Reid My Mind

— Sounds of Thunder storm transitions into a birdsong filled spring day!
TR:
I’m fortunate to live in a place where I’m greeted each morning, during three seasons, by happy bird songs.

There’s this one bird, I think he’s responsible for making the daily announcements to all of the birds in the neighborhood. I’m dead serious.

Growing up in the Bronx, we had pigeons and those little brown birds that bounce. Some of y’all know what I’m talking about.
What are those birds? Are they babies? I don’t think they’re baby pigeons.
Are they orphans? I never saw them with their parents.

Obviously, I admit, I don’t know much about birds, but since moving out to the Poconos, I’ve become a fan.

there’s this one bird, I’ll call him the bird caster.
I first hear him in the morning around 5 AM in the back of my house. He’s calling out to the others. It’s not a song. It sounds more like a message.

— A fluttering high pitch voice
“Good morning everyone! Today’s announcements: First, to all the youngsters, class will begin at 8 AM sharp! The weather today, partly sunny, but be prepared it feels as though a front is moving in from the west.”

This is not a direct translation, but I’m telling you, bird caster is making announcements.

Next thing you know, he’s off, repeating the process on the east side of the house.
Flying around the neighborhood, spreading the daily word, that appears to be bird casters role; delivering messages.

— Sounds of birdcaster in the back repeating his message.

My wife doesn’t like birdcaster.
She’s not a morning person.
That’s more my thing!

I respect birdcaster. He has a function and seems to take it pretty seriously. Based on my unscientific research, outside of rainy mornings, birdcaster is out there doing his thing.

It’s spring y’all, I’m waiting on birdcaster and the rest of his crew to return.

Since we’re in this Art of Adjustment season, I’ll take a queue from nature and deliver a bit of a message.

I know there are lots of our brothers and sisters out there who because of disability, feel as though they’re currently in a season of wait.
But, you’re actually in a season of prepare.

This down time that you’re feeling, is perfect for rehab, retraining, for formal or informal education.
Maybe it’s trying something new, something that’s always been of interest.
As much as possible, consider focusing your energy on you and really dive in and use the season.

Remember, a little movement in some direction is the beginning of momentum.

— Pause

I just made that shit up! (Laughing) I’m Thomas Reid host and producer of Reid My Mind Radio. baby! Let’s go!

— : Reid My Mind Theme Music

— Caribbean soundscape (beach, calypso music maybe outside bar)

TR:
In this episode we move forward with my continuous self-portrait, where I explore my adjustment experience based on aspects of conversations with my guests.

While it didn’t make it into the final edit, my actual conversation with Kiana Glanton featured in the last episode, began with her love of Carnival.

I’m not talking about the traveling amusement parks with rickety roller coasters, stuffed animal prizes and funnel cake.
— In a filtered voice; mm…. funnel cake!

I’m talking about Caribbean Carnival.

— Sounds of ocean waves and a steel drum lead calypso music.

The origin of Carnival dates back to Egypt. That’s in Africa y’all!
It was then adopted by Greeks, Romans and Europeans. But what we know as Carnival today has it’s roots in the Caribbean islands where former enslaved Africans celebrated their freedom and more.
It takes place around the world in various forms.

My only experience of Carnival is the West Indian Labor Day Parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.

— Sounds from the West Indian Parade in Brooklyn!

Kiana:
My favorite carnival hands down is Barbados Crop Over, where it’s the end of the summer season would really literally the crops are over in the whole island celebrates with the parade and parties and festivals and competitions for Soca and Calypso.

For me that down home, very connected, very communal experience came from Barbados.

TR:
It just so happens, when Kiana and I were discussing Carnival, I recently confirmed that my paternal grand father was Jamaican.
I’ve always thought this was the case, but never confirmed.

My mother was from Puerto Rico and I’ve always felt a certain attraction to the Caribbean.
Like I want to move their at least part time the way folks winter in Florida.
No disrespect to my brothers and sisters in Florida, but y’all got to get rid of that governor and the incredible anti blackness.
Yes, it’s everywhere but woof!

Kiana:
The moment I stepped foot in Barbados, I felt like I was home there was this very Africanist.
This very kindred kind of connection that happened the moment that I got there, that I felt like I had been there before, or that I was home.

I was just like yo, , I could live here.
I feel so welcomed.
And I think it is the inherent African spirit, honestly, that like, makes you feel at home.

— Music begins: A up beat percussion heavy African Soca inspired rhythm beat.

TR:
My genealogy isn’t the focus of these episodes.
This is about the art of adjusting, which like these self-portrait episodes is a continuous process

Kiana:
I have not figured out how to participate as a visually impaired person simply yet, because there are safety issues, you have 1000s of people drinking, you have trucks that are moving.
This could be an incredibly day and then your own streets that are not like the streets in the US these are Caribbean streets that have had hurricanes, and everything.
The infrastructure is really different. So it’s not the safest thing to cane, I would say safely behind drunk people and behind the truck. So I have not figured out how to reengage in carnival just yet, but I’m determined that I will return at some point.

TR:
It goes beyond just navigating.
So much of the Carnival environment is visual, but it’s also about community, food and drink.

My first thought is why not experience the Carnival from within as part of a float.
I’m often more interested in being a part of the production. Creation over consumption. Unless we’re in the kitchen, consumption is my preference.

I know there are some out there who hear my approach and may feel it’s limiting.
Thomas, come on man, you can use your white cane and get around if you try.
They’re not wrong. But, if you ever been in such a crowd of people all enthralled by what’s going on around them,
plus add in the rum and other libations, I just don’t know if that’s a battle I personally want to take on. You can, if that’s your desire! You better have some back up canes.

My agenda is more about enjoying the Soca and Calypso music. Sipping on my refreshing rum punch or some Ray & Nephew,
and ultimately reveling in the festivities. But if you want to use that time to gain an O&M Grand Master badge, I support your right to go for it!

I also support disabled people, using our voices to challenge society in different ways. Rather than us conforming to what so called able bodied people deem as…

–Music Ends.

“normal”, why not purposefully enter these spaces with the intention of making them accessible, comfortable environments for us too?

# Working within Blindness

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
I’m curious.
There’s a conversation in the community about whether or not people should be involved in the blindness field.
There’s this idea that oh, some people go in there because it’s easy.
Some people think that that’s a cop out, Oh, you shouldn’t go into the blindness field, you should go out into the workplace and do other things that have nothing to do with your blindness.
.
Have you heard that conversation? What do you think about it?

Kiana:
My thought is this.
You do not get to tell me how to live my life and how to be successful how to be great at being a blind or low vision person.
How do you know that this is the most effective? How do you know that this makes the most sense?

TR:
So much of the philosophy around blindness is based on the idea of being independent. I truly believe in being independent. However, conforming to society for the sake of appearing independent and not in need of any “special” help, well that just let’s society go unchallenged.

Think about it, the NFB from my understanding, advocated against Accessible Pedestrian Signals. This technology was considered an insult to Blind people and our ability to safely cross streets.
Similarly, folks felt the same about audio description and our ability to consume visual content.

“We don’t need no special help”

Meanwhile, the only thing that’s so called special is the way we access the information that’s already there being used or consumed by those who are not Blind. You know, the normals!

I’m getting some real internal ableism vibes from this.

Plus, it feels selfish AF!

Kiana:
Just because you and I are on this side of being able to talk about it without breaking down or punching a wall or being in distress and deep depression doesn’t mean that somebody else isn’t coming straight off of that.

I know what it felt like learning how to cross the street in tears, holding my baby’s hand and she was three and I was blindfolded.
Learning how to use this cane.
I know what it felt like thinking, how am I going to braid her hair? What if she swallows a penny? How am I going to get help? How am I going even know she’s in distress, all this fear And worry.

TR:
Over the years of producing this podcast, that’s been the struggle for me. Admitting the challenge of blindness,
while espousing our abilities, independence and sending a positive message. Making people aware that blindness by itself isn’t limiting, rather it’s the restrictions and limitations established by society .
It’s the barriers society puts in our way that requires overcoming, not our blindness.

Kiana:
Imagine how powerful that is, when we help our community.

Somebody sat with me and told me it was gonna be okay, that it wasn’t gonna be easy, but it is possible. And once you start to organize your world in your mind, and restructure how you think about what success is, then anything is possible in having a functional, happy existence. One of independence and a purpose is possible.

TR:
Let’s be real, hearing that from someone who has been through it is so much more powerful than getting that same message from a non disabled person.

Kiana:
So to the people who encourage you to go out into the world, go for it if you want to.
That’s your thing.
But I feel purposeful in this field.

TR:
As someone producing content specifically for and about disability, some have tried to encourage me to move beyond disability and seek out opportunities to create audio for and about mainstream topics.
I could. But those who make these suggestions never asked me what I wanted. They assumed I was only doing this disability related stuff as a means to something larger, something better, something not disabled. But I don’t see non disabled or bigger as better. Especially when we think about impact.

We have power, even in small numbers

I’m reminded of Kiana and her friends starting what they call the Rescue Experience. They understand that meaningful impact doesn’t necessarily require grand gestures or large amounts of money.

Kiana:
Donating money to a woman who needs to buy coats for her children, or getting her hair done.
Or sending someone we know who’s overworked and tired to a hotel for the night with dinner, and a spa the next day.
People who just needed a little bit of help, who was doing the work, but just use a little bit of support.

TR:
Isn’t that all of us at some point in our life?

I know some want you to believe they did it all by themselves. Holding tight to the idea that their own success was fully based on their individual work. The same folks who won’t acknowledge that perhaps they had advantages that others do not. Access to well funded schools, technology and people.

When we realize we all need a bit of support, maybe we’ll be more inclined to extend that to others as wel.

— Music begins: A traditional sounding slow, smooth Reggae Riddim!

# Audio Described Carnival
TR:
Back to that idea of claiming our own space within existing environments.

When I think about Kiana’s desire to once again enjoy the Caribbean Carnival experience, I have to ask, why not create our own space?
Yes, we advocate for our inclusion in various spaces and places and that’s fine.
But right now, I’m thinking more like the bum rush and less like asking. When I say the bum rush, I’m not referring to the original term where
a crowd of people just rush the door and get into an otherwise restricted area.

— Pause

Well, maybe I am, just not in a violent way.

What happens when we as disabled people worked together to assertively take over sections of these spaces and make them work for us? Obviously, you can’t just go into an existing theater and start building ramps and taring down walls , but we could collectively find a space along the route of a Carnival and create an accessible environment for us. Sort of on that “yeh, we’re here, what up?”

Are there disabled brothers and sisters in the Caribbean who are already doing this? I’m not trying to be the Christopher Columbus and think I discovered something already there. If it doesn’t exist, is this of interest to those living in the Caribbean? I’m pretty sure others like Kiana would be interested in traveling to the islands and accessibly immersing themselves in the Carnival experience.

So let me ask you. Who would be up for an Accessible, audio described Carnival experience? I’m talking about a space within the space designed and made for us!

Picture it.

A designated accessible area along the Carnival route, packed with food and drink (refreshing rum punch) and water, you got to have your water….

— In a filtered voice: Bruh! you’re a man of a certain age now, don’t forget a nearby bathroom

True!
All with live audio description.

— In a filtered voice: Not the bathroom!

Are there any Caribbean describers in the Reid My Mind Radio Family? Seriously, who in the family would be down to experience Carnival with AD?

— Music ends.

Hit me up, ReidMyMindRadio at Gmail.com.

# Close

— Music begins: A bright, mid tempo groove.

TR:
When I thought about this Art of Adjustment season, specifically , giving more thought to aspects of the conversations I have with my guests, I didn’t realize where it could go.
There’s something about it that feels natural. Taking the time to sit with the thoughts and ideas feels really important and necessary.

In the episode featuring Kiana, she spoke about her praying for opportunity. She acknowledged that now she finds herself really busy because her prayers are being answered.
These self portrait episodes for me are a way to slow down. I’m appreciating the time, sitting with these conversations, letting them breathe a bit. It’s an opportunity to spark or reignite ideas and explore them and see where they lead.

Sharing these conversations makes me feel a little like my friend birdcaster.

— In the high pitch fluttering voice: “What up baby!”

There are multiple messages for whoever wants or needs it at a given time. If you too choose to share, that extends the reach of one conversation originally between to people.

Before I fly away, let me remind you to make sure you rock with Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts.
We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.
And no matter what season, winter spring summer or fall or if you’re like Babyface who only believes in two seasons;
you can find me by spelling the name the right way.
;
that’s R to the E I D!
— Sample: (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick
” Slick Rick)
Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro
Peace!

Hide the transcript

TR:
Greetings !
We’re at the half way point in the season. That is, The Art of Adjustment.

This season, we’re focusing on the ways art in any form aids in the adjustment process.
Then I’m challenging myself to follow these episodes with some of my own experiences, observations or ideas that stem from the conversation with the guest.

My name is Thomas Reid. Welcome to Reid My Mind Radio.

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

TR:
My guest today, Kiana Glanton has many titles. We’ll get into them all as they are each closely related to today’s conversation.
First though, a little more about Kiana.

Kiana:
I’m a medium brown skinned black woman of Cuban and African descent. And I go by she her and Ella as I speak Spanish.
I have blonde and brown dreadlocks that are curled up. I would define myself as low vision because when you start to explain to people not within our community about the different degrees of visual impairment, they think it’s either blind or not.

Blindness hit me at about age 16. For me, it wasn’t a drastic vision loss, it was over time. The profound loss has happened over the last five years in which I become a cane user.
It’s only been over the last two or three years that I’ve really stepped into a role of advocacy and empowerment now that I have accepted this and I’m ready to be of use to my community.

TR:
I had a chance to see Kiana serving her community in her role at an event last summer at the Lighthouse Guild in New York.

Kiana:
I am the development intern. I like to call myself the chief development Intern because I often work with the CEO and the chief development officer all the people in the C suite. Sometimes you got to speak it into existence. I don’t walk in rooms without feeling like I absolutely earned my spot and that I deserve to be here.

TR:
It was obvious to me that, although her title includes intern, She’s not an “intern intern”.

Kiana:
I did go to grad school and go to undergrad, I graduated from Stony Brook University. And so I do have education, and I have a work history that I’m proud of. However, when I really started losing my sight, I had to learn how to be back in the office again. And it’s not just learning how to use JAWS, and Word and Excel and outlook, But really learning how to interact with people and get things done and be part of a team that is, for the most part fully sighted. So I began to intern just to get the work experience, because I knew that I could, whatever job I want, whatever job I get, I’m going to do well, and I’m pretty confident and comfortable interacting with people. But I wasn’t quite sure if I had the logistical skills together.

TR:
It takes real confidence to recognize what you’re lacking and humble yourself to go get it.

Through the Commission for the Blind in New York, she was able to secure a thirteen week internship at the Lighthouse Guild. Unfamiliar with fundraising, she ended up knocking it out the park.

— Sound of baseball being hit by a bat and crowd cheering.

