S3 EP4: Creating An Accessible World
Today's episode is in collaboration with our partners at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center. You can find out more about our guest, Elizabeth Ralston, in their online exhibit Enduring COVID-19: Stories from our Transforming World.
Elizabeth is an Independent Accessibility Consultant and the founder of the Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium.
In this episode, Frank and Elizabeth discuss their own lived experience with hearing disabilities, coping with internal ableism, and how the lack of accessibility is an obstacle to building belonging. Listen as Elizabeth tells listeners about how she became involved in this work, how to think about building accessible spaces, and how to foster belonging for all. If you're interested in Elizabeth's work as an independent consultant you can find out more and get in touch with her via her website.
Thanks again to Bobby Choy (aka Big Phony) for letting us use his music for our intros and outros!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Frank: Welcome to the latest episode of the We Belong Here podcast powered by Civic Commons. Thank you to the Big Phony who's always allowed us to use his music for our introduction, and we have a special guest today. This is one of our episodes where we have one guest. And we have Elizabeth Ralston who is an accessibility consultant and Elizabeth’s gonna tell us a little bit about the work that they're doing, how they got involved in accessibility community and advocacy, and the origin story of who she is, where she's from how she came to this place So, I’m really excited. So, with that further ado, Elizabeth, please introduce yourself with a few sentences. Tell us who you are.
Elizabeth: Hello, Frank. Thank you so, much for inviting me onto this podcast My name is Elizabeth Ralston, and I am a white woman, with short wavy silver hair. And I am wearing a red sweater wrapped around my shoulders because it's kind of cold down in my basement where I have the best Internet connection, and I’m sitting on a brown couch with a sort of a blurry background.
It's really great to be here, I am like you said, I’m a consultant and I’m looking at the intersection of public health and community health and nonprofits and accessibility. and I’m always looking at things through the lens of health and equity because I am a person with lived experience as a person with a disability. I grew up profoundly deaf and wore hearing aids my whole life, except recently, the last 10 years. I got 2 cochlear implants.
Frank: Wonderful. Yeah, I would love to actually jump in and thank you for the example. So, for the audience. if they have an issue in accessibility in terms of viewing, I am a male I have black short hair, glasses, and I’m wearing a blue short sleeve button down shirt with, like these little fun wavy checkmarks looks like the ocean, and my background is actually a photo of a rooftop on Seattle during sunset. And you can see the Olympic mountains behind me. And I thought it was taken near the SODO district in the SODO district. But I appreciate that. that example to follow your lead, Elizabeth and I will also, say if it's okay with you and with the audience,
I also. I have single-sided deafness and I was born this way, and I for a long time told people that you know I don't have any accessibility issues. I don't have any problems? You know if there's a form that says, do you have like a, back in the day like it says handicap or disability? I would just pass it by. Not even think about it but you know. I remember my teacher was the one that even though I was born this way I didn't know I had this issue and it was I think it was my kindergarten or first grade teacher that called my mom in, and noticed that if I was on the left side of the classroom, since I can't hear on my right side, I would do a lot of turning my head to listen to the teacher without me even knowing it. And that's when we did the tests and stuff and found out that I had a single-sided deafness.
So, sound location I can't locate sound if someone speaking and I can't visualize them. I don't know where it's coming from. And so, when I’m teaching, when I used to teach you know I had them raise their hand to ask a question, but invariably someone would raise would not raise their hand, ask it, ask a question. I would start answering to somebody, and the person would be like, I did not ask that question. That was that was that person back there, and I was like, Oh, come on, in class you know that I have this accessibility issue. You have to raise your hand.
And what I would lastly, I just want to say, one of my pet peeves is when people are in a large audience, and they're doing conversations with, like, you know, comments and there's a microphone, or some type of amplified sound, and if the the response of “I don't need the mic, I have a loud voice” I, it always drives me a little little just batty like just “oh, come on” like and that's something I learned in my own life, like in my later on, to do that more.
Elizabeth: That is a perfect example of ableism harm when someone says “oh, I have a loud voice. I don't need to use the microphone” but actually it benefits so many people will use a microphone
And also, if someone has a hearing device, they're probably using the remote control to click to a loop system that's in the building. And so, if you talk to them into a microphone, they can hear you directly through the microphone. But if you don't, then they completely miss out and that's totally one of my big pet peeves, too, and Frank, I can relate to your stories so, much, because for so, long I wanted to fit in, and I wanted to do pretend that I was like everybody else. So, for a long time. I didn't tell people about my deafness. I mean people kind of figured it out because of my deaf accent, but I didn't really advocate for myself sometimes in my education. I just sat in the front row and hoped for the best.
