Emily: Hi, I’m Emily … oh, no.
Kyle: And I’m Kyle Khachadurian.
Emily: Oh, no. I am Emily Ladau.
Kyle: I’m Kyle Khachadurian.
Emily: You’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.
Kyle: What are we going to talk about today, Emily?
Emily: We are going to talk about Accessibility.
Kyle: Oh. What’s that? I’m just kidding.
Emily: Well, okay, so we’re going to talk about accessibility in a couple of different aspects. We’re going to talk about it because it is relevant to the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is coming up, and we’re going to talk about it because it seems to have made its way into the news, as of late. Should we talk about the fun stuff first, or the serious stuff first?
Kyle: I think we can do a mixture of both. I think when we say we’re going to talk about accessibility, that the issue at hand here isn’t accessibility at itself. Obviously, accessibility is one of the things that is probably universally considered good by people in our world anyway. It’s interesting, because Emily and I have completely different accessibility needs, and depending on what those needs are, they may or may not conflict, and when they conflict, who gets priority. That’s the thing. Where do different accessibility needs intersect, and what you do when they intersect, is basically what we’re trying to cover here.
Emily: Yeah. We encounter this a lot when we go somewhere together, because there are certain things that makes something accessible to me, that I would say render it … not inaccessible to you, per say, but it’s not your ideal form of access.
Kyle: Or, it’s less convenient. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, elevators, for example. I don’t like them because they break and unreliable. For all the reasons, you don’t like them. The difference is I have a choice and you don’t. I take the stairs every time … always, because they don’t break. Stairs don’t break.
Emily: Or, sometimes you don’t take the stairs?
Kyle: No, I mean when I’m with you I don’t.
Emily: Then Iget yelled at when the elevator breaks … just kidding. I’m not kidding guys. That really happened.
Kyle: That did happen.
Emily: I mean we were kind of almost stuck in the elevator.
Kyle: Yeah. I mean, honestly, though, if you could have something that isn’t in elevator … that does what an elevator does … for you, but never broke, you’d never take an elevator again in this hypothetical situation.
Emily: Absolutely.
Kyle: That’s what I’m saying. So, yes, even though elevators … I can still use them, I prefer the stairs because of reasons that … like, elevators don’t break. I can always count on stairs.
Emily: With the exception of the fact that the elevator on the 7 train for the Subway in New York City is fantastic, and is as close as I can get to a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sideways elevator, so I will always pick that elevator.
Kyle: So will I. if your New York City go to the end of the 7 train … the Manhattan end, it’s a 34th in the Hudson yards, and they have this fantastic angled elevator that goes up at like a 45 degree angle.
Emily: Yeah, complete diagonal.
Kyle: And it’s awesome. It takes like two actual minutes, which is very long if you don’t really appreciate how long two minutes is when you’re waiting for it or on it, but it’s solely worth totry, so you guys go ahead and do that.
Emily: Totally 10/10 would recommend, but anyway. Elevators in general … other than that one, are pretty terrible, and it’s obviously not ideal, but it is the only thing that’s accessible to me. I think more than that, I was thinking of ramps versus stairs, because for me-
Kyle: I don’t like ramps either.
Emily: Right. I can look at stairs, and I can’t really do anything about it, whereas, you look at stairs and you’re like, “I prefer that to a ramp,” because you don’t like walking on inclines.
Kyle: Right. I really don’t like walking on inclines. Obviously, I’ll do it. It’s not something that I have to really deal with, but if given the choice, I will almost always pick stairs, because I prefer flat surface — it’s easier for me to stand on.
Emily: I watched you walked down the stairs and you just look like you’re about to fall and even it.
Kyle: No, I mean it works better. When I run down a ramp, I lose momentum, and then I’m sometimes not able to stop running.
Emily: Oh, actually and that too.
Kyle: Which is worse than falling down one step in every situation. Yeah, I prefer stairs, but where does that conflict. I mean, obviously, when I’m with Emily, I always go up the ramp because I can do that … she can’t do the stairs, but it leads to this really sort of awkward thing, and it makes you really wonder what accessibility actually means.
Emily: It’s like so with a lot of people. I mean I have lot of friends who are not disabled, and I always watch them pause just for a split second to consider when I go over to the ramp and out of my way to get there, they stop and think, “Do I walk behind her and go up the ramp, or, do I go up the stairs and meet her?”
