Ron Brooks lost his eyesight while he was playing

a pickup basketball game with friends when he was 14 years old.

Now as a 30 year veteran of the public transit industry, Ron is a

sought after expert for his work to make public transportation more

accessible and inclusive for everyone.

And drawing on both his professional and lived experience, Ron

teamed up with Kristen Joyner.

One of the transit industry's foremost experts in the areas of event

planning, marketing, and training to co author a brand new book, All

Aboard, Conducting Accessible Community Involvement for Public Transit.

And today I speak with both of them, Ron and Kristen, about the book

and why it's important, why public transit agencies should focus on it.

It's a great, look at what transit agencies need to be focused on

in the middle of everything else.

We need to make sure that the customers we serve, all of them, have

access to our meetings as well as our service and to opportunities to

speak up and have their voice heard.

Ron Books is a graduate of Indiana University and a 30 year veteran

of the public transit industry.

He is the founder and CEO of Accessible Avenue and he is the Senior

Director for Policy and Stakeholder Engagement for USERV, a transportation

network company adapted to meet the needs of people with disabilities.

Kristen Joyner is the founder of KJ Backpack LLC and a 35 year veteran of

the public transit industry who leads with creativity, energy, and enthusiasm.

And you'll hear and see all of that on display in today's episode of Transit

Unplugged as we talk with both of the authors about their brand new book

So happy to have on our podcast today, two of my good friends, Ron Brooks and Kristen

Joyner who have recently written a book called All Aboard, Conducting Accessible

Community Involvement for Public Transit.

Thank you both for being on the show today.

Talk about it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Paul.

We were all together just recently at the APTA conference,

Transforming Anaheim, and I know you all did a book signing there.

That's always fun to do that, and, uh, very excited for you, my friend,

Ron, to have this first book out.

Tell me some about the book and, why did you write it?

Well, I have spent my entire career, 30 years, involved in public

involvement in one way or another, and I've spent my entire life as an adult

involved in the disability community, so I've really sat on both sides of what I

would consider the community involvement table as it relates to people with

disabilities, and a couple of things that I, that I know just from that experience.

One is that just about everybody in the public transit industry wants to

engage with the disability community.

They want to get feedback from the community.

they want to hear what the community's needs are and they

want to do the right thing.

I also have experienced from the community's perspective that

sometimes it doesn't work right.

Either because the folks who represent the agency or the

agency's provider isn't hearing what the community is trying to say.

Maybe the right people aren't at the table, or sometimes the process

itself isn't as accessible or as inclusive as it needs to be.

So I really wanted to write this book initially because I wanted to help the

industry do a better job at designing community involvement processes that

reach the right people, that land right for the community, so that the

community feels welcome and heard.

and that are accessible, that really address the needs of the people

that we're trying to connect with.

Because I personally believe, and I think we as an industry believe, that we

are better when we hear and incorporate the voices of the people that we serve.

So to me, this book was really just a way to bring the sides of this

conversation together so that we can have that dialogue and have that

relationship that that really gets us to where we want to be anyway.

this book actually comes on the heels of a project that

Ron and I did about 10 years ago for Southwest Transit Association.

It was a guidebook for transit associations, and and how they put

together their association meetings.

So it started with a little booklet, a little guidance, but we have learned

over time that there are processes that can be so much better, if you

listen to all the voices involved.

And, that was really important to us to focus on particularly

people with disabilities.

So Kristen, is this book then designed for transit agencies who

want to have public meetings but they want to make sure that people with

disabilities have full accessibility?

Is that, is that what it is?

It's an actual real guide?

Yes, it, it is a true practical guide and the,

the nice thing about it is while it's not, Checklists, you know, we

don't want to focus on checklists.

We want to, it does have very practical step by step, how, how do you do your

outreach so that you're more inclusive?

And, what do you need to have on site?

It's things that, that when you read the book, you go, Oh

yeah, that makes total sense.

But we fail to stop and not only think about it ourselves,

but we fail to ask others.

Okay, if you, if you are unable to see, a presentation screen, or you're unable

to sit in a very crowded room with a lot of noise, it's very distracting

to you, what can we do to make this situation better so that we can hear

your voice and hear what your needs are?