Kiana:
So When my 13 Weeks was over, my boss was really impressed.
And he found a private donor and a foundation to support my internship, while we figured the next steps out, and then I got a promotion within that. And I got extended time, while we figure out if there’s space here at my current job at the lighthouse, which I love. There are lots of companies that I could do really well at, I just feel really connected to the mission. It’s personal for me to work for a company that supports blind and low vision people.

I don’t look at us as a project or a group of people. This is my home, this is just my own community.

— Music begins: A whistling synth opens to a slow driving beat.

TR:
That’s the type of attitude, quite honestly, that in my experience was and may still be lacking in many organizations serving the Blind.

Kiana:
At the time, there was only one visually impaired person in the management floor, the executive suite of Lighthouse Guild, and
over time, they’ve acquired three more and I’m one of those three. So we have a marketing manager. We have a development manager and we have our volunteer service coordinator who are all visually impaired, and that’s affecting programming and policy and really having a voice in this company.

TR in Conversation with Kiana:: 2
Lighthouse, take off that intern, and make this woman permanent management. Alright, let’s go.

TR:
She’s committed to her work, but her foundation is her grounding.

Kiana:
We’re just coming off the Kwanzaa season, which my family has been celebrating since I was six years old. By the time this comes out I’ll be 41.
We believe in the Kwanzaa principles, all seven of them all year round.

Nia is purpose. I literally get up every morning and say, Thank you, God, and thank you for my child, thank you for giving me a reason to stand up taller. And to be more confident because she’s watching me. So I have to give her the best version of me. She needs to know that diligence is always rewarded. I do this for her.

Even when she’s at her dad’s for the weekend, I’m still on the clock. I’m still thinking about meals to prepare. I’m thinking about getting home safely. Cuz she’s dependent on me returning home. What if something happened to me when I was irresponsible. And then there was no mommy for her to come home to, then I let her down. And that’s not living out of fear. It’s just guiding the principles that I govern myself with and how I move around.

TR:
You can tell a child something until you’re blue in the face. Your actions however, speak much louder than words.

Kiana:
She needs to know you can restart your life if you need to. You can pivot.

There are things that I once said and did in my 20s or in my 30s that I absolutely do not believe anymore. I thought that people who eat meat are just ignorant and selfish and greedy. And I don’t think that way anymore.

I once thought that only black people make good potato salad and I don’t think that

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, this is news to me.

TR:
Ok, I get the point. And in general, I agree.

I’m just saying…. I know people who are pretty serious about their potato salad.

Kiana:
I am showing her that it is possible to be taught and repositioned at any point in your life. And then if you want something and you set a goal, and measurable steps that you can get there, you can have it. I explained to her all the time why I’m disciplined in this way.

I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that children are to be seen and heard. Now, I don’t allow no talking back. But if you have a point or something you need to tell me. It’s worth me stopping to listen to you. Now, if it’s an emergency, and I’m giving you every indication that you need to just listen and follow me, you need to do that. I’ve given her code words, because I think sometimes children are put in positions that aren’t always safe or comfortable for them. If there’s something that I’m missing, say the code word and I’m stopping everything so that I can speak to you. That’s important to me.

TR:
My babies are grown now, but I can tell you that’s some great advice.
Children need to know they can come talk to their parents and they will be heard.

Living a life of purpose, for Kiana, starts with being intentional about raising her daughter Cali. (Hi Cali!)
It includes her presentation of herself in the world.

Kiana:
I’m someone that’s really into They’re aesthetic, and not from a vanity standpoint, but in a professional and put together kind of lens.
There’s a misconception that blind people look a mess, because we can’t see ourselves and we’re not aware of a stain or a button or stripes and plaid and polka dots all put together.
I want my daughter to know [when I walk out this door, you look at that face that hygiene together, ] make sure your clothes are straight, you organize over the weekend. So you have your outfits already ready and lined up. And you go accordingly and you carry yourself with pride.

TR:
That’s pride in her full self.

Kiana:
I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a mom, I’m Kiana. [I love carnival, ] I love my family, my community. Oh yeah, I’m blind.

TR:
That pride and sense of self is evident in the way she maneuvers through all sorts of spaces.

Kiana:
So when I choose to come in here as an intern with education, and more experienced than people that are around me, I do so with pride, I do so with confidence, I do not have shame about it, because I’ve worked hard to be here. And I’m opening doors and making opportunity for the other visually impaired people who are coming behind me. I’m sharing my experience and hoping to provide resources, avenues and opportunities for empowerment within my community, particularly for women of color.

TR:
Empowering the community by sharing what worked for her.

Kiana:
Five years ago, I came into contact with the most impactful person to me in my blind journey, who was a really close friend, and he’s an athlete and really disciplined, really strong and powerful and smart. And he told me, I needed to find something. And he knew I liked bodybuilding. And I like lifting. But I was just kind of doing it solo, just because I liked it. I didn’t really have any friends to do it with me or at the level in which I was doing it at.

He’s playing gold ball, running and cycling and playing these different sports and none of them connected to me. So he brought me a baseball one day. It was a standard baseball and it had two little jingle bells in it. And he said, This is Blind Baseball.

TR:
He suggested Kiana speak with a colleague of hers at the Lighthouse who was already involved with the game.

Kiana:
I was like, No way You want me to be around a bunch of blind people all of us with canes. People are gonna laugh at us and point at us and stare at us.
I don’t want to hang out with the Blind kids. I’m too cool. I’m too pretty. I’m too vain. I don’t want to do it.

Mind you. I am blind. I have a cane. I’m talking about myself. But that was my truth. I was still embarrassed. I am highly competitive. I hope you and I never play Uno or anything. I’m flipping tables angry like.

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
Okay, I relate.

TR:
She had a change of heart.

Kiana:
So I get out there to Central Park to practice and I have on workout clothes. I’m feeling great. And there’s another woman there. And she has a hot pink sneakers and a kinky jersey. I thought she was so cute. Oh, so cute. And I was so mad at myself. I should dress cuter.
I wasn’t jealous, I was just like look at her being cute.

We started a running exercise where we had to run blindfolded, from home to first base.

— Music begins: A slow build up groove that leads to a slow hard core beat.

I ran like Frankenstein. Three steps in my hands out. I was scared I was gonna run into a pole. It is horrifying. It took me about 15 to 20 seconds. But I was scared. And then I watched the girl run.

She did a little bit better than me and I said Oh no. I will not lose to anybody out here. The next thing you know I’m running and I got down to nine seconds and the coach comes up to me he says , Kiana, do you work out I said do I work out five days a week every morning Of course I work out.

TR:
She quickly learned how to hit and became comfortable running the bases fast and free.

With her competitive nature kicking in, the coach now sees Kiana as a secret weapon.
By the time the next practice comes around, she ready.

Kiana:

The liaison from Italy happens to be visiting. And he watches me hit. Now I’m knocking this ball far. And he said, I think you can make the national team. And it’s only my second or third practice.
He said, if we get funding for you to go, would you want to try out?
I started in late May of 2022. By July 15, I was getting a phone call saying I made the national team and I was headed to the Netherlands to represent the United States, the only black woman on the team, one of two women to make the team. And that’s all she wrote.

TR:
No, that, was just the beginning.

The team traveled to the Netherlands. Kiana scores the first point of the tournament and the team ultimately brings home the bronze.

This was her first experience with team sports and organized athletics.

— Music ends!

It changed her life.

Kiana:
I had something to fight for. I had a group I had people who accepted me. And if we’re all blind, and blindness doesn’t even matter, right? That’s the common denominator. So now it’s who’s faster, who is stronger, who’s more powerful, who’s louder, who’s gonna Captain us who’s a follower who’s a leader.

Every good thing about me was kind of amplified and elevated. How much of a leader I am, how outspoken I am, how supportive how loyal I am, and how much I care about sharing this experience.

I brought my camera and my tripod. And I went live when we were in the Netherlands. I wanted my baby to see her mom at 39 change her life. I left a home, a business, a longtime partner, I left a bunch of things, to save myself to rescue myself. And this was my biggest rescue at that point, was deciding to do something I had never done before. And I killed it.

I decided this is going to be my thing, I’m going to grow the sport.

TR:
How will she do that, you ask?

Kiana:
I made myself the poster child for the sport in this country. Because I want to see it grow.

TR:
Not just for the sake of growing the sport.

First and foremost, it’s the example she is setting for her daughter. It’s also a chance to challenge and confront perceived limitations.

Kiana:
I take issue with the rates of obesity and heart disease and diabetes within the black community, but particularly within the female community for black women. Because I think sometimes socially, we put things in our way, whether it’s hair, whether it’s access to resources, whether it’s time, whether it’s motherhood, I mean a bunch of things become excuses for why we are not more active and healthy.

So what were visually impaired, you still could come out, I don’t want to see my community dying off 40 and 50 years old, and not making it to our 60s 70s 80s and even to three figures like why is that not on the table for us.

TR:
Can you tell Kiana’s pretty serious about Blind Baseball?

Kiana:
I became a beast about the sport. I am the secretary of the USBBA which is the US blind baseball Association, which was created to grow the sport. And there are other teams and groups that are doing blind baseball, and I love those guys shout out to the lions. But what I’m growing is based off of an idea where everyone has equal transparency financially is important. And all are welcomed, whether you’re 80 years old and you just want to come out here and walk the bases, or you’re a fresh 19 year old who’s jetting around the bases and anything in between This sport is for you. If you want to compete, I’ll help you get stronger. We’ll have practices based off your level. But I want everyone to come out. I want excited people to come out and volunteer, I want you to bring your kids and have them volunteer, I want this to be something that we are proud of. And that we take seriously.

TR:
If you’re in the NYC area, Kiana’s waiting for you.

Kiana:
Hashtag better than bronze, we created our newest team, the lighthouse guild lightning, which I’m the captain of a co captain, and we’re only going to grow. And this is not about me in the forefront. It’s about sport. It’s about how it made me feel. It gave me purpose. It gave me another purpose, another thing to fight for. And then my daughter likes to come volunteer. So whenever she’s here on the weekends, she comes out and collects balls and helps be a sighted guide to our participants. And she cheers her mommy on, and she knows I get busy on that field.

TR:
Getting busy on the field is one way to have fun while flexing those competitive muscles, but it’s also about community.

Kiana:
So I have always been someone really culturally connected and aware and really proud of my race and gender, and culture and nationality and all those things. And that has been a huge hallmark of who I am. And that didn’t change with visual impairment. In fact, it became more important.

Blackness or Caribbeanness or Latinus, or any of these identifiers become more personal when you lose your sight?
We begin to feel a sense of loneliness when you lose your sight, you can’t just make eye contact across the airport, when you see the only other black person going to Europe.
when we see each other we do the head nod. How do you do that when you’re visually impaired?

Kiana:
I’m looking to connect and make more friends in general but particularly with people of color Because I feel so marginalized and so underrepresented in some of these blind spaces that I’m in, I want to know where my people are.

I found them.

TR:
While at an event, spreading the word about Blind Baseball, Kiana met
Eyes Like Mine co-founder and Reid My Mind Radio family member and alumni Krystle Allen.

For the record, I had no idea when planning this season.

Learning more about the organization and the Miss Blind Diva Empowerment Pageant, Kiana decided to enter.

Kiana:
I am very competitive, I don’t go into anything without thinking I’m gonna win. I don’t know if this is for the faint of heart, but if I’m getting in this, your girl’s a beast, I’m gonna win. I believe in manifestation. But I also believe in working hard, and having good morals and ethics, and having a good product and being a representative of my community.
I’m going to use this space appropriately, because I may not have it tomorrow, but on this day, I’m going to show up. And I happen to connect with women who also wanted to make moves in the community. And so that began to make me feel even more powerful. Because I had other women beside me with their canes out, taking steps bravely forward, to tell our stories from our voice from our perspective, without someone else watering down or patronizing our experience.

TR:
The pageant has two segments; Ms. Blind Diva Empowerment and the Ms. Independent YouTube Challenge.
For the latter, contestants submit a video on YouTube that displays their independence. That could mean so many things for each person.
The winners are determined based on the number of likes received over a three week period.

And then just one hour before the end of the period.

Kiana:
I was outside fully glammed in a gown, makeup and everything on the corner in Newark at a bus stop. I was down by about 75 votes.
I stood on that corner and got every person that passed to vote for me. I put my money where my mouth is.
I’m good on any block.

The only three people that didn’t vote for me didn’t have the capacity because they had like flip phones or didn’t speak English or Spanish. I couldn’t explain to them why I was out there.

A city bus driver stop and got off the bus which he shouldn’t have and voted for me and then had people on the bus come off and

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
You had a QR code too?

Kiana:
I had to make it easy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did.

TR:
Next thing you know, Kiana is crowned both Ms. Blind Diva Empowerment and Ms. Independent YouTube Challenge winner.

Kiana:
Those two titles are typically handed to two people. But because I said I’m a beast. I won both of them for the first time in history.

What was nice about this is it was a competition. But really there was such a collaborative spirit, all of us just wanting to do well.

And that’s okay to be competitive for things that makes sense. As long as it’s not over men in from nasty jealousy spaces, but really about excellence. That’s good. When we’re pushing each other to work hard.

Kiana:
And so sports, my baby and then this female empowerment within the blind community. It changed my life even more like just it grew me up further strengthened me and toughened me in a really profound way.

TR:
Adding to that list, prior to the pageant, Kiana found an art form that really resonated with her.

Kiana: 4
So I have always light drummers. I think female drummers are so attractive and powerful Sheila II
. If you’ve ever looked at the arm muscles of a drummer, it’s impressive, like and then the be a woman out there getting busy.

I found out that my captain of Team USA Alex Perella is a drum instructor. And so I said, Can you teach me he said, Yeah, I have weekly classes over at visions, which is an organization in New York City that support the blind and low vision community. And so he invited me to come out. Now I know I have rhythm. I know I can dance. I just need someone to teach me how to do this properly, because anyone could just go bang on a drum, but I want to get busy.

TR:
We’re talking about Congas to be specific.

— Music begins: A Conga rhythm.

Kiana:
these drums and this patterns and this beat comes all the way from Africa, all the way through the Middle Passage all through the chattel south all through the world.

When I thought about the pageant, I was thinking, somebody’s gonna sing, somebody’s gonna dance, somebody’s gonna do poetry. But how dope would it be to explain that drums and music are not a visual experience. This can be felt by people from the deaf community through vibrations. You feel this spiritually and emotionally.

I played and had that crowd rocking with me. And I just remember thinking like, I feel connected to this.

TR:
Think about that. That drum was once a tree with energy. The act of hitting a drum in different locations creating specific sounds and tones involves even more energy. All of that emanates through sound and vibration out to the world…

— Music ends!

to be shared with those nearby. It is a connection. It’s spiritual.

Kiana: 9
I’m willing to put my time in. And it also helps with dexterity. It also helps with autoimmune disease that I have, which is sarcoid and affects my hands and my knuckles. And so being able to engage my hands and strengthen them that way, just makes me healthier, emotionally and physically as well. You have to have good posture when you’re sitting at the drum for long periods of time. So it is challenging me and helping elevate me from a physical standpoint.

TR:
Drumming can be communal.