Kyle: It’s funny, because when we’re together, I almost never go up the ramp with you unless it’s like really out of the way. Like, if it’s just like two opposite ends of something, then I’ll just walk up the stairs and wait. But if it’s, for some reasons, oddly far way then I’ll make the track.
Emily: Well, but at a same time, the further away the ramp is, then isn’t it arguably less accessible to you because?
Kyle: Yeah. But I deal with it because it’s I just do. I’m with you so I’ll deal with it.
Emily: I mean in general, that’s a weird thing about accessibility, and often the very thing that you need for accessibility is actually quite inconvenient access.
Kyle: Yeah, but that’s a thing like, what is accessibility really. Because I know we all like to pretend that accessibility means that it’s accessible to people with disabilities, but it’s not. What it means is, in a practical definition, that it’s accessible to wheelchair users. That’s fine … there’s nothing wrong with that, because generally if you’re not on a wheelchair, there is probably another way for you to get in … that’s arguably almost always better. Like a side entrance. I don’t ever have to go through a side entrance or a back door.
Emily: Well, I do you think that it is peoples go to, when you say is it accessible. Like, if they even register the meaning of that — it’s usually wheelchair accessibility, but they don’t think about. Like, what about people who are deaf, what about people who are blind?
Kyle: Honestly, like, I know that that’s an issue, but I don’t really mind that, because that is almost always what it does mean. You don’t really need to say “Wheelchair accessibility” unless … I mean but for very specific situations. Having said that, there is always room for improvement. Like, my version of accessibility is, I need something to lean on, or to hold … that’s it. It’s not much, but at the same time, you’d surprised how rare that is when you’re at somewhere.
Emily: Or tosit down, if you’re not moving?
Kyle: Even then though. What if I’m at a bar, and there’s only high-bar stools … I can’t do those. It’s better to stand up than to sit on one of those. That’s I’m talking about. It’s a very, it’s –
Emily: Well, you can do a high-bar stool because you can get on it, but I can’t do a high-bar stool because it’s in my way and I can’t get to the bar.
Kyle: Yeah, but it’s a same thing.
Emily: It is. I’m not comparing.
Kyle: I can move it, but we can both not get on it. That’s weird. That is where our accessibility needs are the same of all things. When else does that happen?
Emily: Also this is the first time this is occurring to us too.
Kyle: Yeah, yeah.
Emily: But it’s true. Another thing I was thinking about is when do you put your accessibility needs over the needs of someone else for accessibility purposes, and I have a really hard time with this. Like, example being, we … and by we, I mean, Kyle, transcribes the podcast for the first four episodes … wasn’t it?
Kyle: Four or five. I don’t know. I’ve been lazy, that’s the point.
Emily: Right. For me, I would take on half of that. We could always go [0:08:33 splitsies], but the problem is that I have massive carpal tunnel and already have arthritis, and joint pain, etc. etc.
Kyle: Me too.
Emily: Yeah, exactly. So like typing out a transcript is just not physically applicable.
Kyle: Right, and we do it. We do it to please our one deaf listener. It really is one. That’s another interesting –
Emily: You should clarify what you mean by that?
Kyle: Right. We actually looked up how many people use the transcripts, because we actually had this discussion out of … off the show, and we wondered if it was still worth doing them, and it is. We decided it is. In order to decide that, we actually looked at how many people are actually using the transcripts. As it turns out, in the entire history of this show, only one person ever has downloaded the transcript. Even though we strive to be –
Emily: That’s putting that in perspective, because on the first four episodes, we had well over a 1000 listens.
Kyle: Right. We just hit 2500. We strive to be as successful as possible, but accessibility is a slightly lower priority, at least in regards to transcripts — when we know, for a fact, that out of 2,500 people, only one needs them. We don’t even know actually, if they need them or if they just downloaded it to check it out, so it’s just very strange-ish area.
Emily: And we did make it readily available. It wasn’t like we hit it. It was right there … font and center.
Kyle: No, no. They’re on the front page.
Emily: Yeah. I’ve always been conflicted about this, because if I post something, I wanted to be accessible. I remember I made a video a while back, and I just wasn’t really sure how to do the captions, but I insisted on having them, and Kyle ended up doing the captioning for me. I care really deeply about ensuring things are accessible, but transcribing a 45 minutes long podcast is not physically accessible to me, so then I start feeling guilty because whose access comes first.