Ron, I remember when I was, at WMATA, Washington Metro, with

Christian Kent, was the head of, was the, associate administrator at the time, and

I was working for a contractor running the day to day services, but twice a

month, I would go to public meetings, rider's advisory meetings, where the

people who rode our service, and this was an ADA accessible service, that's what

we were running, I wasn't responsible for day to day fixed route, I was

responsible for day to day paratransit.

is that who this book is for?

People who are running day to day paratransit to make sure that when

they, and fixed route, to make sure they can hear from people who need it?

Is that the problem we're trying to solve?

I think that's part of the challenge that

this book is there to solve.

And I think that people who are providing accessible transit and

paratransit services are part of the audience for this book.

But I think it's actually a little bit broader than that.

Okay.

In fact The thing that really made me think about

this book was not my work in accessible transit and paratransit.

it was actually the work that I've done with a lot of projects when I was working

a few years ago for a transit agency.

Actually it was Valley Metro out in the Phoenix metro area here where I live.

And we were doing a lot of rail expansion at the time.

We were designing, projects which are actually still being built.

some of them have come online since then, but as part of every capital project,

there are public engagement requirements.

yeah, there's, there's reviews, you know, to figure out the alignment of

the project, impacts on neighborhoods, there's reviews at different

stages in the design process.

You know, all sorts of engagement with the community, and we spent a lot of

effort trying to figure out how to make those processes more accessible for

the community that we were serving.

there's also the work that we do around service planning.

When we need to change our routes or restructure our services, there's

public engagement requirements.

As part of that work, and even if there's not a public engagement requirement,

there's a public engagement need, and making sure that we're hearing from

the entire public as part of that process makes that process work better.

It also makes it a little easier when we get to our board, because

there's a better chance that we'll have better community buy in.

So, I was thinking about that, I was thinking about the work

that I've done with advisory committees like you talked about.

I was thinking about board meetings because I've certainly spent time in

board meetings where the community is not very happy and, you know, or they

don't feel like they're being heard.

And so I would say the audience for this book is broad.

It's anybody who is involved in public engagement work, working with supporting

boards and committees, service planning, capital planning, accessibility, you know,

all of those, all of those folks need to have some engagement with the public.

And Paul, I, have talked to several transit agencies, rural transit

agencies, who have been in business 20, 30 years, and, every week, they get

calls saying, do you provide transit service for people with a disability?

and, and so part of this also, the outreach, Continues to keep transit

in a community top of mind with CCAM and, things that are coming on board

for more community involvement and more cross sectional involvement.

it's going to be important that we are engaging with all of the partners in

the community so that, so that transit story can be told and so that we're

doing a better job of partnering.

I think that's a piece of this as well.

One last audience.

as our industry, because one of the areas that we're focused on is, is being more,

inclusive in our employment practices.

As we engage and, and hire and bring in more people with disabilities

into our industry, those people are going to need to go to trainings.

They're going to, they're going to be going to events like APTA and SWATA and

state association meetings and events.

And a lot of this book.

is, talks about events, not just meetings, but conferences and how do

you make meal functions more accessible?

And that's all based on my experience and work that we've been doing

within organizations like APTA and SWATA for years to try to

address those kinds of challenges.

And, uh, so I think there's a little bit for everything here.

Hey, sorry to interrupt the show, but I know if you're listening to

this podcast, you'd be interested in this.

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obviously in the book you describe different types of disabilities, right,

and may not be just visual, it may not be just somebody in a wheelchair,

there's all kinds of disabilities.

Can you explain why that's important as it relates to community outreach?

And yeah, first off, and I do want to just acknowledge, we had a

couple of contributing authors, as well, and, and if you find out of the book,

these people, we brought in folks who have really strong disability experience

in the disability community, not maybe in transit, but just in general, because

we wanted to get the details right, First off, 25 percent of Americans have some

sort of a disability, but the number's actually probably a little higher than

that because a lot of people, as they get older, they have health conditions, that,

that really are similar to disability.

For example, by the time you're in your sixties, 30 percent of us have

hearing impairments that, that count as hearing impairments, but we may not

think of ourselves as being disabled.

We just don't hear as well as we used to.

What we wanted to do.

was to make sure we captured all of the kinds of, challenges that people

face and the different ways that people engage with the environment, because

it isn't just one size fits all.