In fact, I had a college professor who had this big big thick beard. Almost like Santa Claus, you know and he said, he offered to shave off his beard for me, because he knew that I had to lip read and I said, no, no, no, don’t worry I can lip read you just fine, but but that was interesting
Frank: That is really, and that's great for the the professor, to to to make that a a possibility for you.
Elizabeth: And and that's not that many people, really, who are that understanding. And I wanted to explain a little bit about the visual description. That is a way for low vision and blind people to hear who is speaking because because they give them sort of a sense of place and space. And so, when you're having virtual conferences, virtual meetings, it really helps, because somebody could be calling in, and they have no idea who's speaking right, and also, I think it just uhm generates greater understanding between people and greater relationship building, because people make assumptions about who you are, just based on the way you look. And when you self-identify, that immediately deletes, or lessens any kind of assumptions or biases that a person may have.
Frank: Yeah, yeah, and that's whole like idea of self-identification. And this is kind of tying into this when we think about you know the work we do at Civic Commons and belonging and the reason we would ask people to share their stories, and even on the podcast you know, is kind of like.
I can do an introduction. but I want the person that I’m speaking with, to really tell us about themselves is because then you tell your own story in the way that you want you. To use a description and describers and identities that you want to magnify and talk about, cause you know, I know a lot of folks in terms of gender and non-binary issues about like using pronouns when they start. And for me, it's like, yes, and if you want to talk about your pronouns, great, but I don't want to force it upon you, right? But I also, but I want to give you the space like, hey I think the best way to do is like, hey, tell us who you are in the way you want to tell us, and I appreciate you using, I’m gonna use more of this language in terms of like the visual descriptions of the person that is listening so that they have a better idea of placing me, and where I am, and even using the fun virtual backgrounds that I have letting people know if I change that up so that listeners can know what's even behind me in the in the screen so, I appreciate that
Elizabeth: Exactly, and I apologize I forgot to use my pronouns. I use she/her pronouns, and that's something I often forget. Also, with visual descriptions, you can say as much or as little as you want uhm you know that no, there are no rules around this. It's just a way of helping people get to know who you are, and there's no requirement or application to repeat anything about yourself
And I wanted to mention something of when you said Frank, about your single sided deafness. Know, that 1 in 4 people had a disability in the United States, and that number is probably higher, because so, many people don't disclose that they have a disability because of so many reasons. One, they don't think they have one. That's kind of like the way it was for you and me. Two, they fear reprisal from the employer or from anybody. You know, they just want to fit in and the go under the radar so to speak. And 3, because of know discrimination, and of all that stuff and ableism. So, that's a lot of reasons why people may not disclose and so, that number is actually really high I think. And disabilities are actually the greatest minority in the world, and there's so many invisible disabilities that we don't know about. Know apparent and not apparent disabilities.
Frank: Yeah, no, that’s a, thanks for bringing that up, and the number 1 out of 4 is probably more close to like 1 out of 3, if not more right?. And so, and like, you know, when I was sharing before, I internalized my ableism and what my needs. I didn't talk about it. I wanted to feel in. I remember playing that game, Marco Polo, in the pool. You say, Marco, and close your eyes and all the other kids say polo, and use your sound hearing to try to, you know, tag somebody. So, I could not do that obviously, I didn't know why I couldn’t do that as a kid, but that is also, when I learn to cheat and go underwater open my eyes and then try to swim.
Elizabeth: Me too. Me, too. I totally cheated at that game.
Frank: I hated that game So, bad. Let’s go to the pool. Yay! Let's play Marco Polo. Boo!
Elizabeth: And telephone, remember telephone, that was also awful.
Frank: Right, it's like I know this, and when I sit down for me at least with single side deafness when I sit down at a dining table, or with friends, my friends know that I need the right hand side seat. And circular tables are my downfall, because there's always half the table that I have a hard time hearing.
Elizabeth: Totally. So, I guess you don't know how to read lips. Maybe now you have to learn.
Frank: I can’t. Maybe maybe maybe I could start taking some type of classes and maybe online materials for lip reading. That would actually come in handy.
Elizabeth: Oh, yes, yeah and that's another point I want to make is that I don't sign. So, there's a lot of diversity within disability. So, it's really important, if you’re trying to learn more about disability and form relationships with people with disabilities, you have to meet them where they’re at and everyone's gonna be different.
I need captions for a theater performance, I don't sign but my friend who is an ASL signer might need ASL. So, being open and curious and asking people what they need is really important.