Kiana: 4 plus
I just love that there are so many blind people in this class and low vision people who want to express themselves in a way that perhaps they didn’t think was possible.

TR:
When it comes to the art of adjustment, people are the thread that connects it all together.

Kiana:
From the introduction of my friend that really prominent athlete to my community at Lighthouse to the women have LVH and Eyes Like Mine, they have made me want to fight harder,
they’ve been the fuel the people around me, especially the people who are more seasoned than me, because I aspire to be confident and have longevity in our community as an advocate, just like they are, and they were to me.

I believe that God positions people to help you He sends people your way that are going to influence ,impact you. And that’s what the blind community has been.

What I’ve been able to do is connect with like minded people, with hearts, for service, and for community in a really real way.

I’ve learned to kind of identify the areas that are important to me, we’ve talked about art, we’ve talked about athletics, we’ve talked about empowerment, my baby, being a prominent part of my life is really important that I have balanced, and that I’m able to effectively participate in these areas.

Regardless of whether you’re through Helen Keller or visions or lighthouse, whether you are in this pageant or playing this sport, or you’re just home or your goal is simply to be able to move around your house independently. I would like to be a person that advocates for you.

TR:
Kiana obviously has a personal connection to blindness which can explain that desire to be an advocate for others. But it goes further. She’s looking to provide relief to others in general through an organization she found with some friends.

Kiana:
The Rescue experience is a support group that my two friends and I created five years ago, and at that time, I was leaving a toxic and unfortunately, a violent relationship. And I just remember thinking, how am I going to figure this out. What am I going to do with being blind and single and just depressed and all these things.

And my friend, Lexy B told me, You have to rescue yourself. And then you have to tell people that this happened, part of your healing, and part of your journey is going to be you expressing that you went through this and that you’re losing your sight. And that you’re, you’re figuring these things out, you’re healing is going to come from you sharing.

TR:
After rescuing herself, she was able to begin doing the same for others.

Kiana:
Donating money to a woman who needs to buy coats for her children, or getting her hair done. Or sending someone we know who’s overworked and tired to a hotel for the night with dinner, and a spa the next day. People who just needed a little bit of help, who was doing the work, but just use a little bit of support.

TR:
They formed an LLC in order to begin sharing even more.

Kiana:
I’m ready to help people on a grander scale. And so we’re growing daily, and so that’s the rescue experience.

TR in Conversation with Kiana:: 3
I like everything about it, but I like specifically how the things that you’re providing. They’re not huge, It’s not a million dollar thing. It’s accessible. But I can imagine how much that means to that individual receiving that.

TR:
Kiana has her job at the lighthouse, Blind Baseball, Miss Blind Empowerment, she’s playing the congas and in between all of that helping to rescue others… that’s a lot!

I just had to come out and ask her..

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
So, how you chill girl? (Laughs)

Kiana:
(Laughs.)
I am deeply rooted and connected in my family. And so I love music. There’s always music playing in my house.
I love to dance. I love some good season food. I love to entertain. I have a lot of game nights in my house and we play different social games and drinking games and just an opportunity to connect.

I listen to Audible. Love to hear your voice when you pop up all these different audio descriptions and stuff.

I make time for myself. I mean Time to sleep in some days and to take naps. And to really thank God for all the opportunity, there was a time that I felt stagnant. So I do a lot of work. But I remember praying for something to believe in, something to get into. And now it’s here you can’t complain when you pray and your prayers get answered.

Right now is busy season so I just pray for strength and endurance like physical I get in the gym and I lift, mental and emotional to deal with all that comes my way. Working from home and being stagnant for some years. And so I gotta catch up. It’s work to be done.

TR:
Kiana has some serious energy!

I’m talking about both the vibe she puts out into the world.
And that high energy level as in, come on let’s go do this!

If you want to stay up with what she’s up to:

Kiana:
On Instagram, please follow me at pretty underscore blind underscore baseball
Facebook is Kiana V Glanton.
That is K I A n, Nancy, a, the letter V for Victor or victory. And my last name Glanton. G L A, N as in Nancy, T as in Tom, O as an Oscar, and N as a Nancy.

TR:
You can also catch her live on her Miss Blind Diva 2023 fan page every Monday.
If Instagram is more your thing, she’s live there as well, talking about various issues in the Blind community as well as the Rescue experience.

Kiana:
I’m raising money for the TD fiber or bike tour, I’m going to do a 40 mile charity ride. I’m asking people who are participating, to donate to that campaign, so that I can raise funds and awareness for adaptive athletics, which changed my life. I have not ever been on a tandem bike before my adulthood. And I’m about to do 40 miles in five boroughs with 30,000 people. So I got some work to do. And that journey is going to be online as well through the lighthouse guild on our social media pages, but particularly on my personal pages on pretty blind baseball or and Kiana V Glanton on Facebook.

TR in Conversation with Kiana:
Well Kiana when folks come on the podcast, and they share their story, they share their experiences. I like to welcome them and appreciate them. Let you know that you are now officially part of the Reid my Mind Radio family.

— Airhorn

Kiana:
privilege to be with you today. Thank you so much for this platform. Thank you for the work you do in our community. You Your voice is so powerful and meaningful. So I’m glad to be amongst good people and good company. So thank you to you and your listeners.

TR:
My conversation with Kiana actually began with her sharing her love for Caribbean Carnival. It wasn’t included here because it was a bit of a tangent. But on further examination it inspired deeper thought and generated some ideas.
Join me next time where I’ll talk about some of this and more in my continuous self-portrait.

— Music begins: An energetic percussive opening to a synth infused excited beat!

Have you told someone lately that you rock with Reid My Mind Radio and they should too?
Family, I don’t ask much from y’all, because I have my own issues around asking.
But here’s the absolute real deal, I’m not asking you for me. I’m asking you for those who I truly believe will benefit from what is being shared on this podcast. People like Kiana, Krystle, Andrew need to be all up in the ear holes of those adjusting to blindness and disability in general.

Ok, maybe that’s not a great way to put it but you know what I mean.

I’m being honest and sincere right now, I think we can make a difference in people’s lives. So the more we tell folks about what’s going on over here, the more likely that person new to disability, whatever it is… will find some helpful ideas, concepts and encouragement.
Reid My Mind Radio is available wherever you get podcasts. We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.
The only way to find the website, this podcast or me is by spelling it right,
that’s R to the E I D.
— Sample “D… And that’s me in the place to be!” Slick Rick.
— Reid My Mind Radio Outro
Peace!

Hide the transcript

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
What is your politics around disability?

Raven:
I think most people who have disabilities should be put on an island.

Riana:
Silly Laughter

Raven:
Away from us normal people! (Laughs)

Riana:
Girl! I agree. (Laughter continues….)

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Ok, this is the way I’m going to open the show.

Raven:
)Loud laughter)

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Nobody’s gonna know you’re playing.

Riana:
My sister’s opinions do not …

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
(Loud Laughter)

Raven:
Hey! I thought we were in this together.

(Group laughing fades out!)

TR:
Maybe not an island.
But let’s say Andrew Leland’s country of the Blind were indeed a real place, what would be the requirements for citizenship?
Is it based solely on acuity or must you have additional qualifications?
What would be some of those qualifications?
What actually makes you Blind?

Visual Accuity?
Orientation and mobility skills?
What if you have multiple disabilities?

These questions, well sort of, have been on my mind ever since my conversation with Andrew, featured in the last episode. the actual questions I’ve been thinking about are more related to topics like ableism, and what categorizes something as disability art or a part of disability culture.

Today, continuing with my self portrait, I’ll see where these topics take me. That is, with the help of those two you heard at the top of this episode.

Riana:
My name is Riana Reid. I’m a 26 year old woman. I’m brown skin. I wear rectangular glasses. I currently have my hair and a pineapple meaning My curls are on the top of my head and like a ponytail. I have a bright smile. And high cheekbones, kinda. (giggles)
People tell me I look like my mommy. (Giggles)

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
You look like your father.

Riana:
(Giggles) Okay!

Raven:
Riana’s pronouns are she her hers.

Hi, everyone. My name is Raven. I’m a 20 year old woman. I have dark skin and big curly fluffy hair with almond shaped eyes and big smile and my pronouns are she her hers.

TR:
I’m Thomas Reid. If this by chance is your first time listening, I’m the host and producer of this here podcast. And more importantly, I’m the father of these two young ladies.
That’s right, Daddy Daughter Day in full effect! Let’s go!

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

TR:
During my conversation with Andrew, we got into a discussion about what categorizes something disability culture. What makes someone a disabled artist.

TR in Conversation with Andrew: 56:24
If they’re in the mainstream, I don’t consider that disability culture. That’s just me.
Are they making the art from a disability perspective? I think that’s the way I draw that line.

Andrew: 56:57
My book is a mainstream book, it’s with a commercial publisher.

I don’t want to put you on the spot. But like, does that mean that what I’m doing is not from a disability perspective?

TR in Conversation with Andrew: 57:08
No.

When you mentioned the blind music artists, like, everybody knows Stevie.

to me, it’s a little different.

Andrew: 57:28
It’s interesting, he has like an album called Talking Book.

He’s not singing about blindness in every song.

It’s kind of a bigger question about identity.
Does your work fall under the category of the identity just by virtue of your having the identity?
Or does the work have to be about the identity for it to be included?
I think it’s kind of a spectrum.

TR:
Before we get to the question of what categorizes something as disability art specifically, let’s talk about identity.

A few years ago, I submitted Reid My Mind Radio to a Black podcast collective. They were looking for Black podcasts to amplify. Based on the fact that I never received a response, I assumed my podcast wasn’t Black enough for them.

But I’m Black!

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
How do you define black?

Raven:
From African descent?

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Okay.

Riana:
There are some people who have some African descent and are not Black. Clarence Thomas, I guess he black technically? Well, he probably (Said in a deep mimicking voice ) “I’m not black I’m dark complexion. I’m the same race as my wife.”

Raven:
We had a speaker in this club that I was in. And I just remember her saying that she doesn’t use the term black anymore because someone found it offensive and she’s African American. And I don’t know if I lost my mind in the moment. But every time I think about it, I lose my mind. Black people are all around the world. And I think whoever said she was offended by the term Black has her own personal issue.

Riana:
At the friggin schools, they’re always like Black or African American. I’m like this school district is blessed with such a beautiful black diaspora. Half these kids do not identify as African American, but they definitely black.

Raven:
I’ve had friends before be like, Oh, I’m not black then because I’m not African American. I’m like girl.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Cause they’re from the Caribbean…

Raven:
That’s what they’re taught.

TR:
Could I have been rejected from that Black podcast network because I’m Blind?
Stevie’s Blind, Ray was Blind and they’re Black!

— Do the Right Thing on He’s Black but he’s not Black!
Mookie (Spike Lee):
Can I talk to you for a second?

Pino: ():
What?

Mookie:
Pino, who’s your favorite basketball player?

Pino:
Magic Johnson.

Who’s your favorite movie star?

Pino:
Eddie Murphy.

… Magic, Eddie Murphy, Prince, there not Black. I mean….
Let me explain myself. They’re not really Black, I mean they’re Black but they’re not really Black. They’re more than Black. It’s different.

Mookie:
It’s different?

Pino:
Yeh, to me it’s different.
End of Clip

TR:
When I listen back to this podcast, I think it sounds Black. Not just because I’m on it, not because of the music beds or the references throughout that I know those who know, know. It’s a vibe that is in everything I do.

Police see me as Black.
My teachers and authority figures saw me as Black.
But then again, if your perception of Black is based in stereotypes then ok, maybe my podcast and I don’t fit.

But, I’m Blac!

— Song “I’m Black” from the Parody film CB4

Andrew: 58:30
So there’s a writer named Jim Knipfel who wrote the first book about blindness I ever read, which is a RP memoir called slack jaw that came out in the 90s. He and I have become friends. He’s sort of like a blind writing mentor for me. One day, he paid me a really big compliment, he was like, Andrew, be a writer, don’t be a blind writer, you’re too good of a writer to be a blind writer.
And it was a compliment, but it was also like I’m kind of psyched to be a blind writer.

TR:
Without knowing the exact intent behind that message, it reminds me of someone telling me I don’t look or act Blind. Which is actually less about me and more about someone’s perception of Blind.

Andrew:
John Lee Clark, the deaf blind poet, he had an interview in Word Gathering, the disability arts journal, where he kind of said the opposite. He was like, don’t hide it. That’s a perspective that is going to set your work apart. It’s a perspective to really draw from, I want to write everything from a deafblind perspective.

I kind of feel the tug of both of those approaches to being an artist.

TR:
Could it be more about who is doing the defining?

Andrew:
I was getting a ride from a friend of mine, honestly at the end of the ride, I was like, why are you a friend of mine?

He said to me, in no uncertain terms, so now that you’ve written this book, you got to know your audience, people really respond to hearing the story of you losing your vision, that’s what you need to write now. Just stay in your lane basically.

Write another book that’s about losing more vision. I was like you knew about my career that I had before I wrote this book now all you can see is blindness and like this kind of emotional aspect of vision loss that you see as the moneymaker.

I think that’s what Jim meant by being a blind writer, as opposed to just being a writer. People could only understand you through this experience. And so to me, that’s the pitfall. That’s, that’s where I agree with Jim. But then the next book, I want to write, it doesn’t even have to be about vision loss, but it can be sort of, from a blind perspective. And using blindness in that way that I find really positive.

TR in Conversation with Andrew: 1:00:45
Yeah, I totally get it. It’s how you’re being perceived as one way, and how you present yourself.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem to even matter, you’re being pigeon holed, which is not your goal.
When I started podcasts, I had this whole thing, I don’t have to do everything about blindness.
That wasn’t my intention. But along the way, I was like, wow, there’s nothing wrong with me doing things about blindness and then it broadened out to disability in general, I like this. And I can talk about everything and anything within the disability community or from a disability perspective.
I’m making that decision, it’s not someone putting that on me. But at the same time, when someone wants to limit me and say, This is the only thing you can do, that’s what I have a problem with. Because I can do whatever the hell I want to do!

Andrew: 1:02:37
That’s the question that I’ve been wrestling with really through the whole process of writing the book and figuring out my own identity as a blind person.

Is it supposed to be central? Or is it supposed to be incidental? When is it Central? When is it incidental?

Raven:
You know what blows my mind.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
What?

Raven:
When I don’t mention that you’re blind? And it’s like, (Mimicking voice)”Oh my God, how did I not know? Why didn’t you tell me, oh my we’ve been friends for so long, you didn’t tell me.”
(Laughter)

What’s it gonna come up for?
“Yeah, my Dad didn’t see today!”
(Laughter)
What the hell do you want me to talk about?
(Laughter)
I don’t know!

Riana:
it’s the same thing with me. They’re always like, shocked that I didn’t share and I said why would I

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
I mean you can understand why people would find that….

Raven:
Not really.

Riana:
No! They think it’s like me sharing like a like a trauma

Raven:
exactly! That’s what it feels like.

Riana:
(Mimicking) “Why didn’t you tell me?”
And that’s weird.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
If you go back everything that you learn about disability in the in the world and how it’s perceived and all of that stuff, it makes sense that people will respond like that.

