You First Podcast

Episode Transcript

Keith Casebonne (00:00:00):

You're listening to You First: The Disability Rights Florida Podcast. In this episode we talk with Ashley Shew and Mallory Kay Nelson about technoableism, the history of disability in tech and the need for people with disabilities to lead the way in tech development. Hey everyone, I'm Keith.

Maddie Crowley (00:00:35):

And I'm Maddie, and we're the hosts of You First. Today we're chatting with two really cool people about the intersection between disability and technology. And despite often good intentions, there's a bit of ick within the disability tech sphere that really needs some discussion.

Keith Casebonne (00:00:53):

Yes. Tech ick. I like it. A new term. So this all started because Maddie read an article by one of the guests, Ashley. It talked about why there are no disabled people in outer space. So then we realized that this was the same Ashley that recently released the book, Against Technoableism. So personally, as someone in the tech field, I have to say I was a bit taken aback and intrigued by the book title and I was not disappointed at all by the book. I had so many, put the book down and go, "What?" moments. It really was fun.

Maddie Crowley (00:01:27):

No, the book is fantastic and we'll link to all of their stuff in the show notes, including where you can get the book. And as Ashley will say, I think the audiobook is coming out in December, which is my preferred way of reading, so stay tuned for that. But, I definitely highlighted, circled and just was so like, "Whoa" to so many different moments in the book. Wow. Yes. This, thank you for really tying thoughts together that when we say it out loud in the interview, it isn't so, I don't want to say it's not groundbreaking, but it's just because we're so conditioned to think of disability as a deficit, especially in a medical and tech way, to really lay it out there in very clear plain language, was just really, really good. And I appreciate it.

Keith Casebonne (00:02:28):

Refreshing.

Maddie Crowley (00:02:29):

For sure. And the whole book is like that, and we'll talk about that in the interview, how easy to read the book is, and it feels like you're just having a conversation with somebody.

Keith Casebonne (00:02:39):

Absolutely.

Maddie Crowley (00:02:40):

We reached out to Ashley and they kindly sent her book and we got to chat with Ashley and her friend who also joined the conversation, another awesome human named Mallory, who is referenced a ton in the book and acknowledged a lot for helping Ashley through her journey and understanding disability and tech and all that stuff. And honestly, it's such a cool interview because they're such besties and such good friends and, as we'll say in a second, their bios even match a little bit, which is cool.

Keith Casebonne (00:03:14):

Sort of.

Maddie Crowley (00:03:15):

So I don't know, I just love that. And anyways, here's a little bit about them. Take it away.

Keith Casebonne (00:03:21):

So Ashley Shew is a hard of hearing, chemo brained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus. As she would say, you got to collect them all. She's also an associate professor at Virginia Tech where she reads a lot of disabled memoir, poetry, social media and other stories with a particular interest in how disabled people talk about technology and infrastructure. Her areas of interest include disability studies, emerging technologies, animal studies and bioethics. Her book, Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement, just came out this year. And, as we mentioned, Mallory Kay Nelson is a character in it.

Maddie Crowley (00:03:59):

So, such a cool person. And this is now a little bit about Mallory. So Mallory's bio starts with, who is Mallory Kay Nelson, the woman, the myth ...

Keith Casebonne (00:04:11):

The mystery.

Maddie Crowley (00:04:12):

... the legend. The transmobile cripborg. And we'll get into some of those identifiers, crip, cyborg. Stay tuned.

(00:04:21):

Again, it continues ... Just makes me laugh. She's been called a folk hero and a wizard with cloth. She holds an MFA in Costume Design from Carnegie Mellon University, and a pair of forearm crutches. Her work has taken her all over the US as a costume designer, activist, artist, and scholar. Born in Denver, Colorado Mallory has been disabled AF since birth. Dyslexic and poroud! It's purposely spelled wrong, which I love. She found her love for theater. Queen Elizabeth I and Frida Kahlo as she grew up. A barter and trade deal, she acquired more disabilities - gotta collect 'em all! - becoming a hemipelvectomy amputee at age 14. If you want to see what she's working on now, come out and check her Crip space on Patreon and follow her adventure.

(00:05:11):

It's just like, man, I love people that are just fun and don't take life so seriously. And obviously they're such accomplished people, but what cool people. They're so awesome.

Keith Casebonne (00:05:22):

They really are clearly super cool. It's so fun talking to them. So, I guess you'd like to all hear it, right? So let's jump into the conversation.

(00:05:31):

Hey, Ashley and Mallory, thank you so much for being our guest today on the You First Podcast. Can you introduce yourselves and just tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Ashley Shew (00:05:40):

I'm Ashley Shew, an Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society, all three, at Virginia Tech. And I'm excited to be talking with you all today. Thanks.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:05:50):

Hi, I'm Mallory Kay Nelson. I'm presently an artist, but also have a background in costume design and working with disabled actors along with being an advocate and just general trouble for society.

Maddie Crowley (00:06:06):

I love that. Well, thank you both so much for being here. I'm honestly so, so, so excited to talk with you both. Your individual works and collective works are so exciting. And as I was emailing a bit with Mallory saying that as a past theater kid, past, present, whatever, disabled theater kid and learning and looking at all of her costume designs, I was just like, whoa, we have plenty in common and much to talk about. And, so basically I had heard about your book, but I believe it was, I don't remember which news article it came out in, but it talked a bit about people with disabilities in space and how we're not thinking about how people with disabilities or just people beyond what is considered like strong astronauts and people to explore space and we aren't thinking about all of the ways that people of different identities, disability experiences, neurodiversity, et cetera, can be really helpful and really inform safe expedition of the world and the world beyond.

(00:07:15):

And I just thought that was such a cool concept. And we actually just released an episode this morning where AJ Link was on as a podcast guest, and I know y'all know him and he gave y'all a shout-out, but because of his work in that area. But anyways, I really was so intrigued by that. And, like I said, as someone with a disability and getting into the identity of Cyborg, as someone with a variety of implants in medical devices, et cetera, I just was so intrigued by y'all's work and y'all's path into this.

(00:07:53):

So, first off, I think just as a great place to start, we could talk maybe about some of the terms that come up in the book and terms that might come up in this space in particular when you start talking about folks with limb difference or amputees. So, I just want to toss that back to you to talk about maybe Cyborg, Crip, other identities that maybe aren't as familiar to folks who might be listening to the podcast.