There's things that, that we can do that support people with all sorts of

different communication styles, with all sorts of different abilities as it

relates to, you know, the things you think about, hearing, seeing, walking, etc.

Transcribed But also people with different types of, of styles of

learning, people with different, types of neurodiversity, you know, where do

people land in terms of, you know, how they communicate, how they learn, how

they listen, how they process information.

We really tried to catch all that.

specifically, the chapter in the book that deals with

that, it's called Implications of Disabilities for Community Engagement.

So it goes into, specifics of deafness and hearing loss, intellectual

disabilities, mental health, autism, like, Ron said neurodivergence.

It explains what those are, but then it gives very specific bullet points

about, how, how or why someone with a particular disability might miss

a direction and how, someone in the transit space can help connect the

dots and help them understand better.

So it's very specific like that.

You also have some chapters focused on in person and virtual

meetings, which we do a lot of these days.

Can you talk about two or three things that a transit agency or any organization

can do, you know, to make those spaces work well for people with disabilities?

Yeah, I'm going to pick up on that one first, because

it's one of my favorites, that we have several examples in there.

Everything from how you set up the room, leaving space for someone, who

might be in a wheelchair, but not just put them at the back of the room,

have spaces throughout the room, the, but here's one of my favorites, Paul,

and you're going to really love this.

you always have the person in the meeting that wants to comment, and,

they holler from the back of the room, You can hear me from back here, right?

My voice is loud enough, isn't it?

And everybody is thinking, well, yeah, but it's really annoying.

So, a simple fix is to make certain that everybody has access to a microphone.

And, which means you might, You might need to have a runner in the room that takes

a microphone to someone, and then you have microphones on stands, but not just

high up, but you have a low microphone for someone who's sitting in a wheelchair

that wants to roll up to a microphone.

And then other simple things might just be the font style that you choose.

if, if there is someone with, with low vision and you have a lot of graphs

and charts in your presentation, you need to take the time to

stop and say, on the screen is.

a chart showing our, increased ridership in this particular neighborhood

and, or, or increased population of people who speak a particular

language in this neighborhood.

And then explain even further what that looks like.

So, it's taking the time to be respectful of everyone in the room.

And I'll just I want to touch on one other for the meetings and then

talk about virtual, which, as you pointed out, we're doing quite a bit of in one of

the things that we learned and I learned this at Valley Metro when we were doing

a bunch of meetings with the community is Is things like speaker cards and

knowing where to go in a meeting to make a presentation or to talk to the board

or whoever the audience was, was, was a barrier for people to participate and

just by having a couple of staff members in the room who could provide assistance,

whether it was filling out a speaker card or grabbing a cookie for somebody.

So they didn't feel left out of the of the refreshments.

Made a big difference.

In terms of virtual, a couple of things people don't realize is that there is

currently not a single, platform that's currently available in the market that

makes the screen sharing accessible for somebody using a screen reader.

So, if, If you are presenting a, you know, you're sharing your screen in

a meeting, people who use assistive technology do not have that information.

And there's a couple of fairly easy things you can do to make it more accessible.

You can send a presentation out in advance.

assuming that it's been created to be accessible.

or you can just describe the presentation as you're presenting it.

And it's little things like that that make virtual meetings more accessible.

There's other things like giving people a break every 45 minutes to an hour.

you know, those Those meetings can be long for all of us, but if you

have a disability that, makes it hard to pay attention for more than an

hour, they're, they're excruciating.

Or, if you're like me and you just want to get up and walk

around for a minute, you can focus better in shorter blocks of time.

So, it's little things like that that can make those meetings work

a lot better for a lot more people.

when, when you build a comprehensive and accessible public

engagement plan, what should be the real goal for a transit agency?

I would say that the first and ultimate goal is to hear and to

make sure that we're getting all of the voices of the people that we serve.

We know that we make better products and we deliver better services when

we hear and incorporate the voices of the people that we're serving.

I mean, we know that.

So, the only goal is how do we hear and engage those voices.

And I think ultimately, another goal is is to really bring more

people into, to our workforce.

we, we have, you know, as you know, we have ongoing chronic

and epic labor shortages.

We've got a population that, that if we can engage them, they're interested.

they, they will get more involved and, and as they get more involved,

they're going to become more and more a part of the solution.

And I think that engaging the public really is a first

step to making that happen.