Kyle: Right. It’s almost like when I take a priority seat on a bus, or on a subway, and a very old person gets on the subway, it’s that same ting of like, “All right, do I get up?” More often than not the answer is, “Yes.”
Emily: You mean like, does the disable person get the seat or does the elderly person get the seat?
Kyle: Yeah. What I found is that old and not disable usually trumps young and disable, at least for me. That’s okay. But sometimes it doesn’t. You wouldn’t believe the amount of side-eye you get from everyone on the bus, then when you say, “No,” to an elderly person to give up the seat.
Emily: Especially because you don’t look disable.
Kyle: Yeah, or a pregnant woman. I don’t do that either. I really don’t. It’s not because I’m a jerk, it’s because I need the seat, but they don’t know that.
Emily: Yeah. I never have to prove myself in that way.
Kyle: Oh, you wear your disability — it’s part of you.
Emily: Yeah.
Kyle: And I don’t. I mean I wouldn’t if I could, but I can’t either.
Emily: Then this also makes me think about universal design, and how is there a way to make something accessible to everyone, so that everyone can be in perfect harmony using what they need, when they need it, and it’s always accessible to them.
Kyle: No. I mean, universal design is something that everyone should try to do to the best their abilities. I’m not saying the answer is “No.” I’m just saying the answer is no because you can’t make every single thing accessible, because as we just demonstrated, it comes at the cost of accessibility for others. Where I think a universal design can succeed is if you have a type of a disabled population. Like, I think, we talked about Gallaudet University once, where they designed their whole campus for their deaf population … for their entire student body, and it was masterful, and it came with other things that could benefit wheelchair users. Like, for example, wider hallways. But they didn’t do with wheelchair users in mind. They did it with their deaf student body in mind, and it just so happen to benefit wheelchair users.
Emily: Yeah, like they gave the lightly slopping hallways which was intended so that people don’t have to be looking down at the stairs and they can instead pay attention to the person that they’re conversing with in sign language, but that also would super benefit someone like me.
Kyle: But hinder someone like me, and that’s the point. I think in that case when they had a specific goal in mind, it doesn’t really matter that it benefits Emily or hinders me, because we are not their intended audience.
Emily: i just always have this vision in my head of what if someone who is a little person and someone who is seven-and-a-half feet tall got married, how could you possibly universally design that house. I realize that’s kind of a silly example, but I think it’s a legitimate one nonetheless.
Kyle: No, I mean it’s hyperbolic. I wouldn’t say it’s silly. I’m sure that’s happened. Little people, I’m sure, have gotten married to non-little people, and there’s no way that hasn’t happened before.
Emily: But I mean it’s unexceptionally tall person to the point where a sink that was at a height, for a little person, would be so low down, for the tall person, that it would be physically impossible for them to use it.
Kyle: Right. That’s what I’m saying. Is that possible … I don’t know. It would probably look silly.
Emily: I mean, so my kitchen, as an example, is supposedly universally designed … that being said, we’ve been told … once or twice we were contemplating selling the house, and we were told that our kitchen might be a determent to selling the house. Not because it’s not a presentable kitchen but because everything is lower, so we basically would need to find the short family … or tall family that doesn’t mind bending down, to buy our house.
Kyle: That goes beyond disability. That’s a very practical real world application of where accessibility isn’t accessible to most of the population, because most of the population isn’t disabled, but there you go, a family sold their house, suddenly her house drops a value … why, because their sink is a couple inches lower. Should that happen? No. The fact that it does is exactly the point that we’re trying to make.
Emily: Also I’m dying now to talk about-
Kyle: Oh, yeah. You spent the first 20 or 10 minutes trying really hard not to talk about Pokémon but.
Emily: We’re going to talk about Pokémon, and I’m not sorry, because it really, I think, it covenants everything that we were talking about.
Kyle: Yeah, Pokémon Go, if you haven’t played it, get out from under your rock and go download it, because it’s literally the most popular app ever. Like, it has more users right now than Twitter, which is like actually insane.
Emily: It’s really fun.
Kyle: Yeah. Basically if you’ve ever played the Pokémon video games, you know that you’ve got to catch them all, and this sort of puts an augmented reality twist on them, so that you have to catch Pokémon in the real world, and it’s awesome.
Emily: Okay. For people, who are like me, who have no idea what that meant till I started playing, it’s basically like you walk around and the game actually has maps in it … sort of like Google Maps, and it uses the GPS on your phone to locate where you are, and then little Pokémon characters appear on your screen and you can catch them in real time on your phone.
