Episode Notes
In this episode of AccessWorld, we look back at 35 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Aaron shares what it was like growing up only knowing about the ADA, while Tony reminisces on what life was like before the landmark legislation for people with disabilities became law. They talk about how the law made our physical world more accessible, and what’s had to happen since then to change attitudes and chart how accessibility eventually grew into the digital space. Aaron then shares what’s in store for the August issue of AccessWorld Magazine.
The AccessWorld podcast is an extension of AccessWorld Magazine, a quarterly online publication on digital inclusion and accessibility published by the American Foundation for the Blind. Aaron Preece is editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, and Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB. Together, they meet up each month for the AccessWorld podcast to discuss all things digital accessibility. Visit afb.org/AW to check out the latest issue of AccessWorld Magazine and read through the past 25 years of back-issues, available completely free to readers.
Want to help support our work? Consider making a tax deductible gift to the American Foundation for the Blind. Your support helps create a world of endless possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision. Learn more at afb.org.
AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 22 Transcript
Intro:
AFB, you are listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind. Learn more at afb.org/aw.
Tony Stephens:
What do they call that part of Huntington with the movie theater and the
Aaron Preece:
Oh, Pullman Square, I think from the railroad. There's real stuff there.
Tony Stephens:
No, yeah, that's great. I'm looking forward to heading out there later this month. Welcome back everybody to AccessWorld episode. As we're getting started here, we're just chatting episode number 22, double Deuce for the AccessWorld. But yeah, so at the end of August I will be heading out your way for our big premiere of Unseen Horizons, a documentary on West Virginians who are blind. So we're excited to show that at Marshall University. But yeah, I'll be staying at that same hotel and it's just a great place with the guide dog. It's wonderful. You have the river, like the Ohio River, like a block away.
Aaron Preece:
There's a whole giant sidewalk. You can walk along the pretty far along the river, I think, too.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, it's just really nice. Yeah. Cool man. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to get back out to Huntington. I've been enjoying my time out there.
Aaron Preece:
And I guess your summary sounds like you've been traveling a lot. I don't know if we talked too much about it last time, but I think we might have Mexico and Florida
Tony Stephens:
Last episode. But yeah, I just got back from Orlando. In fact, I'm kind of stopped up always. Every time I go to Florida, it's like that hot cold, hot cold where it was like 110 and then you go into a 65 degree air conditioned space.
Aaron Preece:
Oh, that shock of complete.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, it fills my immune system. So I'm very basey. I sound like Barry White today because it's just, I'm all stopped up but, but we checked out the new Epic universe, which was just amazing. My girlfriend is a big Harry Potter fan and she had never been to the original Universal Studios where they have the Diagon Alley and they have Hogwarts, and it's crazy the amount of energy they put in to kind create these spaces that seem so real
Place where things take place in these movies. They went above and beyond for the Epic universe, the new theme park in Orlando where it is like 1920s Paris, and they have done an incredible job of recreating this space and part of it, the science of not just creating a set that you walk and you feel like you're walking on Costone, but the sound throughout the park is incredible. The way that they mix the audio through these speakers throughout the park, and it's much hotter sound than other theme parks. It's a much higher mix. They could turn it down maybe a little because you got to kind of speak loud to your friends, but it's like you're in the movie. They have a Nintendo world there as well. You go through these portals at the park, it's like these four little extensions and the Nintendo world, and you walk in and visually it looks like you're playing the game. Super Mario Brothers, but audibly as well. The sound is just, it was almost overwhelming, just the amount of game sounds and music and the way they mix everything together. And as you walk it fades and changes and it was
Aaron Preece:
That's cool. So it changes are track to track depending on where you are and
Tony Stephens:
Depending where you are. And then depending the oral A-U-R-A-L, I think how you spell it, the sound experience is just as incredible as the visual experience. So it's an impressive place. So yeah, I know you go to Florida every now and then. You don't have family down there.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, I sometimes have family down there,
Tony Stephens:
So yeah, depending on what time of year it is. But yeah, the epic universe, man, it is not cheap, but it's just,
Aaron Preece:
I could see why.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, yeah, they spent 7.3 billion for it, and it's an incredible place though. So yeah, worth checking out. But that's where I've been and I'm looking forward to August and here we are to August and I'm looking forward to a little downtime before heading out to Huntington. But yeah, so you are listening to this episode AccessWorld. It is an extension of AccessWorld Magazine, which is also going to be launching its quarterly issue this month as well. We'll talk a little bit about that. But in chatting earlier, before we started the podcast, we were trying to think what to really focus in on this month. And I learned something very exciting for you because we just had a birthday, not necessarily your birthday, but when we're recording this, the weekend before we celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and I know your birthday is what, the end of August, early September. When's your birthday?