Ashley Shew (00:08:27):

Thank you so much. So, because the viewing audience cannot see us, Mallory and I are both amputees leg amputees, which is a thing that you can't catch on a podcast. And even if this were like a vlog, you wouldn't be seeing our lower halves, I hope, right? Not that kind of podcast, not on that kind of vlog. But there is, Mallory is someone who I've had lots of discussions about space with because she has lots of really cool ideas about bodies. And one of the things that we've worked on and published together is really about her idea about transmobility. So we also talk about being cyborgs - technologised disabled people are cyborgs, why wouldn't we be? When in fact, the early definition of the term was thinking about the coinage of the word cyborg happens in the context. And this is something Damien Williams talks about in his research, too.

(00:09:15):

It was coined to talk about how we would need to alter people's brain chemistry in order to survive in space, right? So it has this already, there's some sort of question about what it would mean to be experiencing mental health related to space and to talk about altering bodies to be better fits for space travel. Which then it becomes really weird that we're choosing along the lines of very, a lot of things that don't matter. If we are choosing astronauts based on physical form, but we're going to places where gravity is lower and different and moving around means bumping off of walls and pushing yourself like wheelchair users do in kitchens, just like Sam de Leve has highlighted as part of the Crips in Space, Deaf Poets Society call for papers a couple of years ago, disabled people have a lot to offer here, and Mallory has actually given me a lot of food for thought in this realm.

(00:10:10):

Mallory, do you want to tell them about why we should put ostomy bags on all the astronauts, A? And B about a little bit about transmobility? 'Cos I think it's relevant to the conversation, too.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:10:21):

Well, Ashley, you've gone on and on about how difficult it is to be walking, how difficult it is to go to the bathroom in space and how involved it is for astronauts. And if the systems break down, it's even more involved. Whereas, for myself, I have an ileostomy, but there's also colostomies. For those of you that don't know, it's where your intestine come out the side of your pelvis wall, which is a lot simpler of a surface that the down below bottom area. This makes it so it's just simply a matter of having the right technology to do just essentially a Tupperware seal, right, on the area? And it's a lot easier to evacuate. I would imagine that if the astronauts had that ability in space, it wouldn't be so unruly up there.

(00:11:08):

Speaking of transmobility, it's a term that I actually coined a few years ago and was published in an article with Ashley Shrew. We discussed the fact that disabled bodies move in a lot of different ways. We use a lot of different technology, and I was frustrated about not having a word to describe this. It got exhausting saying, "Oh, well I use a wheelchair, I use crutches. I use other devices to move around, like a scooter or a power chair or what have you." Or, for Ashley's case, prosthetic. I, myself, do not use prosthetics, which throws the entire world off.

(00:11:43):

But I was frustrated that there wasn't a word, so I had to come up with it. And luckily in discussion with Ashley, she was able to find a place to get it published. And so it's a real word. This is quite a feat because I, myself, am intensely dyslexic and writing papers is not one of my skillsets usually.

(00:12:01):

But I gave a platform to explore the fact that we use multiple different mobility devices to move through space. And I found that talking with some of my doctors, this publication actually is a useful tool for them because the medical industry believes that there is only, you get one device, not multiple devices and the world of anguish that it would fix if we didn't have the insurance companies up against us about what mobility devices we needed.

Ashley Shew (00:12:32):

So, it would be great if doctors and insurance companies realize that many of us will use multiple devices to get around in the world. Right now, a lot of our systems say you get one thing and one thing only and good luck for a certain number of years. And getting a replacement involves sometimes a prescription, sometimes meeting with the right people to fill that prescription, whether it's a prosthetist or some sort of wheelchair company or convincing, in the case of Mallory, convincing the insurance company to pay for more expensive crutches that won't destroy her wrist and rotator cuffs quite as quickly when they only want to pay for a basic pair. And the difference between the two is like $900.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:13:13):

It's the strangest thing. I can't quite understand why they only cover the $100 crutches, but previously I used crutches 90% of the time. Right now it's about 25%. But the fact that they want to just give you the cheapo tin ones that break easily, don't have good pressure support. I can't remember the last time insurance actually bought me a pair of crutches, let alone the fact that I also have to buy the tips for it, which wear out and the handles for it, which wear out. And over here they will actually cover a prosthetic because that's normative for amputee. That's the solution for amputees is crutches. It's prosthetics. And a prosthetic for me could cost over $100,000 because of all the components. I'm hemipelvectomy which is a high level amputee. It means I'm missing not only my leg but also my hip.

Ashley Shew (00:14:06):

You're half-assed. Okay.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:14:07):

I'm half-assed. You just throw that in there. Everything I do is half-assed. So frankly, if there was ever a term that offends me is when people use the term half-assed incorrectly, because half-assed means working your ass off, in my book, and not doing anything half-assed.

Ashley Shew (00:14:23):

That's awesome.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:14:25):

So it's amazing that what the insurance company will cover and what it won't. They also force you into one specific chair or two. They don't give you many options when there's loads of good chairs out there. It's an absurd process to get these things and then find that they're forcing you into ones that don't work well.

Ashley Shew (00:14:45):

No, and here's a case where we have the technology. You know what technology works for you. It isn't high cost technology. It's higher cost than basic crutches, but compared to a prosthetic leg, at the cost of the crutches you need costs 1% of what this prosthetic leg would cost, but it's impossible to get insurance to pay for. And so my book, Against Ableism, witnessing some of what Mallory's been through, of course, and Mallory's a character in my book is a thing that is true. You pop up in several chapters there, Mallory, and I did read all the pieces to you before it went to my editor so that I wasn't telling stories you don't want told and it's important to do.

(00:15:22):

But my book is about, we're told all of these new technologies are going to empower us. We're told that this story about technology and disability is that we have to look forward to the next big thing, right? There's all this fanfare when new disability technologies are made. And often they're technologies that we can't afford or won't use or it's not actually what disabled people wanted. Right? If we're looking at Mallory here, we have the technology, the solution's simple, and nonetheless, we see all of this investment in technologies when most disabled people can't afford access and, worse, maintain the technologies that already exist. We talk about the long wait times for getting wheelchairs repaired in the United States. It is abysmal and we're still supposed to be wanting the next big technology, but the next big technology is probably harder to maintain after that.

(00:16:10):

So I feel like we're often forced into thinking about technologies and perceived as people who need them. And I don't hate technology, but it really misses what's actually happening with most disabled people and the things that we can actually legitimately dream about.