For There's one other thing I'd like for people to learn from this book.

And that is that the book has a lot of suggestions in it.

Most of them are easy.

A lot of them cost absolutely no money at all.

Some of them cost a little bit of money.

very few of them are expensive, and these are things that, just through careful

planning and just thinking ahead, are pretty easy to do, and you can get a

lot of value for a little bit of effort, and we also know, curb cut being a great

example, that when we design the stuff we do, to be accessible for disabilities.

The rest of the population also benefits.

And so to me, this is really just a lot of easy stuff that you may not have thought

about that will make your engagement processes work better across the board.

You know, Paul, we, Ron and I, as we've talked about

the book, there are three truly main points that, that we want to make.

And one is that accessible community involvement benefits everyone.

He just gave you, an example of universal design and curb cuts.

we believe that accessible community involvement, it should be practical.

and it is practical.

It's relatively easy to do.

It doesn't need to be expensive or time consuming.

And I think that we've given some good examples here, like change the

font, or, or provide a microphone or provide, assistance in some way.

Then the final one is Accessible Community Involvement leads to better service

outcomes and stronger community support.

that really encapsulates.

That's what this book is about.

I also want to mention the names of your contributors, Ron,

that you had mentioned, that helps you.

Mary Liz McNamara, Michelle Whitman, and a foreword by April Ray, who

is the CEO of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials.

Great job in getting some big names to help you with the book.

Yeah.

And I just want to underscore.

score, Mary Liz and Michelle are, experts in their own field.

they've done some trainings in our industry around, disability,

cultural awareness and inclusion.

and, and we really brought them in for that kind of academic

understanding of disability.

That was a little bit broader, than what, than what we typically have in the

industry, so that was really helpful.

And of course, April, I can't say enough about the work that COMTO is

already doing, to be more inclusive, and more accessible for everyone.

And it's, it's a model that, I would like to see all of us really pay attention

to and follow as we move forward.

do you mind if I share one quote from April's?

Yeah.

so, this is something that April Wray wrote, as, as part of the forward.

She says, please hear this, wanting to do better, is a commendable start.

Acknowledging that the biggest room is the room for improvement

puts us on a path to doing better.

In the world of community engagement, listening is a highly prized skill.

Considering varied perspectives offers fuller context and fuels idea innovation.

I really love that she, that she said, you know, we, we all want to

do better, we, and, and starting is great, but it's finishing well.

The ADA itself is the floor, it is not the ceiling.

And the ideas in this book, that are in this book that we're putting forward.

They're the floor, they're not the ceiling.

That's why we don't want it to be viewed as just a checklist.

We want it to be viewed as a start for, for real improvement.

That's wonderful.

And as transit agencies have Made an extra effort to be more inclusive.

This gives them a guide and a tool to make sure that their meetings, that their

public events, and all engagement is made in a way which, just like your title

says, so that everyone can get all aboard.

I love that title!

Conducting Accessible Community Involvement for Public Transit.

It is available on Amazon, and wherever you do get the book, I'd encourage you

to read it and then review it, give them a review that helps, with the

algorithms and give them a good five star review and make a nice comment about

the book and about the great authors.

And that'll help us spread the word, right, Ron?

Oh yeah, we definitely appreciate that and, and, you know, we,

we definitely want to get the word out and, yeah, that, that's a great start.

Yeah, it's available on Kindle and we are getting ready

to get it recorded so it will be available as an audible book.

Oh, that's great.

and Ron is working on a braille version as well.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Well, both of you, Kristen and Ron, thank you so much for being our

guest today on Transit Unplugged.

This truly is, I think, a key part of what we're doing as an industry, making

sure that everyone can get all aboard.

Thank you.

Thank you to Ron Brooks and Kristin joiner for

being guests on the show today.

I'm Tris Hussey editorof the podcast.

And coming up next week, we kick off season eight.

As always, we make the season premier something special.

So we've.

We've brought you a CEO round table with TFL's andy Lord.

Dottie Watkins of CapMetro.

Dwight.

Ferrell of SMART in Detroit.

Sean Donaghy of North County Transit and Adam Leishman of

a Ascendal Group in Hong Kong.

We know, you'll enjoy this.

Compelling discussion about the present and future of public transportation.

Around the world.

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