Kyle: You got to catch them all, that’s the whole thing. The app has created … [0:16:19 inaudible]my God, I mean, it’s crazy.
Emily: It’s really created massive controversy.
Kyle: I mean, to the internet. On the one hand, it is completely inaccessible to somebody with the disability — who has trouble leaving the house for whatever reason, because you have to move around in the real world to play the game … that is the whole entire shtick.
Emily: Not that I read this as much, although, I can’t imagine how I wanted it to be true, I don’t imagine that it’s very accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.
Kyle: No, it’s not. You have to aim your Poké balls and stuff.
Emily: You have to see what you’re trying to catch on to –
Kyle: To be fair though, most cellphone games aren’t, and not that that’s an excuse. I mean that’s nothing new. That’s not specific to this game. What is specific to this game, though, is in order to gain items, short of paying real world money for them, you go to landmarks around your neighborhood, and then if they have items … you’ll have icon on your screen that you touch and you have items, but you have to be right in front of it.
Emily: Yeah, you have to be able to get out and get there.
Kyle: Yeah, and sometimes if that space isn’t accessible it will literarily be out of reach to the player, and so it creates this weird thing where … are people with disabilities enjoying this game as much as their able body counterparts.
Emily: Yeah, I mean I’m enjoying it. Like I always hanging out with a friend of mine, and we were walking around just kind of checking out the game, and getting a feel for it, and she climbed up a curbs that have no curb cut, to see if she could get closer to catch something, and I was just kind of sat there. I mean I have an option, I suppose, of handing her my phone and having her do it for me.
Kyle: No, but and you’re not playing the game?
Emily: Exactly. I’m just watching someone play the game for me.
Kyle: Having said that there are workarounds … The AbleGammers Foundation did a fantastic article about it, and we’ll put a link in the thing for that, because there are workarounds, but the fact and the matter is, it wasn’t created with people with disabilities in mind, and that’s not a bad thing because almost nothing is … that’s a bad thing. Like, it’s not out of the ordinary for a game to not be accessible but when –
Emily: I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing, but it’s not an out of the ordinary thing. I would say [0:18:45 inaudible].
Kyle: Yeah, you’re right. I got it backwards. My point though is that it’s generally not a problem, because in mobile games you don’t really have to move in the real world. Just like most the appeal of most mobile games — you can do it from your couch, but not this one. On the other hand, though, I had CP, which mean I don’t like to move, and this game has made me move more in this two weeks I’ve been playing it than, probably, in the last four or five months, because I go out of way to take longer walks, which benefits me physically, to play this game more efficiently. It’s a really odd double-edged sword because, again, this is where access needs inflect.
Emily: For me, I haven’t taken it on a walk, yet, in the sense that I’m physically making motion with my body, but I’ve gone around in my wheelchair with it, and that still works. But for someone who can’t push their wheelchair long distances and doesn’t have a power wheelchair like I do, that would be an issue. Or, I mean, I was in my living room the other night and I wanted to gain some distance, so I just wondered in circles around my living room to pick up distance … not everybody can do that.
Kyle: But oddly enough, in this particular instance, almost everything that can be said about why it’s accessible to wheelchair users, can be said about people who are totally able-body but happened to live in rural areas too. It really it’s odd because –
Emily: I don’t know that I would agree with that.
Kyle: Really? Because if you live in rural area where your nearest … they’re called Poké Stops, Item shop is 15 miles from you — you have to drive, and you –
[Crosstalk]
Emily: Sure. But you may have the option of driving. I mean if you’re … someone who has a disability doesn’t drive, and your only option is very regimented public transportation options, if that … if that’s even available to you, then you’re basically reliant on someone else to play the game, which granted. We’re talking about a game here, but I feel like this apply to so many things in the real world. Like you miss –
Kyle: Well, this is a game. I mean this is a game but because it actually takes place in the real world, it highlights accessibility issues that you wouldn’t even real think of.
Emily: Well, right. Because we’re talking about like, “Oh, may be, you don’t have transportation to go to a Poké Stop to get more items, and catch more Pokémon and play your game, but if you translate that into language of adults, because we are adults … you wouldn’t know it, but we are.
Kyle: We pretend to be anyway.