Keith Casebonne (00:16:27):

So you mentioned technology and how you're not against technology in any way, shape or form. And so I love technology as just a nerd geek kind of thing. And I have to be honest, when I first picked up the book and I'm like, "Okay, how can you be against technology? I don't understand." And that's not what the name of the book is. It's not against technology. The name of the book is Against Technoableism. But I didn't really understand what technoableism truly meant until I dove into the book.

(00:16:52):

And the book, first of all, just had so many aha moments for me, not even just in technology, but in so many other aspects, just little things you throw in there about historical context. And I have to admit, and Maddie and I have each read a lot of stuff about disabilities and disability rights over the years. And so, for a book to still do that and really make me go, "Whoa", I just think is amazing. So kudos on that. I think it's just such an incredible book and it's a quick easy read, it's witty and so on. Anyway, I keep gushing about the book, but let's talk about technoableism itself.

Ashley Shew (00:17:30):

No. Thank you so much for reading the book. I mean, it's really an honor when other disabled people enjoy it. I mean it as something that anyone could pick up to read, but that disabled people like it is the best, that I can't achieve more than that.

Keith Casebonne (00:17:44):

For sure. And so let's talk a little bit about what, you've already touched on what technoableism is. But let's dive a little deeper into that, the idea that you don't want to use technology to assert those ableist biases that are out there. And so what seems to happen a lot is that there's all this technology coming out and the people who are creating it are like, "Look at this, look at that. This is incredible. You're going to do all these great things." But they don't really consult people with disabilities themselves. And these "breakthroughs" might be a breakthrough to them and maybe even in just science in general, but for an individual with a disability who has a life to live and barriers to traverse and get around and so on, that technology may be pointless for them, or at least not nearly as effective as whatever they're using.

(00:18:38):

I love your example of exoskeletons, I think, is really great because sure, now an individual with disability can climb stairs and that makes them, and I'm making air quotes, "normal" because that's what society dictates is, let's make this where this person can walk upstairs instead of just putting a ramp in a building or an elevator or whatever else, making the doorways a little wider. Things that are so much simpler than inventing exoskeletons that really in a sense nobody wants. So, can you talk a little bit more about some of that stuff and the disconnect between technology and the needs of people with disabilities?

Ashley Shew (00:19:16):

A lot of disability technologies, a lot of people who are designing them mean well, but don't necessarily have the right context for our lives. I think about even when we are forced to fill out paperwork to get ADA accommodations at work, I can't go in and tell them what I need. I have to get someone to certify that those are the things I need. But I can tell you that my primary care physician has not a lot of clues about what my daily life looks like once I'm out of his office, right? He's looking in my ears and feeling my belly. That doesn't tell him anything about my life, my dreams, my work, right? And I know we're supposed to be part of the iterative process, but I feel like a lot of times we're not seen as knowledgeable about our own lives. I think this happens in all sorts of contexts where disabled people, even when we claim to want one thing, are perceived as wanting something else.

(00:20:09):

So particularly in the case of people who can't walk, walking, right, is a primary thing that people really focus on. And I have a prosthetic leg. It's convenient, but I don't think that people who can't walk have terrible lives. Right? I think people who can't walk have lives that are made terrible by lack of accessibility. Right? I don't think everyone's dream is to walk. And in fact, I'm going to say about walking, and I'm going to sound like a philosopher because that's my training. It's not an inherent good. Right? There's nothing fundamentally excellent about walking, right? It's convenient. That's why I wear a prosthetic leg. It's much more convenient to move around with a prosthetic limb.

(00:20:54):

For Mallory, it probably wouldn't be, right? She's a very high level amputee and to get the equipment and it's going to be so super heavy, a lot heavier than mine, mine's going to be a lot shorter, fewer components, no computers on mine, but what she would need to walk would be super heavy. It would be less convenient for her to get around in the world that way.

(00:21:10):

So when we're talking about walking, it's good because you can go places with it. But if you can go places with other technologies, in some sense, I'm very pro technology, more options, more ways of being in the world that are equally valid. I think a lot of hierarchies get set up in terms of disability based on who can walk and talk. And I hate it, right? Because I think we're better in community together where we appreciate that a lot of the things that non-disabled people want us to do are not by themselves, are not intrinsically valuable. Right? They are things that make us appear more normal but don't necessarily enhance our lives. When we talk about what it means to be able to date and socialize and hang out with your kids and do basic life stuff, maybe work, maybe not.

(00:21:59):

I feel like a lot of times there's a narrative frame that's given to us by a lot of media, by a lot of religious doctrine. Harriet McBryde Johnson in her book, Accidents of Nature, which I quote in the book several times, has these two, a wheelchair using disabled kids at disabled summer camp talking to each other. And at one point, one says to the other, "I wish there was just one book in the Bible where the crip didn't get cured because then maybe I could just exist without other people trying to change me in a fundamental way. If I could just have one character in the Bible where they existed and were loved and appreciated without some sort of cure rhetoric being overlaid over their narrative."

(00:22:41):

Right? So we're getting this from all sorts of places and we see it in the praise of technologies. Oh, helping paralyzed people walk again. That is a headline people love. But it's also one that doesn't tell you a lot about what paralyzed people actually want. Mallory, do you want to add onto that? 'Cos you have a lot more lived experience. And, so Mallory got me thinking creatively about bodies, which is to say I was a new crip, a newly disabled person. I went to a society for disability studies meeting, and Mallory collected me. Which she was like, "You're the other amputee here, come with me." And I did.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:23:16):

It's interesting. Amputees are best known for being some of the most ablest of the disabled community since they tend to go towards, "Well, I have a prosthetic. I'm fixed. I'm not disabled. I don't want to identify with that group." And me wandering around without a prosthetic makes me an exile in the amputee community space. And so the Society for Disability Study just doesn't have a lot of amputees that show up that are studying disability and trying to get a better scope and understanding about what it is to be disabled in our society. So, when I saw Ashley Shew show up at the Society for Disability Studies Conference, I just jumped on her. But it was a great time because I knew everybody there and she's read everybody there, which it's always worked really well with our relationship since of my dyslexia prevents me from being able to read everything, especially the scholarly jargon.

(00:24:08):

I'm the person at the Society for Disability Studies Conference asking for a jargon interpreter as my accommodation, which it never quite fleshed out yet, which is a little disappointing. But having someone like Ashley Shew at my side, she's easily just a wealth of information and able to dive into her giant Rolodex of various different people and various different writings. So, I'm the extrovert that brings us into conversations and she's the one with the good context that really elaborates whatever we might be talking about.

