Podcast appearances and mentions of fred schroeder

As I have always told our guests, our time together is a conversation, not an interview. This was never truer than with our guest this time, Andrew Leland. Andrew grew up with what most people would call a pretty normal childhood. However, as he discovered he was encountering night blindness that gradually grew worse. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, he was not getting much support for determining what was happening with his eyes. He did his own research and decided that he was experiencing retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that first affects peripheral vision and eventually leads to total blindness. I won't spend time discussing Andrew's journey toward how finally doctors verified his personal diagnosis.   Andrew was and is an incredible researcher and thinker. He comes by it naturally. In addition, he is quite a writer and has had material published by The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney's Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. He comes by his talents honestly through family members who have been screenwriters and playwrights. Example? His grandfather was Marvin Neal Simon, better known to all of us as Neal Simon.   This year Andrew's first book was published. It is entitled, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight. I urge you to get and read it.   Our conversation goes into detail about blindness in so many different ways. I am sure you will find that your own views of blindness will probably change as you hear our discussion. Andrew has already agreed to come on again so we can continue our discussions. I hope you enjoy our time together.     About the Guest:   Andrew Leland's first book is The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight. His_ writing has appeared in _The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney's Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2013-2019, he hosted and produced The Organist, an arts and culture podcast, for KCRW; he has also produced pieces for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible. He has been an editor at The Believer since 2003. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and son.     Ways to connect with Andrew:   Website: https://www.andrewleland.org/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes    Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet. And we're gonna get to have a little bit of all of that today. I get to interview someone who I've talked to a couple of times and met a couple of months ago for the first time, I think the first time at a meeting, Andrew Leland is the author of the country of the blind. And he will tell us about that. And we will have lots of fun things to talk about. I am sure he's been a podcaster. He's an author. Needless to say, he's written things. And I don't know what else we'll see what other kinds of secrets we can uncover. Fair warning, right. So Andrew, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Andrew Leland ** 02:01 Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 Well, I really appreciate you coming. Why don't you start by telling us a little about kind of the early Andrew growing up in some of that kind of stuff? Oh, sure. A lot of times go in a galaxy far, far away. Yeah. Right.   Andrew Leland ** 02:18 planet called the Los Angeles. I was born in LA. Yeah. And my parents moved to New York pretty quickly. And they split when I was two. So for most of my childhood, I was kind of bouncing in between, I live with my mom. But then I would go visit my dad on holidays. And my mom moved around a lot. So we were in New York, just outside the city. And then we moved to Toronto for two years, and then back to New York, and then to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and then to California, Southern California. So I lived a lot of places. And that was all before college. And yeah, what can I tell you about young Andrew, I, you know, I always was interested in writing and reading. And I come from a family of writers. My mom is a screenwriter, my grandfather was a playwright. My aunt is a novelist. And so and my dad, you know, remember when I was a kid, he had a column for videography magazine, and has always been super interested in digital technology, you know, from the earliest days of desktop publishing. And he worked for, like early days of USA Network, you know, so like this kind of shared interest that I inherited from my parents of, you know, creativity and media, I guess was one way you could put it, you know, storytelling and sort of like playing around with electronic media. And, you know, I grew up I was born in 1980. So by the time I was an adolescent, the internet was just starting to reach its tendrils into our lives. And I remember my dad bought me a modem. And when I was like, I don't know 14 or something. And I was definitely one of the first kids in my class to have a modem and you know, messing around on message boards and stuff. So that was very influential for me. You know, when it was around that time that I started to notice that I had night blindness, and I kind of diagnosed myself with retinitis pigmentosa on that early web, you know, before the days of WebMD or anything like that, but it just there didn't seem to be a lot of causes for adolescent night blindness. And so I kind of figured it out and then sort of just compartmentalized it like kick that information to the side somewhere dusty corner of my brain and just went about my life and then it wasn't until later my teenage years I'd already done a year in college I think in Ohio where I said you know what, this is getting a little more intrusive and then I've that my mom finally booked me an appointment at a at a real deal, you know, medical retinal Research Center and at UCLA. And then, you know, an actual retinal specialist said, Yep, you've got retina is pigmentosa. You'll you Will, you know, maintain decent vision into middle age and then it'll fall off a cliff. Once again, I just carried that information around for, you know, the next 20 years or so. And I'm 4040 How old am I? Mike? 22 years old? Right? Well, I actually I'm a December baby. So we gotta go, Okay, you got a couple of months to go a 42 year old medicine me. You know, and at this point in my life, you know, I had the, you know, I read about all this in the book, but I have a feeling that, like that part of his diagnosis way back when is coming true, you know, and I feel like, okay, it's all finally happening, and like, it's happening more quickly, but then my current doctor is kind of careful to reassure me that that's not actually happening. And that RP, you know, their understanding of it has evolved since then. And there's like, you know, different genetic profiles, and that, in fact, maybe I might have some residual useful vision for many years to come. But one of the things that I really wrestled with, both in the book and just in my life is the question of, you know, how much to claim to that site and how useful that site really is. And, and, and trying to figure out what, what it means to be blind, if I'm blind, you know, certainly legally blind, you know, I've half got about five or six degrees of, of central vision. You know, and so, so, so my so So, I've left your question behind at this point. But I wrote, I wrote this book, in some ways to answer that question of, like, where I, where I fit into this world of blindness? And am I an outsider, or am I an insider? like at what point do I get to be part of the club and all those really tricky questions that were really bothering me as a person, I got to kind of explore in the form of a book.   Michael Hingson ** 06:52 The interesting thing about what you said in the book, however, concerning Are you an outsider or an insider, Am I blind? Or am I not? is, of course a question that everyone wrestles with. And I personally like the Jernigan definition, have you ever read his article, a definition of blindness?   Andrew Leland ** 07:11 Oh, maybe tell me what he says. So what he says   Michael Hingson ** 07:15 is that you should consider yourself blind from a functional standpoint, when your eyesight decreases to the point where you have to use alternatives to vision to be able to perform tasks. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use the residual vision that you have. But what you should do is learn blindness techniques, and learn to psychologically accept that from a blindness standpoint, or from a from a functional standpoint, you are blind, but you do also have eyesight, then there's no reason not to use that. But you still can consider yourself a blind person, because you are using alternatives to eyesight in order to function and do things.   Andrew Leland ** 08:00 Yeah, no, I have heard that from the NFB I didn't realize its source was Jernigan. But I really aspire to live my life that way. You know, I think it's, there are some days when it's easier than others. But, you know, I'm here, learning, you know, practicing Braille, using my white cane every day, you know, like learning jaws and trying to try to keep my screen reader on my phone as much as possible. And it's funny how it becomes almost like a moral mind game that I play with myself where I'm like, okay, like, Wow, it's so much easier to use my phone with a screen reader. Like, why don't I just leave it on all the time, but then inevitably, I get to like a inaccessible website, or like, I'm trying to write and write a text message. And I'm like, Oh, am I really going to like use the rotor to like, go back up, you know, to these words, and so then I turn it back off, and then I leave it off. And I'm just like, constantly messing with my own head and this way, and I've heard from, from folks with ARPI, who are more blind than I am, who have less vision. And there is the sense that like, one relief of even though it's, you know, incontrovertibly, incontrovertibly inconvenient to have less vision, right? Like there's there's certain affordances that vision gives you that shouldn't make life easier. But But one thing that I've heard from these folks is that, you know, that kind of constant obsessing and agonizing over like, how much vision do I have? How much vision am I going to have tomorrow? How am I going to do this, with this much vision versus that much vision? Like when that goes away? It is a bit of a relief I've heard.   Michael Hingson ** 09:28 Yeah, I mean, if it ultimately comes down to you can obsess over it, you can stress about it. What can I do if I lose this extra vision or not? Is is a question but the other side of it is why assume that just because you lose vision, you can't do X or Y. And that's the thing that I think so many people tend to not really deal with. I believe that we have totally an inconsistent and wrong definition of disability. Anyway, I believe that everyone on the planet has a disability. And for most people, the disability is like dependents. And my case from then my way from making that is look at what Thomas Edison did in 1878. He invented the electric light bulb, which allowed people to have light on demand. So they could function in the dark, because they couldn't really function in the dark until they had light on demand, or unless they had a burning stick or something that gave us light. But the reality is, they still had a disability. And no matter how much today we offer light on demand, and light on demand is a fine thing. No, no problem with it. But recognize that still, without that light on demand, if a if a power failure happens or something and the lights go out, sighted people are at least in a world of hurt until they get another source for light on demand. Mm hmm. I was I was invited to actually Kelly and Ryan's Oscar after party to be in the audience this year. So we went to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which is fun. I used to go there for NFB of California conventions, a great hotel, man. So we got there about three o'clock on Thursday, on Saturday afternoon, and it was my niece and nephew and I and we were all there. And we just dropped our luggage off. And we're going downstairs when suddenly I heard screaming, and I asked my niece, what's going on. And she said, there's been a power failure in and around the hotel. And I'd love to try to spread the rumor that it was all Jimmy Kimmel trying to get attention. But no one's bought that. But but the but the point is that suddenly people didn't know what to do. And I said, doesn't seem like a problem to me. And you know, it's all a matter of perspective. But we really have to get to this idea that it doesn't matter whether you can see or not. And you pointed out very well, in your book that blindness is not nearly so much the issue psychologically, as is our attitude about blindness? Absolutely.   