Frank: And this reminds me we're doing a, so we're on May 12 and 13th we're holding a belonging gathering where we have our RSVP invite list and that is something I need to put in a questionnaire form. If there is any accessibility needs you have, please let us know so we can accommodate them. Yeah.
So, that's great you know. I’m, look, this is the most practical and experiential like hey let's do this right now podcast I've had in a while.
Elizabeth: Exactly, exactly. And I’m nodding my head vigorously, as you are speaking because this is all about universal design. Like when you're planning something from the very beginning, you think about what is going to benefit everyone, because anything you do to engage the largest number of people will benefit everybody. So, even if you use captions, you know captions benefit everybody actually, not just people with hearing loss. They benefit people who have cognitive issues. They're better for people whose language, whose first language is not English, etc., etc., So, really incorporating an inclusion lens into your planning is very important. as well.
Frank: Yeah, absolutely, there's a great person I've mentioned on this podcast before that civic Commons has worked with, and his name is Professor Ceasar Mcdowell, and he talks about human-centered design, but not designing from the middle but designing from the edges.
And if you design from the edges, you cover everyone in the middle. But if you design from the middle, then you leave people out at the edges. And so, this is definitely one of his design elements that you just mentioned as well.
And so, I kinda wanna talk about this. You know this idea of belonging right. And so, we talked a little bit about like we want to fit in, we wanna not stand out. What community are we part of. You know, when you think about belonging for you personally? Where, where, or when or both, is the time that you felt like you most belonged? And what are the what made you feel that way?
And you could also, approach that question from the opposite, which the opposite of belonging, is othering. When or when did you feel like you were not? You did not belong. And what was the reasons for that? How to impact you? So, you can answer that question either way you want.
Elizabeth: Great question. I'll start with the othering. So, I went through many, many years of speech therapy, and so, a lot of people are really surprised when they meet me, and they say, “oh, my goodness, you speak So, well for a deaf person.:
Or, “my goodness, where are you from?” and I'll tell them I was born in Buffalo, New York. “No, no, no, no! Where are you really from?” I am American. I was born in New York State.
“No, no, you must be from Australia or some other exotic place”, and I’m depending on my mood I’ll kind of string them along or I'll just come right out and say, you know I have a hearing loss that's why my speech is different. But this is a perfect example of othering.
So, when you, I mean people, their intentions are good right? I want to believe that. But when you tell someone with the disability, how amazing they are, and put them on a pedestal you immediately setting them apart from yourself, and you're immediately putting them into a different category. Maybe a worse category, because, as an able-bodied person, you cannot imagine ever being in that position. But guess what? As we get older, all of us are going to join the disability community temporarily or permanently, whether we like it or not.
And in terms of belonging, I think the best times I have felt belonging are when I’m with people who have a shared life experience. For example, I was in the Peace Corps in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Whenever I meet someone who was in the Peace Corps, I immediately feel a connection because we had that shared experience, and so, we have that common language.
I also, feel a sense of belonging when I’m around people who read books and I have a book group that I've been part of for 23 years. And so, when I’m with these people we just, I just feel like I fit right in with just the way they read books and talk about books
And finally, I feel a sense of belonging when I’m around other deaf people like myself, because when I’m with other people who speak and read lips like myself, we just instantly get each other, and we just know what we're talking about. Oh remember that time when we're in a restaurant and someone asked for our order, and we have no idea what they said. So, we can totally relate to each other.
Frank: Yeah, no, no, I, I even for us, you know. The listeners are obviously not privy to our conversation before we started recording. But I let Elizabeth know that I have single-sided deafness, and immediately I think I felt like there was a bond, right because there's a things you know and I don't know what it's feel like, feels like to be more, to have more in terms of like hearing loss in both ears. But I do know what it's like for me to live my life, and how that impacted me, and I talked about the stories of like finding it out and hiding it like, we connected immediately. And so, that was really wonderful and you know it's, when we think about belonging there's So, many different aspects. It's kind of like this one of those words is it's amorphous. But people have a good idea what it means, and so, you know with like Peace Corps volunteers. Maybe it's a shared experience that you all went through shared customs, shared language, shared, you know, we did this international service for like a part of our life, and you know, where were you located?
Oh, I was in Costa Rica. I was in here. I was there. What did you do? And that's, I've definitely seen that, and I worked with Americorps volunteers for a long time, and I've seen that with AmeriCorps alumni as well, now more to more domestic service. And then the idea of like when people get you you don't have to explain yourself right. I think a lot of belonging is like, do people see me for my full humanity, and take me in? You know, doesn't mean they have to agree with my humanity, or agree with my decisions, or lifestyle or choices. But do they see me as fully human?