(00:24:42):

So, I think one of our favorite moments was the time I took a bunch of Diet Coke and piled it onto the back of my wheelchair. 'Cos at this time I was doing crutches and wheelchairs at the same time. I have this great wheelchair that has this setup on the back that has a nice clip in factor to hold my crutches, which was made by a maple syrup farmer in Connecticut. Always good to find your machinist and have them do special technology for wheelchairs to be able to be transmobile. But I was carrying a bunch of coke, and I believe I stood up from the chair, the chair fell over backwards. Ashley's trying to get the chair back up again, and I'm just laughing my ass off and taking pictures.

Ashley Shew (00:25:27):

I often feel like C-3PO in these moments where I'm like, "Oh, Sir," 'cos I can't bend over quickly. And I was a newer amputee then, so it wasn't like, I didn't have a good sense of my body in the same way. So I'm just struggling, but it is just basically like robot panic that was happening.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:25:43):

Something that I found interesting to think about when thinking about technology being designed by people that don't quite understand disability. What's interesting is some of our very early great breakthroughs in technology like lifts and ramps in vans, some of that was actually designed by, and, well not necessarily probably designed, but was contrived by disabled people. The modern wheelchair as we know it was actually an idea that was a woman wheelchair user who designed it. I can't remember her name right now, but when technology's really useful, there tends to be some disabled person behind it. And when it's not, it tends to have no disabled people involved.

Ashley Shew (00:26:25):

No, and you're not shy about finding the maple syrup farmer and asking him what he can do to screw pieces onto the back of your wheelchair to make the object that you want. And I feel like it's really hard to find professionals and, of course, this was not a disability service professional. But to find professionals who are willing to actually listen and not override with their desires for what they hope to make.

(00:26:49):

And a lot of this, I think about how people have to write grants and what better to say than I'm going to help people walk, or I'm going to help people talk and communicate. And this stuff sells well if what you want is a whole bunch of grant money, but in terms of actual commercialization, use, maintenance, it often leaves disabled people just frankly stranded, right? You make a new device, your graduate students graduate, leave the lab. There's no one there who knows how to actually work the device or fix it.

(00:27:16):

That's a one and done. And it requires already a lot of access to, say, a university lab where you could actually get the latest and greatest technology, but usually the latest and the "greatest", and I put greatest in square quotes here, this longevity isn't there. There's this really great movement in history of technology, which is my favorite thing to read about, where, and this is a movement with Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel. They have this whole program called The Maintainers. And their argument is, what we care about in terms of technology, our priorities in terms of technology are clear by what we maintain, not by what we make.

(00:27:51):

So it's a move against a lot of innovation rhetoric to say that our sustaining things are the technologies that we should think of as amazing and focal and that we should put more work into even maintaining, say, plumbing systems, our electric grid, all of these basic technologies that mean that disabled people get to live in many cases, are in fact are things that the things we care about are the things we maintain, not the things we do one off and never look at it again.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:28:17):

Another thought is as far as technology and repair, right now there's a big monopoly going on in the States with one wheelchair provider has taken over the entire scene, and that's really dropped the quality and fastness that wheelchairs are being fixed. Another thing is my first pair of really good crutches actually came out of a motorcycle shop. This was a little place in Denver that the creator of these crutches was a paraplegic who got injured, of course, during a motorcycle accident. And technology he needed and wanted was something he had to make. And the fact is motorcycle shops are really great places to make technology as far as needs of disabled people getting met.

Keith Casebonne (00:29:06):

Gosh, motorcycle shops and maple syrup. It's kind of incredible.

Maddie Crowley (00:29:13):

I'm just listening to both of you tell these stories and I hear what you're saying as far as needing to be appealing to grants or the preexisting monopolies, all these things. But it's just, it's so clear what the solution to the problem is, is to stop investing so much in this radical new non-disabled frame of what that technology could look like and just reinvest all of that time and energy and money into maintenance. 'Cos this is not new information for us, but might be for people that are listening. If an airline breaks your wheelchair because airline staff aren't trained in how to get it on and off airplanes, you're forced to get out of your chair to board and get off of a plane, which that alone can be a traumatic and disabling experience alone. People quite literally are stripped of their independence, their mobility, all of their agency just because they broke a chair.

(00:30:24):

And because we haven't invested time and energy into, like we're talking about, maintenance and extra resources to ensure that when those things happen that they're swiftly fixed and addressed. People are waiting months, if not years, to get their chairs back. Like years. Imagine if you didn't, for non-disabled people, imagine if you didn't have the car you used every day. And I know that's not even essentially equivalent, but just to put a frame of reference that suddenly you had no mode of transportation to go anywhere, let alone get up and move about your house or wherever you live, right?

(00:31:05):

So I think it is so incredibly vital and a problem that needs to be fixed yesterday, but should be so crucial and the main focus of what these creators and technology enthusiasts and everything should be worried about. And I know we talked about ableism and their frame of why and what they're doing and creating and yes, but it's just, it's so aggravating to still have this be such a pertinent problem when we know the solution, but disabled folks are just the ones that continue to be left behind. So anyways, I'm just resonating and feeling all of the feelings that y'all brought up.

Keith Casebonne (00:31:52):

One thing that I thought about, too, was just how much money it cost to develop exoskeleton. That money could have went to installing ramps and widening doorways. You could probably widen a whole city's, you could literally fix a city's issues probably with the funding that one exoskeleton took to build.

Ashley Shew (00:32:10):

No, and so when it comes to exoskeletons, it's the sort of normative frame that get put on them. I think what we're going to see is exoskeletons in PT clinics that help people who have had strokes. But that doesn't make flashy headlines. Oh, we have a new piece of physical therapy equipment for people to try out. I think there are some markets for these things. I don't think people are going to wear exoskeletons all day, A, because if you look at the funding, and this is something Bill Peace, The Bad Cripple, talked about a whole bunch was if you look at the funding for most exoskeleton projects, it's Department of Defense and DARPA. They don't actually care about helping disabled people. They're building super soldiers and this is just a step on the way, disabled people are the test pilots for enhancement technology, in this case, how they would see it.

(00:32:54):

But if you give an exoskeleton to a random disabled person, I remember I had put up an image of an exoskeleton at one point before class so that we were going to discuss exoskeleton. All the students were just gathered around it looking. And this is, I'm going to talk about poop again. And one of the students says, "How do you poop in that?" And then the laughter was, "Oh, you're going to poop in it, right?" Because, in fact, there was no way to get down your pants to sit on a toilet. And if we talk about what paralyzed wheelchair users might want, there's a whole group of people that did, Corbett O'Toole was one of the disability rights people who was at it, but there was a disability led make-a-thon, this was pre-pandemic. It has to be like 2017. And they all got together as a group of disabled people with some helpful designers, but also some disabled designers, and they decided to discuss what project they would want to make. And they worked on a hoist for female wheelchair users who are paralyzed to put themselves on the toilet by themselves.

