that would be possible for people with cognitive disabilities and or ADHD. Oh, I think the ADHD one too, you could make it dark or lighter. So a lot of devices now, like at night, or people are better able to see a dark background with white text instead of the traditional black text on a white background.

0:18:12.1 Michael: A white Background. Right.

0:18:14.9 AS: Yeah. And just, I mean, you know, and that was just helpful to me. I didn't, you know, I've lived my whole life not thinking about, oh, could the background be black and the text be white? You know? So I mean, it really is so accessible.

0:18:24.9 Michael: AccessiBe works to make websites much more usable for people regarding a variety of disabilities. It isn't just blindness, it isn't just one thing. There are like nine or more different profiles that people can activate to address different kinds of disabilities depending on what their particular situation is. And over time, it will become much better than it is today. We can't, for example, yet today provide with accessiBe audio descriptions of videos on a website because AI hasn't progressed to the point of doing that. There are people who are working on a lot of that technology, but it hasn't progressed to the point where it can really be built in, in an effective way to make that work across the board. But there are people who are doing that work and who do provide audio descriptions, but the time will come when AI will do some of that.

0:19:22.8 Michael: And, you know, some people will say, well, AI's gonna take our jobs away. No, it's not. Because all it's gonna do is make it possible for you to concentrate on other things. I interviewed that guy on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he made a very good point. AI doesn't eliminate any jobs whatsoever. People do. And they do that by incorporating AI, not recognizing that the people who may be doing jobs that AI might overtake those people could also be put to work in companies doing other things. And he gave some examples of how companies have done that. And I actually talked to one gentleman who was involved with a shipping company, and I said, what do you think is gonna happen when autonomous vehicles really come into the shipping world? What will that do to your companies? And he said, well, I'm not sure that we're gonna get there for a while.

0:20:15.3 Michael: But what he said was, there are always other jobs to do. And I said, yeah, look at your trucks. So let's say you actually use an autonomous vehicle technology to drive your trucks, keep the drivers in the trucks to monitor it, but also you can give them other company jobs to do so that they're still adding value to the company. It's not that you're replacing somebody, you're gonna provide them with different things to do and teach them to do different, jobs and provide different tools. But the reality is AI isn't gonna overwhelm and overtake us. AI's going to allow us to become a lot more effective and grow and learn, which is what we should do.

0:20:57.0 VB: And make a lot more things more accessible. I mean, just thinking about some of those jobs that if AI is supporting and AI is kind of like helping that worker, we're opening up the doors to more people who may have needed accommodations to fill those jobs in the first place. And that AI can provide that accommodation so that people who may be wouldn't have otherwise been able to be qualified for that job, or people would assume they can't because of maybe their disability or some type of impairment. Right. But that now, with that help with that accommodation, they can get a job that is more substantial than, you know, what is often offered to them.

0:21:41.5 Michael: Yeah. And I really work hard to get people to understand not picking on anyone, but we need to get away from viewing disability as being an impairment because, all it really means is we're gonna do things in a different way. And I think no matter what person with whatever disability they manifest, the reality is I think we all have gifts. And what we really need to do is to accept that and find the gifts that different people have. I mean, people with autism can do things, people with Down syndrome can do Many things. And oftentimes do, if given the opportunity. So, you know, like visual impairment, I think that's a horrible term because we're visually, we're not different simply because we're blind and we're certainly not impaired. So we gotta get people away from thinking about that in that way. And that's of course part of the whole issue in dealing with disabilities and so on in general. And getting back to your question of earlier, we're not impaired. We may not do things the same way, but a lot of people don't do things the same way. Left-handed people don't do things the same way right-handed people do necessarily, even though our world is more constructed for right-handed people, But the bottom line is that we all do things in different ways.

0:23:01.4 AS: Yeah. As a lefty here, I definitely I am definitely one to know that even scissors, when I was growing up, I hated using the left-handed scissors. I would just use the right-handed scissors in my left hand because the left-handed scissors didn't cut well. And so I think that that is probably the biggest thing. I think people very early on are conditioned to think, oh, people with disabilities, they're the weak link in the chain.

0:23:28.4 Michael: They're impaired.

0:23:30.9 AS: They're impaired. Yeah.

0:23:33.7 Michael: And we're not. And we're not. In 1973, I attended my first convention of the National Federation of the Blind. And there one day at the convention, the president Kenneth Jernigan delivered a speech that he called Blindness, a left-handed dissertation. And he equated blindness as to how we're treated to people who are left-handed and how they're treated. And actually, I like that speech so much that when Thunder Dog was published in 2011, I got permission to put that whole speech in the book. So if you buy Thunder Dog, that speech is in there. If you get the audio version, the original talk from 1973 delivered by Jernigan is in the audio edition, which is really kind of cool. But the reality is that it is not an impairment, it is a difference. And we need to deal with that.

0:24:18.7 Michael: So that's how I got involved with accessiBe and I work with access to, when I'm not speaking, do other things, dealing with, teaching internally about disabilities. I do onboarding sessions for all of the new staff that comes on. And I'm involved in doing other kinds of things with it as well. And then I continue now that the pandemic has passed. And also my wife passed away in November of 2022. We had been married 40 years, and she was in a wheelchair her whole life. Her body just slowed down. And so I can travel again and I don't need to worry about leaving her at home 'cause I won't do that. And didn't really do that. So I'm traveling again and speaking. In fact, I'll be in London at the end of October and I've got a number of other talks around the country coming up, which is kind of fun as well. And one of the speeches that I give, especially as a breakout session, is called Moving from Diversity to Inclusion. Because you can't be inclusive if you don't include disabilities. And that's kind of the message of the speech. So it's a lot of fun and we're always looking for speaking opportunities. So hopefully, those will continue to come in. And I love to go and learn when I go to different places and hopefully people take things away from what I say.

0:25:33.4 AS: Yeah. I mean, London sounds like it'll be fabulous. We are just, we're grateful for your time and coming to speak to us and our listeners. We have thoroughly enjoyed having you on our podcast. And listeners, if you have any questions, you know, please let us know. We work very, very closely with accessiBe and we will be in contact with Michael. You, can't get rid of us, Michael.

0:25:57.7 Michael: And I don't want to, so tomorrow's a fun day for me because back when I was a student in getting my master's degree in physics, the last year I was there, they held an organizing chapter for a Phi or, well, an organizing meeting for Phi Beta Kappa chapter to be put at UC Irvine. And I mentioned it in an article that was written about me last year. And suddenly I get a call from one of the historians, the people at UC Irvine, who has been around since the beginning. Can't believe it. She's still there. But she said, we saw the article, we'd like to explore you becoming a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. You can be an alumni member. So I go down tomorrow to UC Irvine to visit the campus and look around a little bit and see how it's grown over the past number of years. As well as being inducted as an alumni member of Phi Beta Kappa. That'll be kind of fun.

0:26:48.8 AS: Yeah. That's definitely so much fun.

0:26:51.1 VB: Very cool.

0:26:53.1 AS: Well, congratulations on that honor, and we are just, again, delighted that you came back. Listeners. We will talk to you next week.

0:27:01.9 VB: Bye.

0:27:02.0 AS: Bye-bye.