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, early September. So it's like a month from the,
Tony Stephens:
And you'll have celebrated the same year because you were born?
Aaron Preece:
Yep, 1990.
Tony Stephens:
1990, I guess, what is it? Like two? So you were a month and a half after the 80 DA was signed into law by President George Bush, which is
Aaron Preece:
Cool. So I've only ever grown up under the A DA, which had been interesting to think about.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, and that's something we were thinking about talking about today was just the Americans with Disabilities Act and kind of life before and life after. And really, when you think about the 25th anniversary this year of AccessWorld, it's crazy to think the internet wasn't even really 10 years old when AccessWorld began to really shift from what it was. We had that great episode earlier when that was the end of last year with Ms. Kendrick. Did we not?
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, I think, was that November, 2024 or December, 2024?
Tony Stephens:
It was November or December episode. It was I think the one just before Thanksgiving,
Aaron Preece:
The holiday. Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
But it was great because I remember we recorded it right around Thanksgiving, but just hearing about the history and when you think about the A DA, it's only 35 years old. I mean, the Civil Rights Act is 61 years old. A lot of other legislation's even older than that. But it's incredible to think where we've come with the ADA and even more incredible to think that's all you've ever known is the A DA.
Yeah. So yeah, I unfortunately have known much more than that because I'm an old dog. But to that end, tell me a little bit about that. So when the A passed, I was graduating high school and there was this idea, this great sense of civil rights finally came to our space and for people with disabilities, and it was this great momentum and movement. What has it been on your side growing up with this? Have you been cognizant that it's accessibility in a physical sense, at least in the world around us? We've had our obvious arguments around digital accessibility. We can get into that as well and kind of chart it course, but what's it been like?
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, the physical side is something like, I've always just been able to expect that doors and any kind of public building will be brailled. The bathrooms will always be brailed elevator buttons, always being brailed or being accessible in some form or another. I remember, I don't know if we talked about on here or somewhere where I was in a hotel recently and they had one of the very new fancy touchscreen elevator buttons where it would normally be completely inaccessible, but they had literally, I think they called it the a d button, and it would let you, it was elegant, but also kind of cumbersome and kind of a mix. But the fact that, oh, there's this whole new elevator system, and if normally in technology, whenever something new would come out until really fairly recently, even with the release smartphones in the late two thousands, anytime there was a new tech innovation, it usually took a little while to be made accessible.
And usually there were a little growing period where you lost accessibility that you might've, there was always two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes three steps back depending on what it was. But with these elevators, because the A requires that they're accessible, there's no gap there as these new sort of elevator systems are innovated. And it's not really meant for blind people necessarily. But I always think about the fact that you need to be able to access other floors of buildings without having to take stairs. Because a lot of times in hotels and malls and airports especially, oftentimes the escalator is the only staircase available. But I don't know. I know Guide Dog schools all kind of do it differently, but at least with GDB, it's to make sure your dog is safe on an escalator, take some effort to make sure their paws don't get hurt.
Aaron Preece:
So I've always just avoided them when I could. So I always think about that when I'm like, well, this isn't really meant for me, but the fact that I can go find an elevator or find a ramp or something to get up to the next floor without having to take an escalator has actually been really beneficial.
Tony Stephens:
It's so interesting you mentioned that because it is like you can visit a building and get a sense of when it was built just by the elevator alone,
Where it was placed by the type of elevator it is. Because if you had a four or five story building, you just did the stairs. You didn't have elevators before, really, unless it was something that was specific to knowing that there was going to need to be a reason to move people up and down. But when we lived in New York, there were all these pre-war buildings, and it was interesting. Some had elevators, but if you were only in a three or four story building, they wouldn't have these elevators and you would sort of see how they would attach them on the back or I think of when I went to a college at the University of Georgia when the A DA was passed, I was going off to college and they were getting the regulations spelled out because the bill passed at 90. But it took a couple of years to actually get things up and running. And the student center, the academic building where you would register for your classes and stuff was where the office for Disability Services was. Well, just so happened the Office for Disability Services was on the second floor of a building that didn't have an elevator. It was an old built in the 1820s. Never even, they would find ways to go downstairs and meet with people or that kind of thing, but it just didn't phase them. It just wasn't part of our thought. It was the world ISN inaccessible, and we just had to deal with it.