Andrew Leland ** 11:58 Yeah, I remember I interviewed Mark Riccobono, the current president of the National Federation of the Blind, and he made a very similar point, when we were talking about the nature of accommodations, which is something that I still I'm thinking a lot about is I think it's a very tricky idea. And a very important idea, which I think your your your idea of light dependency gets at, you know, in America, Bono's point was, you know, look, we have the the BR headquarters here in Baltimore, and we pay a pretty hefty electricity bill, to keep the lights on every month, and that, you know, the blind folks who work there, it's not for them, right? It's for all the sighted people who come and visit or work at the at the center. And in some ways, that's a reasonable accommodation, that the NFB is making for the sighted people that they want to be inclusive of right. And so that just even that idea of like, what is a reasonable accommodation? I think you're right, that we think of it as like the poor, unfortunate disabled people who need to be brought back to some kind of norm that's at the center. And there's the kind of reframing that you're doing when you talk about light dependency or that Riccobono is doing when he talks about, you know, his electricity bill, you know, it kind of gives the lie to puts the lie to that, that idea that, that the norm takes precedence. And the reality is that, you know, that we all need accommodations, like you say, and so what's reasonable, is really based on what, what humans deserve, which is which is to be included, and to be, you know, to have access equal access, that   Michael Hingson ** 13:38 ought to be the norm. Jacobus timbre wrote a speech called the pros and cons of preferential treatment that was then paired down to a shorter article called a preference for equality. And I haven't, I've been trying to find it, it's at the NFB center, but it isn't as readily available as I would like to see it. And he talks about what equality is, and he said, equality isn't that you do things exactly the same way it is that you have access and with whatever way you need to the same information. So you can't just say, Okay, well, here's a printed textbook, blind persons that's equal under the law, it's not. And he talks about the fact that we all really should be seeking equality and looking for what will give people an equal opportunity in the world. And that's really the issue that we so often just don't face, like we should. The fact of the matter is, it's a part of the cost of business, in general to provide electricity and lights. It's a part of the cost of business to provide for companies a coffee machine, although it's usually a touchscreen machine, but it's there. It's a cost of doing business to provide desks and computers with monitors and so on. But no one views provide Seeing a screen reader as part of the cost of business and nobody views providing a refreshable Braille display or other tools that might give me an equal opportunity to be a part of society, we don't view those as part of the cost of doing business, which we should, because that's what inclusion is really all about. You know, we don't, we don't deal with the fact or sometimes we do that some people are a whole lot shorter than others. And so we provide ladders or step stools, or whatever. But we don't provide cost of doing business concepts to a lot of the tools that say, I might need or you might need. Yeah,   Andrew Leland ** 15:37 yeah, it's one thing that I've been thinking about lately is, is really even just the challenge of understanding what those accommodations are. Because, you know, I think I think, practically speaking in the world, you know, you'll, you'll call up a blind person and say, What do you need, you know, like, we're trying to make this art exhibit or this, you know, business or this, you know, HR software accessible, what do you need, you know, and that one blind person might be like, well, I use NVDA, you know, or that one blind person might be low vision, right. And they might be like, I use a screen magnifier. And it's so difficult to understand, like, what the accommodations are, that would be, that would be adequate to cover, like a reasonable sample. And so just like, it's just so much more complicated than it originally seems, you know, when you have a really well meaning person saying, like, we really value diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility. And but then like, the distance between that well meeting gesture, and then actually pulling off something that's fully accessible to a wide swath of the whatever the users are, is just, it's just unfair, quickly, huge. So that's something that I'm thinking about a lot lately is like how to how do you approach that problem?   Michael Hingson ** 16:46 Well, and I think, though, the at least as far as I can tell, I think about it a lot, as well, as I think any of us should. The fact is that one solution doesn't fit everyone, I'm sure that there are people, although I'm sure it's a minority, but there are people who don't like fluorescent lights as well as incandescent lights, and neither of them like other kinds of lighting as compared to whatever. And then you have people epilepsy, epilepsy who can't deal as well, with blinking lights are blinking elements on a webpage, there's there isn't ever going to be least as near as I can tell, one size that truly fits all, until we all become perfect in our bodies. And that's got a ways to go. So the reality is, I don't think there is one solution that fits everyone. And I think that you, you pointed it out, the best thing to do is to keep an open mind and say, Yeah, I want to hire a person who's qualified. And if that person is blind, I'll do it. And I will ask them what they need. You know, an example I could give you is, was it three years ago, I guess, four years ago, now actually, I was called by someone up in Canada, who is a lawyer who went to work for a college. And we were talking about IRA, artificial intelligent, remote assistance, a IRA, you know about IRA, you wrote about it. And she said, you know, a lot of the discovery and a lot of the documentation that I need to use is not accessible through even OCR to be overly accurate, because there will be deep degradations and print and so and so I can't rely on that. And certainly, Adobe's OCR isn't necessarily going to deal with all the things that I need. So I'd like to use IRA is that a reasonable accommodation? And I said, sure it is, if that's what you need in order to be able to have access to the information, then it should be provided. Now the laws are a little different up there. But nevertheless, she went to the college and made the case and they gave her iris so she could read on demand all day, any document that she needed, and she was able to do her job. And not everyone necessarily needs to do that. And hear in probably some quarters, maybe there are other accommodations that people could use instead of using IRA. But still, Ira opened up a VISTA for her and gave her access to being able to do a job and I think that we really need to recognize that one solution doesn't fit everything. And the best way to address it is to ask somebody, what do you need in order to do your job, and we will provide it or work it out. And here in the US, of course, given although they try to renege on it so much, but given the definition of what rehabilitation is supposed to do, they're supposed to be able to and help make people employable. They should be providing a lot of these tools and sometimes getting counselors to do that. Just like pulling teeth, I'm sure you know about that. Yeah,   Andrew Leland ** 20:02 I do. I do. I mean, it's interesting because I think in the face of that complexity of saying, like, Okay, we like interviewed a dozen blind people, and we like have this we know, our website is it's compatible with all the screen readers. And, you know, this event, like, you know, let's say you're doing an event, and the website is compatible with every screen reader, and it's got dynamic types. So the low vision users are happy, you know, and then the event starts and you're like, oh, wait, we forgot about the existence of deafblind people, and there's no cart, or captioners. Here. And, you know, and then the question for me another another thing I've been thinking about lately is like, how do you respond to that, you know, like, what is the? What is the response? And even just like on a kind of, like, a social level, like, is it scathing indictment, like you, you terrible people, you know, you have you have like, you don't care about deaf blind people. And so I hereby cancel you, and I'm going to, like, tweet about how terrible you are? Or is there like a more benign approach, but then you don't get what you need. And like, sort of, and I think, I think a lot of this is a function of my having grown up without a disability, really, you know, I mean, like, growing up, my I went through my, my full education, without ever having to ask for an accommodation, you know, maybe I had to sit a little closer to the board a little bit. But you know, nothing, nothing like what I'm dealing with now. And I think as a result, I am just now starting to wrap my head around, like, how when self advocates and what styles are most effective. And I think that's another really important piece of this conversation, because it's easy, I think, to walk into, you know, cafe x, or, you know, I just did it the other day, yesterday, last night, I saw this really cool looking new magazine about radio, which was an interest of mine, like great for radio producers. And it was print only, you know, and I wrote like, Hey, how can I get an accessible copy of this cool look in new magazine? And they're like, Oh, actually, we're, we're putting our resources all it were kind of a shoestring operation, all our resources are going into the print edition right now. You know, and then, so then I had a question before me, right? Like, do I say, like, Hey, everybody, like, we must not rest until you agitate for these people to make their accessible thing, or I just sort of wrote a friendly note. And I was like, there's a lot of like, blind radio makers out there who might find your stuff interesting. And I like, affectionately urge you to make this accessible. And then, you know, their hearts seems to be in the right place. And they seem to be working on making it happen. So I don't know what's your what's your thinking about that? Like how to respond to those situations.   Michael Hingson ** 22:34 So my belief is whether we like it or not, every one of us needs to be a teacher. And the fact is to deal with with what you just said, let's take the radio magazine, which magazine is it by the way? Oh, I   Andrew Leland ** 22:51 didn't want to call them out by name. Oh, I'm   Michael Hingson ** 22:52 sorry. I was asking for my own curiosity, being very interested in radio myself. So we   Andrew Leland ** 22:57 give them some good and bad press simultaneously. It's called good tape. Okay, it's brand new. And at the moment, it's as of this recording, it's print only. And,   Michael Hingson ** 23:06 and tape is on the way up a good tape. No, that's okay. Anyway, but no, the reason I asked it was mainly out of curiosity. But look, you you kind of answered the question, their heart is in the right place. And it is probably true that they never thought of it. I don't know. But probably, yeah, they didn't think of it. I've seen other magazines like diversity magazine several years ago, I talked with them about the fact that their online version is totally inaccessible. And they have a print version. But none of its accessible. And I haven't seen it change yet, even though we've talked about it. And so they can talk about diversity all they want, and they talk a lot about disabilities, but they don't deal with it. I think that it comes down to what's the organization willing to do I've, I've dealt with a number of organizations that never thought about making a digital presence, accessible or having some sort of alternative way of people getting to the magazine, and I don't expect everybody to produce the magazine and Braille. And nowadays, you don't need to produce a braille version, but you need to produce an accessible version. And if people are willing to work toward that, I don't think that we should grind them into the ground at all if their hearts in the right place. And I can appreciate how this magazine started with print, which is natural. Yeah, but one of the things that you can do when others can do is to help them see maybe how easy it is to create a version that other people can can use for example, I don't know how they produce their magazine, but I will bet you virtual Anything that it starts with some sort of an electronic copy. If it does that, then they could certainly make that electronic copy a version that would be usable and accessible to the end. And then they could still provide it through a subscription process, there's no reason to give it away if they're not giving it away to other people, but they could still make it available. And I also think something else, which is, as you point out in the book, and the country of the blind, so often, things that are done for us, will help other people as well. So great tape is wonderful. But how is a person with dyslexia going to be able to read it? Yeah, so it isn't just blind people who could benefit from having a more accessible version of it. And probably, it would be worth exploring, even discussing with him about finding places to get funding to help make that happen. But if somebody's got their heart in the right place, then I think by all means, we shouldn't bless them. We should be teachers, and we should help them because they won't know how to do that stuff.   