(00:33:46):

That was the dream. When you had your crack team of people together, it wasn't exoskeletons. It was like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if I didn't need assistance using the bathroom. Or if there was an easier way, safer way to use the bathroom and I'm on my own." Right? That's not the image most people have of disability technology, but it was the first thing they worked on in this crip maker space out in California. And I think it just really goes to show you the vast gulf in between tech booster visions of disability technology and what the people actually want.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:34:20):

I mean, those exoskeletons are an amusement park ride at this point. Basically any disabled person that's used one has used it one, they got to experience it and they'll probably never get in it again.

Ashley Shew (00:34:33):

But Mallory, they got the pictures for the newspaper. So the next time the guy goes to put in a grant application, he's set.

Maddie Crowley (00:34:41):

I had an experience like that. 'Cos I demoed something that y'all might be familiar with. It's called the iRobot, and it's a wheelchair that could be assisted to help people get up and down the stairs and you could pull it and you could even move up and down in it. And it's cool, but it's like, I've been trying to get a wheelchair for years and haven't been able to, but I was able to test out the iRobot. It's just that same dilemma.

Ashley Shew (00:35:11):

I love that example. Thank you for telling us about it.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:35:13):

It's utterly amazing, the difficulty in getting a wheelchair. The fact that these physical therapists that are identifying whether you need one or not have to fudge the information because Medicare and Medicaid and stuff, for instance, has a standing requirement. If you can stand for X amount of minutes, you don't need a wheelchair, is their philosophy. So getting a wheelchair when you have the ability to stand is incredibly difficult. Even though, for me, I'm not able to move after I'm standing. The last wheelchair I actually got took two and a half years to get. Mind you, it was over the pandemic, but the fact is they just kept messing it up. For instance, my old manual wheelchair, which I'm sitting in right now, long story, right, is incredibly skinny. When you're half-assed you don't need as wide of a seat so you can push the wheelchair down to a really thin narrow pathway, which is necessary for getting around the current society structures that we're dealing with.

(00:36:16):

Doorways aren't always the right size, spaces aren't always equipped to fit you, but I pushed for as small as we could get with my current size and they went and added three extra inches because of the way the cushion that we molded fit into the chair, and I was livid. So I had to send that wheelchair back, have them adjust it, bring back a new one, and then find that the cushion was done poorly and have that sent back and have them do a new one. And all in all, I have trauma from getting this wheelchair and I can't even stand to look at it. It just upsets me 'cos it's still not right. 'Cos the chair that I was forced to have, because they won't cover the nice beautiful TiLite titanium chair, because QUICKIE just happens to have a light one now. Not that the quality is as good. It's very frustrating.

Maddie Crowley (00:37:08):

So in your book you talk about the good examples of disability tech, the things that we're talking about, right, like prosthetics, pacemakers, wheelchairs, just like a whole list of things that folks probably think about when they say, "Oh, disability technology," and those are the images that might come to mind, right? But you talk about that there are bad examples of disability tech and how technology has been used in a very purposeful negative way. Can you expand upon that a little bit and speak to some of those examples?

Ashley Shew (00:37:46):

So exoskeletons are one example. I also think about, and I talk a little bit about cochlear implants and I refer out to a lot of different literature about cochlear implants. The thing is, there is a lot of good writing about the problems posed by this technology. And really it's about how the technology gets rolled out and understood by the larger culture. Like cochlear might be good or bad for individual people for whatever reason. But the way in which it is seen to solve any problems with deafness and covers over the fact that it will take many years of speech and language pathologists talking to you and the sort of years of work that it actually is to be able to "hear" through a cochlear implant are really bulldozed. So often on social media we see, "Oh, the cochlear implant's being turned on for the first time and you see a kid, their head go and look at their mom hearing their mom's voice for the first time.

(00:38:42):

So many of these things are celebrated in social media viral ways, in ways that a lot of deaf advocates say are actually really harmful, right? Because then when you encounter people in the world and you're deaf, people ask you why don't you have a cochlear implant? Or if you have one, why you don't hear better? And actually judge you in very ableist standards that suggest that this piece of technology can cure you. It can't, right? It doesn't work in the same way that sort of natural hearing does. What it does is something different. And so there's lots of really good writing. I love Sara Novik's True Biz. It is a novel about, here's disabled kids at a disabled school. See, I love novels about disabled kids in different disabled locations is a thing, but it's about deaf kids at a deaf school and the different social forces, different family histories.

(00:39:30):

So many times we're given our label, right? I'm an amputee, and people think that all amputees act alike or need the same things, right? So that exists for deaf people in all sorts of ways. And if you are fully into adulthood and you lose your hearing and you want to get a cochlear implant, that's not where the controversy lies, right? That's an individual choice for you as an adult. So much of it is about how kids are targeted for this intervention and about the society at large, always bringing it back to, "Don't you want this thing?" And this exists for, of course, paralyzed people who don't walk. This would be encountering, a casual chat at the grocery store about an exoskeleton.

(00:40:09):

One of our good friends who lives down in Florida who we're friends with from amputee conferences, at one point he had, so he has, how do I put it? He's missing part of a leg, but the other one was really messed up in the accident that he was in. It was a car accident. So he was using a wheelchair regularly and people would randomly ask him, why don't you use a prosthetic leg? And the answer was, "I have one, but it's my other leg that I'm riding in the wheelchair for. It's not what you think." But there's a lot of judgment if you choose not to use the technology that people think that you should want. And I think it's really a problem when we have all of these media images that tell disabled people what they should want and that doesn't align with maybe our values or lives or even see disabled people as wanting different things. Not all amputees dream of running again. I've encountered this.