Raven:
Yeah but it’s stupid!

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
It is stupid. (Laughs)

Riana:
And I also don’t like it sometimes because especially older generations if I tell someone that my father is blind, probably because it contributed to a conversation. They’re like, Oh, I’m so sorry.

Raven:
You knock his eyes out?

TR:
When it comes to being Black or Blind, I never had a choice.
I’m totally Blind. No eyes Blind! Like, I can win a Blind contest

— Timpani Drum roll “And the winner is”

TR:
Years ago my intention was to bridge this gap between the Blind community and others. It feels like a natural thing to consider especially as someone becoming Blind as an adult.

Today, considering all of my identities, I’m just not interested in trying to convince others to se my humanity.
I want to live a life with others who choose to recognize and appreciate people as they are in full.
I want to be seen with all of my identities not just those we happen to share. I want to do the same for others.

On the question of what makes something a part of disability culture, I think it’s about intention.
Who is the art made for?

I think disabled artist create for disabled people. Of course, others can appreciate, find inspiration in and interpret based on their own lived experiences, it’s art. But, in my mind and my interpretation, it was made for us.

— “Hold Up!” (Nate Dogg Sample)
Music begins: A crescendo leads into a bouncy up tempo beat!

TR:
Hey y’all! Quick update.
Shout out to all of the R double M Radio family out there who continue to put in that work.

Justice Shorter, who joined us during our Young Gifted Black and Disabled2022 season, along with SeededGround, recently launched the Disaster Justice Guide Book

“This guidebook is a collection of disaster-oriented lessons, lived experiences and learned expertise concerning people of color with disabilities. Based on six interviews conducted during the summer of 2023, each section is curated using the contributions of profoundly insightful individuals of color who are all well-versed in their respective areas of focus.”

You can find the downloadable guidebook along with accompanying interviews at JusticeShorter.com.

Big shout out to Ajani AJ Murray who launched his podcast Acting Up with AJ & Crew.

The podcast focuses on disability and pop culture. From movie analysis and reviews to some of the latest media happenings in the disability community, AJ’s got you covered.

I’ll link to both of these in this episode’s blog post over at ReidMyMind.com.

And now, back to the episode!

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
What is ableism?

Raven:
Ableism

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
(Laughs)

Raven:
(Spelling out the word) A B L… (Laughs)

Riana:
ableism to me is pretty much society today where it’s just it’s set up for able bodied people with the lack of acknowledgement for people with disabilities,
I guess that’s discrimination.

Raven:
I feel like a lot of the isms and all of that come from just the belief that there’s a normal like boy and girl that and if you stripped from that in any way you need to be fixed. In terms of disabilities to I think that’s what the feeling bad comes from because they’re not living the normal life that we deemed as a society as good and easy. Even though you can live happily with whatever cards you’re dealt.

Riana:
Yeah, we just need to adjust society

Raven:
Yeah!

Riana:
… to be more inclusive.

TR:
I can’t recall hearing the word ableism prior to becoming Blind.
In fact, it wasn’t until I eventually began reading about disability in general that I came across this word and concept.
That is, the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that
typical abilities are superior.
It defines people by their disability and is applicable both to an individual and system.

Like my girls said, society views disability as something requiring fixing.
It’s evident throughout our culture. Art, politics, religion.

Andrew: 52:10
The refrain that the poem says over and over again, is fall to your knees. And thank God for your eyesight.

TR:
This poem Andrew refers to in his book, was read during a service in a synagogue.

Andrew:
You just sort of have to sit there with your family, as a whole room of people just sort of appreciates that they aren’t blind.
It was kind of wild to me that Lily was offended or found it annoying and it wasn’t just me.

— Theme from Love boat!

TR:
My family and I were on a cruise taking in one of the family friendly comedy shows held in one of the ship’s smaller theaters. It’s still amazing how incredibly large these ships are. But they still get tossed around during stormy weather.

When attending any sort of comedy show, I specifically do not sit in the front row. I don’t want to be visible to the comedian. I’m there to be entertained, not part of the entertainment.

— Music begins: A dark, menacing violin repeats over a mid tempo beat.

We weren’t in the front row but it wasn’t a large theater and I was sitting in the aisle seat.

There was this one “comedian”, I say that in quotes because there wasn’t much about his comedy at all that was funny.
I could tell he was pacing from one side of the stage to the other.
He then stopped in front of the aisle that I was sitting in. He took a few moments and then walked back off to the right side of the stage.
I could just feel it, a Blind joke was coming.

It did. And it sucked!

He was struggling to make something up on the fly. It was some corny, basic joke that involved Stevie, probably the most famous Blind person on the planet. In fact, I didn’t even tell you which Stevie and you know who I’m talking about.

TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
Anyway, do y’all remember that? Do you have any recollection of that?

Raven:
I have about 10% recollection. And I am afraid that 9% of it is because you’ve told me the story three times this week.

TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
(Laughs)

Riana:
Literally the only thing I remember is daddy’s story. I don’t remember that happening at all.

TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
Really, y’all don’t remember that?

Raven:
Kind of?

Riana:
You’re saying that he saw you in the audience. And then he made a joke because he made the assumption you were blind.

TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
I’m telling you. It was like there was an energy thing something was going on. But it was like, it was as though we were making eye contact.

Raven:
Maybe you had a dream.

TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
Oh my god! )Said incredulously)

Raven:
(Laughs)
TR in Conversation with Riana and Raven:
It’s like, you know when you just go somewhere and you just want to be. You know what I’m saying? You just kind of want to just do your thing. You don’t necessarily need to interact. You just want to be there.

Riana:
definitely every day. I can see what Daddy is saying. When we go out, he has his cane or if you’re holding on to somebody’s arm people are going to look especially when Daddy had his eyepatch. Everybody was staring there was no just being like blending in the crowd. We stood out for sure.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Sometimes as a family we don’t necessarily always get that and that was one of those times for me that we don’t get to just be

Raven:
(Sympathetically) Augh!

Riana:
Does mommy remember that?

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
She did. She remembers it like I remember it she just says it was a different cruise which I don’t care that’s fine. And it was just it was a weird thing

Raven:
I remember a comedian saying a Blind joke and it not being funny on a cruise.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
This was that guy! (Mumbling incredulously)
Laughter

Raven:
But I don’t know what you want me to tell you.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Did it make you feel any sort of way?

Raven:
I was probably very upset, annoyed.
But you have similar experiences that are all the same thing.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Again, we talked about it goes into that just being, okay, we’re just hear we just want to have a good time like everybody and then all of a sudden, boop! Spotlight! You see what I’m saying. And not the good spotlight where you know I’m rocking the crowd “hey what’s going on” (finger snaps… “Uh, Uh!” as if dancing)

(Silence….)
Hello?

Riana:
Laughs….

Raven:
That makes me sad.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Why does it make you sad?

Raven:
Because I don’t want you to think that it’s like, hard to go out and be a family, with your family?

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
No, no, no, I’m not I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s nothing that we do wrong, it’s not our fault. My thing is that I want to know how it impacts you or do you all recognize that and I know you do now, Riana has come a long way in terms of it doesn’t you know, she knows what it is, it doesn’t bother her. So I really feel like she’s gonna be better for that. She’s a better person…

Raven:
What? (Giggles) I thought you meant better than me.

TR In Conversation with Riana & Raven:
No, no, no! (Laughs)
I’m just saying like, she’s gonna be better for that. And I think the same is true for you. At the end of the day, we’re just goin’ do are thing!

Raven:.
That’s always been my thing.

TR:
And that’s exactly what we were doing during that trip and in that theater.

The rest of the audience around me, I could sense was aware of my presence, they seem to be looking for my reaction.

— Music stops.

In this case, there was none. Because I didn’t find it funny.
I don’t think they did either.
Although I’ll never know if that’s because they are aware of me being there or if as in this case, the joke just isn’t funny.

But, that uncomfort felt by the non Blind folks, a reluctance to laugh as they await my reaction as though if I find it funny absolves them of the “sin” of laughing at a blind joke…

— (An evil, menacing laugh….) “That actually is, (coughing) pretty funny!”, The Joker.

TR:
I was extremely aware of racial discrimination at a very young age.
But, I knew nothing about ableism.
I know I didn’t harbor any sort of hatred toward disabled people. I didn’t have an ableist bone in my body! (Sarcastic giggle)

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Do you ever notice any of your own internal ableism?

Raven:
Yeah,

Riana:
For sure.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
I know, Raven should be really good.
(They all laugh)

Raven’s like, “And, what’s the problem!” (Laughs)

Raven:
I think I noticed more of internal ableism with more intellectual disabilities because I’ve been exposed to it less.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
that affects you in a certain way? Is that what you’re saying?

Raven:
Yeah.(Pause)
Riana didn’t give any…

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
I’m going back. This was all about an intervention for you. (Laughs)

Raven:
That’s what it feels like. (Laughing)

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
I remember growing up, it felt like when you saw someone with a disability, you were supposed to feel bad. And sorry, and sad. Right.
The tel-a -thons. Y’all don’t know about the tel-a-thons.

Riana:
I don’t feel bad at all.

Raven:
We do know about the tel-a-thons.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Oh, ok! That was a thing.

Raven:
Did you hear Riana?

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
What she say.

Raven:
(Overly sarcastic and in vocal fry) “I don’t feel bad at all”

(They all laugh)

Riana:
I don’t. The only time I do is if like, if they’re not being accommodated.

Raven:
Yeh, yeh!

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Riana, , what about you anything around the internal ableism?

Raven:
Yeh, anything for you? (Laughs)

Riana:
Right now I see like ableism in the way that like I approach, neurodevelopmental disabilities or disorders. Sometimes I need to remind myself that we don’t need to, like, fix it. But especially with like a kid with like ADHD, because you get into this mindset, especially at the school, and I’m definitely not going to name drop that school, but they’re very ableist, in the sense of every behavior needs to be addressed. And they have to display the behavior in a certain way. And that’s where I see myself, making sure that I step back and be like, we don’t need to change this child. The curriculum needs to be adapted towards it. And school psych is pushing towards that message anyway. But I see myself being like, (Mocking voice that sounds a lot like Elvis Presley impression, LOL)
oh, yeah, we gotta do this and check in check out, behavioral modification…

(TR and Raven laugh hysterically)
Riana:
For real, I see it. Or like a kid with autism, we were just doing like, trying to figure out an intervention for them. And I just had to sit back and be like, Okay, we’re not trying to fix this child. We’re not going to try to change this child.

TR:
Another message around disability was, inspiration. As in, “Damn, if they can do it what’s my problem?”

— “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special news bulletin.”

That’s not inspiration. That’s just looking at someone as less than yourself.

No one ever gave me reason to question that way of thinking.

In my episode with Andrew, we talked about an early experience he had at a NFB chapter meeting.
That really brought back some memories for me, both as someone new to that environment and as someone who used to chair meetings of a local blindness organization.

In the latter, I had many opportunities to observe the uncomfort of those attending a meeting for the first time. These folks assumed we were a support group even though everything advertised about us was clear that we were a community advocacy organization working to increase access and opportunities for people with vision loss. That was literally what I’d say to not mention the word Blind because it scared folks away.

But when those unfamiliar with disability read “people with vision loss or blind”, I think their interpretation is, “Of course it’s a support group? What else do those people need?”

During these meetings, we’re talking about the business of advocacy. Meanwhile, those new to blindness are there in search of resources, maybe comfort, encouragement?

I don’t care if you’re personally impacted or a family member or friend, there’s something quite shocking when first encountering white canes, telescopic lenses and anything else associated with blindness.
Of course, there’s nothing shocking about these things, but when you are in this position where you’re facing a new normal; it’s a lot to take in.

Over time, I could recognize those who would return and those who were outta there.

Occasionally I think about them. the ones who ran away. I hope they found what they were looking for.

I’m not necessarily saying it was internal ableism that stopped them from connecting with our group. I just know that my internal ableism could have stopped me from connecting with people who truly made a difference in my life.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Have you ever witnessed ableism, in the real world …

Raven:
Are you kidding me?

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
… that’s outside of anything to do with your father?

Raven:
Oh my god. Yeah.

Riana:
Girl, yes! (Laughs) What?

Raven:
Are you joking? (Laughs)

Riana:
Yeh, everyday.

Raven:
Number one, Villanova. That place man…

Riana:
Yeh, Villanova.

Raven:
Not the place but

Riana:
No the actual place is not accessible.

Raven:
(Ugh!) Ok, hold on. So the first thing I’m going to say is that a lot of the places on the campus, obviously they make accommodations but a lot of the places on the campus have like the disability stalls but there’s only stairs to get in it.

Another thing that drives me nuts is the people who think that they are so woke .
I was telling a story once something about going into the big stall somewhere and they were like, (In a British accent for some reason. LOL)”Oh I don’t use those stalls cause I realize those stalls are not for me”

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
(Laughing)

Raven:
And I’m like… (laughs) it pisses me off because I’m like, (yelling) “How are they gonna get inside of the place if that’s what you’re talking about.” It pisses me off because it’s this one dimensional viewpoint here it’s like don’t say a slur to someone but it’s so much more than that.

Riana:
I’ve been around people with disabilities for a while so I see it, institutional heavily like Raven was mentioning. Daily conversations. I’m thinking of things in like recreational therapy too.

The Rec therapist is coming in and trying to make something accessible. So you’re seeing how it’s not accessible for everybody. Just a lot of times you go into a space, and they’re like, Oh, this is what you can use. And it’s like, well, we’re going to need contractors because the people are not going to even be able to come in. If you take two seconds and put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. Even like a YMCA we went to and it wasn’t accessible. Every day living, we just had to create things, at least in my experience. And maybe that was just because we were students. So they weren’t really taking us seriously, but you had to be very creative. It puts you in a mindset of like, wow, people who are just not included. You have to be so creative, just to make sure that you’re able to do what you need to do.

In school psych. It’s always like, wow, my child looks normal, they seem normal.
And I’m like, you know who’s not normal? You

Raven:
I think also in a casual way, I notice it more. I think as a society we’re starting to work on our language

Riana:
Yeh!

Raven:
But I notice that it’s a little less with ability language.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Hmm! Riana let me ask you this. What’s the language that’s used when it comes to disability in your line of work?

Riana:
In School Psychology?

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Yeh! Do they used differently abled, special needs, do they use disability?

Riana:
No, we say disability. That’s my huge argument over semantics. Everybody’s like don’t get caught up with semantics but that’s extremely important. If you describe a disability in a certain way it can put a picture in a parent’s brain and sometimes you just have to let that parent or teacher or whoever is uncomfortable, be uncomfortable because it is what that child is period.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
It sounds like you’re in the camp of no we’re gonna use the word disability, we’re not gonna change the language we’re gonna use those words.

Riana:
No!
Riana:
I’m not making you comfortable with anything, especially when I’m making you comfortable within ignorance. I’m not doing that. I’m gonna tell you your child has Autism cause there’s nothing wrong with Autism.
The DSM 5 says what it is and it is what it is.

Raven:
I just noticed this thing because I’m taking Psycho Pathology and I’ve noticed a lot of the names of things have changed.