It was just this kind of given that, well, I got to figure out, you have to have that workaround. We've talked, I think on the podcast before about how sometimes people that are blind, we kind of find alternative ways to do things and to get around, and it takes longer, we know. But that was just kind of the given. You knew it would take longer, but then suddenly, well, these two story buildings that are from the late 18 hundreds or early 19 hundreds on campuses started to have these bright, new, shiny stainless steel elevators. You could tell by the braille buttons. It was like this whole new style of the fact that somebody thought around accessibility and said, all right, we need to make this accessible. Even with the braille on the elevator buttons, the way they started to angle them a little, so it was easier in the wrist to read. It wasn't an afterthought. Things and any accessibility that existed before the A DA, it was sort of like that after it was sort of dealing with the situation as it arose. Yeah. So it's cool to think that you mentioned the elevators afterwards at the hotels, but at least they kind of had to figure something out.
Aaron Preece:
Something out
Tony Stephens:
Before it would've been like, eh, sorry.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, they'll figure it out. Someone, they will just ask. There's people going in and out of this elevator. People can just ask somebody or something is how, I was reading a book recently and it was written in the eighties, and there was a character in a wheelchair, and the things that he had to deal with were just alien to modern people because there was no 1983, there's no a DA, so he's on a college campus and like you said, just basically buildings he can't access and the things he can't do, it's like, oh, it seemed alien to my experience and people that I know. So it was interesting.
Tony Stephens:
Well, even the attitudes, it took a while. I took Russian to college as my language, and I had this old school, he was from the Soviet Union. B Petrovic was his first two names, and he was a hard old school Soviet professor. That was really tough. And he was not going to let me slide at all. I could have probably said, well, I need a reasonable accommodation to learn the language this way. And he's like, no, you're going to learn how to write the Relic letters for real. So we figured out we took glue because we didn't even have things were still being, there was a disability services office, but we didn't have access to braille, Russian Braille translated in Russian and start learning their ciri braille alphabet or workarounds like that. So we took glue. You ever use Elmer's glue? And it gets puffy
Aaron Preece:
To make raised tactile
Tony Stephens:
Services is a combination. Hired someone to basically raise it where you would create these puff letters and sculpted out the alphabet, the Russian LIC alphabet. And so I would feel it, and then had to learn how to read and write Russian by literally feeling, and I had to hand write everything. I couldn't type anything. I didn't have a surreal keyboard, and it was this painstaking process, but I actually got to where I could write Russian better than English
Aaron Preece:
Because you have to submit assignments and that sort of thing.
Tony Stephens:
I'm sure now I'd be like, wait a second. I think there's usable accommodations that could be put in place in this. But it was just, it was only a couple of years that a DA had been passed and not really even fully regulated yet. And it was like, no, no, this is how you're going to do it. By golly, I could probably still write Russian better than English, even though I don't really speak it much anymore. Yeah. I remember taking ballroom dancing. Well, I tried to take ballroom dancing, and I just had the teacher just say straight up, no, I'm not going to teach 'em. And it was like, okay, so I guess I won't take this class. And this was only a couple years after the A DA, but it was still, the attitudes in some ways drag slower than the physical improvements that had to be made on campuses around the country.
Aaron Preece:
And just having weighing, is it worth the uphill battle to try to fight to get into the class? Or is there something else? Or is how much effort do you want to spend and
Tony Stephens:
Made a good case? Look, no, he's going to take ballroom dancing and you're going to figure blind people can dance. I think they didn't even have that TV show. There was somebody that was visually impaired that was on that show, whatever, dancing with the Stars, but it was just a different time where the attitudes were lagging sometimes longer than it took for the actual changes to happen. So just the idea. I remember even with Guide Dogs and stuff like that, I got my first dog in 94, and there were years when it was just trying to convince them, no, I have rights.
Aaron Preece:
And now people just take it for granted it seems, or not for granted, but if you walk into a business, even if they've never seen a guide dog, I can't remember the last time I was questioned over,
Tony Stephens:
Oh, I got the guy that owned a jewelry store in 94 with my first guide dog in Atlanta, and he called the police on me, and the police backed the guy up. They were like, yeah, you got to leave until some other police showed up. And they're like, actually, no. And then they took me to, they quickly took me to a room to take my statement, and I think then they were suddenly like, oops.