(00:40:56):

I'm afraid to go see a physical therapist. I walk in that office. Also, they say, cha-ching, in their heads. Can take a lot of work. I walk funky and they're like, "What are your goals?" And they hope that the goal is that I want to run. And running was terrible before I lost part of my leg, right? This isn't going to be a hobby that I'm ever interested in. I remember once my husband and I decided we were going to take up jogging and we jogged halfway down our street before we decided that this was a terrible idea, and then we walked back home really quickly. It's not a way to move in the world and it's expensive now that I'm an amputee. I need a totally different leg in order to be able to regularly run and only on flat surfaces and I live somewhere that's hilly, right? The sort of barriers aren't worth it. I wouldn't want to run because it would be a lot of work to do something that is kind of shitty.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:41:42):

I mean, it amazes me how people look at the technology. I had, since I'm a collector of disabled people, I am also a big collector of hemipelvectomy [inaudible 00:41:52] as well. And I had a friend that I recently knew, acquaintance, was in the area where I live and she came over to visit and she was using all the technology all at once. She had her manual chair, which she was sitting in with her prosthetic leg with her crutches ready to go to help her walk if she got up. So, how does it work when we've got all the technology necessary to do this one task of being able to stand and walk?

(00:42:19):

So it was something that she was currently exploring. I'm not sure where she's going to end up landing in the long run. She's a relatively new amputee who loves hiking and being outdoors and is originally from my home state of Denver, Colorado and is a more older woman that's already lived life as a two-legged person and now is experiencing life as a one-legged person. And I'm not quite sure how much the prosthetic is filling in that gap of her feeling to need to have two legs and thus using an extraordinary amount of technology all at once to complete that thing. Or is it a factor of, she'll eventually figure out which technology is the best thing for the best purpose. Although I think it is fun to watch her get up from her wheelchair with a prosthetic leg onto the crutches. It's just one giant cyborg moving at once.

Ashley Shew (00:43:13):

Got to collect 'em all.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:43:14):

Got to collect 'em all.

Keith Casebonne (00:43:16):

Well, and when we talk about good versus bad examples of technology, in your book you even go further until some really dark examples like gas chambers and prenatal selection and things like that that, that's also technically technology geared in some way, well, usually against disability. We don't even have to even delve into that too much. But, it's such a broad range of things. And honestly, when it comes to that broadness of even just the term disability or disabled, you also talk a lot about what does that even necessarily mean? There are philosophical challenges around what counts as disability and what does not count as disability. Some examples you give are like an individual who wears glasses, by all other accounts, you don't have any disability other than you wear glasses. You're not considered "disabled by society", but you must have some level of visual impairment or you wouldn't need glasses, right?

(00:44:12):

So why is that person not considered disabled and someone else is? Another example I liked was an individual with dwarfism who otherwise is completely healthy, well, they're considered disabled because we decided to build a world that works for people of average height and not for them. So, why are they disabled? They're not disabled by their own nature, if you will. They're disabled by the world and expectations and norms that we built. So, can you talk a little bit more about some of those historical and social factors that determine what disability is and why people are grouped the way they're grouped?

Ashley Shew (00:44:51):

So my editors really wanted me to have a place where I actually defined disability and talked about it in these ways. I think, left up to me, I might leave it actually more vague, because I think disability is a really porous category and I care more about people being, and this is a term that people in movement for disability justice might use. I want people to be politically disabled, which means I really want people to have, A, a sense that the disability community exists. B, a belief that disabled people are the experts about disabled people and that we should be in every realm, especially the nothing about us without us chant from the disability rights movement plays in here, too. But there's a sense in which disability is always going to be difficult to pin down. And that's often because people take different models of disability or take different cultural understandings about disability, and we have to negotiate a lot between those.

(00:45:49):

I think there's so much we learn in cross disability community. Mallory's already explained that as amputees, we don't necessarily want to flock to a whole bunch of amputees, right? Especially since both of us are multiply disabled. What it is to be in a space that sets physically disabled people at the top of a hierarchy where people say things like, "Well, it didn't affect my mind." Where my treatment did affect my mind. I've mentioned I have chemo brain. Mallory here's been dyslexic since birth. I don't think we're lesser because we have additional disabilities, right? I think political disability really requires you to believe that all disabled people are valid, which means that you're not going to do a lot of policing around the edges. And it means that sometimes you just don't even ask what a person's disability is because irrelevant to the conversation.

(00:46:36):

If you tell me you're disabled, I believe you're disabled. I'm probably not going to ask a lot of follow-up questions. This is actually a fun thing in disability community. At one point I was talking to one of my friends, we were two years into knowing each other. Paraplegic person. And she goes, "Ashley, you've never asked how I became paraplegic." And I was like, "I didn't think it mattered how you became paraplegic." And she said to me, "Most people ask. Most people ask within the first meeting." So oftentimes disabled people are asked, "What's wrong with you?" I've gotten that as an amputee, more so when I was going through chemo and I was bald, people will ask me what's wrong with me? And then they tell me who they know who's died of cancer. It is not a great conversation, but just being out in the world, people might understand that you are disabled or wonder about your categories.

(00:47:23):

And for me, I believe in creating friendly neurodiverse environments in which people don't have to be diagnosed or critiqued or policed. So I actually, I think it's great that we have, I think glasses are definitely disability technologies, whether people who wear them think they're disabled or not, right? I don't actually need that buy-in to talk about them as a device developed in the context of disability. Because it certainly was at some point, even though because of social acceptance, we don't think about people with more minor visual differences as being impaired even in the way we once did. Even though by some weird metrics and standards, they are. And it certainly keeps you out of some jobs like being in the Air Force and things like that. So there is this element of work that plays into a lot of who gets counted as disabled, and that still applies to a lot of people who wear glasses. It's just in most parts of your life, it won't be a problem unless you have particular types of career aspirations.

(00:48:21):

Also, the maintenance and wear and the whole system, the fact that the person who tests your eyes is the person who sells you glasses is really messed up. I had to get hearing aids again a few months ago and I don't know, man, the person who's giving you the hearing test shouldn't be trying to sell you hearing aids. I think that the whole setup is incredibly flawed. Okay. Sorry, you look like you're going to talk, Mallory.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:48:45):

I just got so invested in your hearing aid discussion. 'Cos it always fascinates me because hearing aids, the technology keeps getting better and better, but the access to it, once again, that the good stuff is hard to get to through insurance.