Riana:
Yeh, like Sociopath is anti social personality.

Raven:
There’s like a lot that I realized have changed.
Riana:
Yeh! And that’s because of culture though. The way that semantics comes into play and the way they become derogatory and then we have to be sensitive. And that makes perfect sense, you know what I mean.

Raven:
Yeh!

Riana:
The “R” word. It makes perfect sense, I’m not going to use it.There’s some things though like obviously school psych’s aren’t going to test if a child has “gender dysphoria”, but I wouldn’t approach a situation where a child says they’re non conforming . I’m not going to say you have gender dysphoria. Like, that’s so stupid. That’s something that’s becoming a little derogatory too. That’s when I might change my wording, but that’s because of a cultural aspect.

— From George Carlin Stand Up Comedy:
“Sometime toilet paper became bathroom tissue. Sneakers became running shoes. Information became directory assistance. Car crashes became automobile accidents. Used cars became previously owned transportation.” (Audience laughter.) “Room service became guest room dining. And constipation became occasional irregularity.” (Audience laughter fades out)

— Music begins: A very bright, fun mid tempo beat.

TR:
Now, thinking about the requirements for citizenship in the country of the Blind, the truth is I don’t know that we have an immigration issue at all.
I don’t know anyone lining up trying to get in.

The country of the blind, just like this podcast, has fully open borders.

That being said, it is an opportunity to examine and challenge the way we move through the world to really figure out what blindness is and isn’t. What disability is and isn’t.

Even more of an opportunity if you have people in your life who you love and love you back to share in the experience.
Yes, these conversations can produce a range of emotions, but if you’re lucky, it can just lead to strengthening those bonds as opposed to breaking them.

(Sounds of laughter and conversation between Raven, Riana and Daddy!)

Blindness, disability is all a normal part of the human experience. Which I think works better when we’re all in it together!
Raven, Riana and Daddy:
(The conversation continues and leads into a hysterical laugh from the three!)

Big shout out to Andrew Leland, author of The Country of the Blind, remember, available on the NLS BARD for digital download and Book share as well as all the other places you can purchase books.

Riana and Raven, AKA, Daddy’s babies!
Hanging out with them, is one of the biggest blessings of my life.
Daddy loves you!

Reid My Mind Radio, daddy loves you too! (Silly laughter)

Reid My Mind Radio is available wherever you get podcasts.
Transcripts and more are at ReidMyMind.com.
The only way to get there is by spelling it right!
Riana and Raven:
R to the E I D!
— Sample: “D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick

TR, Riana and Raven:
Like my last name.

— Reid My Mind Radio Outro
Peace!

Riana:
Can we do shout outs!

Raven:
Can we say bye?

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
You just said bye!

Raven:
Not really.

TR in Conversation with Riana & Raven:
Go ahead, say bye!

Raven:
Bye, guys! Thank you for having us on Reid My Mind Radioooooo! Peace!

Riana:
Peace! (In a deep voice)

(In her television announcer voice)
Thank you everybody for listening to Reid My Mind Radio. I’m Riana Reid with my co-host Raven Reid, taking over for this episode. Please follow us on Instagram. Mine is @RianaGeorgette. Raven what’s yours?

Raven:
I’m @Raven22 .

Riana:
We love you, thanks for listening, see you next week.

Raven:
I liked it, that was awesome!

Raven (at about 5 years old)
Woh! Heavy breathing. That was awesome, that was awesome!d

Hide the transcript

TR in Conversation with Andrew
sort of a silly question. But I guess you know, you could go somewhere with this. If blindness were really a country, who are you voting for President.

Andrew
You’ve got my vote Thomas.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
Oh, no, I don’t want that.

TR
That’s the last time I ask a silly question. My guest today is Andrew Leland.

Andrew
Writer, Editor, Producer, Teacher, my pronouns are he him, I am a white guy with glasses, short brown hair, wearing a sweatshirt.

There’s certainly people who I think would nominate themselves. You want me to name like a particular human being?

TR in Conversation with Andrew
You don’t have to if you don’t want to. What are the qualifications that you would think would make a good president of The Country of the Blind.

Andrew
the people that I’m drawn to, generally speaking, these are people who probably don’t want to be politicians, and wouldn’t take the job. But, you know, I really love blind people who are creative and who aren’t rejecting their blindness, but they’re also not really defined by it. And they’re sort of using it as this sort of creative aspect of themselves. So it’s sort of like, not for it, not against it. But like with it.

I can pick out a number of people who I write about in the book too.

TR
Well, you’re going to have to read the book, The Country of the Blind, to find out who else can get Andrew’s vote.
I’m Thomas Reid, this is Reid My Mind Radio, and I approve this message.

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

TR
Whether you’re blind or disabled, or in any way, identify as someone in a marginalized group, chances are you thought about what life would be like in a place where you are accepted, and your needs are centered. Maybe even just considered?

Andrew Leland’s first book, The Country of the Blind isn’t a fictional place, but rather, it’s about something much more real.

Andrew
I have a degenerative retinal condition called RP, retinitis pigmentosa. I knew that I was going blind since I was a teenager. But for a really long time, it felt abstract, distant and not worth thinking about. Another way to say not worth thinking about might be like I was sort of in denial, as I think a lot of people are with our P is very easy to be in denial about it, because it’s like, well, sure, I might be going blind. But I’m like driving a car and scoring the winning goal over here. There’s no blindness anywhere near here. And then it caught up with me.

TR
Over the years of doing this podcast, and even prior, I’ve spoken to a lot of people experiencing blindness, low vision, vision loss, no matter what you call it.
or , the reason for the loss, denial is commonplace. And so too, is the fact that it will catch up.

Andrew
I’m about to turn 43 And I would say was about 8, 10 years ago that I really started noticing blindness, intruding into my life, into my day to day in a way that I couldn’t ignore. It was around that time that I started using a white cane full time in public. As soon as I started using the white cane in front of my partner, in front of colleagues, walking down the street in front of strangers, It made me blind in the eyes of other people. It forced me to think of myself as blind. And that was really the beginning of the writing process for me.

TR
He began first exploring blindness as a journalist

— Audio clips of Andrew hosting or reporting from The Organist” and “Radio Lab” respectively.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
Can you talk about the art of writing in general, and maybe how important it is and has been in your life?
Andrew
It’s one of the most important things in my life. There’s this phrase that I think about sometimes, which we usually think about in terms of like technology, which is a word processor. Microsoft word is a word processor, the computer is helping you process words, there’s something in that idea that you’re processing and kind of a lot of different ways when you’re writing emotional processing. I use the word metabolizing a lot too. There’s something that happens like an experience and the experience is a little bit just like this meal that you just swallow down but like, you’ve got to digest it. For me like writing is such a crucial part of that process of metabolizing what it is that I’m feeling and experiencing in the world.

TR:
This probably sounds familiar to those who journal and not only gives you an opportunity to purge all of the things running through your mind But literally, it enables you to process those thoughts and emotions.

Andrew
I had some ideas about what blindness meant to me. But now that I’ve written the book, I’ve kind of given myself a little bit of a map to my own feelings and my own thoughts about it that I would never have arrived at without the work of writing.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
To be a good writer, you have to be a reader. And I’m assuming you’re a big reader.

Andrew
Yes, I love reading. So when I started writing the book in 2019, I still was kind of hanging tough with print, I couldn’t even imagine a life after print is such a deep part of my life. And I was very, very unwilling to let go of it. The tricky thing about RP is it’s not like you just wake up one day, you can’t read print anymore. It’s the kind of thing where literally, it will happen over the course of a decade. And at a certain point, you have to just sort of decide like, Okay, this is actually more trouble than it’s worth

TR:
a decision, each individual has to make for themselves. Yet, there are some real world things to consider as a guideline,

Andrew
I had a Kindle, and I just like kept on cranking size up and up and up, had started to meet enough blind people and talk to enough blind people, the writing was on the wall. They were like, text-to-speech, man, it’s where it’s at. You’ve just got to listen. I just sort of went all in and kind of made it like a project for myself. Like I’m going to learn how to read text to speech. It took me a while until I found Voice Dream Reader. That app was a game changer for me. And Bookshare, which is a online library for blind and print disabled folks, which has millions of titles, those two tools in unison. That’s the power combo for me. Over the course of the last three years, while I was writing the book, I was also kind of training myself to be a blind reader.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What about Braille? You mentioned that in the book you were headed that direction?

Andrew
Yep. Yeah, I’m holding tough with Braille. I mean, it’s incredibly frustrating to be so slow, after so many years, I think I started in 2020, maybe, or 2019. Even. It’s been a journey.

TR:
In the book, Andrew discusses first learning Braille with a sighted instructor, then a season Braille reader gave him some strong advice,

Andrew
that guy’s teaching you bad habits, like get rid of him. And I was like, Oh, right. Blind people know how to read Braille, like that guy was sighted. And I don’t think he knew what he was doing. And then I found the Hadley Institute, amazing service. It’s a free mail order correspondence course, for Braille. If you hang with it, do everything they tell you to do, you’ll come out the other side with Braille. I’m still super slow. I tried to touch Braille at least once a day just to like, keep it in circulation. Last night, I tried to read a book to my kid, my father’s Dragon is a great kids book that we’ve read before. I’ve read that book a bunch of times with him already. So I sort of know the sentences, but still, I just sound like, (reading very slowly)then… he… said, hey… guys…, how long can I expect my son who’s 11 Now to like, roll with me on that. And he’s sort of like patient because he knows I’m like trying to get better. But it’s a struggle.

TR:
Every aspect of our lives are affected by disability. Jobs or our careers. Our real concern, is the way we make money, feel a sense of purpose. For many, it’s how we identify, it’s often the first thing we ask when meeting someone new, “So what do you do? ”

Prior to reading The Country of the Blind, I assumed a writer experiencing blindness would have an easier time moving forward in their career, magnification of screen reading software, along with word processes and access to the internet, chances are they can perform the work. But actually being able to perform the work is only part of the struggle

Andrew
for the kind of writing that I like to do most, which is going out into the world hanging out with people that I want to write about taking notes, and then doing research, reading articles, and so on. The heart of it is that reporting process where you’re out on the scene, long form narrative nonfiction, you gather facts, but you also gather sensory data, like any creative writer has to have sensory impressions. If you think about literature, or the novel, it’s all about these visual descriptions of people. And those are sort of these windows into their character. And so I think about that a lot, both on the level of like, just being an artist and having artful sensory descriptions that convey this kind of mood that I want, but also as a journalist, am I going to be reporting somewhere and miss the story because I can’t see it.

TR:
That’s understandable, especially if you’re new to disability and unfamiliar with an adaptive way of thinking or creating accommodations, but this is 2024. And there are lessons to be learned from those who blazed trails before we ever set foot on a new path. Andrew tells us about one such example.

Andrew
Ved Mehta, who moved to the United States from India when he was a kid. He ended up becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker, which is one of the premier places to publish that kind of narrative nonfiction. He was there during the celebrated William Sean era, writing nonfiction was one of the greatest nonfiction editors of all time.

TR:
Mehta, who was totally blind and on staff still had to deal with questioning around aspects of his Writing,

Andrew
he would write these dispatches from different places where he would talk about his subjects twinkling wintry eyes set against the mahogany Brown of his study and so on. He would have an assistant often with him, met who was doing the interview and, and he was doing the writing, but he might say to the assistant, describe his eyes for me, and use that.

TR:
precede just about any occupation with the word blind. And I’m pretty sure a version of this conversation exists, questioning the blind person’s accommodation, blind accountant, blind programmer, blind orientation and mobility instructor, blind, audio description Narrator or writer. Hmm,

Andrew
maybe if I’m using the Be My Eyes, virtual volunteer five years from now, if I’m reporting and I use that to gather some details about somebody’s pronounced cheekbones or their tousled hair, I think that that’s a totally legitimate way to report, you can look at that as an accommodation. Ved Mehta needs an assistant in some context to fully do the reporting he needs where I might need Be My Eyes to finish the job. People look at that as like almost a disqualification. You didn’t run the race unassisted, you had this help.

TR:
The unfairness, the hypocrisy, makes my blood boil.

Andrew
But, I think if you take a step back and you look at technology, or even just like tools, in general, we’re all getting assistance all the time, from each other from other people and from technology. disability might mean you need different kinds of tool, different kinds of technology, different kinds of personal assistance, but it’s not categorically different. If you think about any journalist, any writer, if they’re sighted, don’t need assistance in gathering visual details. But they certainly are reporting things that they haven’t seen with their own eyes, almost any piece of nonfiction writing will have a reconstruction. If I’m writing a story, and I want to talk about when you first became a podcaster, I might interview you and say, okay, describe the scene for me, where were you? What was the day like, what were you wearing? Tell me all of it. And then I write that scene as though I were there even though it was 20 years ago, and I was 100 miles away.

TR:
The same people questioning accommodations, go gaga for AI.
Ableism is real.
Ableism isn’t just an external thing done to those who are disabled. In The Country of the Blind. Andrew bravely shares an experience where he attends a local chapter meeting of the NFB in Missouri. Here’s an excerpt from the book with Andrew narrating.

— Andrew as Narrator
I had noticed the blind woman in a wheelchair using a strange device that looked like it somehow converted the text on a laptop screen into metallic Braille. I had noticed the other people with multiple disabilities and the modest scale at which the group was operating, arguing over how to spend their tiny publicity budget. If I had gone to the meeting to find other blind people whom I might commiserate with, or learn from or befriend, the first impression was more off putting than I had expected. Part of it was surely just geographical culture shock, but a greater part was a different kind of culture shock, or discomfort with disability.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What do you think your experience would be like? Now knowing what you know and feeling how you feel? If you went to that meeting for the first time? How do you think it would be different?

Andrew
Just to preface, it’s me being super open about the, I guess you could call it internalized ableism that I felt where I’m just looking at this group of blind people, like, what do I have in common with any of these people, like, get me out of here,

TR
Andrew receive some real criticism from blind people about this part of the book.

Andrew:
Today, in retrospect, going to that meeting now, like I know, Gary wonder was there. He’s the editor of the Braille monitor, somebody who is more engaged with blind intellectual life, which is something I’m deeply interested in, then like, most people in the in the world, that guy alone is somebody I should have, like, grabbed and had a long conversation with, but at the time, all I could see was a group of disabled people who felt very different from my image of myself. So having the patience to spend longer than I did spend at that meetup, having the courage to actually like, talk to people as people rather than just look at them through this sort of other engaged the way I do

TR in Conversation with Andrew
I get it. For folks to get mad at that, I don’t think they realize what’s really going on like you being honest about that, is that process of checking your own ableism. You can’t get to a point without doing that work.

Andrew
Totally

TR in Conversation with Andrew
putting that in the book is inviting other people to do that, too.

Andrew
Thank you for pointing that out. Plenty of blind people said to me, just what you’ve said, where they’re like, that was me. And these are people, some folks who have been blind their whole lives. It’s not like it’s only somebody who’s like, has this site privilege or somebody coming at it from the outside. I think any blind person can have that perspective, and many of them do. And I’m with you that it felt important to take that risk of making myself seem like a real jerk in order to expose some of that ableism that a lot of us carry around.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
That’s the other thing too, that you, you included your wife? Did you talk to her before you include? Because I was like, oh, yeah, I don’t know if I could do that.