Emily: Now I think about how it translates to driving to the grocery store, driving to the library, driving to a doctor’s office, getting to a place of employment. Like if you can’t even so much as get outside to play a game because you have access issues, then … and we’re not talking about the design of the game, we’re talking about the way the game is played at this point, then if you can’t even get out to play a game, because of the transportation issue –
Kyle: What are odds that you can get out to go to a job interview or something?
Emily: Right. Then on flip side of that if you’re talking about accessible technology, I mean, think of all the other apps that are inaccessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. I mean –
Kyle: Most of them.
Emily: Yeah. I mean some apps are designed with accessibility in mind then they are.
Kyle: Actually we’re not giving them enough credit because a lot of that stuff isn’t handled at the app level, it’s handled at the OS level, and both android and iOS have fantastic accessibility options … all of them.
Emily: Right. Then you have to make your app compatible with those accessibility apps.
Kyle: No. No, I know. But almost all of the app frameworks are built into OS, especially when it comes to accessibility, so it you have to go out every way not to. However, while I’m talking about this, iOS does have a leg up on android in one specific area. That is, if you are blind or visually impaired, iOS will blank the screen so that somebody standing behind you won’t steal your passwords. Android cannot do that yet. That’s a big something if you’re blind or visually impaired. That’s a little thing for me or Emily, but that … if you’re somebody who is blind or visually impaired, you obviously don’t need your screen on, and that does pose a threat to your identity in some odd way that you might not even consider.
Emily: For me, the major accessibility feature, which is really something that so many people use, but I use for purposes of accessibility, is dictation on my phone. Because when my wrists and my hands have had it and I physically like cannot move them anymore, I can dictate things.
Kyle: Yeah, I know. That was a feature that’s design on both OSs … it wasn’t intended as an accessibility feature, but that ended up being the most used accessibility feature oddly enough, and that’s great. When you have a disability, technology doesn’t just make your life convenient, in some ways it makes it possible.
Emily: Right. Technology is the double-edged sword. I knew you used that phrase earlier, but it’s so true. It can either help you or hinder you.
Kyle: For us, there are certain cases where we need it, whereas the average person might just like it, so it’s this.
Emily: I also want to make sure we talk about the flip side, because we are talking about access issues and how accessibility means different things to different people, so for all the people who have been pointing out the glaringly obvious accessibility issues with Pokémon Go, there’re also a lot of people who have various mental illnesses, who have been –
Kyle: Oh, yeah. Like, social anxiety and that stuff.
Emily: Yeah. Social anxiety, or even depression.
Kyle: A lot of my friends actually pointed that out to me … believe it or not. Like I have whole bunch of friends that’s say that Pokémon Go has cured my depression … or ingest, obviously — depression can’t just be cured with a game but like, it was such a game deal that –
Emily: Well, because I was reading things that were saying like, “I got out of bed this morning to go catch Pokémon,” and honestly, that’s a fantastic reason to get out of bed … first of all, and second of all, that’s like a way that the app is opening up the world to part of the disability population.
Kyle: Or even just [0:25:15 inaudible]. Like, it’s very accessible to a lot of people that you might not normally think about, and it’s funny because some of the people that you might think about are in fact those who the game is inaccessible to. It’s a very strange thing, this whole new video game.
Emily: Yeah. Such a sticklike conversation almost, because you can weigh the pros and cons. I think that they’re honestly sort of equal in this case. The cons are accessibility issues, the pros are accessibility.
Kyle: – accessibility benefits.
Emily: Yeah. There we go.
Kyle: Having said that you should all go download immediately if you haven’t, and pick team Mystic because we’re the best.
Emily: I mean, I’m thinking about it because I was sort of just feeling [0:25:59 blah]the other day, so I went for a spin around the block, and I caught the Pokémon, got some vitamin D –
Kyle: And you felt better.
Emily: My chair. I mean it was completely aimless and an absolutely waste of time arguably, except it wasn’t at all because I felt a little better.
Kyle: You were having fun and you were better in yourself.
Emily: Yeah. Like … Ah, but can I in good conscience keep enjoying something that so many people cannot enjoy?
Kyle: Yes. Yes. You can.
Emily: Because I’m about to go down a wormhole right now where … like okay, like Uber. Uber. Let’s talk about Uber.
Kyle: That’s actually just as good an example.
Emily: A tone of people of use Uber. I pretty much can’t use Uber.
Kyle: But a tone of people with disabilities who are wheelchair users also use Uber.