Aaron Preece:
And now they give you a card and it has all the laws, and they'll even say, yeah, call the police. That's part of the things I've seen recommended online or something to deal with those kind of situations.
Tony Stephens:
But it was just like, oh yeah, I guess it took a while for the rule to really sink in for everybody. I think. So, yeah,
Aaron Preece:
We've been seeing that lately with, at least in my lifetime, with this VAA being passed. And then we were talking earlier today about how by the mid 2010s, late 2010s accessibility culture had got to a point where companies may have had to start by doing accessibility because it was required, but then the longer that goes on, the culture shifts and then they're more proactive about it later on and it's a voluntary thing.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. Well, that's been totally interesting. The CVA, which is folks know the Communications Video Accessibility Act, which was passed in 2010, and it's kind of like the A DA for the telecommunications world. So it's technically, whereas the A DA is sort of, there's a group called the Access Board, but also the Department of Justice is where you file complaints with the CVA. It's under the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission because it focused on telecommunications. It's the law that made smartphones have built-in accessibility as a requirement. So you get your talk back and Apple was already working on voiceover when the law was being pushed through and had made voiceover accessible, but you had it where now all phones had to have that, right? All smartphones had to have that. Any phone that could do texting, messaging, that would be a communications type thing had to be accessible. And it was really interesting because it came out before smartphones. I mean, if you had a mobile phone, it was like a real phone in your car and it had the giant antenna, used
Aaron Preece:
The antenna on your car, and
Tony Stephens:
All you could do was call people. And then we didn't even have the internet really. It was only a couple of universities kind of thing, and it was all like FTP servers, and I don't even think A OL was around when the A DA was passed, but you begin to get all this technology post a DA, and a lot of that wasn't protected under the A DA because they didn't even think of it. Right?
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, very focused on buildings and physical accessibility, I guess you'd say.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, there was some word processing. It was all dos, still computer, old school computers, but none of that stuff really existed. So when 2010 rolls around and it's two, three years after the iPhone was thrown to the world and changed everything and social media started to change, Facebook came out and changed everything. It was more than just where you would put a profile of yourself like MySpace or Friendster up there. It was actually human engagement and interaction and communications and conversations that the CVA threw all that under it and really help bring the a DA to the digital revolution of the 1990s, the Ts, and now we're in that renaissance again, this second revolution of digital world with everything now being AI and all that stuff.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, the fact that you usually on launch now as smart TV has a screen reader, a smartwatch has a screen reader,
All that type of thing, it's just native. Sometimes they add to it later as they improve, because I think the law focuses on accessibility to use specific features. So they usually put in a full-fledged screen reader, but the goal is to get the law, so you need to be able to get to this feature and use it. But it's definitely a change. I mean, we've talked before about if you go back in the AccessWorld archives and look in the older, the two thousands, early 2010s, a lot of times we would review a mainstream product and basically the whole review would be about how it wasn't accessible and all the features it didn't have that it could have. And it's been a long time since we've ran into a product like that where that's what the review would be.
Tony Stephens:
It's like going back to caveman cave person years. It really is. When I think of the technology we had in the 1990s to make the world accessible, it was all stuff we had to work around like the Braille and Speak or the Blaze, a lot of these, the pac, what is it? You mentioned it earlier.
Aaron Preece:
Oh, the PAC mate. Yeah, I have one of those. In 2004.
Tony Stephens:
There were all these, and they were really expensive stuff, like thousands of dollars 20, 30 years ago for this stuff. And you had usually the only way you could afford it was to be lucky and have vocational rehabilitation services pay for it. And then fast forward only like 15 years for some of this stuff, 10 years a blink of an eye, and it's all screen readers are free. It's such a democratizing sort of world. Now the problem is developers don't develop, so the screen readers work, but even then, we've talked multiple times on different episodes, like with the meta glasses and all the other stuff with technology, with AI and Gemini, when you were demonstrating,
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, you can just brute force it essentially. It shouldn't have to, but you absolutely can. Brute force, that was it two episodes ago we talked about Viewpoint where you can literally use AI to scan and interface and it tries to figure out all the UI elements and then lets you route by pressing inter on 'em. You can tab through and it'll auto moves your mouse and clicks that spot of the screen. And pretty crazy stuff.