Andrew Leland ** 26:10 Ya know, I love that answer to be a teacher. And I think there was I think there was a teacher Lee vibe in my, in my response to them, you know, like, this is a thing that is actually important and useful. And you ought to really seriously consider doing it. You know, I mean, I think if you think about the how people act in the classroom, you know, it's those kinds of teachers who, you know, who, who correct you, but they correct you in a way that makes you want to follow their correction, instead of just ruining your day and making you feel like you're a terrible person. But it's interesting, because if you, you know, I mean, part of a lot of this is the function of the internet. You know, I see a lot of disabled people out there calling out people for doing things and accessibly. And, you know, I feel I'm really split about this, because I really empathize with the frustration that that one feels like, there's an amazing film called, I didn't see you there by a filmmaker named Reed Davenport, who's a wheelchair user. And the film is really just, like, he kind of he mounts a camera to his wheelchair, and a lot of it is like, he almost like turns his wheelchair into a dolly. And there's these these, like, wonderful, like tracking shots of Oakland, where he lived at the time. And there's this there's this incredible scene where it's really just his daily life, like, you know, and it's very similar to the experience of a blind person, like, he'll just be on a street corner hanging out, you know, in somebody's, like, the light screen, you know, like, what do you what are you trying to do, man, and he's like, I'm just here waiting for my car, my ride, you know, like, leave me alone. You don't need to intervene. But there's this incredible scene where there are some workers in his building are like, in the sort of just sort of unclear like they're working. And there's an extension cord, completely blocking the path, the visible entrance to his apartment, and he can't get into his house. And he's just this, like, the, the depth of his anger is so visceral in that moment. You know, and he yells at them, and they're like, oh, sorry, you know, they kind of don't care, you know, but they like, they're like, just give us a second. And he's like, I don't have a second, like, I need to get into my house. Now. You know, he just has no patience for them. And it's understandable, right? Like, imagine you're trying to get home. And as a matter of course, regularly every week, there's something that's preventing you. And then and then and then you see him when he finally gets back into his apartment. He's just like, screaming and rage. And it's, you know, so that rage I think, is entirely earned. You know, like, I don't I don't think that one one should have to mute one's rage and how and be a kindly teacher in that moment. Right. But, so So yeah, so So I kind of see it both ways. Like, there are moments for the rage. And then I guess there are moments for the mortar teacher like because obviously, like the stakes of me, getting access to good tape magazine are very different than the stakes for read like getting into his apartment. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 28:53 Well, yes and no, it's still access. But the other part about it is the next time, that group of people in whatever they're doing to repair or whatever, if they do the same thing, then they clearly haven't learned. Whereas if they go, Oh, we got to make sure we don't block an entrance. Yeah, then they've learned a lesson and so I can understand the rage. I felt it many times myself, and we all have and, and it's understandable. But ultimately, hopefully, we can come down. And depending on how much time there is to do it, go pick out and say, Look, do you see what the problem is here? Yeah. And please, anytime don't block an entrance or raise it way up or do something because a person in a wheelchair can't get in. And that's a problem. I so my wife always was in a wheelchair, and we were married for two years she passed last November. Just the bye He didn't keep up with the spirit is what I tell people is really true. But I remember we were places like Disneyland. And people would just jump over her foot rests, how rude, you know, and other things like that. But we, we faced a lot of it. And we faced it from the double whammy of one person being in a wheelchair and one person being blind. One day, we went to a restaurant. And we walked in, and we were standing at the counter and the hostess behind the counter was just staring at us. And finally, Karen said to me, well, the hostess is here, I don't think she knows who to talk to, you know, because I'm not making necessarily eye contact, and Karen is down below, in in a wheelchair. And so fine. I said, maybe if she would just ask us if we would like to sit down, it would be okay. And you know, it was friendly, and it broke the ice and then it went, went from there. But unfortunately, we, we, we bring up children and we bring up people not recognizing the whole concept of inclusion. And we we really don't teach people how to have the conversation. And I think that that's the real big issue. We don't get drawn into the conversation, which is why diversity is a problem because it doesn't include disabilities.   Andrew Leland ** 31:16 Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, that seems to be changing. You know, I mean, you have you know, you have a lot more experience in this realm than I do. But But But haven't you felt like a real cultural shift over the last, you know, 2030 years about disability being more front of mind in that conversation?   Michael Hingson ** 31:36 I think it's, it's shifted some. The unemployment rate among employable blind people, though, for example, hasn't changed a lot. A lot of things regarding blindness hasn't really, or haven't really changed a lot. And we still have to fight for things like the National Federation of the Blind finally took the American Bar Association, all the way to the Supreme Court, because they wouldn't allow people to use their technology to take the LSAT. Yeah, lawyers of all people and you know, so things like that. There's, there's so many ways that it continues to happen. And I realized we're a low incidence disability. But still, I think, I think the best way to really equate it. You mentioned in Goldstein in the book, Dan, who I saw, I think, is a great lawyer spoke to the NFB in 2008. And one of the things he talked about was Henry, mayor's book all on fire. And it's about William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist and he was looking for allies. And he heard about these, these two, I think, two ladies, the Grimm case, sisters who were women's suffragettes, and they and he said, Look, we should get them involved. And people said, no, they're dealing with women's things. We're dealing with abolition, it's two different things. And Garrison said, No, it's all the same thing. And we've got to get people to recognize that it really is all the same thing. The you mentioned, well, you mentioned Fred Schroeder and the American Association of Persons with Disabilities at various points in the book. And in 1997. Fred, when he was RSA Commissioner, went to speak to the AAPD talking about the fact that we should be mandating Braille be taught in schools to all blind and low vision kids. And the way he tells me the story, they said, Well, that's a blindness issue. That's not our issue, because most of those people weren't blind. And that's unfortunate, because the reality is, it's all the same thing.   Andrew Leland ** 33:41 Yeah, no, that's something, uh, Dan Goldstein was a really important person for me to meet very early on in the process of writing the book, because I mean, just because he's, he's brilliant. And yeah, such a long history of, of arguing in a very, you know, legalistic, which is to say, very precise, and, you know, method, methodical way. A lot of these questions about what constitutes a reasonable accommodation, you know, as in like, his, his, the lawsuits that he's brought on behalf of the NFB have really broken ground have been incredibly important. So he's, he was a wonderful resource for me. You know, one of the things that he and I talked about, I remember at the beginning, and then, you know, I had lunch with him earlier this week, you know, we still are talking about it. And it's exactly that that question of, you know, the thing that the thing that really dogged me as I pursued, writing this book, and one of the kinds of questions that hung over it was this question of identity. And, you know, like, the sense that like the NFB argues that blindness is not what defines you. And yet, there it is, in their name, the National Federation of the Blind by and like, Where does where does this identity fit? And, you know, and I think that when you talk about other identities like Like the African American civil rights movement, or, you know, you mentioned the suffragette movement, you know, the feminist movement. You know, and it's interesting to compare these other identity based civil rights movements, and the organized by movement and the disability rights movement. And think about the parallels, but then there's also I think, disconnects as well. And so that was one of the things that I was it was really, really challenging for me to, to write about, but I think it's a really important question. And one that's, that's really evolving right now. You know, one of the things that I discovered was that, you know, in addition to the sort of blind or disability rights movement, that's very much modeled on the civil rights model of like, you know, my the first time I went to the NFB convention in 2018, you know, the banquet speech that Mark Riccobono gave was all about the speech of women and the women in the Federation, you know, which, which someone told me afterwards like, this is all new territory for the NFB, like, you know, they don't, there, there hasn't traditionally been this sort of emphasis on, including other identities, you know, and I found that was, I found that interesting, but then also, I was so struck by a line in that speech, where Riccobono said, you know, the fact that they were women is not as important as the fact that they were blind people fighting for, you know, whatever was like the liberation of blindness. And, you know, so it's, there's still always this emphasis on blindness as, like, the most important organizing characteristic of somebody is a part of that movement. And it makes total sense, right, it's the National Federation of the Blind, and they're fighting that 70% unemployment rate. And, you know, I think by their lights, you don't get there by you know, taking your eyes off the prize in some ways. And, and so I was really struck by some of these other groups that I encountered, particularly in 2020, when a lot of the sort of identity right questions came to the fore with the murder of George Floyd, right. You know, and then I was attending, you know, because it was 2020 it was that the convention was online, and I you know, I read it, this is all in the book, I, I went to the LGBT queue meet up, and which, which is also like a shockingly recent development at the NFB, you know, there's this notorious story where President Maher, you know, ostentatiously tears up a card, at a at an NFB convention where there are LGBT. NFB is trying to organize and have an LGBTQ meet up and he sort of ostentatiously tears it up as soon as he reads what's on the card. You know, a lot of still raw pain among NF beers who I talked to about that incident, anyway, like that this this LGBTQ meetup, you know, there's, there's a speaker who's not part of the NFB named justice, shorter, who works in DC, she's, she's blind, you know, and she's part of what is called the, you know, the Disability Justice Movement, which is very much about decentering whiteness, from the disability rights struggle and centering, black, queer, you know, people of color, who are also disabled, and and in some ways, I've found the NFB struggling to, to connect with with that model. You know, I talked to a Neil Lewis, who's the highest ranking black member of the NFV, you know, and he wrote this really fascinating Braille monitor article in the wake of, of George Floyd's death, where he's sort of really explicitly trying to reconcile, like Black Lives Matter movement with live the life you want, you know, with with NFB slogans, and it's, it's a tough thing to do, he has a tough job and trying to do that, because because of the thing, you know, that that I'm saying about Riccobono, right, it's like he is blind is the most important characteristic, or where do these other qualities fit? So it's a very contemporary argument. And it's one that I think the the organized blind movement is still very actively wrestling with.   Michael Hingson ** 39:02 I think it's a real tough thing. I think that blindness shouldn't be what defines me, but it's part of what defines me, and it shouldn't be that way. It is one of the characteristics that I happen to have, which is why I prefer that we start recognizing that disability doesn't mean lack of ability. Disability is a characteristic that manifests itself in different ways to people and in our case, blindness as part of that. For Women. Women is being a woman as part of it for men being a man as part of it for being short or tall, or black or whatever. Those are all part of what defines us. I do think that the National Federation of the Blind was an organization that evolved because, as I said earlier, we're not being included in the conversation and I think that for the Federation and blindness is the most important thing and ought to be the most important thing. And I think that we need to be very careful as an organization about that. Because if we get too bogged down in every other kind of characteristic that defines people, and move away too much from dealing with blindness, we will weaken what the message and the goals of the National Federation of the Blind are. But we do need to recognize that blindness isn't the only game in town, like eyesight isn't the only game in town. But for us, blindness is the main game in town, because it's what we deal with as an organization. Well,   Andrew Leland ** 40:40 how do you reconcile that with the idea that you were talking about before with with, you know, with the argument that like, you know, with the historical example of, you know, it's the same fight the suffragettes and like it because it doesn't that kind of, isn't that kind of contradicting that idea that like, having the intersection of identities, you know, and these movements all being linked by some kind of grand or systemic oppression, you know, so it is it is relevant? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 41:06 it is, yeah, and I'm not saying it any way that it's not relevant. What I am saying, though, is the case of the Grimm case, sisters, he wanted their support and support of other supportive other people, Garrison did in terms of dealing with abolition, which was appropriate, their main focus was women's suffrage, but it doesn't mean that they can't be involved in and recognize that we all are facing discrimination, and that we can start shaping more of our messages to be more inclusive. And that's the thing that that I don't think is happening nearly as much as it ought to. The fact is that, it doesn't mean that blind people shouldn't be concerned about or dealing with LGBTQ or color, or gender or whatever. Yeah. But our main common binding characteristic is that we're all blind men. So for us, as an organization, that should be what we mostly focus on. It also doesn't mean that we shouldn't be aware of and advocate for and fight for other things as well. But as an organization, collectively, the goal really needs to be dealing with blindness, because if you dilute it too much, then you're not dealing with blindness. And the problem with blindness as being a low incidence disability, that's all too easy to make happen. Right?   Andrew Leland ** 42:35 Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting, just thinking about that question of dilution versus strengthening, you know, because I think I think if you ask somebody in the Disability Justice Movement, the dilution happens precisely, with an overemphasis on a single disability, right, and then you lose these like broader coalition's that you can build to, you know, I think I think it comes down to maybe like the way that you are our analysts analyzing the structures of oppression, right, like, right, what is it that's creating that 70% unemployment? Is it something specifically about blindness? Or is it like a broader ableist structure that is connected to a broader racist structure? You know, that's connected to a broader misogynist structure? You know, and I think if you start thinking in those structural terms, then like, coalition building makes a lot more sense, because it's like, I mean, you know, I don't know what kind of political affiliation or what but political orientation to take with us, you know, but certainly the Disability Justice Movement is pretty radically to the left, right. And I think traditionally, the NFB, for instance, has had a lot more socially conservative members and leaders. And so it's, you know, that reconciliation feels almost impossibly vast to to think of like an organization like the NFB taking the kind of like, abolitionist stance that a lot of these disability justice groups take to say, like, actually, capitalism is the problem, right. So yeah, so I mean, the thought experiment only goes so far, like, what like a Disability Justice oriented NFP would look like. But you know, that I think there are young members, you know, and I do think it's a generational thing too. Like, I think there are NF beers in their 20s and 30s, who are really wrestling with those questions right now. And I'm really interested to see what they come up with.   Michael Hingson ** 44:29 I think that the biggest value that the NFB brings overall, and I've actually heard this from some ACB people as well, is that the ENFP has a consistent philosophy about what blindness is and what blindness is. And and that is probably the most important thing that the NFP needs to ensure that it that it doesn't lose. But I think that the whole and the NFP used to be totally As coalition building that goes back to Jernigan and Mauer, although Mauer started to change some of that, and I think it will evolve. But you know, the NFB. And blind people in general have another issue that you sort of brought up in the book, you talk about people who are deaf and hard of hearing, that they form into communities and that they, they have a culture. And we don't see nearly as much of that in the blindness world. And so as a result, we still have blind people or sighted people referring to us and and not ever being called out as blind or visually impaired. But you don't find in the deaf community that people are talking about deaf or hearing impaired, you're liable to be shot. It's deaf or hard of hearing. And yeah, the reality is, it ought to be blind or low vision, because visually impaired is ridiculous on several levels visually, we're not different and impaired. What that's that's a horrible thing to say. But as a as an as a group. I was going to use community, but I but I guess the community isn't, as well formed to deal with it yet. We're not there. And so all too often, we talk about or hear about visually impaired or visual impairment. And that continues to promote the problem that we're trying to eliminate. Mm   Andrew Leland ** 46:22 hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that question of blank community is fascinating. And yeah. And I do think that I mean, you know, from my reading the book, I certainly have found blank community. But, you know, if I really think about it, if I'm really being honest, I think it's more that I've met, it's, you know, my work on the book has given me access to really cool blind people that I have gotten to become friends with, you know, that feels different than, like, welcome to this club, where we meet, you know, on Tuesdays and have our cool like, blind, you know, paragliding meetups, you know, not that not that people aren't doing that, like, then they're a really, you know, I would like to get more if I lived in a more urban center, I'm sure it would be involved in like, you know, the blind running club or whatever, willing to hang out with blind people more regularly, but it doesn't feel like a big community in that way. And it's interesting to think about why. You know, I think one big reason is that it's not, it's not familial, in the same way, you know, Andrew Solomon wrote a really interesting book called far from the tree that gets at this where, you know, like, the when, when, when a child has a different identity than a parent, like, you know, deaf children of hearing adults, you know, there doesn't, there isn't a culture that builds up around that, you know, and it's really like these big deaf families that you have with inherited forms of deafness, or, you know, and then schools for the deaf, that, you know, and with deaf culture in particular, you know, really what we're talking about is language, you know, in sign language, right, creates a whole rich culture around it. Whereas, with hearing blind people, you know, they're more isolated, they're not necessarily automatically you have to, you have to really work to find the other blind people, you know, with, with travel being difficult, it's a lot easier to just like, Get get to the public library to meet up in the first place, and so on. So, yeah, it feels a lot more fractured. And so I think you do see groups more like the NFB or the ACB, who are organizing around political action, rather than, you know, like a culture of folks hanging out going to a movie with open audio description, although, I will say that the weeks that I spent at the Colorado Center for the Blind, you know, which is, you know, you can think of it as like a, you know, it's a training center, but in some ways, it's like an intentional blind community do right where you're like, that's like a blind commune or something. I mean, that is just a beautiful experience, that it's not for everyone in terms of their their training method. But if it is for you, like, wow, like for just such a powerful experience to be in a community, because that is a real community. And it nothing will radically change your sense of what it means to be blind and what it means to be in a black community than then living for a while at a place like that. It was a really transformative experience for me.   Michael Hingson ** 49:11 Do you think that especially as the younger generations are evolving and coming up, that we may see more of a development of a community in the blindness in the blindness world? Or do you think that the other forces are just going to keep that from happening? Well,   Andrew Leland ** 49:30 you know, one of the things that I discovered in writing the book was that, you know, and this is sort of contradicting what I just said, because there there is a blind community. And, you know, I read in the book like, at first I thought that blind techies were another subculture of blindness, like blind birders are blind skateboarders, right. But then the more I looked into it, the more I realized that like being a techie is actually like a kind of a basic feature of being a blind person in the world. You know, and I don't hear if it's 2023 or 1823, you know, because if you think about the problem of blindness, which is access to information, by and large, you know, you basically have to become a self styled information technologist, right? To, to get what you need, whether it's the newspaper, or textbooks or signs, road signs, or whatever else. So. So I do and I do think that like, you know, when my dad was living in the Bay Area in the 90s, you know, when I would go visit him, you know, he was a techie, a sighted techie. And, you know, he would always be part of like, the Berkeley Macintosh user group, just be like, these nerds emailing each other, or, you know, I don't even know if email was around, it was like, late 80s. You know, but people who have like the Mac 512, KS, and they would, they would connect with each other about like, Well, how did you deal with this problem? And like, what kind of serial port blah, blah, blah? And that's a community, right? I mean, those people hang out, they get rise together. And if there's anything like a blind community, it's the blind techie community, you know, and I like to tell the story about Jonathan mosun. I'm sure you've encountered him in your trailer. I know Jonathan. Yeah. You know, so I, when I discovered his podcast, which is now called Living blind, fully blind, fully, yeah. Yeah. I, I was like, oh, okay, here are the conversations I've been looking for, because he will very regularly cover the kind of like social identity questions that I'm interested in, like, you know, is Braille like, is the only way for a blind person to have true literacy through Braille? Or is using a screen reader literacy, you know? Or like, is there such a thing as blind pride? And if so, what is it? I was like? These are the kinds of questions I was asking. And so I was so delighted to find it. But then in order to, in order to get to those conversations, you have to sit through like 20 minutes of like, one password on Windows 11 stopped working when I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11. And so like, what, you know, if you what Jaws command, can I use in and I was like, why is this? Why is there like 20 minutes of Jaws chat in between these, like, really interesting philosophical conversations. And eventually, I realized, like, oh, because that's like, what this community needs and what it's interested in. And so in some ways, like the real blind community is like the user group, which I think is actually a beautiful thing. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 52:14 Well, it is definitely a part of it. And we do have to be information technologists, in a lot of ways. Have you met? And do you know, Curtis Chang,   Andrew Leland ** 52:23 I've met him very briefly at an NFB convention. So Curtis,   Michael Hingson ** 52:28 and I have known each other Gosh, since the 1970s. And we both are very deeply involved in a lot of things with technology. He worked in various aspects of assistive technology worked at the NFB center for a while and things like that, but he always talks about how blind people and and I've heard this and other presentations around the NFB, where blind people as Curtis would put it, have to muddle through and figure out websites. And, and the fact is, we do it, because there are so many that are inaccessible. I joined accessibe two years ago, two and a half years ago. And there are a lot of people that don't like the artificial, intelligent process that accessibe uses. It works however, and people don't really look far enough that we're not, I think, being as visionary as we ought to be. We're not doing what we did with Ray Kurzweil. And look, when the Kurzweil project started with the NFB Jernigan had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, but Ray was so emphatic. And Jim Gasol at the Washington office, finally convinced kindred again to let him go see, raised machine, but the rules were that it didn't matter what Ray would put on the machine to read it and had to read what Gasol brought up. Well, he brought it did and the relationship began, and it's been going ever since and, and I worked, running the project and the sense on a day to day basis, I traveled I lived out of hotels and suitcases for 18 months as we put machines all over and then I went to work for Ray. And then I ended up having to go into sales selling not the reading machine, but the data entry machine, but I guess I kept to consistently see the vision that Ray was bringing, and I think he helped drag, in some ways the NFB as an organization, more into technology than it was willing to do before. Interesting.   