Andrew
I think she’s within earshot listening to me talk to you right now. So you know, you might hear the door burst open. And you know, she might

TR in Conversation with Andrew
Come on in.

Andrew:
She might jump on the mic. But, uh, yeah, I mean, like, there were definitely moments where I was like, I want to write an interesting book. But I also want to be married for the rest of my life. And I don’t want to jeopardize that. So there were a lot of tough conversations that we had. A journalist should never give their source a copy of the text to change. You can fact check it by saying like, is this true or not. But with Lily, it was a very different situation. Like, we just sat down with the book in front of us multiple times, like and did sort of a find, for her name. And then just like, read every sentence of what do you remember about this, and a lot changed in those conversations.

TR
You can’t overstate the importance of good communication. having these conversations, no matter how uncomfortable is so important to a relationship.

Andrew
It was like a way for us to talk through some of those issues. Even though a lot of that stuff was difficult. And like, I’m sure she would have been happy to see all of her name just like completely scrubbed from the book. I think to her credit, like she recognized the importance of including for the same reason you just said about the picnic scene. I don’t think I had read a book that was really honest in that way about how difficult the partners journey can be to and the trickiness around the way that your partner is entering blindness at the same time you are, it was worth the difficulty and the risk in order to start that conversation, not just in my own family, but maybe in others as well. Then

TR:
there’s the ableism we experienced through our society. In The Country of the Blind. Andrew writes about a poem read during a service at a synagogue.

Andrew
The refrain that the poem says over and over again, is fall to your knees and thank God for your eyesight. You just sort of have to sit there with your family, as like a whole room of people just sort of appreciates that they aren’t blind. I certainly still encounter it. I think one thing that’s changed is that that moment marked the kind of beginning I think for not just me, but for my family to sort of have a politics around it. It was kind of wild to me that Lily found it annoying. And then it wasn’t just me.

TR:
Everyone in the family is adjusting to disability. The question is, will that be done alone, or together?

Andrew
My son, I feel like I’ve sort of trained him to be a critical thinker about it. I will be watching something and he’ll sort of perk up when there’s like a disability reference that seems off. He’s in fifth grade. And at the beginning of the year, they were doing this exercise about guidelines for how to be a good community for each other. And one of them was like, be respectful. Even if the person has a disability. The line that caught his ear was even if they have a disability. He raised his hand and was kind of like I don’t know about like, even and the teacher was like, oh, yeah, that’s good. Like something was bothering me about that. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. To me that shows that he is really internalizing some of these critical disability thinking that I’ve sort of come to that makes me feel really proud and excited.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What’s your son’s name?

Andrew
Oscar.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
Is that like a head nod to your grandfather?

Andrew
It is. It is.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
Oh, very cool. (Laughing)

Andrew
He was a playwright. His name was Neil Simon, one of his best known plays that got turned into a TV show and a movie was “The Odd Couple”.

— Music begins Theme song from The Odd Couple
— Narration from the opening of the Odd Couple
On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife.

Andrew
my wife, Lily, when we were trying to think of baby names. She said, Well, what about Felix? My first thought was the odd couple because Felix is the sort of more fastidious neurotic member of the odd couple. I was like, No, it can’t be Felix. Oscar, that’s who you want to name a baby after.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
A hearty laugh!

Andrew
. She wasn’t even thinking of “The Odd Couple”.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
I hope he’s not like Oscar though. He’s not pulling out sandwiches from the bed?

Andrew
He’s got a little bit of both, I would say.

— The Odd Couple theme music comes to an end.

— Music begins A funky baseline opens to a smooth mid tempo R&B groove.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What was your experience, if any, with disability arts prior to 10 years ago, when you opened up your cane?

Andrew
Hmm. That’s a good question. I think I’d encountered it in the art world. When I first learned about the work of Christine Sun Kim. She’s a Deaf artist who does really interesting work around like sound or like representations of sound, interesting stuff with captions. That would have been on that level, or certainly, like mainstream blind musicians, that would have hit me on that mainstream level. That movie, like I think Sound of Metal, but really, it was not on my radar.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
If they’re in the mainstream, I don’t consider that disability culture. That’s just me. Are they making the art from a disability perspective? I think that’s the way I draw that line.

Andrew
My book is a mainstream book, you know, like it’s with a commercial publisher? Does that mean that like what I’m doing is not from a disability perspective, it’s kind of a bigger question about identity. Does your work fall under the category of the identity just by virtue of your having the identity? Or does the work have to like, be about the identity for it to be included? I think it’s kind of a spectrum.

TR
What qualifies something as disability art? disability culture? What makes someone a disability artist. Questions really worth exploring. I’ll do some of that in the ongoing self portrait episode.

Andrew
That’s the question that I’ve been wrestling with really like through the whole process of writing the book and figuring out my own identity as a blind person is like, is it supposed to be central? Or is it supposed to be incidental? When is it Central? When is it incidental? I read an interview with this bio ethicist who was blind named Adrian ash who died a couple years ago, she was very adamant that blindness was totally incidental. Her friends joke that she was 20, before she realized she was blind, because she just was like, it doesn’t really affect my life. But then when she applied for a job, and it was pretty obvious that she didn’t get the job because she was blind, because the person was basically explicitly like, I don’t know how we would hire a blind person, that’s when she became blind. That’s when it became a central part of her identity, that kind of politicizes it in a way that I don’t totally track with. If we’re talking about disability arts, I do want to center blindness as a writer, in some ways. There’s other times when, when I want it to be totally off to the side.

— Music comes to a close.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What has the response been like today? And I’m wondering if there’s any difference between blind and non blind readers?

Andrew
Yeah, it’s been great. I’ve gotten some criticism. But over my overwhelming experience has been one of people really responding positively to the book, it seemed safe to assume that like people whose experience was close to mine, would be like, oh, yeah, I recognize that like the first time I used a cane, stopping driving. But one of the things I learned in writing the book is that blindness is such a diverse experience, not only in the ways that people experience blindness, but also all kinds of other life experiences intersectionality’s that can inform one’s relationship with disability. The cool thing for me, after the book has come out has been just seeing folks whose experience is very different from mine, also resonated with a book that makes me feel like I captured something about blind culture Blind politics in 2023. The experience that extends beyond my narrow experience of it,

TR:
the response Andrew hears the most from those who are not blind?

Andrew
“I learned a lot.”

It’s shocking sometimes how little people really stopped to consider the experience of blindness. And so I think one thing that book has done is really just like cracked that world open a lot more for a lot more people

TR in Conversation with Andrew
What was some of the criticism you mentioned that you receive.

Andrew
One of the things I really tried to do in the book is like not just have it be a memoir. I think the parts that people respond to the most are like me writing about my relationship with my son or with my wife are very emotional, personal moments. And I understand that, I think it’s important to include those, but I also get pretty nerdy. And talking about history of audio description, or the history of Braille history of the organized blind movement and NFB versus ACB versus AFB. Plenty of readers who didn’t know anything about blindness pointed out that it’s wild that there’s like these ancient beefs between blind people. Why are blind people fighting? Are they supposed to be in solidarity with each other fighting the fight to raise Blind people up. there are certain readers who are like, dude, enough of the alphabet soup? I don’t care, let’s move on.
That’s one criticism.

TR
You should judge for yourself. Get the book.

Andrew
The book is on Bookshare. It’s on barred I read the audio book myself. Every blind person who hears the audiobook is like how the hell did you do that? The short answer is Rp. 5% of my visual field still hanging in there.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
You did a great job reading that book. Part of that I’m sure was from your podcast experience and narration and stuff.

Andrew
Totally. Yeah.

TR
You can learn more about Andrew, his work and find him on social media by visiting his website AndrewLeland.org.

There really is something for everyone in this book. But here on Reid My Mind Radio, we’re especially interested in those adjusting to disability. while Andrews experience is specifically about blindness. I want to strongly encourage those new to disability to read The Country of the Blind, you’ll see yourself, your family, you’ll hopefully confront your own feelings about what it means to be disabled. And don’t worry, the final say is always up to you.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
So what’s your current citizenship status for the country of the Blind? Are you a citizen? Are you just visiting? What are we doing?

Andrew
I’ve applied for a green card. It’s been approved and now I’m just like waiting in the mail for it. So I’m like technically a citizen but I don’t have like the full papers yet.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
I can’t give you those papers, but I can tell you that you are an official member of the Reid My Mind Radio family sir.

Andrew
That’s much better news. That makes, that makes my day. And I have to say, you know, I didn’t want to I didn’t want to like mess things up by flattering you too much, but, you know, if we’re really talking about blind President? It’, you got my vote, it’s all you Thomas.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
(Laughing) Well, I appreciate that, but I am not running.

Andrew
Alright, well, I’m still gonna write you in. Gonna get my slate and stylus and braille you right on to the ballot.

TR in Conversation with Andrew
There you go. All right. Well, if I get enough, I’ll think about it.

TR
You know, I really do appreciate Andrew’s vote. But even more than that, I appreciate all the effort put into the book, sharing his experiences and time with the Reid My Mind Radio family. Sharing the art of adjustment.

I’m very hopeful that Andrew will come back and share some of his experiences around audio description. We of course, had a little conversation about that, but I think a future episode on what we were specifically talking about would be nice. That’s all I’ll say for now. Well on that topic at least.

— Music begins Hail to the Chief.

— Tap on microphone

TR
— Over exaggerated clearing of throat.

(In a presidential style speech )
. My fellow citizens, as we move forward together united as one, no matter where we land on the spectrum called blindness. We should ask, not what the blindness has done to us. But rather, what is it that we will do with our blindness?

We should also remind ourselves… to rock with Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts. Transcripts and more are at ReidMyMind.com.
Just remember, that’s R to the E, I, D!
— Sample (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick)
Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro

Peace!

TR in presidential mode
And may God Bless Humanity!

Hide the transcript

Music begins
THOMAS: Welcome to the Blind-Centered Audio Description Chats. These are the edited recordings of the Blind-Centered Audio Description Live Chats!
CHERYL: The live is the most fun part! We get together, we start with a question, and then we invite up anybody from the audience who wants to come and chat with us, agree, disagree, shed light on something that we hadn’t thought about before, which is Nefertiti’s favorite. [electric whoosh]
NEFERTITI: I’m Nefertiti Matos Olivares, and I’m a bilingual professional voiceover artist who specializes in audio description narration! I’m also a fervent cultural access advocate and a community organizer.
CHERYL: I’m Cheryl Green, an access artist, audio describer and captioner.
THOMAS: And I’m Thomas Reid, host and producer Reid My Mind Radio, voice artist, audio description narrator, consultant, and advocate.
[smartphone selection beeps]
CHERYL: Recording now!

NEFERTITI: As ever, our approach is that of centering the blind perspective. In this discussion, we will be yielding the mic to blind people first. How about we talk about blind centered, what that means, and what that means to us as the hosts of these chats, but also what that means for the blindness community at large? All right, Thomas, lobbing the ball to you. What is blind centered? What does it mean? What’s that about?
THOMAS: Ooh, I think I caught it.
NEFERTITI: Good catch.
THOMAS: Thank you. Cool. Good afternoon, everybody. Blind centered, yeah, let’s talk about that. So, you know, we’ve been doing these chats since the, I think toward the end of ‘22, when I looked back. It might’ve been the summer of ‘22 when we actually started, but they started posting toward the end of ‘22. And the idea behind it has always remained the same, is that our perspective is that we believe that when everything about audio description, the creation of audio description, like any good product, should center its targeted audience. And while we all know that audio description can serve many different populations, that centered population has been, and should always continue to be, blind folks. And I will say, I will try my best to say “blind and low vision.” But I want y’all to know that for me personally, I always, included in when I say blind, I’m including that spectrum, okay, that full spectrum of blindness, which includes low vision, from low vision to total blindness. So that’s what I mean when I say blind. That’s our guiding principle, the fact that the target audience for audio description is blind folks. WE use this centering to look at everything about audio description. I think everything, everything about it, everything that goes into the creation.
So, for example, the technology that’s used to create audio description. If we looked at that, we probably wouldn’t have inaccessible software that, companies using inaccessible software to create AD, whatever part of that software, whatever part of that business is. If targeting, again, centering blindness, that would mean that it would automatically be accessible. So, that’s an example of how that works, right? The creation, the delivery, the process of educating and training those who are producing audio description. Again, blind centered, employing and procuring, right? AD centering blindness. That’d be fantastic.
So, I think what we wanted to do today is to take a look at, again, this certification by first framing it with this perspective of blind-centered. I think it would be good if we first take maybe five, let’s say five issues that are of the greatest concern to blind people when it comes to audio description. What are five things that are the most pressing? I’m specifically talking to blind consumers of audio description that I wanna hear from y’all. But what are some of the most pressing issues when it comes down to audio description? What are some of the most pressing issues that you feel we face today?
JOLIE: There should be as much audio description as there is captioning.
THOMAS: Okay, okay.
KATIE: One of the things I thought of just now is not interpreting emotions or facial expressions, like just saying what somebody’s face is doing or what’s physically happening, not, you know, having someone say, “he looks worried” or “he’s angry.”
NEFERTITI: Gotcha, okay.
KATIE: You know, it’s like, what do they, you know, what’s their face doing?

NEFERTITI: Anybody else who identifies as a blind consumer?
GRETCHEN: Hey. Yeah, this is Gretchen Maune. And I just wanna say, quality control.
THOMAS: Quality control.
NEFERTITI: Excellent.
MITCHELL: Oh, that’s what I was about to say.

CARRIE: I think it’s this debate that we’re all having, which is fine, about text to speech versus real audio description with narrators, human narrators. And it’s the whole thing, like, some people think, “Well, it’s better than nothing, and it’s fine with me.” And other people it’s not.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
CARRIE: And I think how companies, I don’t wanna, say, pick on anyone in particular, but specific companies think it’s cheaper and it’s so convenient and will give more if we can just do TTS, and it’s fine.