Tony Stephens:
Took all the steps to think that. I mean, thanks to the CVA and what it did to sort of spark more innovation in accessibility space because it wasn't just blindness with accessibility. There's so much other stuff like that, automated captioning that has gotten enormously better since it was around 20 17, 20 18. When you look at a lot of things for people that have cognitive disabilities or motor impairment they can use on the phone. I mean, I remember when voiceover came out, there was accessibility, there was voiceover Zoom, maybe one other feature. If you go to the iPhone now and go into accessibility, there's a whole host of accommodations that can be adapted on your phone full of variabilities, and it's really cool. So yeah, so we got coming up the 35th anniversary we just had for the A DA, but in October we have the 15th anniversary of the CVAA, which I think when we talk about digital accessibility, it's just as important if not
Aaron Preece:
More for sure, because there for a while it felt like mobile accessibility, kind of outstripped desktop accessibility in a lot of ways, I feel like, and especially in the first half of the 2010s,
Tony Stephens:
How many people do now that do so much on their phone? I had an intern a few years ago, he would be doing, I'd say, okay, I need you to work on this Microsoft Excel, and he would do it all on his phone because the only way he knew how to make something accessible or how to do the accessible work around.
Aaron Preece:
We had a letter from someone that worked in some kind of college a couple years ago in AccessWorld where her students did all of their schoolwork. They had never, growing up, they never used a computer. They used maybe like a note taker, but then all their mainstream stuff was on their phone. So they were writing papers, submitting assignments, everything from their iPhone or their Android phone. And it's like, you can do it, but it's crazy that that's even possible and that people have, I still, I love my iPhone and I couldn't these days. I couldn't live without it, for sure. One of those things that very quickly becomes integral to your life, but I definitely still prefer to do anything growing up in the two thousands. I still gravitate to my PC for anything remotely productive.
Tony Stephens:
I'm the same way, but my kids, I have a 15-year-old son that creates movies, and it's all with capta, like this app on his phone and doesn't use final cut on the computer that I have. I have a studio, I'm recording this in, and I have film production equipment and audio production equipment and all this stuff. And he's like, no, I got it all on this free app on my phone I'm doing. And it's just like, okay, all right. It's just that it's an extension of that's how they do work, which is cool. I guess in a sense that what maybe if that's Gen Z, what's Gen Alpha? Whatever the next
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, if it's after Gen Z, yeah,
Tony Stephens:
They're just going to have chips in their brains, so
Aaron Preece:
Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. The happy birthday, A DA raise, alas to you, 35, you're 30 something, which is a show that took place, a popular evening primetime show. That was before you were born, Aaron named 30 something.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, I was going to say I've not heard of that one.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, it was really big in the time before you were born. It makes me feel old, but I'm cool with that because I'm young at heart man, and happy upcoming 15th of the CVA. So yeah, that was then we're now in August. We got access will come out later this month. What do we look forward to in AccessWorld this month?
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, so AccessWorld, our big feature for the fall issue, which will come out on the 26th, is the meta glasses we've talked about on here. We've got both a blindness perspective coming and a low vision perspective coming. I think there are just such an important technology and they're really a forerunner for what could be possible kind of ahead of the curve right now. And it's just the fact that you can pay two to $300 for something like that, that it just is pretty amazing. And they've now released what I've had 'em for a while and been wanting to review them for a while, but one of the features that they added in the last couple months is the ability to start a live conversation with the meta ai. And so normally you're asking questions and it's kind of somewhat, just because of the nature of the tech and how fast it can respond, super low latency speed wise. So super quick to respond and process your requests and things like that. But this is essentially a live video feed being fed to the ai and you can just talk to it like a person. And it's even just that slight increase in latency and conversation flow is pretty cool. And so that was what I was waiting for to review these, and I think that could be really helpful for a lot of people to have. Essentially someone looking over your shoulder, looking out of your eyes is where the,
So that's the big feature. A couple articles on that. Got some gaming coverage on game accessibility, going to cover some travel accessibility apps that you can use when you're traveling to access different things and gather information and see what's available on the accessibility side for that. And then some employment, our employment journey series, some more in that area.
Tony Stephens:
Cool. Alright. That comes out later this month?
Aaron Preece:
Yep. August 26th, Tuesday.