Andrew Leland ** 54:27 Yeah, I heard a similar comment. The one thing I got wrong in the first edition of the book that I'm correcting for subsequent reprints, but I really bungled the description of the Opticon. And my friend, Robert Engel Britton, who's a linguist at Rice University, who collects opera cones. I think he has got probably like a dozen of them in his house. You know, he helped me you know, because I didn't have a chance to use one. Right he helped me get a better version of it. But he also sent me a quote, I think it was from Jernigan was similar thing where like, I think they were trying to get the public I'm included with, you know, voc rehab, so that that students could not voc rehab or whatever like so that students could get blind students could use them. And it was the same thing of like, you know, this newfangled gizmo is not going to help, you know, Braille is what kids need. So I do that, that's all to say that that makes sense to me that resistance to technology, you know, and it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a sort of conservative stance of like, we understand that what blind people need are is Braille and access to, you know, equal access. And don't don't try to give us any anything else. And you know, and I think, to be fair, like, even though the Opticon sounded like an incredibly useful tool, as is, of course, the Kurzweil Reading Machine and everything that followed from it. There. There is, you know, talking, I talked to Josh Meili, for the book, who's who now works at Amazon, you know, he had this great story about his mentor, Bill, Gary, who, who would, who would basically get a phone call, like once a week from a well, very well meaning like retired sighted engineer, who would say like, oh, you know, what the blind need? It's like the laser cane, right? Or the Yeah, it's like, basically like a sippy cup for blind people like so that they don't spill juice all over themselves. And, you know, and Gary would very patiently be like, Oh, actually, they don't think that that would be helpful to do probably, yeah. Talk to a blind person first, maybe before you spend any more time trying to invent something that blind people don't need. So I think that resistance to like newfangled technology, there's a good reason for it. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 56:26 there is but the willingness to take the Opticon. Look, I think the fastest I ever heard of anybody reading with an optical was like 70 or 80 words a minute, and there are only a few people who did that. Yeah. You know, Candy Lynnville, the daughter of the engineer who invented it, could and Sue Mel Rose, who was someone I knew, was able to and a few people were but what the Opticon did do even if it was slow, yeah, it was it still gave you access to information that you otherwise didn't get access to. And, and I had an optic on for a while. And the point was, you could learn to read and learn printed letters and learn to read them. It wasn't fast. But you could still do it. Yeah. And so it, it did help. But it wasn't going to be the panacea. I think that tele sensory systems wanted it to be you know, and then you talked about Harvey Lauer who also develop and was involved in developing the stereo toner, which was the audience since the audio version of the optic comm where everything was represented audio wise, and, and I spent a lot of time with Harvey Harvey at Heinz a long time ago. But the the fact is, I think the question is valid is listening, and so on literacy is literacy, like Braille. And I think there is a difference there is, are you illiterate, if you can't read Braille, you point out the issues about grammar, the issues about spelling and so on. And I think that there is a valid reason for people learning Braille at the Colorado Center, they would tell you, for senior blind people, you may not learn much Braille, but you can learn enough to be able to take notes and things like that, or, or put labels on your, your soup cans, and so on. So it's again, going to be different for different people. But we are in a society where Braille has been so de emphasized. And that's the fault of the educational system for not urging and insisting that more people be able to use Braille. And that's something that we do have to deal with. So I think there is a literacy problem when people don't learn braille. But I also think that, again, there are a lot of things that Braille would be good for, but using audio makes it go faster. It doesn't mean you shouldn't learn braille, though, right? Yeah,   Andrew Leland ** 58:51 no, it's another I think it's interesting. And it's a related idea, this, this sense that technology, you know, this like, just sort of wave your hands and say the word technology as a sort of panacea, where I think, you know, it's, it's a tragic story where, where people will say, Oh, well, you know, little Johnny has, you know, some vision. So like, he could just use technology, like he doesn't need Braille. And it's fascinating to me, because I never really felt it. And maybe it's because I encountered Braille at a point in my development as a blind person that I really was hungry for it. But, you know, people talk about Braille the way they talked about the white cane, like the white cane, I felt so much shame about using in public, and it's such, it's just so stigmatized, whereas Braille, I just always thought it was kind of cool. But you know, you hear it so much from parents where they it's just like their heartbreak seeing their child reading with their fingers, which is, you know, and so as a result, they're like, why don't I just buy like a gigantic magnifier, that maybe in five years, you're not gonna be able to use anyway, but like, at least you're reading the same type of book that   Michael Hingson ** 59:56 half hour or 45 minutes until you start getting headaches. Exactly. And that, you know, I worked on a proposal once. I was an evaluator for it. We were in a school in Chicago, and one of the teachers talked about Sally who could see and Johnny, who was totally blind, literally, it was Sally and Johnny. And she said, Sally gets to read print, Johnny has to read Braille. Sally couldn't read print very fast. her eyesight wasn't good. Yeah, she got to read print. And Johnny had to read Braille. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that we we see all the time. And it's so unfortunate. So yeah, I, I do understand a lot of the technology resistance. But again, people like Ray helped us vision a little differently. But unfortunately, getting that conversation to other people, outside of the NFB community, like teachers and so on, is so hard because so many people are looking at it from a science point of view and not recognizing it as it should be. The the NFB did a video that did it. Several, they have had a whole series of things regarding Braille. But they interviewed a number of people who had some residual vision, who were never allowed to learn to read Braille. And invariably, these people say how horrible it was that they didn't get to learn to read Braille, they learned it later. And they're, they're reading slower than they really should. But they see the value of it. And it's important that we hopefully work to change some of those conversations. Yeah,   Andrew Leland ** 1:01:33 I mean, it gets back to our earlier in our conversation a

Have you ever heard of Ren'ee Rentmeester? Well, possibly especially if you lived in Florida in the early 2000s or if you searched around YouTube. Ren'ee is the producer and creator of a program called “Cooking Without Looking”. Ren'ee always wanted to have a career in journalism and began by getting her college degree in the subject.   She worked for television stations in Florida until she decided to start her own advertising agency. While interested in journalism Renee also has a strong entrepreneurial streak which was enhanced as she worked on a number of nonprofit boards.   In 2001 she decided to create this unique show called “Cooking Without Looking”. Ren'ee is not blind but felt having a program that would feature blind cooks and chefs was worth exploring. The program aired on a public tv station for a time in Miami. Now you can find it on YouTube and there is also a Cooking Without Looking podcast. Renee is seeking ways to bring the program back to a major streaming service. Don't be surprised if this happens as Renee is clearly unstoppable.     About the Guest:   For the past 22 years, I have advocated for people who are Blind/Visually impaired through the TV show called, “Cooking Without Looking,” the ONLY TV show which features people who are Blind/Visually Impaired. We aired on PBS in South Florida.   Blind people prepare their favorite recipes and speak frankly (including humor) about their lives as People living with Blindness. It's not sad. The feeling is like, “This is my life, and oh, by the way, I'm blind.”   Mr. Fred Schroeder, President of the World Blind Union, says this about our show: “Your work fits well with our belief that blind people need encouragement to live normal lives and the sighted public needs the opportunity to learn that blindness does not render people helpless nor grant them with superhuman gifts. Your show shows blind people doing normal things, and that is a powerful message for the sighted public and for blind people themselves.”   Over the years, I have spoken to thousands of Blind people in various organizations such as the National Federation of the Blind (NFB); the American Council of the Blind(ACB); and the American Federation of the Blind(AFB).   Before that time, I worked at CBS as a Press and Public Relations Manager/Spokesperson; Associate News Producer; and Assignment Editor. I've been nominated for two Emmys...one for a series of Black History Month PSAs about the Miami people who fought in the Civil Rights movement. The other was for the writing of a special on youth gangs, “Youth Violence: Walking The Line.” I've written/published two books of poetry available on Amazon…”Visions From a Dream Called, ‘Life': The Poetry of Meadowville”; and “Visions II: The Poetry of Life.”     Ways to connect with Ren'ee:   www.cookingwithoutlookingtv.wordpress.com   Twitter:   @cookwithoutlook   Facebook:   The Cooking Without Looking TV Show   YouTube channel:   Cooking Without Looking TV Show   Cooking Without Looking Podcast:   Anywhere you get your podcast, and is available on Alexa-enabled devices     About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, Hi, and welcome to another exciting episode of unstoppable mindset. They're all exciting, actually. So I don't know why I said that. But they are and it's fun to talk about whatever comes along. today. Our guest is Ren'ee Rentmeester Ren'ee has an actually a very interesting story to tell, in terms of what she's doing now, what she has done, and so on. And I think it is a fascinating thing that hopefully will fascinate all of you as well. So we are really glad that you're here to listen to it. And Ren'ee, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Good morning or afternoon to you.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 01:58 Well, thank you so much, Michael. And thank you for the honor, I'm truly humbled by you honoring me with the interview. So thank you so much.   Michael Hingson ** 02:08 Well, my pleasure. And you know, as usual, this is really more of a conversation than just a plain old interview. So feel free to treat it that way. It's it's both of us talking to each other. Well, let's start with a little bit about the early Ren'ee you know, before you did what you've been doing lately and so on, so tell us about you growing up and all that and how you got where you are is it were?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 02:31 Well, usually my airplanes perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 02:35 Come fly with me.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 02:38 I was a born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin was a daughter My father is Anthony rent Meester. My mom, Margaret and dad was a worker in a factory, paper factory Procter and Gamble. And so you know, I'm just just was born and raised there. And I always wanted to go into TV. And my family were, you know, farmers and factory workers. So that seemed like, sort of a crazy idea to them. Like, what are you talking about get real and such. But I did it anyway. And I worked myself through college, working about six jobs. The favorite I could tell about is working in a pickle factory working six days a week, 12 hours a day putting pickles in jars or one at a time. I don't know if you remember the I Love Lucy episode where they were working in a factory. It was pretty much like   Michael Hingson ** 03:42 Yeah, well, one at a time. So why one at a time.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 03:48 Because they were spears, the pickle spears and and you had to put them in there because you had to get them standing nicely. next to one another. And in the middle, there would be a half a pickle half a half a cucumber that would go in and then at the end of the whole thing. The machine would cut that middle pickle into more spheres. So it was it was quite a learning experience. And I knew that I wanted to continue with college so I wasn't working in a pickle factory the rest of my life.   Michael Hingson ** 04:26 You didn't want to be in that much of a pickle. Oh, I had to say   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 04:30 it was a doozy of an opportunity.   Michael Hingson ** 04:32 I get it. Yeah, well we've been so it's pretty unique that that that kind of a job. How did all the pickle juice get into the jars? Did they also put pickle juice in or did the pickles just leak   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 04:50 in cotton pickles was a in the machine. I'm trying to visualize it now because honestly I don't remember but I know There was a part of the machine that just poured the pickle juice into it. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 05:04 And then when you filled a jar, what did you do with the jar?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 05:09 Well, it was on a moving line. So you know I'm a conveyor belt would just take it and then someone was at the end of the line, and those people will have to put them in put the jars that are already covered into a box.   Michael Hingson ** 05:28 So did you put pickles in while the jars were moving? Or? Oh, yeah. So you had to work at a at a decent speed and they didn't let you slow down.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 05:40 And they didn't let me talk, which earned me rubber gloves over the head several times from little Katie, the four person   Michael Hingson ** 05:51 which is for talking.