NEFERTITI: So far, we have TTS versus human voiced narration, we have quality control, interpretation, and that we should have as much audio description as there is captioning. Anything else?
ROBERT: And censorship of explicit material as well as the audio description infrastructure not traveling from one studio to the other.
THOMAS: Okay. Censorship and passthrough. So, I’m gonna go ahead and do this list ‘cause I was pretty much working on this, and I think we all captured the majority of them. And this is not necessarily in any order, but I think many of us would feel that TTS is a high priority, right? So, the forcing of TTS on us. And I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna say it like that. I’m gonna collapse some of these into one because I think when we talk about, when Robert mentioned the censorship and all of that, I feel like this is about quality. And some of this stuff falls into quality.
NEFERTITI: Yes, and I would also loop in interpretation in there as well.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Censorship, interpretation, all of that goes into quality.
THOMAS: And there’s a bunch of other things that go into quality that I think we can, that we talk about and we think about: well written, culturally appropriate, well casted, all of that.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: All of that kind of goes into the quality. So we’ll say quality is one, but it equals all of those things. I’m gonna go and add significant and meaningful inclusion of blind professionals throughout the process.
NEFERTITI: Aha! Yes.
THOMAS: Oh, y’all okay with that one? Y’all okay with that one being in there?
NEFERTITI: Oh yeah!
THOMAS: All right. Cool.
NEFERTITI: Very okay.
KATIE: That’s a good one. Yeah, exactly.
THOMAS: Thank you. We’ll also say, I’m gonna add this one because I know that this is a thing. We still experience this. But I’m just gonna go ahead and say the overall experience of theater, in theaters and in broadcast and all of that, right? So, we’re talking about the experience. I think some of that is captured by passthrough. We mentioned the passthrough issue, right? That’s part of the experience because the AD just never made it there, but we know it exists already, right? Just never made it there. When you go to a theater and the theater gives you the equipment that doesn’t work, that’s part of the experience. All of that stuff. When you go to a theater and the treatment that you receive in that theater is beyond, eh, you know, it’s just not a comfortable experience when, you know, they say, yeah, they have AD on the Tuesday at 7:00 one time a month for this one show. And then when you get there, if you can get there, no one really kind of knows what to do. Like, that’s not a good experience. Yeah, they have AD, but it’s not a good experience. So I’m gonna add that in on our list because I think that’s a really important one.
NEFERTITI: And that’s for cinema and for live performance.
THOMAS: Absolutely. Anywhere that they say they have AD.
NEFERTITI: Right.
THOMAS: And then one that I didn’t hear, but I think y’all might agree, is increasing awareness among consumers, number one, because y’all know we’re here. We’re in the know. Even if we’re just looking at the States right now, but we’re talking about more than the States, there’s a lot of people who do not know or are not using audio description who are blind. So I think there’s a real effort that’s necessary to get this word out to them. But also, in terms of getting the word out, increasing awareness also amongst content creators. Because we know that if content creators were more involved in the process of creating audio description and looked at it as a creative process, a creative tool, I think we believe that that would increase both the quantity and the quality of audio description.
NEFERTITI: I certainly believe that. Yes.
THOMAS: Okay. Cool, cool.
NEFERTITI: I believe that any content that embraces audio description is enhanced by it.
THOMAS: Is enhanced by it, so the content creators need to know about it. So, that increase of awareness is really, really important. It goes beyond those two, but I’m really just kind of talking about those groups specifically: blind people and content creators in the long run. Because, you know, one of the things we talked about that would be great for audio description is—and any form of accessibility—is when we, accessibility from the beginning of the process, right? So that won’t happen, that will never happen until content creators are aware and accept it and view this as an art. We won’t get there until that happens.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: Cool. So, we have the five things, those five areas. That’s the framing that I’m talking about. That’s the blind-centered framing. So these are the things that are pressing to blind folks when it comes to audio description. Okay? So, that’s what we’re gonna work with today.
So now what I wanted to do was to say, okay, let’s use this as the context to sort of look at where the accreditation, the proposed, I’m not sure if it’s just proposed, but the document is serving blind-centered, serving these things. How does it help? How does it help reduce TTS? How does it help increase the number of blind professionals? How does it help increase the awareness of audio description? How does it help the quality of description? Including all of those issues, including cultural appropriateness, including making sure that it’s not censoring, including how does it help the passthrough issue?
NEFERTITI: Mmhmm.
THOMAS: How does it help all of that?
NEFERTITI: The impact.
THOMAS: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, that’s kind of how I wanna approach this. Because we can go through it and just be like oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s fine. We could do that. But I think to get to that sense of at least my question when it comes to this is, how’s this gonna help? How is this gonna help us as consumers?
NEFERTITI: Absolutely.
THOMAS: How’s this gonna help us as consumers?
NEFERTITI: How does it benefit?
THOMAS: How does it help us as blind professionals?
NEFERTITI: Yes, exactly.
THOMAS: Okay, so.
NEFERTITI: How does it impact? How does it benefit? How does it possibly take away from?
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah. If anyone has anything specific to point us to where it does address any of these issues, I’m willing to hear that. I would love to hear that, ‘cause that would probably make this a little faster process. But until that, we’ll go through it. Let’s just go through it. I’m gonna go through a couple of things that I noticed, and then we can invite a couple of folks to come up and talk about some of the things you noticed. Because maybe you did notice if it does or if it doesn’t address any of these five things. And in general, how would it help those who are looking at audio description from a blind-centered approach as opposed to something else?
So, I wanna go over this one part that I noticed, and we could use this as an example that I thought was kind of interesting. Okay. So it says, “In media and in live performance practice, a CAUDES tries to fit the description into the pauses between the spoken or sung dialogue and critical sound elements. A list of visual elements to describe includes, but not limited to, actions, facial expressions, physical characteristics, body language and gestures, visual comedy and sight gags, dance movements, costumes and clothing, multimedia effects and lighting, settings and scene changes, props, including signage, characters’ descriptions.” Oh! There we go. There goes something. I mean, that might be some identity stuff. Might be, that’s kind of low, but it’s there, I guess, if that’s what that means. “Text or on-screen graphics.” Okay, cool. Titles, credits, all of that. Okay. Oh, why is that kind of low though? The character, the characteristics, if that is, I guess that’s identity. Y’all see? Nef, you think that’s identity and character? Cheryl, that’s identity? Is that, would that be identity stuff? So, would that be?
CHERYL: It doesn’t have to be.
THOMAS: It doesn’t have to be. Right.
CHERYL: No, I don’t think, at least the item that you read out doesn’t rule in or rule out anything, for example, race or ethnicity, skin tone, hair, disability, like you started to say, mobility devices. Or is it just “this is the mom”? All I can say is that particular item you read out doesn’t clearly answer to that. There may be something later in the document.
THOMAS: Let’s go to Jolie! Let’s go to Jolie. So, Jolie, is there anything that you see that is addressing some of the five concerns?
JOLIE: Yes, yes, yes!
THOMAS: Yeah.
JOLIE: You know what I found really exciting is at the very beginning where it says what the definition of a CAUDES, a certified audio describer specialist, they say can be blind, low vision, or sighted. I love the fact that that starts out with blind, then goes to low vision, then goes sighted. Because normally it would be the other way. And they may say, “and in certain circumstances people who are blind could also blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But instead, it starts right out with a certified audio describer specialist is a person who is blind, low vision, or sighted. I like that. I like that list.
THOMAS: Jolie? Jolie, who else? Who other than someone who’s blind, low vision, or sighted would it include?
JOLIE: Exactly, Thomas! Exactly. And so, I just, when you talk about blind centeredness, I think that that’s excellent. The stuff, by the way, that does cover the idea of ethnicity and how to describe different things like skin tone and hair and all the rest of that kind of stuff, that’s in a different part of the document. But I encourage everybody to read it with an open heart. There you go.
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I wanna get back to that, though, because I think I’m thinking of that line a little differently because, well, I definitely wanna point out that it says that. I definitely. But I’m more curious to how does it do it? How does it do it? Because there’s lots of things that say things, right? Because what I was getting at is that a person who’s doing audio description, from my knowledge, can only be sighted, blind, or low vision. I’m not sure what the other option is when it comes to, I mean, you know—
JOLIE: You know, Thomas, I’ve been in discussions where just to try to get somebody who is sighted to understand that a person who is blind can absolutely do audio description, that it’s not you’re editing something that somebody else has said or the people who are sighted who are helping you are really doing it, and you’re just taking credit for it, blah, blah, blah.
THOMAS: Yeah, I know.
JOLIE: I have been in those discussions.
THOMAS: Same. Same.
JOLIE: Yeah, yeah.
THOMAS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JOLIE: I was in one this morning, so I’ll tell you I think there is an open heart here.
THOMAS: Okay.
JOLIE: But people should make comments and stuff like that ‘cause that’s what the group is, you know, is looking for and that kind of stuff.
THOMAS: 100%.
JOLIE: But, yeah, I liked that.
THOMAS: Cool!
JOLIE: Anyway, this makes me nervous. So, I’m gonna go back and hide out in mute land.
THOMAS: Aw, Jolie, I hope I’m not making you nervous. I hope it’s just the fact that you’re talking to other people that make you nervous. Not me. I hope it’s not me.
JOLIE: Oh, it would never be you because you have Charles Bonnet syndrome.
THOMAS:
JOLIE: And your show, that podcast. I have that. And I hated it my whole life, Thomas, until I heard your podcast on Charles Bonnet syndrome. And I know that’s not the subject at all, but now I can sleep because I don’t hold those pictures and images and light and stuff against them. And now it’s just, as you say, a reverie. It just changed my life. It was nice. It was nice.
THOMAS: Aw, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.
NEFERTITI: All right, thank you for sharing that.
JOLIE: All right, I’m gonna go hide. Bye-bye.
THOMAS: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Cool. So, that’s good. So Jolie looks at that as yeah, that’s blind centered because blind was mentioned first. Cool. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. So, I also wanna, I wanna see how ‘cause I think the how is important. The how is very important.
MITCHELL: I think this still is related, but one thing that stuck out to me was the on-screen text. And the reason that this sticks out to me is because there are certain shows, for example, Survivor, where they subtitle English, and sometimes it actually can become more difficult to understand what people are saying when two different people are reading or saying the exact same thing. And I wonder, I guess, what would be the best way or of how to go about understanding. Because obviously, you wanna have everything described, but also, there needs to be some sort of limit.
THOMAS: Are you talking in terms of who should be subtitling, who should be narrating that? Who should be voicing that?
MITCHELL: Well, it’s, I’m more referring to is when subtitles are narrated by audio description, when they’re being said relatively clearly by other people.
THOMAS: Mm!
MITCHELL: And I think that they’re subtitled to ensure that people understand what they’re saying.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
MITCHELL: But in some ways, that could lead to actually more misunderstanding.
THOMAS: And that’s the type of thing we talk about in other blind-centered chats that we have, blind-centered AD.
MITCHELL: Okay.
THOMAS: But here we wanna really focus on that. But I can definitely appreciate what you’re talking about. And just real quick, I think sometimes, you know, it’s a call that someone has to make on whether or not to actually go ahead and voice that. And to me, that’s an access issue, right?
MITCHELL: Yeah.
THOMAS: Like, sometimes our access issues can break someone else’s access or maybe annoy someone, but, you know, someone, a different person is being served by that. And so, I think we always have to kind of remember that.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. One size does not fit all when it comes to accessibility.
MITCHELL: Nope!
NEFERTITI: But thank you, Mitchell.
THOMAS: Yeah. Thank you, Mitchell.

CHERYL: I read through the draft criteria, and it is exquisitely detailed. So, kudos to the team for covering so many topics and so many angles. I will say, however, that the writing is often very dense and sometimes even academic, and there wasn’t, at least in my feeling, a real emphasis on plainer language. And sometimes I have trouble understanding reading, and I have to get somebody to read it to me. Or sometimes if writing is very dense, I have to take it and rewrite it in my own words and then cross check and make sure did I get the stuff right. And so, there may be some things that I don’t understand, so I can’t say they’re good or negative, because the writing of this document sometimes is too hard. And so, I wonder if, I’m not asking people to answer, but I do wonder if other people have experienced or may experience trouble knowing whether they can get certified or knowing what certification is about because the document is a little bit hard. I will pause and yield the floor to Scott Nixon.