Ashley Shew (00:49:00):

I think the image of hearing aids is that they've gotten better and better, but we have stories from Jaipreet Virdi where, when she was moved from analog to digital and you can't get analog anymore, she had to learn how to hear again and she's never heard as well as she did through analog hearing aids, 'cos that's what she learned on, right? We have this idea that hearing aids have gotten better and better. I think that they just want to sell you new models sometimes. And I think incremental improvements are fine. Nothing has to be dramatic all the time and they always try to make it seem dramatic, right? You need this new thing. And, of course, hearing aids are incredibly expensive and insurance doesn't pay for it. And I sit in the hearing aid audiology clinic and I look at a poster that's all about how people who don't have access to hearing or hearing aids are more likely to develop dementia. That's what was across for me as I'm sitting in the audiologists. Thanks.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:49:54):

So as far as disability goes and identifying disability, I'm exhausted at telling my story. It's always been something that gets brought up while you're walking through the grocery store, going into a store, complete strangers coming up and asking you what happened. And I'm starting to charge for that as my current plan of it. But what's interesting is I have this habit of trying to convince people that they're disabled. I'm a big recruiter. The more people that believe they're disabled, the more likely they're going to vote into the directions of systems that help and serve them well. And it works. You slowly recruit people 'cos they're like, "Oh yeah, I do have difficulty with this or that," or it's something that grows over the years and becomes more apparent that it's the disability they have that I have that I've always seen of them.

(00:50:44):

Another thing that I thought of as far as disability technology out in the world, I always find one of the more interesting things is when disabilities are in conflict with each other. One of the examples that I generally turn to is the fact of curb cuts. Now, curb cuts are necessary for a wheelchair to get out of whatever block they're in, and it's one of the biggest inventions of all time for disabled people to have curb cuts and not be stranded on an island of a block of a city.

(00:51:15):

But these curb cuts actually got in the way of blind people knowing where the roads start and where the sidewalk ends. So it became dangerous and life-threatening for them. So it's okay, we've got life-threatening over here. We got this person's permanently stuck in this one spot and doesn't get to go anywhere, which we've seen with the good quality newer curb cuts. You see those little nibs on them and those are there for the blind and the curb cut is there for the wheelchair user. And they've had to find a symbiosis space that makes it so that both technologies are working at the same time.

Ashley Shew (00:51:50):

Well and as hellish, if you're an amputee and can't feel one of your feet, putting me over a tactile paver is an obstacle course, but I still think it's important I can get through it, is I'm going to look weird doing it. I still want my blind friends to be protected. But there are trade-offs. It's not like, this is where we've hit the limits of a lot of universal design. I mean, universal design also talks about design for multiple ways of using something. And I think, we should still have a curb and a curb cut. We should have both of these things. And for some embodiments, curb cuts are a lot harder, especially once you add the tactile pavers.

Maddie Crowley (00:52:23):

I think that the concept of usability and universal design is often thought of as only making it the best for everyone all the time through this one option. Whereas it's like you said, it's not necessarily the case. Having multiple options that work for multiple different experiences is, in reality, what's going to be the best option. And that reminds me of something that I've learned over the years, but also you brought up in your book is that a lot of people think of disability, thinking of the dis as I know as we're talking about language, the dis part of it as dis meaning bad. And I think that's where a lot of the calls for variety of people, disabled people, but primarily non-disabled people to use terms like special abilities and handy capable. Some of these terms that are just, they're harmful, but they're just honestly just so silly to hear because, like you mentioned in the book, but I assume we're going to chat about a little bit too, is the historical or linguistic origin of the prefix dis doesn't mean bad and doesn't really mean bad ability or worse ability in this context.

(00:53:51):

So could you all share a little bit about that and maybe how we can reframe disability just as a category or experience as a whole for folks who may think that disability is bad or that disability, that dis means bad? Does that make sense?

Ashley Shew (00:54:10):

And I mean, this is a topic that Lawrence Carter-Long has talked a lot about as part of the #SayTheWord #DisabilityCampaign. If you're on Twitter, those are the things that you can put in. And that movement got coverage on NPR. I mean, rarely do our things make national news even. So, he was looking up the etymology of the word dis and the definition that he brought forward was to twain, which means to diverge in path, to go a different direction. And I really think that's beautiful. Yes, sometimes we are literally taking the long path around a building, right? So there's something, part of it that is, speaks to mobility disability in my head. "Oh, I'm just going off on another path. I'm forced to go off on another path. Sometimes I'm not pleased about it." But there is also this sense of, you're just going a different way, right? That you're not on the expected path, maybe? But you're on, when people say, "Oh, differing abilities." I'm like, "That is literally what disability means y'all."

(00:55:10):

I don't know how to fix that for you. Maybe it's time to study the Oxford English Dictionary for a while. But really that's what it means. I don't know why, it's really convenient. And for me, I really think it's important to say disability. A, because that's what disability rights campaigners chose over handicapped. I honor my elders. When I say I'm disabled and I claim that identity, right? I think that's important to build on the work of our disabled ancestors.

(00:55:37):

But I think there is also a sense in which it's important to make things Google-able. And when you keep coming up with new euphemisms, I have no idea how to find relevant information to me. And when they try to make euphemisms as part of titles and disability service offices and things, I am always like, please don't, right? Just make it so that I can find you as quickly as possible, because chances are, if I'm trying to find you, I need you quickly, right? If we're talking about an accommodation situation or if we're talking about some disability service that I might need, it's important to make it findable. So in the era of Google, I think it's even more important. It's not just about honoring my ancestors and the people who forge this movement, but it is also about just get me the information I need as quickly as possible, and to do otherwise is a disservice.

Mallory Kay Nelson (00:56:27):

Google, oh my goodness. I've been Googling disability forever, since Google was invented and it's always been lots of social security. You generally can't find the real interesting information by just typing in disability. I've also found that typing in disability theater, about 10 years ago, you'd only find information about audience access as opposed to all the wonderful disability theater performance groups that are out there. Family Theater, for instance, in Denver, Colorado, which I've costume designed for many years. So as far as language goes, it's incredibly frustrating. Differently abled, I think that one's a really hot one that people like to use, which, it's serving the same purpose, but it's just making people more confused.

(00:57:14):

I always find that I think symbolism is also something that we should be looking at. A lot of people fought really hard to get the wheelchair symbol that we know that you find in the accessible parking spots and other places to tell you and indicate whether something a wheelchair can fit in those spaces like bathrooms, and I've sometimes notice when they start disappearing and they're not where they're supposed to be. This was a big thing that I noticed when we started getting gender-neutral bathrooms is some of those signs suddenly didn't have the braille and didn't have the wheelchair user on them, and it was very disappointing when I've always thought, hey, we have a law that says bathrooms need to be accessible, and you know how many bathrooms are still not accessible out there? The trans community could have just totally rode that out and forced a lot more accessible bathrooms in turn while they're making individual stalls that are gender-neutral.