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 05:52 That's right for talking, you know, so um, yeah, it was a problem. My head I talked too much.   Michael Hingson ** 05:59 Well, so that was one of your unique jobs in college. What were you majoring in?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 06:05 Journalism? I have a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire.   Michael Hingson ** 06:12 So you did pickles among other things? Yes. You go ahead. Oh, no, no,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 06:20 and and worked in a disco bar? I thought I just throw that out there. So pretty much you can you can tell I was also a bouncer at that disco bar.   Michael Hingson ** 06:31 Wow. And did you throw pickles at people? Or why you? No, no, I hear you that that you had a variety of different kinds of jobs. You just were pretty flexible in that regard? Huh? Yes. Well, you know   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 06:45 what, I had the goal, I had the goal of working myself through college. And that was the only way I was gonna get through. And actually the I was bartending at the bar. But then they found that I could be useful as a as a bouncer as well, because guys didn't want to look nasty when I walked up to them on was really nice and said, Okay, you have to go now, you know, they couldn't get into a barber all with me and look bad in front of the girlfriend. So   Michael Hingson ** 07:20 that's pretty cool. What did your parents think of all these jobs?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 07:24 Well, a mom would after I got home from the pickle factory. Mom would make me take my most of my clothes off in the garage, and she gave me a set of clothes because I smelled so bad. Imagine vinegar times 1000. That's what I smell like. And then sometimes I would I had a marketing job in, in a mall, and I also worked at a TV station as a nighttime receptionist.   Michael Hingson ** 07:58 Okay. Well, so you again, you did a lot of different things. And that's pretty unique. But it certainly had to broaden your horizons and a lot of different ways that I can appreciate that. But you graduated then and had your degree in journalism, and what did you do?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 08:17 Um, hey, I moved to move to Tampa first. And I just looked for any kind of job I could get to keep myself going. And one of them was a receptionist at an employment agency. And so as people would come in to the employment agency, I would ask them if they knew anyone in TV because it's, it's, you know, it's always who you know, and all that sort of thing. And I talked to this one gentleman, and he told me all his sister worked at a TV station, which was amazing. And I'm so sure he gave me someone to contact by this time. I was in Miami. I was only in Tampa for a year. I sold magazines in Tampa, and then I moved to Miami. And that's when I became the receptionist. And they he led me to assist her who led me to a job at an independent station in Miami. I wrote on the back of a motorcycle I didn't have a car or in the back of a motorcycle to get there and it rained it poured. It was my summer. It's   Michael Hingson ** 09:35 Miami. Yeah. What made you move to Florida from Wisconsin?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 09:40 My boyfriend boy who I eventually married. Oh, good. Okay. Now here are the usual the usual suspect.   Michael Hingson ** 09:50 Well, so you moved down there and so you got a job. Then through your sister and her contact   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 10:00 The gentleman's sister Yeah, I don't have a system to gentleman sister. Yeah, through her and I got to know who she was. And she had been in Miami for a long time. And my boss was, was pretty amazing. And I was a writer there as a writer at the station.   Michael Hingson ** 10:20 So what kinds of things did you write for? What did you write?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 10:24 Um, I started out just writing voiceovers, you know, little voiceovers I used to have between shows, I   Michael Hingson ** 10:30 don't know shows. Yeah. Well, not commercials, not the commercials, but just   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 10:35 the little voiceovers, like telling you like you had an acute C and about the show that was coming up. Like Benson falls down the stairs. You know, whatever. And and so it was the little things like that.   Michael Hingson ** 10:52 And then again, the game say something like, can you believe that that Benson guy fell down those stairs? Like Benson we liked Benson. That was a fun show.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 11:03 BENSON Yeah. I don't know how I just started that. It just popped into my head.   Michael Hingson ** 11:08 Well, so you wrote, and then what   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 11:15 we see there, your independent station. I was there for 13 years, and it turned into CBS. And I just said one place. And so I became that an associate producer and news and an assignment editor and news. And that was pretty cool. Because as associate producer, you write the news stories, I was just gonna ask. Yeah, you write the news stories. And I remember one of my most memorable news stories that I wrote was about a little boy, he was three years old, and he needed a liver. And in Florida, there's a rule against giving livers to certain people of certain ages, like, if you're under certain age, and over a certain age, while I was on the news desk that day, and the mayor or the governor was doing one of those wonderful luncheons that they do. And I called the father of this little boy. And I said, Listen, I'm going to send my photographer over to you get over there. And my photographer is going to shoot you and the governor asking to get your son a liver. And it happened. I could have lost my job, but it happened.   Michael Hingson ** 12:36 So you created the news.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 12:39 Yes. Well, it helped because three days later, the little boy had a liver. So the Governor made it happen.   Michael Hingson ** 12:51 Well, that's cool. And then you took the the time and the interest in doing that. Because that certainly had to be, as you said, a little bit of a challenge and you could have lost your job over it.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 13:03 Right. But as your title is unstoppable mindset. I don't ever let any of that train stop me like, what's more important my job or little boy's life?   Michael Hingson ** 13:15 Yeah. So did anybody chastise you for it? Or because of that or not? Okay. They Oh,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 13:23 yeah. Yeah. turned out great. I don't even know if a lot of people knew that my cameraman and I did that. I mean, that we set it up, sort of, because, you know, no one ever said anything about it afterwards. So, but it worked for a while. And then the little boy died a couple months later, because his buddy Jack did it. But at least he has a chance.   Michael Hingson ** 13:48 Yeah. What year was that?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 13:51 Ah, let's see. It was probably late 80s, early 90s.   Michael Hingson ** 14:00 Okay. So how long did you work at writing the news and being an associate producer and so on.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 14:09 I was I was there for that in a news department for one year. And then they created a job for me. I was a press and public relations manager. And that went upstairs because the news was downstairs and I went upstairs. And so I was I suppose, spokesperson for the station. And I also produced the PSAs. So that was pretty cool. And in the meantime, I started on a whole bunch of boards because I dealt with a lot of nonprofits. So that's, that's what I did there. And eventually, you know, 13 years later and you're like, Well, what else can I do? And I started my own advertising and PR company. I left the station started my own advertising PR company. And then I thought of something because then with so many different so many different nonprofits, like six of them at once I was on the board. I wanted something for myself, and I wanted something that was a legacy for my family. So I wanted to make a purpose have a purpose.   Michael Hingson ** 15:23 Before we get there, I'm just curious. So you were there until after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, because you were there? 13 years is that right?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 15:33 Was I? Um, no. Okay. Because we're already to that. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:41 you're gone by then. Because I was going to ask what, what you did or what was it like at the station and so on? Around September 11. But you were gone by then.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 15:51 Yeah, I was gone by then. I I remember that day, I remember where I was, I remember. I had a friend in New York, and I called her to see if she was okay. And I just watched her the coverage and and I kept my daughter home that day, my daughter was nine. And I kept her home from school. Because, you know, you didn't know what was gonna happen?   Michael Hingson ** 16:19 Yeah. Yeah, there was no way to know. No. Well, you eventually started as you're saying something that became very personal to you a project that you've been doing for quite a while, and in of itself is an interesting story. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 16:39 Okay, um, I created cooking without looking at the first TV show that features people who are blind and visually impaired,   Michael Hingson ** 16:47 which we really call low vision today and appropriately. So. Because when you talk about visually impaired, where we should be compared to people who have eyesight, just like, if you said hearing impaired to a person who was partially deaf, they probably Dec you because hearing impaired is as they recognize a way of comparing to people who can hear rather than saying deaf and hard of hearing, right. So it's learning continuum. And so the whole concept of visually impaired is really unfortunate, for two reasons. One, visually, we don't look different, just because we're blind or partially, why do we deal with it in terms of impaired saying, well, you're impaired if you can't see fully? And so we're learning to say, as deaf people already have blind or low vision, but anyway. Alrighty. So you want it you started this this show?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 17:47 Right? Right. Because TV was what I did, that was my tool. And if you want to change the way people look at people who are blind or, or, you know, low vision, you will have to show people, you know, and it's also a way to bridge between the sighted community, the low vision community, the blind community, just just to show what is done because we still have an old mindset. So I did my research, and I went on some blind listservs. And learned about blindness from a lot of people. I did not know a blind person, I do not have a relative who was a blind person. It was just something I saw that needed to be done.   Michael Hingson ** 18:42 And you of course, are not blind. No, I am not. So you did a lot of research, which is always a great thing to do, and a great way to start. So this When did all this start?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 18:57 This started in 2001. Ironically, I'm talking to you and 2001. I was in my first meeting about the show, as the twin towers are being hit. That's what happened. And we actually took a break from the meeting and saw as the towers were being hit. Yeah. So your your story is much more compelling. But But I remember like, How can this happen? How, you know, like, we become desensitized to things like this, and it almost seemed like we were watching a movie. It didn't make any sense.   Michael Hingson ** 19:46 Yeah, it was very surreal to people because who would have thought somebody would fly our planes deliberately fly airplanes into the World Trade Center yet? That's the end of the Pentagon. And of course Shanksville, Pennsylvania, but that's what happened.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 20:04 Yep, exactly. So.   Michael Hingson ** 20:06 So what was the first meeting about? Was it trying to sell it to a station or plan or program? What was the meeting? Like? What was it?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 20:14 It was at Florida International University, the School of Hospitality, because that's where I met a man who was a blind chef. And I met him. And then he was a professor there. And he introduced me to all the people he worked with. And we were looking for anything like how can we work together? Sponsorships, whatever. Um, and that's, that's what we did. That's what we did it first. So So,   Michael Hingson ** 20:48 so when did the show actually start airing or when did you start producing it,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 20:56 we started producing an airing it. We started producing it in September of 2005. And after that, it went on in September. And we had a live studio audience at PBS station in West Palm Beach. And we were on like a couple of seasons. And then after that, we hit the recession at 2009.   