Tony Stephens:
All right. And that's the day of our screening also in Huntington, Virginia, so at Marshall University. So I'll look forward to reading that episode or that issue on the airplane that morning when it drops. Yeah. And then we got coming up the AFB Leadership Conference. Folks can check that out on our website as well. That program is now published, and we've got some great stuff on digital accessibility. So join us outside Washington DC in Crystal City, which is part of Arlington, Virginia, November 12th through the 14th. You can go to afb.org/AFBLC for that info. Then too, we're asking everybody, our public Policy and Research Institute has launched an AI survey. I still need to take it. Have you taken yours yet, Aaron?
Aaron Preece:
I have not taken it. I need to do so also.
Tony Stephens:
No, it's great that we take it because we'll be able to share our experiences of how it's impacting our world, like what we talk about here on the podcast episodes. But wait on everybody, wait a minute. They want to hear from not just people with disabilities. They want to hear from everybody. So if you know someone or you are someone who is not blind or low vision or doesn't have a disability, you are encouraged, strongly pleased to help us out, spread the news, but also take the survey. So depending on how you answer questions, it varies in length, but the information is extremely valid as we're doing this phase two of our AI research, and it's really the only research taking place out there that I've come across that focuses on how this is going to impact our community, people with disabilities more broadly. And so, yeah, doesn't kill you to spend half an hour of your day really embarking your wisdom onto us by sharing with us your experiences. So that's afb.org/aisurvey, and you can take that there. So we go and we're getting excited for the 25th anniversary celebration at the Leadership Conference
Aaron Preece:
For AccessWorld.
Tony Stephens:
You're going to jump out of a cake, right? Is that the idea? Dunsmuir your dog. Love Dunsmuir, your dog.
Aaron Preece:
I have her do it. Yeah, she'd love that.
Tony Stephens:
Nougat would just eat the cake. He'd have it all over his face and be like, oh, I was supposed to jump out of it. I'm sorry.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, it's all gone. She's just sitting on the platform.
Tony Stephens:
I got the wrong memo here. Sorry. Anybody want some more? It's a little icing left.
Aaron Preece:
Something I wanted to throw out real quick. As we've been talking about the Aada A and the us, and I imagine most just because we are the American Foundation for the Blind, but I know we've got kind of somewhat of a worldwide audience. I'd be curious, we put this kind of thing out on socials. If you are in another country, I'd be curious what the accessibility is like and what kind of legislation you have or what your experience is. So let us know. We have on Twitter and Facebook and that sort of thing, there's always comments. So I'd be curious if anybody out there is from some other country and would be interested to share. It'd be interesting to see what other country's trajectory has been in regards to accessibility.
Tony Stephens:
No, we've talked a little on the podcast like Mexico and Greece, and
I've taken recent years. But yeah, the European Union, I remember long before the A friend went to China, it's school trip, and this was back in the early eighties, and just them talking about the attitudes toward people with disabilities. I talked earlier about the attitudes and how it was so much more different down there. There was much more of a community setting of, which was almost like a sense of empowerment. But what is it like in your part of the world? And even if you've got stories here, if you've grown up, if you're a millennial or Gen Z or an old dog, some of us here, let us know what your experiences have been. So please leave a comment and follow this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And we're looking forward to, I think we're going to have a guest next month, which is fantastic. So you won't just have to hear Aaron and myself, and hopefully I'll be over this cold by then as well. I'm still like, I'm all sniffle sniffle. So I think universe was great, but there was probably a lot of germs I shouldn't have gone,
Aaron Preece:
Right? Could be. Yeah, that didn't,
Tony Stephens:
The whole world's down there. Confident, sneezing on all the, there was no Harry Potter. Expect us germ.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah, scorify the clean things
Tony Stephens:
Off. Must be nice to be a wizard reader or a witch where you can just wish those germs away. Awesome, man. Well have a great rest of your August and we'll talk to everybody back in September,
Aaron Preece:
Early September.
Tony Stephens:
Be sure to check out the leadership conference. We'll have to maybe do something live there. That'd be cool.
Aaron Preece:
That'd be very cool.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. Awesome. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you next month.
Outro:
You've been listening to AccessWorld, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind, produced at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland. Our theme music is by Cosmonkey, compliments of Artlist.io. To email our hosts Aaron and Tony, email communications@afb.org. To learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind or even help support our work, go to afb.org.
AFB.