Emily: Right. But they’re people who have manual wheelchairs so they can fold them. Or, Uber is like great for people who are blind.
Kyle: Yeah, and they are also great for people who live in rural areas with crappy rural transportation.
Emily: Uber is not in rural areas.
Kyle: Rural transportation, Emily. Did I really just say that?
Emily: Sure did.
Kyle: Well, public transportation. It’s in a lot of minor cities now. In any hick town in Pennsylvania, you’ll find Uber, but you won’t find decent reliable public transportation. I know –
Emily: Hick townisn’t anice thing to say.
Kyle: Yes. We’re from New York, anything south of Mason-Dixon Line, for me, is hick town. I apologies.
Emily: [0:27:26 inaudible] somany people. I don’t agree with him. I’m not supporting this.
Kyle: Well, you can attack me. My Twitter is … I’m not a Kardashian, just send me all the hate tweets, man. I don’t care.
Emily: Like Uber is great for people with certain disabilities, and it’s absolutely horrendous, and terrible and awful for me. I guess that’s the flipped version of Pokémon Go.
Kyle: Yeah, but at the same time, to your point before, if you could only, in good faith, have fun and do things that were accessible to everybody, how many things would you do every day … not many. May be just wake up … that might be it, so you shouldn’t limit yourself … is what I’m saying.
Emily: I agree. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to acknowledge our privilege though.
Kyle: No, no. No. No. Check, check, check. Having said that, if you can play Pokémon and use Uber, or both … do it, because they’re pretty cool.
Emily: Yeah. that’s where it gets me, because there are so many things in my life that I may have access to, that other people may not have not access to, and how do I reconcile [0:28:47 crosstalk].
Kyle: We live in the United States; there are some people that don’t have running water.
Emily: I sound like I have some kind of like severe complex … that’s not what I’m looking for. I just I’m like throwing myself down a wormhole right now. The point is that –
Kyle: How can we have fun if some people can’t? It sounds cynical but it’s really not. Like that is a very valid set of feelings, that doesn’t really have a definite black and white answer, because it’s just doesn’t. Because for every access need you have, there is somebody somewhere that your needs take away from theirs, and where is the balance. Is there a balance? I mean these are open ended questions.
Emily: Yeah, and for all the things that I can do that someone else can’t do there. Plenty of things that I can’t do, that someone else can do. I mean I think of all the –
Kyle: Like[0:29:35 pobble]thing?
Emily: Sure. Not that I would [0:29:39 inaudible]that.
Kyle: I don’t know why I said [0:29:42 pobble]. I just figured what is the least possible thing to do — I landed on pobble thing.
Emily: Okay, well, here is something. Like all the Paralympians are being called superhumans … that’s literally the catch phrase they’re using for them is “Superman,” and I’m over here like, “Well, I’m a person and I can’t do that, so am I less of a human?”
Kyle: No, you’re a human. Super means above. Any Olympian … para or not, is the closest that we can get, outside of comic book movies, to superhumans, because they’re literally the best in the world or something. I don’t have a problem with that. I really don’t.
Emily: I don’t have a problem with it. It just causes me to have a little bit of an existential moment over here.
Kyle: Yeah, but it’s okay to be normal.
Emily: What is normal?Oh, my gosh.
Kyle: Not being an Olympian, being able to play Pokémon, kind of Uber maybe. I don’t know man, that’s a different episode.
Emily: I don’t know what horrible is.
Kyle: [0:30:43 inaudible] what did I just say.
Emily: If anyone have even still listening to us talking about this, I mean the whole reason that I wanted to talk about this … not only was, not only because the whole thing with Pokémon Go has been in the news, but also because the anniversary of the ADA is coming up, and accessibility in a lot of ways all goes back to that.
Kyle: Yes. It’s because of the ADA that we, as people with disabilities, have many, if not most, of the accessibility means that anyone born after the ADA pass … such as Emily and myself, quite frankly take advantage of every day, so thanks.
Emily: Not for nothing. I said this one and got entirely yelled at, because someone thought that I was just taking the ADA for granted and not doing my part to [0:31:38 inaudible].
Kyle: But no, but we do. We do, and that’s okay, because if you’re not going to take advantage of a law that got passed for us to take advantage of, then what are we doing. Seriously.
Emily: Although I got told that I was like lazy and careless for that. As far as I’m concerned, you should be appreciated that your laws working.
Kyle: It’s a privilege that you can be lazy and careless in a post ADA world in certain situations. I disagree with whoever told you that entirely.