Michael Hingson ** 21:31 How's my typical like three and a half years to actually bring the show to fruition? Since you had your first meeting in 2001. And it took until 2005, for the show to actually come on,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 21:44 there are so many moving parts. First, I found a man who I thought we should use as a host right. And then I had to start going out and selling the program. Because even my I was on the Board of Governors for the National Academy, TV Arts and Sciences. And even they couldn't understand having a show with blind people, because they thought blind people only only are taught, and that a lot of times I still find that out, but they couldn't understand it. So it was a lot of selling them apart just to sell the idea. Then I went to talk to the TV station. And then we had to find a sponsor, because we actually had to pay to get it produced on there. And so I produced it. And it was just a lot of explaining to people and making people understand and once they understood, you know, everybody really loved it and moved on from there.   Michael Hingson ** 22:58 So you obviously had a lot to go through at the same time you had your own advertising agency, you said right,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 23:07 right, exactly. So a lot of times whatever costs, I had to pick it up from my advertising company. And because I was you know, like, there were like three of us there. And PR, I do did a lot of PR for people. And I always tried to look at the positive side of it, trying to help people with my PR, you can have negative PR or positive PR. And I always I always used it for the positive and as a matter of fact, even just helping people with it.   Michael Hingson ** 23:42 Do you believe the in the comment, there's no such thing really as bad PR that even bad PR is really good PR?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 23:53 Well, I to a point, I won't say bad and good. Effective PR, which means that people at least know about you. And in some ways, because a lot of times they've done studies that people don't realize how they know about you or how they heard your name, but they just know you know, they know your name. And so So yeah, I just I believe that. Just getting your name out there. Sometimes people don't know how but they know of you.   Michael Hingson ** 24:36 And so there's no qualitative factor there. They just know who you are.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 24:42 Right. Exactly. Exactly. So then we continually went to many food festivals and people were just amazed we were at Macy's. We went to the Boca Raton wine and food festival. We do presentations with our hosts, one of which was time Although a blind on one was he has, he isn't nearly blind, nearly total and the other man who, who was not all the way blind at all, but we just we just had a lot of fun going together driving down the road hitting these festivals and showing people what it was like.   Michael Hingson ** 25:27 So was this before the show actually started airing or while the show   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 25:32 afterwards because when we hit 2009, we, most people didn't have any money to sponsor anymore because of the recession. So we just we had to find other ways to get the word out. And so that's what we did, we went on the road or went to the festivals and showed people, we pretty much closed down Macy's because the whole store when they announced that we were going to be there, everyone wanted to see people who were blind, you know, cook and give tips. And, and that's the cool part about our show because it actually is a bridge between, you know, the sighted and non sighted communities. And and so we can understand one another, we don't deal in stereotypes or, you know, something from the 1950s. We know what we can do, and we can do anything we want because we have an unstoppable mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 26:32 So is the show still airing at that time? Or were you just doing the festivals?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 26:37 No, the shows weren't airing but I had to keep, I had to keep it going. There was no way I was going to stop it. Because I had a purpose. And I felt like I had a commitment because so many people were backing it at least you know, supportive, even least just in their words. I had to keep it going. So I did we kept it going through. I started a podcast in 2018. Where we talk to people, our motto is changing the way we see blindness everyone there is either blind or low vision. And we also during the pandemic, we started doing it on zoom as a TV show, which we still do now. And we reached 61 countries.   Michael Hingson ** 27:33 Tell me if you want a little bit about maybe some of the unique recipes or some of the interesting experiences on the show. Love to hear some stories.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 27:44 Okay. Well, you know, um, we had South African, it was a, it was a sort of organization like the lighthouse. And its Cape Town society for the blind, and we had them on there and they made South African food, which was like pretty cool. And then we had one gentleman when we were in Palm Beach, it was funny. We had a live studio audience and he was an elderly gentleman and he was he was nice man a little crusty. And he was showing us how to make it was like a poor it was called poor man's I forgot what it was. Anyway, he was put here to test the noodles, he actually put his hand in the boiling water. And this was the way he did it. Obviously I cut it out for the TV crowd. But when I was there, the people were yelling at me stick his hands on the floor. It's like he's 80 years old, you know, he knows this is how he does it but I won't put it in I'll you know I'll edit it out because I don't want little kids watching that. But um, let's see what other types of stories we we've had just like a lot of fun. We went to a school in Minnesota and we taught blind kids how to cook and we did our own little cooking without looking with them. And that was a lot of fun. We had a special script for them you know, it was just it's just every everything is full of stories. We also have podcasts where we speak to individuals who are blind visually impaired, we they talk about their life as a person who's blind or low vision sorry, caught myself and and and then at The end they present a recipe and all of our recipes that we present is the cooking without looking recipes of the day are submitted to us by blind or low vision people, and they've actually made them themselves. So we know that you know that they're good recipes. We don't have any sighted people present them. We just, you know, we just have a lot of fun together, we went to a bar, a year and a half ago, we went to an NFB convention, the Florida NFB and was a net, Alan and I in that now in our, our hosts, and we just had a great time. It's like we're family, we've been together now the 22 years, a full 22 years. So we just get a lot of laughs that way too, because we each have our own personality. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 30:59 well, and that's, that's, that's what really makes a long running operation work when you have a family and people are able to work together and so on. So what happened at the NFB of Florida convention? What did you guys do?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 31:16 Well, what we did was we put people on Facebook Live, and we had them tell their story. And then we took pictures with them, it's sort of like we were like, famous, quote, unquote. And we just, we just had a good time, we had people talk about themselves, and what they were doing at the NFB convention. And out of that, we got a sponsorship out of the Florida Division of Blind Services, and they appeared on one of our shows. So that was, that was a good time. It's nice to learn. I mean, every single person has a story that we can learn from, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, where you are. Everyone has a story that we can all learn from. And that's it. That's what makes us unstoppable. You know, you know, my computer went down and and it was like, Okay, well, what's going on here? You know, what, what's happening with the universe, and my computer went down, because I couldn't do any of the shows or the podcasts. And those are really my fun. That's, that's the fun in my life. I don't bend to Disney World plenty of times.   Michael Hingson ** 32:37 There's a lot of that, then on cruises,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 32:38 Ben to other countries. But this is my fun, because I feel like I'm doing something that matters.   Michael Hingson ** 32:47 So you, I remember in looking at your biography, you mentioned Fred Schroeder, who is the past president of the World Blind Union, tell me about meeting him and a little about that.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 32:59 Well, that was wonderful. I actually met him when he was president of the NFB. And we spoke there. And when I met him, I was I was just, you know, he seemed like a really great person. But when he said all the nice things about us, you know, how he loved the show, I was honored, because here's a man who has been all over the place and who is blind, and told me that, you know, what we were doing helped. And honestly, when when you start something that has never existed, you're sort of sitting there all by yourself, going, you know, what, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? And, and he made me feel like, we were doing something that mattered?   Michael Hingson ** 33:59 Well, today, is the show airing on any TV stations or is it?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 34:07 Well, that's what we're working on. We wanted to get the TV stations, we want to stream it. So been working on getting it either Netflix or the Food Network or, you know, something like that. I've been in contact with Rachael rays, PR people. And Stevie Wonder is PR person. She's very nice. So you know what, we're starting the rebirth. Round two, but we keep it going on Zoom. And with Zoom, we can reach people around the world, which is what we've been going.   Michael Hingson ** 34:47 Yeah. Which absolutely makes sense. Well, how are you being received by Rachael Ray is people Stevie Wonder and so on, and kind of what have you had to do to keep them interested and so on.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 35:02 Well, you know, it's really just keeping on reminding people that we're there. Stevie Wonder's person, her PR, the PR person, you know, is Shelley. And she was very, very nice. And so I just keep up, you know, reminding her, Rachael Ray now has left her show, but she's starting something new. So I emailed them, which is very recent, and they're probably on vacation right now. And and people, you know, are actually very receptive. Well, we'll see what happens. But just like before, you just have to keep on knocking on the doors chiseling something out, you know, just keeping on trying. That's, that's all you can do.   Michael Hingson ** 35:47 Have you looked at any of the other Food Network people in the the other celebrity types and gotten any, anywhere with any of them? Or have you tried?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 35:56 No, I really haven't. Because I'm, I like the philosophy of Rachael Ray, which is similar to what we do. It's you don't have to be a fancy chef or whatever. It's the home cooking. We've all learned from our parents, grandparents or whatever, how to cook, and survive and have a good time. And, and I liked the way she does it. So our philosophies are similar. In the past, the first, the first host that we had did reach out to one of the people, I don't like the idea of, of, you know, racing or doing things fast and cooking in the kitchen or having a contest and you know, getting angry at one another. I don't like that. I you know, I like just showing people as they are. Because I think that's how we see ourselves. We're not all we're not all celebrities, we're just people who are trying to get by and do the best we can.   Michael Hingson ** 37:07 I would say I think there are places for some kinds of competitions, but I hear what you're saying. I think a lot of the angry, sharp edge things are really a problem. And they don't, they don't really serve a useful purpose. And I've enjoyed a lot of the Food Network. But I like things that are really more fun than yeah, getting angry.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 37:35 Right, right. And I and you can have so much fun in the kitchen. Think of it like, a lot of times, that's the way we get to know our grandparents are our parents is cooking with them in the kitchen. You know, like, I cooked with my daughter, my daughter cooked with me from the time she was little. And honestly, I think she's a better cook than me. She's more of a detail person where I'm like, You know what, this is my art. I'm just gonna throw this in. This sounds like it's gonna be good. Try this. Try that. So I'm a little more experimental. But that's the way you get to know your family, in a lot of instances. So I like that part.   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 Oh, I still think it would be fun to somehow involve Bobby Flay because he's such a fun guy. And yeah, he's an incredibly fun guy. He's an incredibly sophisticated guy. He's got an incredible grasp on food preparation, but I bet he would be a fun guy to somehow be involved with   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 38:37 that, well, you know what, firm your lips to God's ears. I'll give that a try. And you know, I'm living in a place of Ray Charles birthplace I live in Albany, Georgia. And, and so I was thinking about reaching out to their foundation to see how we could work together to get something done as well. There's a beautiful monument to Ray Charles is in the Ray Charles Plaza on the river in Albany. And it turns around, it's blueish. And it turns around, and it plays all of his songs in his voice. And is is is just really beautiful and inspiring, and, and a lot of funny things, a lot of the songs my mom used to sing.   