And the last thing I wanna say, Elizabeth, is when you started with the where are you really from? With accents. I know AAPI heritage month is next month in May, and so, a lot of my Asian-American friends have gotten the, both the, “hey you speak English really well”, like a surprise. It's like, oh, I was, I've been here since I was 3, I don't the language… Yeah, so, or “where are you from?” Oh, New Jersey just like, oh, no I remember this.
“Where are you from?” New York City. “No, like where are you from?” Okay, look, you got me, I’m from New Jersey
It's like, “no, no, no but where, where are you really from?”
And you know there’s a whole YouTube video with this Asian-American woman running. And this white gentleman saying like, hey where are you from? Where are you really from? And her getting really upset.
And like you sometimes I play along. depending on the mood. And sometimes I’m like it's like, why, why did you decide to ask me where I’m from but not, you know the other people in the room, you know.
Elizabeth: Exactly. As what are you seeing first? Are you seeing a person’s color first? Are you seeing a person’s disability first?
And another example I wanted to illustrate of belonging is when I fell into this work, into this accessibility work the first time, I really realized, oh my gosh, I should have been doing this a long time ago is when I was at the Leadership Exchange for Arts and Disability.
It's a conference that happens every year. It's put on by the Kennedy Center, and basically is arts sector, arts administrators and staff, and disability professionals and everyone who’s involved in the arts and disability convenes in this conference. And it was the first time at a conference where I thought, oh, my gosh, they speak my language. There were captioners everywhere. There were interpreters everywhere. Everyone was very kind and respectful and understanding and patient and curious and interested. And I learned so much from them, and I didn't have to explain myself.
So, that was a really great way to feel welcomed and included.
Frank: Yeah, yeah, and for audience members that have been listening, they may know or may not know, that in late 2020 I decide to move back to the country of my birth, which is South Korea. So, I’m actually here in Seoul and it's morning and for you it's afternoon or early evening. But when I landed here and I’ve been here multiple times, but you know its just was so nice, to not have to, this feeling of anonymity. like I can ride the bus the subway people don't look at me, or you know, like I don't stick out and that's there's something about that that that's why, I decided to try to stay here more long term and fly back into Seattle to do the work quarterly, and meet people and do and make sure I can still do my work and create community. But the feeling of safety, anonymity, acceptance, hearing the language I grew up with, eating the food that I grew up with, seeing family members, it's just been really rooting for me like a rooting event for me, for sure.
Elizabeth: That’s amazing. That sounds great. It's like really going back to your roots and really discovering who you are.
And you know, for a long time, you know, I grew up in a family where I have 3 older brothers, and everyone was hearing in my family, So, I always felt, I mean I everybody really loved me to tears, of course, but I always felt like there was something missing. I didn't really have any deaf friends growing up and so when I met my first deaf friend in graduate school in public health, it was like looking into a mirror. So, I can imagine that some of what you feel is like you go somewhere and you feel like you're home
Frank: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, no, you get it, and that's that's great. At my last job at the City of Seattle I was, when I’m walking down the street with somebody, I usually try to get on the right side you know. I don't try to explain my single-sided deafness, but it's easy for me to hear them with noise, traffic, and construction and the outdoors to be on the right side of someone. And then it's my friend Sahar, and we're walking, and then Sahar does the same thing like, Sahar walks past me and gets on my right side. So, I was like that was weird, and that happens, maybe like 2 more times. So, I stopped. Sahar, like, “hey I’m just I’m trying to get on your right side, because I can't hear on my right ear.”
And Sahar looks at me and goes, “me too!” Also, has single-sided deafness in the right ear. And here's 2 people that cannot hear the right and there trying to both jockey for position so that we (laughs)
Elizabeth: (laughter) I’m having this image, I’m having this image of you doing circles around each other.
Frank: Yes! Trying to get past each other. Oh, my goodness. I was like “Sahar this means we can't walk in public together“ like either one of us is not going to hear to the other person, or one of us has to be in a dangerous position where they're walking backwards so they can actually hear each other and so we do the thing where we kind of like talk loudly when we're walking together because one of us is not be able to… (laughter) And but that's only like that's only something that people like you know, that have had this type of experience can get.
Elizabeth: Totally. I've walked with lots of friends who've walked into telephone poles because they were looking at me so I can read the lips. But I keep telling them don't do that, please don't do that I have magical powers, I can read lips from the side. (laughter)
Frank: Wow! Peripheral lip reading. Yeah, yeah. amazing. I, you know this is one of those conversations like probably go on for long but I do wanna make sure that I’m respectful of your time so, I kind of want to go to my last question, which is really, you know, in this podcast, it's really about allowing people to tell us what they're working on so that either myself or our audience members can, actually, my friend Betty Fujikado came up with this with me.