Emily: Well, so do I but that’s another story.
Kyle: It’s because the ADA, that Emily and I … more Emily than I, quite frankly, but still can do things … like, leave the house, because there are curb cuts in the world [0:32:39 crosstalk].
Emily: One more thing to think about it that way, but it’s really true.
Kyle: No, I know. Yeah. I mean what else is there? Yes, there are certain streets that still not curb cuts, and what you do when you see when you go, “Oh, damn it,” and then you find one that does, but 26 years ago we lived in a world where none of them did. It was more common to find one that didn’t have one than one they did have one, and for that we are grateful.
Emily: Yeah, I think that when we say taking for granted, we do genuinely mean grateful in this case.
Kyle: Yeah. I’m not ashamed to say that I sometime do mean for granted, because I genuinely don’t think about, because it’s been my normal … my whole life, and your whole life.
Emily: Yeah, it’s nice not to always have to worry when the next curb cuts coming up.
Kyle: It’s nice to know the history … don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, but I’m also saying is that when you’re born in to something kind a like disability, this is our version of normal. To an older generation of disabled people, they might look at us and go, “These kids don’t know how good they have it,” and the fact is they’re right … we don’t, but also we acknowledge it every time we step, or roll on a curb cut or something … I step but you [0:33:38 inaudible].
Emily: But then what are we doing to pass that on to the generation that comes after us, like the post ADA generation?
Kyle: 882.0.
Emily: I mean there was the ADA Amendments Act, but.
Kyle: We’re making a podcast so.
Emily: I mean we got it so covered, like activism deed is done.
Kyle: Check.
Emily: Please don’t think we mean that, because we don’t.
Kyle: No. We can do so much more and we really don’t, but we do this and –
Emily: I do.
Kyle: I know. I don’t. I don’t. I really don’t. This is as far as I go.
Emily: I, on the other hand eat, sleep and breeze activism. All the time, always.
Kyle: And it’s exhausting, isn’t it?
Emily: Yes. Except for when it’s not, and I enjoy it.
Kyle: Well, it’s literally anything in the world. You could say anything, and it’s like, “Yeah, it’s …,” except when it isn’t. Anyway. Final thoughts, and takeaways and stuff.
Emily: Accessibility is not something to be ignored. It is something to incorporate as much as possible into whatever it is that you’re putting out there in the world, and at the same time understand that a perfect universally designed world is something to aspire to, but I don’t know that it’s something that’s ever going to be a hundred percent possible, and it’s up to all of us to find ways to balance that out so that everyone can access as much as possible.
Kyle: Accessibility is something to be learned from, and utilized, and embraced and recognized that when you do it — when you incorporate an accessibility thing into whatever is you’re doing, that although you might meet the needs of many, that by design they’re going to some that you leave out. I would say that it’s probably better to recognize that than not, because at least then you can work further, later, to accommodate as many people as possible.
Emily: And to remedy the situation.
Kyle: Right. Does perfect universal design exist? It’s Utopian pie in the sky. I’m not so cynical as to say that we can’t get very close to it if we all just put our heads together and try and little harder.
Emily: A lot harder. Oh, we’re turning into those people.
Kyle: I don’t know. I’m not … I’m not unhappy.
[Laughter]
Emily: No, I have to say when I put into perspective, I can actually do this on a personal level, because my mom often tells me … and for those who haven’t heard me say it a million times, my mom has the same disability that I do, but obviously grew up in a very different generation, and she often says to me that she wishes that she had half of the access to the world around her that I have now. For all the times that I complain about the imperfection, I really want to end this on a positive note, because I think I do have so much that I am appreciate about.
Kyle: Yeah, we love the ADA. I mean it’s pretty good. Also join team Mystic when you play Pokémon Go — it’s the best team.
Emily: I mean I’m also team Mystic so I guess that’s what I’m [0:37:07 inaudible].
Kyle: Valours are bunch of scrubs. Instinct is a bunch of babies.
Emily: And now that we’ve lost two-thirds of our listeners.
Kyle: Please no one takes Instinct … except for my mother … oddly enough. Anyway. That’s it for this episode, The Accessible Stall … I think.
Emily: Did we catch them all?
Kyle: Did we? We did. We caught them all. We checked every box in our little priority list here. Until next time.
Emily: Thanks for listening.
Kyle: Bye.
Emily: Bye.