(00:58:10):

Working together as communities and symbols are something that I think are very important. You start seeing the wheelchair user not as the primary symbol for disability, even though it's internationally known as the primary symbol for disability because they don't see themselves in it. I understand that yes, a deaf person doesn't see themselves in a wheelchair unless they happen to be a deaf wheelchair user, but the notion of getting behind one brand is very important to me and I think it's necessary for people to accept that they might not see themselves in that image. I never almost see myself in an image because the amputee's always wearing a prosthetic or the wheelchair user always has two legs, or you name it, I don't see my leg missing in this singular body shape in any spaces, which in some cases makes me feel like the most interesting body there is to see because it's unseen until it is seen.

Ashley Shew (00:59:08):

I don't want to play the who has a more interesting body question with you, but I might. No, I mean, I think what you're saying is really important, and I think it's even rarer, particularly for non-white disabled people to actually see images of themselves, whether it's stock photos or whether it's on TV. In the rare instances when they have disabled people on TV, we make up a huge percentage of the population and the fact that we aren't represented even close to the levels we exist is pretty serious, and people think that disabled characters will be less relatable instead of more, even though disability is a normal experience for human beings to have.

Keith Casebonne (00:59:46):

Well, and one last point about language, too, that I thought about when y'all were answering this question, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the language chosen for that law was because that was the word that people with disabilities said they wanted used in the law, and it also helped go back and retroactively update some old laws to change, take out words like handicapped and things like that and put in the word disability. So it was a choice that was made when this now, what, 30 something year old law was drafted and why are we talking about changing it again? It's just, anyway, the soapbox I could jump on and go on and on about, but just to wrap up things again. First of all, thank you both for being on the show. Just closing thoughts, what would you say to folks listening to the podcast about maybe how they can advocate for change in the technology space or attitudes about technology for people with disabilities?

Ashley Shew (01:00:39):

I'll let Mallory think for a second because I've been talking about this book for a while, and that is listen to disabled people who are connected to other disabled people. I think a lot of people when they newly acquire a disability is a time where they're not necessarily seeking out community and they're often passed around medical professionals. You don't necessarily have the vibe of what the work needs to be or have a long-term investment in disability community at that point. I think it's really important to listen to organizations that are run by disabled people and to make sure disabled people who are connected to other disabled people are in basically every place that exists in the world.

Mallory Kay Nelson (01:01:19):

I mean, we're always at the uphill battle and moving disability forward and sometimes two steps forward, one step back. I find that getting educated on some of the more basic articles and stuff is a very big tool. It helps really build the language, so like Ashley's book is a great tool. I would say as a dyslexic person, it's actually legible compared to some of the very scholarly writing that comes out of Ashley. But it's always, it's a matter of we really have to accept the fact that we're educators and we're always going to have to be teaching people about what it is to be disabled, what our needs actually are, and how we convey them to the people and who we convey them to.

(01:02:10):

Back to my example of sharing the transmobility article with my physical medicine doctor, they don't have the resources and information that is going on in the disability scholarly community and the social models that are being built. I was at an event that didn't even understand quite what the social model was. It was at a university and they're talking a little bit about the building of the spaces and stuff, but the fact is they weren't showing it against the medical model of what it is not versus what it is. But that's the uphill battle of advocacy and finding as much language as you can to better describe what you're trying to convey.

Ashley Shew (01:02:55):

Thank you so much for having us. I really appreciate your questions and this has been lovely.

Mallory Kay Nelson (01:03:01):

Thank you so much for including me in the discussion. It's always fun. Ashley loves to bring me along.

Maddie Crowley (01:03:10):

Well, it was honestly such a informative and I wrote so many things down of folks I want to look into, books I want to read, all of this stuff. And I just quick want to echo something that Mallory said that I also experienced. I'm not a great reader myself and I really just want to highlight that for folks who may not love to read or like to read or have difficulty reading, I really do like how the book was written. I feel like it's very approachable. I like you can definitely hear your tone and the sarcasm and just realness of just this conversation, and that goes for Mallory, too, in the stories that you share of hers in the book. I just really want to flag that. I've already told a couple of my medical providers to read it because I just think it's really accessible for people who don't know disability well to really get a solid grasp of the concept, but also how it translates to their profession. So ...

Keith Casebonne (01:04:15):

Truly.

Maddie Crowley (01:04:15):

... wonderful job. I really appreciate both of your time. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.

Ashley Shew (01:04:22):

Thank you. And the audiobook is out at the end of December. I was holding out for a disabled narrator, so I held that up. And I'm really excited about the person they have to narrate or read the book. I don't know what you call the people who do audiobooks. Narrators? Actors? One of those things, but she's going to be great. Thank you so much.

Keith Casebonne (01:04:43):

That's really cool. Looking forward to that to come out. All right. Well, thank you guys so much. We really appreciate giving us your time and being on the podcast.

(01:04:52):

Thanks again to Ashley and Mallory for being on today's episode. We obviously had such a great time chatting with both of you.

Maddie Crowley (01:04:59):

Definitely. And we'll be sure to link to their work in the show notes and also tag them on social media when we share the episode and different posts, so be sure to check them out.

Keith Casebonne (01:05:09):

Also, we wanted to give you a heads-up that we will be taking a break from releasing episodes for a bit. We'll be starting up again sometime early next year. We already have a lot of great episodes in the queue, so get really excited for some great conversations coming your way in just a few months.

Maddie Crowley (01:05:25):

I'm so excited about some of the ones we have.

Keith Casebonne (01:05:27):

Me, too.

Maddie Crowley (01:05:28):

Already getting started. And the best way to be notified of when we're back is to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. We're on all the podcast platforms, so you'll get notified when new episodes drop when we're back in early 2024, which is so weird to say out loud.

Keith Casebonne (01:05:46):

It sure is.

Maddie Crowley (01:05:47):

So, you can listen on all the podcast platforms and you can also listen or read the transcript of each episode on our website at disabilityrightsflorida.org/podcast.

Keith Casebonne (01:06:00):

Thanks for listening and, as always, please email any feedback, questions or ideas about the show to podcast@disabilityrightsflorida.org. Happy Holidays and have a happy New Year.

Announcer (01:06:14):

The You First Podcast is produced by Disability Rights Florida, a not-for-profit corporation working to protect and advance the rights of Floridians with disabilities through advocacy and education. If you or a family member has a disability and feel that your rights have been violated in any way, please contact Disability Rights Florida. You can learn more about the services we provide, explore a vast array of resources on a variety of disability related topics, and complete an online intake on our website at disabilityrightsflorida.org. You can also call us at 1-800-342-0823. Thank you for listening to You First, the Disability Rights Florida Podcast.