SCOTT: I completely agree with Cheryl about the draft. The language in it was very, very dense. Very, very not necessarily hard to understand for myself because I’ve had experience with these sorts of documents in the past, but a plain-language version I thought would have been a great idea. Because in many cases in, you know, legislation or things like that in government and so forth, they have obligations to have a plain-language version that anyone can understand. So, creating a plain-language version of this would be good as well.
But the main points that I would like to bring up are this. Going back to the points that Thomas was mentioning at the start when I first came in, things like passthrough and cultural competency and cultural sensitivity and things like that, I don’t think that this is going to really help change much of that, simply because, yeah, okay, we want to create this overarching standard for audio description professionals. That is great, in theory, but which companies are gonna sign on to take this certificate or this training or whatever seriously enough to hire people who are going to go through it? And once these standards are adopted, are they only gonna be recognized in the United States, or are they going to be recognized in Canada or the United Kingdom or here in Australia?
At the end of the day, I in no way mean to harsh anyone’s vibe about this great idea that everyone’s having, but at the end of the day, at the moment, with no company willing to take it on as a standard, no company saying, “we expect you to have done this” or whatever, it’s just another piece of paper. It’s just gonna be another thing. Okay, great. Sure, great to have. And it will increase the amount of blind professionals who are out there in the industry, you know, like myself who is a audio description narrator. But it’s not gonna help with passthrough at all. It’s not going to help with TTS at all. It’s, you know, it may help with competency and cultural competency and things like that.
THOMAS: How?
SCOTT: But we….
THOMAS: Scott?
SCOTT: Yeah.
THOMAS: I just wanna back up because you said that it will increase the amount of blind professionals. How do you see that happening with this?
SCOTT: Because it’s going to be coming through from blind-centered theory, and the information is gonna be passed out to people who are blind or have low vision in the community, hopefully. And people who are blind or have low vision will be able to see it and go, “Okay, well, I’m blind, I have low vision. I think I’ve got a decent voice. I think I might be able to do this, so let’s”—
THOMAS: This is not about narrators. This is not about narrators. It’s only about writers and quality control.
SCOTT: Oh, right. My deepest apologies. I did come in a few minutes late. In that case, scratch that. Okay. We’re taking that off the table. Quality control. it may help with people who, getting more people who are blind or have low vision to come in for quality control. Scriptwriters, I don’t see it working at all. So yeah, like I said, at the end of the day, it’s going to just be another piece of paper. And I don’t see how without getting all the companies together, all the producers together and saying, “Okay, we’ve got this. We wanna get more blind people into the industry,” they’re just gonna turn around and say, “Why? We could do it faster with a sighted person. We could do it faster with a computer” or whatever. Because at the end of the day, it’s coming down to cost. It’s coming down to, you know, speed and accuracy and things like that. And I don’t think this proposal is going to improve standards. It really just comes down to the skills that someone is gonna be bringing to the table, and you can teach them all the skills in the world. There are still gonna be things that, things that slip through. And cultural competency, I don’t see it happening, you know, at all. So, yeah, that’s more than two minutes for me, I’ll shut up now.
NEFERTITI: Thank you for speaking up, Scott, for sharing with us.
THOMAS: Thank you. Thank you. I would want to get an understanding of how someone with no experience who’s interested in becoming, a blind person who’s interested in doing QC, let’s just say QC. Let’s not even touch on the writing. But I would really like to know how would a blind person interested in QC be able to kind of go through this process? Because it seemed like there was a significant, like the barrier of entry seemed relatively significant to get by. It’s really partially because even what Jolie was talking about in terms of getting folks to even be willing, I think there’s that barrier. But then the requirements in here, which I don’t have in front of me, but it was, you know, 100 hours of this or this and that and all of these various things that folks have to take and sign off on and whatnot seemed like an additional barrier. Plus, if we go into, which is not in here, whatever the cost of the trainings, there’s probably a dollar level that has to be reached, not only by the training, but then all of the other things that one has to have, submit to get this piece of paper.
CHERYL: So you said just for the purpose of discussion in this moment, let’s think about blind QC and not so much the writing, just for right now. The certification looked like you have to have X number of hours in, you know, film or TV, that kind of post-production, and X number of hours in live. If you were in the city where I live, I don’t know if blind QC is used in the scriptwriting process in the theatre. Now, you know that the stuff that I write and the stuff that I work on for film, we do employ blind QC. But if you lived where I live, where there’s no…. I don’t know, some of the live theatre describers who I know don’t work with blind QC.
THOMAS: Yeah.
CHERYL: So, for the blind QC specialist who lives in my town who wants to get certified, how on earth are they going to get their hours in the live space if it’s not being offered here? I guess remote is the only option.
THOMAS: I just wanted to point out something that I read in here that I find kind of related to what you just said because it says, it says here, “When possible, a CAUDES involves audio description patrons in the design and development of audio description language and encourages the collection and use of patron feedback.” When possible. I think this should be mandatory. I don’t think that “when possible” should exist, because that’s the problem. That’s the issue that you’re talking about right now, is that folks leave it. You know, it’s always possible. Blind people are all around the country. It’s not that hard.
NEFERTITI: And yet, it is always possible to leave us out, to not include us.
THOMAS: Absolutely. And I think, yeah, and giving this a, making this an option, to me, isn’t blind centered. That’s going back to what we started. That’s not blind centered for me. But we can go to Mitch. Let’s go to Mitch.
MITCHELL: Yeah, I agree with you on this because I’m personally, as someone who doesn’t really live close to any big cities or whatever, so I can’t exactly go places for QC stuff. But I think it’s, it does, I agree about the fact that it does…. You have the ability to leave people out, but also the ability to leave people in. And I agree. I think it is very important that this is mandatory. I just, I do think that that’s true. But I’m also kind of curious in just the, in the broader sense of like, you know, where would you go to get, who would you contact, and who would you contact for when these QC openings opened up?
NEFERTITI: Well, I think that speaks to a little bit about, so you go through this training, however much that will cost. You take the exam, if there’s a cost associated with that. And then will there be a job for you at the end of this? If we’ve established that companies are not necessarily jumping or chomping at the bit to accept this certification as a means to vouch for someone’s competency, then what guarantee is there that there will be a job, Mitchell?
MITCHELL: There isn’t. There isn’t if no one, if no one. Like, it’s just a piece of paper if no one can vouch for it.
NEFERTITI: If no one validates it necessarily.
MITCHELL: No one believes it.
NEFERTITI: That’s interesting. Something to think about for sure. Thanks, Mitchell.
MITCHELL: Glad to help.
THOMAS: So, we talked about the formatting, the accessibility of the document itself, industry adoption. We talked a little bit about, yeah, the fact that blind professionals are really barely being hired right now, let alone having to go and get some certification or even just having other things to do to try to get into the industry. That’s just, to me, it sounds like another barrier. It really feels like that. I should have said this off the top, that this is a critique of the document. This is not a critique of the intention behind the document. It’s not that. Because I think that chances are, most people affiliated with this process have good intentions. I believe that.
NEFERTITI: I agree.
THOMAS: We’re not talking about the intentions. We have to talk about where this is going to lead and how is this going to help? Again, how is this gonna help the quality of AD? How is this gonna help the experience? How is it gonna impact those five things? And so far, I’m not seeing how it’s going to do that.
NEFERTITI: So I wonder if in the last four years that this committee has been meeting, it’s a lot of people involved, which is fantastic, a lot of perspectives from all over the world, though I must note I did not—and Thomas and Cheryl, if you’ve picked up on this, let me know, or if someone in the audience has—I didn’t notice any involvement from Africa or much, if any at all, in South America, was it?
CHERYL: One from South America, none from Central America or Mexico.
NEFERTITI: Central America, ah. Okay.
THOMAS: I mean, I know there were blind folks involved in the process. I don’t know how many.
NEFERTITI: Oh, for sure. I’m not sure of how many, but I do recall going through the extensive list, loving the representation, the amount of people at all sorts of levels.
THOMAS: What part of that representation you talking about?
NEFERTITI: Blind specific.
THOMAS: Blind specific.
NEFERTITI: But also people from other countries.
THOMAS: Okay, okay.
NEFERTITI: People that I’m assuming are of color, some.
THOMAS: Hmm.
NEFERTITI: I don’t know anything about sexual orientation or gender identity, but I’d like to think that that was represented to some degree or another amongst those folks.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
NEFERTITI: It was a big swatch of, nice amount of people over the last four years, and I just wonder what if that time had been put towards these five umbrella type terms that we’ve put out here? The quality, the fight against TTS, the awareness of audio description as an option to enhance access.

THOMAS: We could put this in context because, well, I don’t know if it is in context, but it’s a part of it, I think. I think timing is an interesting part. Because four years, right? So that goes back to 2020. Mm. I think of the climate of 2020.
NEFERTITI: Oh, gosh. Do we have to?
THOMAS: Well, I mean, it’s a part, it’s a, I think that’s context.
NEFERTITI: No, it is, it absolutely is.
THOMAS: I think it’s context.
NEFERTITI: I jest, but the truth is, as much as we may not want to, it has been a tough time on us all.
THOMAS: Yeah, but even if we go back to that, and I’m thinking of what was taking place. Let’s just bring that down to this, right?
NEFERTITI: Yeah.
THOMAS: There’s the cultural stuff, right? There’s all of that. Absolutely. That is a part of this I believe, too, in terms of framing because nothing happens in a void, right?
NEFERTITI: Correct.
THOMAS: Audio description involves everything. Everything.
NEFERTITI: Yes.
THOMAS: But specifically 2020, there was a lot. That was the beginning, to a certain extent, of really sort of like this idea of blind professionals. That was 2020. That’s when that conversation was really up front and center. That’s when it started. And if it was going back before that, I’m not talking about two people somewhere having a conversation, I’m talking about a community conversation. The audio description community was talking about that. The audio description community was really talking about cultural competence, right? I think that’s important. But also, if we look at TTS. TTS was really starting to take place at that time. That was a little before. It was happening, but that was the time that I think we as a community failed to really get a hold on that. So Nef, when you talk about the amount of effort and where some of that effort could have gone, that could be, could really contribute to audio description, we gotta look at the time frame. We have to.
NEFERTITI: 100%. What else was going on? What else were people doing? What else was coming at us? And how did we respond?
THOMAS: I mean, you know, we, obviously, were in the pandemic and all of that, right? But this is, so this came out of during that time.
NEFERTITI: Well, that too. And blind participation too, right?
THOMAS: That’s what I’m saying.
NEFERTITI: That’s when we started being able to record from home.
THOMAS: Yes! Access was taking place.
NEFERTITI: And having more opportunities like that. Yeah.
THOMAS: Yeah!
NEFERTITI: Because everybody was cooped up.
THOMAS: Yeah.
NEFERTITI: Nobody could go out to studios and carry on, right? Like, we had to adjust.
THOMAS: We were having conversations about blind writers.
CHERYL: At the same time, this development of AI writing was exploding, so that is also kind of a threat to having human writers, blind and non-blind.
THOMAS: Mmhmm.
CHERYL: I don’t see that addressed in the certification. It may be in the background in the committee who wrote these criteria. I kinda wish it was foregrounded, like really openly stated: “We don’t want AI writing audio description.”
THOMAS: I wanna point out this right here from the document. So it says, “A CAUDES should not allow personal bias to interfere with communicating the creative intent of the original work.” This doesn’t, I mean, it’s a good line, but there’s this thing called unconscious bias. When a person, when a person is not familiar with their bias, they can’t be expected, cultural competency can’t be this checkbox.
NEFERTITI: No.
THOMAS: It cannot be this idea that, “Okay, y’all gotta know what you’re doing. Recognize your bias.” Folks who have bias don’t believe they have bias. You don’t know it. And so, until they understand it, they can’t do anything about it. And if this document, if the training—
NEFERTITI: Some don’t know it. Some don’t care to know it.
THOMAS: Some don’t know. But who’s training? Okay, so what this document doesn’t say is who’s doing the training for these audio description folks, right?
NEFERTITI: Correct.
THOMAS: So if there’s gonna be a certified, if there’s gonna be a certification, that means certain trainers have to be certified. How are they getting trained to teach cultural bias? How are they how going to do that? It’s not in here.
NEFERTITI: How are they getting trained, who’s doing the training, and how do you check up on that?
THOMAS: How do you check up on that? Well, quality control.
NEFERTITI: How do you keep up? Yeah?
THOMAS: Quality control. But it has to be the full thing. So, it’s not addressed in here. So just the idea, I just wanna get this because I need more. And again, this is just my interpretation. But just because words are used in a document doesn’t mean that something’s being addressed.
NEFERTITI: That said, I would love to hear from people who were involved in making this, in putting this proposal together. I really wanna hear, and Thomas and Cheryl, you let me know if you agree, but I would love to hear from folks who were part of, like, where the kitchen was, right? I would love to hear from the cooks in the kitchen if we have any of them amongst us, and you’re comfortable speaking.
THOMAS: Before we do that, or when we do that, because I am open to that. However, I wanna frame that too because this is not, there’s no need for them to defend anything here, right?
NEFERTITI: Oh, not at all.
THOMAS: But if they could shed some clarity, that’s a different thing.
NEFERTITI: That’s what I want.
THOMAS: If they can give some clarity on something, right, that would be fine.
NEFERTITI: Thank you.
THOMAS: But there’s no, y’all don’t need to come up here and say, “Oh, we had great intentions.” I tried to establish that. I think you probably did. I think most of you probably did. I’m an adult. I don’t necessarily think everyone is, you know. But who do we have?
OLIVER: Yeah, I just had the thought that, I mean, it seems possible in theory that, you know, the creation of the institution of certification, this gatekeeping, this committee that has to decide on rules, requirements, and update them regularly, it just seems like a natural consequence of that would be more of a community, more communication and discussion among AD writers. And else equal, that actually could accelerate the adoption of progressive ideas. I mean, even if it’s not said in the draft document, isn’t, can we rule out that it wouldn’t generate more community? And I mean, do we know there would not be democratic or sensitive to movements that support the principles, the goals?
THOMAS: Walk me through a scenario, Oliver. Walk me through a scenario where the certification creates more community. Oliver, I’m not sure if you were here during the beginning framing that in our blind-centered approach.
OLIVER: Well, yeah, I’m saying specifically with respect to these goals like cultural competency, which you would like to see embraced by the AD industry overall, and you know, which are not percolating through, I think, one could argue that that’s because there isn’t really a community of AD writers. But if there were a community of AD writers and somebody heard and was persuaded that it was a good idea to be more culturally competent, then they would tell the other people in their community, and maybe that would become a popular idea. And maybe they would talk, they would talk to the member they know that’s on the committee, or they would host their own continuing education lecture because continuing education is a requirement in certification, as I’m familiar with it. So yeah, I am speaking with respect to the particular goals of, you know, the five ones. I’m sorry I can’t rattle them all off, but it seems worth considering that this is a way of helping.
NEFERTITI: Absolutely. Thank you, Oliver, I just wanna say really quick interjecting here. Remember, folks, your comments, though we will be sharing this audio and transcripts on the Reid My Mind Radio podcast, we do highly encourage you to do your own work in commenting directly to the organization. That’s comments@ACVREP.org, putting in the subject line CAUDES, very important. CAUDES, at comments@ACVREP.org. We still have time till March 31st to get your comments in, folks. March 31st, 2024, to get your comments in to the committee, or to the ACVREP, I should say, the organization.
I will not speak for Cheryl and Thomas, though I’d like to think that you join me in this. I would love to hear from folks who were part of putting this together. As Thomas so beautifully said, this is not confrontation. This is not come up here and defend your work. Not at all. We believe that your intentions are good, and that overall, this is to legitimize audio description as a field, as a practice, as an art form. Though I agree with Thomas, we are all adults here, right? Not all of our intentions are purely good necessarily. But beside all that, I would love to hear from folks, particularly blind folks, right? Blind-centered. Where are the blind folks who were part of putting this together? I just want to, again, encourage any blind folks who are here with us today who were part of putting this together, who had input, who had a seat at the table, let us know. Please speak to us.
How does this all work? How does it come together to improve the quality, the access to the experience?
Whether we got to it here or not today, whatever your thoughts are, and if you haven’t yet, or if you want to go over it again, that proposal is nice and front and center at the ACVREP.org website. But to comment, that would be comments@ACVREP.org with the subject line of or that includes the word, I should say, and if you just wanna make this the subject line, that’s fine too: CAUDES. Very important that that be in the subject line: CAUDES. Let them know.
THOMAS: You know, I feel like this just has a different vibe, this whole idea of the certification. It doesn’t really feel like it’s going to really help. It almost feels like it’s a reversal. It’s a reversal a little bit. Like we’re going cordless, and this is really putting a landline back in the house.
NEFERTITI:
THOMAS: I’m sorry. That’s my silly joke. But yeah, there you go. But I do encourage everybody to go ahead and whatever they feel, by all means, send it in and let’s hope for the best.
JOLIE: You know what? I’m looking forward to getting a certification. Because I feel that if I have a certification, I can say to people, “You know what? Yeah, I’m blind, and I have a certification. I’m a certified audio description specialist, or.” I’m dyslexic. I have trouble with all the letters and stuff. And I think it will make a difference. I absolutely encourage everybody to read this and comment because they need our comments.
THOMAS: Yeah!
JOLIE: If we’re gonna hold people to the fire to or say good things or whatever it is one way or another, it has to be based on, as you say, authenticity.
THOMAS: Jolie, I just wanna say thank you for that, and I wanna let you know that I hope it works out for you. I really do. And for whoever is impacted by that, if that so be. That is truly what I hope for, because I do want you to have an opportunity. However you get that opportunity, I would love for you to have that. So, thank you. Nef, Close us out.
NEFERTITI: Yeah. Just please remember that you do have till the 31st, the 31st of March, 2024 to get your comments in. Be that against, be that for, whatever it is. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your effort. And I agree with Thomas. Whatever comes of this, we hope it is for the best. After all, this is an art form: audio description for us, by us. It should always be about us, and I can only hope and trust that anything of this kind to legitimize it more, or whatever the intentions are, makes it better, improves it, and makes it more open to blind and low-vision folks, who this is all about period. All right, everybody. Talk to you at the next chat!

— Sci-fi sound rises and music begins…
THOMAS: Cool. Well, that concludes this week’s conversation. Why don’t y’all keep the conversation going on social media.
CHERYL: Use #ADFUBU, for us by us, #DescribeEverything, and #AudioDescription.
NEFERTITI: And hey, you know we’re out here, right? Mmhmm! Gathered and galvanized y’all. If you haven’t joined us yet, what are you waiting for?! You can find us in the LinkedIn Audio Description group and the AD Twitter community. We know that your participation will only make these spaces better.
Music fades out!

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