We call it now the Triple A. Which is either augment it, accelerate it or amplify it. Right?
Is there something you're working on that we can augment accelerate or amplify? It could be your, you know, you can talk about your actual consulting practice, and how people can reach. You can talk about pet project, you can talk about passion project, totally up to you.
So, Elizabeth, what are you working on?
Elizabeth: Well, thank you for asking me that. I am a Jack of all trades, so we say. I am working on a bunch of different things, and the main thing, of which is my consulting practice. Basically, my mission is to dismantle ableism and to help people and organizations understand that ableism is a big barrier for accessibility, and why that is, and how they can learn to examine their own assumptions and recognize what those barriers would be.
And I help organizations do lots of things like planning for accessibility. What does accessibility integration look like? You know, that, is it integrated into your fundraising? Is it integrated into your communications? Do you have disability representation on your board and your staff?
I do a lot of presentations in training around accessibility related issues. And I also run the Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium, which is a grassroots effort to help the art sector basically improve accessibility for people of all abilities. And we do a lot of presentations and workshops and try to keep the accessibility conversation relevant and top of mind for people. It's a wonderful way of making sure that people keep talking about it, because if we don't talk about it, it’s not going to expand.
So, one of the things I really love to do is answer questions about, well, what what does it mean to interact with a person with a disability? And making it really a safe space for people to lean into their discomfort because it can be an uncomfortable topic.
I’m sure you've noticed when you tell people, I have single-sided deafness, the energy kind of changes. And so, you try to help people understand that it's okay to make mistakes. But the most important thing I tell people is to be an ally. And really advocate for people with disabilities and take the burden of advocacy off of the person with the disability.
I mean, we can still advocate for ourselves. But, like you say, if you include accommodations in the registration process, that takes the burden off of the person with the disability. So, those are the kinds of things that I work with my clients and the community, yeah.
Frank: Well, I, I’m hoping that after this airs and we push it out on social media and stuff that you are incredibly busy, and you ask me to take down the episode because you have too many clients, and too many people asking for support (laughter) but I doubt you'll do that.
No that's wonderful, and I definitely encourage folks to reach out to you, and if it's, you know, if you're not, well do you only work with clients in the Washington Seattle region?
Elizabeth: I work with anybody and my practice is expanding beyond Washington state, and it is expanding beyond the arts sector. I mean, accessibility is an issue for all organizations. Whether it be, it is the healthcare sector or business sector, or what not. So, yes.
Frank: Wonderful. Well, I’m gonna have Elizabeth send us the all the links for all the different, you know, be it be it her consultancy be it some of the organizations that she's working with etc. So, we'll put that all in the descriptions for our listeners and and readers, and so, what, yeah, I guess for me it's just, what a wonderful way to, you know, end the month. We're turning the corner for summer in the Seattle region, and I'll be visiting starting next week, and I'll be in town for 3 weeks.
I also, want to plug the Belonging Gathering. 2022 Belonging Gathering on May the 12th and 13th at Axis Pioneer Square.
We'll put the link in our website and in our description for this podcast and we, I, will add the questionnaire form to make sure that people can let us know if they have any accessibility issues that they would like accommodations that they would like met and I'll make sure that's on there before I post it.
And I really want to just thank our our guest, Elizabeth Ralston. You've been a wonderful guest. I really loved just connecting with you, talking about belonging with you, talking about accessibility and raising the awareness.
And yeah, I just look forward to, I’m sure I will reach out to you again, either for your consulting profession practice or knowledge, or just to just touch base and just see how things are going. So, I appreciate you spending time with us.
Elizabeth: I’d love that, I'd love to come visit you in Seoul so you can invite me out there to give the presentation.
Frank: Absolutely. Oh, and this is maybe for another episode. Seoul and the South Korea can definitely use you and more people like you, because there is no ADA here, right? American Disabilities Act. There is no, there's a lot of, there's a lot of issues here with accessibility, and so, we can talk about another episode or face-to-face but I appreciate you. Great. Thank you Elizabeth for being our guest. Thank you to the Discovery Gates Center for connecting us, Elizabeth.
I will also, link to Elizabeth’s work and their media information that the Gates Discovery Center did with her exhibit, and we'll put that on the podcast details. And then, lastly, thank you again to Big Phony for letting us use his music royalty free. And just telling our listeners, as always, you know. remember to see each other as fully human, ask questions, tell your stories, and always remember that you belong. Thanks everyone.