Michael Hingson ** 39:28 Well, yeah, I think any place like that where you can get some funding would certainly be a valuable thing. But I, I think that an innovative visionary kind of guy, like a Bobby Flay might really take an interest in something like this, because it's unique and it's because it's different. And since that's just a thought, you know?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 39:54 That's good. It's a seed I'll work on seeing how I can reach Bobby flaying. No problem.   Michael Hingson ** 40:02 So, how has the show changed over the years? Like, from the pandemic, to now and so on? Is it really still basically the same format? How has it evolved overall?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 40:16 Well, um, it really evolved from the way we were doing it before. You know, during the pandemic, we started off with people from the United States, and it evolved into going to like seven countries, and having people from all around the world actually watch us. And so, as I wrote in the letter to, I contacted the CEO, both CEOs on ones left now of Netflix, like, Okay, we've planted the seeds all over the world for you. And, and there's an audience all over the world. And Netflix is, is one of the most watched shows by people who are blind, most watched streaming services of people who are blind, and all over the world. So they were, I had heard that that particular CEO was a very nice man. And I've always found a lot of people in TV are really nice, not, not the way we look at them. And TV shows they're actually like, real human.   Michael Hingson ** 41:28 So have you had a response from Netflix yet? What was that? Have you had a response from Netflix yet?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 41:36 Um, no, no, we haven't. His name was Ted Saran dose, and he's the CEO over there. And so that's where I sent it. You know, we'll do Bobby Flay. But we're, it's just, you know, an ongoing process of planting seeds, planting seeds. To get it this far, has been pretty amazing. Because, you know, I'm sort of like the Wright brothers with the first airplane, no one can really visualize that, like, What the heck are you doing? And, and, and now we've gotten to a point where we can launch it in a bigger platform.   Michael Hingson ** 42:20 Have you had guests on the show from other countries? Or just the Yeah,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 42:25 yeah. We have we've we've had seven countries. They're all blind people from other countries. It was, like I said, South Africa, Guyana.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 42:43 Barbados, Barbadoes. Let's see where else where else where else trying to think of the ones off the top of my head. But those are just some of them. But   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 42:57 everyone can go see them. They're all on our cooking without looking YouTube channel right now. And that's what we're focusing on just getting the things done and and showing people but yeah, we've had lots of different Oh, Jamaica, we had to make it too. So that was pretty cool. So yeah, we've had all these countries, that's really the biggest change that we've had is, is going and highlighting people from other countries, other people who are blind, cooking their native recipes in other countries.   Michael Hingson ** 43:35 How many shows have you produced so far?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 43:40 Wow. That's a good one. I think we were up to like 90 something. I'm not a numbers person. You know, I'm a writer. So um, but I'm pretty close to around 90 And then the podcasts as well. We just, you know, I've got another podcast to do tomorrow with a lady. So she's making peanut butter cookies. Yeah, only three ingredients. Peanut butter cookie. So she's going to talk about her life, and Tara coin. So that's what we do. So if you ever want to see or go to them, and enjoy them cooking without looking TV show on YouTube.   Michael Hingson ** 44:37 So how often do you produce a new show?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 44:42 Um, once a once a month, and we're going to start up again since my computer and then the podcasts are like, several times a month like whoever comes out and wants to do a podcast. We produce their podcast several times. The month.   Michael Hingson ** 45:02 So, you've, you've had a number of interesting people on needless to say, What's your favorite show so far?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 45:10 Oh my, well, that's hard. That's like asking her mother, a mother what her favorite child is, which one is your favorite child? It all depends on who was on there. We had a cute one. For Valentine's Day once, we had two blind couples on there. And we had a lot of fun with that. Um, that was, that was a cute one. And then I really liked the one from South Africa. That was, I was cool. Maybe it's like a little selfish because I love food from other countries. You can always see the similarities of of your own of the countries of your own. One of my favorite podcasts, we had a couple who was blind, and I actually they came to Miami and I walked him around Miami and the beaches and everything. And Mike Gravatt and his wife, Gianna, they're there just a hoot to talk to. Let's see what else they those are probably my favorites, that I can pop off the top of my head. But it's, it's nice to see that people get along and just enjoy themselves. And the blindness is really just a secondary factor. It's it's living and having fun and enjoying your life.   Michael Hingson ** 46:40 So when you do the shows, like on Zoom, and so on, you people are actually cooking during the shows. Oh, yeah,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 46:47 yeah, we have a script, everything.   Michael Hingson ** 46:50 So how does all that work in terms of the fact that typically, if you've got to have a camera and everything so people can see it? How, how easy is it to set all that up? I mean, from your side, it's great. But if the other end where the people are actually doing the, the cooking and so on, how does that work? Oh,   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 47:08 it actually works really great. Um, I've only had edit like one or two of them just a tiny bit, that people put their cameras up either the cameras or their computers, and they are able to cook and we practice first, we have a rehearsal a couple of days before. And we look to see where their cameras set up a lot of times, we you know, they have a family member or something who sets the camera for them in a certain area. It's, and it goes really, really well because we we just do it ahead of time we show them you know, we take a look at see how their camera is set up or whether they're using their computer, and whatever works for them. But we've had lots of success that way. Not a big deal. People are always excited to be on the show the tips. We had one young man mica, he made like he has it down the perfect chicken breast because that's one of those things that can be really really difficult. And sort of dry, you can wear him as a shoe. And he he had a doubt and that became like, pretty popular. And he's a young man and he just took us through it. He was like, Okay, you do this, you do this, you do this. I'm very, very attentive, lots of attention to detail.   Michael Hingson ** 48:43 When people are cooking, there's, there's, there's the actual cooking part. And there's the preparation part. So do people move their cameras around? Or do you just have them in one spot? How does all that work?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 48:56 No, um, it depends. It really depends on the recipe. We have one lady who has a special syrup, and she was making some food, very special syrup. Oftentimes, if there's like a lot of cutting or preparation or whatever, we have them prep their food ahead of time. And then maybe just for example, if you need a cup of carrots, chopped carrots, they chop their carrots ahead of time, just like any other TV show, they chop their carrots ahead of time, and then show us just one. But there's there's not a lot of moving around. Most of them don't move around, we haven't worked out so like depending on the recipe, we tell them how to position your camera, how to position your computer, and, you know, look this way to your right to your love, you know. So, um, it actually hasn't been harder. This is probably the first time I'm thinking about it when you ask me this, Michael.   Michael Hingson ** 49:57 The reason I ask is I'm just thinking Have me. One of my favorite recipes is a recipe that I will do on the grill outside. But the preparation is inside. It's a chicken recipe. It's called Chicken Diavolo. It's actually a recipe my wife got from food and wine. And it's really our favorite recipe uses chicken thighs. And the marinate that you put the chicken thighs in is wonderful.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 50:26 Sounds good. And it's just, Michael.   Michael Hingson ** 50:29 And it's, it's, it's got a, it's, it's, well, it uses a fair amount of oil, but they're not really oily by the time you're done. But it's a wonderful recipe to do. But just the preparation or doing it and then putting it on the grill is in two different locations. And that's what really prompted me to ask the question, when I'm sure that we could figure out it would be fun to to do it. It's been a while since I've done chicken D. But   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 50:55 I would love to have you on that one that will be great. Because we don't have anything like that, I would have to see you do part of it, like part of it would be done ahead of time. Because that's really like a lot of TV shows the cooking, a lot of things are done partially ahead of time. And then do you have like some sort of a table alongside of you or?   Michael Hingson ** 51:22 Well, when I do the grilling, everything else is done. And then I take it out and there's there's a table on the grill. But it wouldn't be fun to to think about doing it. The preparation is really creating the marinade. Because then the chicken thighs go into the marinate and then they go on to the grill. So it would be it would be something to explore. And yeah, we'd love the idea would the idea would be that you create marinate, put the chicken in it, then let them marinate a while. And so that could be done inside and then just move the camera and everything outside. It might be fun to think about.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 52:00 Well, you could you could just you could have, are there like lots of ingredients for the marinade.   Michael Hingson ** 52:08 Not too many.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 52:10 But take those ingredients outside. You can have the chicken in the marinade already done, right?   Michael Hingson ** 52:16 Yeah, you can just take the ingredients outside that would go into the marinate and, and create a little bit of it. Yeah, that's another way to do it. Which also means when you do that, you get a second batch, which is also good. So that's fine.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 52:29 Right? You can never have too much grilled chicken. That's fine. No.   Michael Hingson ** 52:33 And and if unlike anything else, if done, right? They come out pretty moist. You don't want to overcook them. It is chicken thighs so that the marinate does get absorbed a lot better into the thighs than it would into like chicken breasts and so on, which is why thighs are used. But it's a it's a great recipe.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 52:52 Oh, that sounds good. Well, what's in it?   Michael Hingson ** 52:55 There's rosemary, there is oil. I'm trying to remember some of the the other spices are. Well, there's peppermint   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 53:02 rosemary.   Michael Hingson ** 53:03 Yeah, there's pepper. And I have to go back and find the recipe. It's been a while. My wife was ill last year and passed away in November. So frankly, I haven't made it for a while. So I'm going to have to do that. I've been lazy, but that's okay.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 53:19 Well give you a reason to make it. I'm sorry to hear about your wife, Michael.   Michael Hingson ** 53:23 Well, it's okay. We, we we continue to move forward. And and she's around watching. So it's okay. So I will do it right. Otherwise, I'll be in trouble. So it's no problem. Well, so what are your future plans for the show? You are? I know you said you're restarting it and so on. So kind of what are the plans? What do you expect to see happen?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 53:46 Well, I would like to get some sponsors. I would like to go to more events, the season in California, I'd like to go there, you know, bring my troops. So I'd like to be more on the ground with people. And I would like to find a resting place for us on a streaming service.   Michael Hingson ** 54:13 Well, I still think of Bobby Flay and Food Network as far as a place to go. I don't know Bobby, and then and all that, but I've watched him and just he's clearly an innovative visionary guy. And I would think if anybody would be intrigued it would be would be He. So something to think about.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 54:34 Well, I don't think I just do so um, this this week, I'll get a note off the bobby off the research how to get a hold of him. And um, you know, Rachael Ray knows him and the thing with her is Rachel has a her mother has macular degeneration, so I thought there will be a special in with her as well. Have you? Go ahead? No, no go up.   Michael Hingson ** 55:03 Have you ever had the opportunity to interview Christine? Ha, who won the Mastership?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 55:10 I did. And she's on our, our Facebook. I'm sorry, our Facebook, our YouTube channel. She's on her podcast. Oh, cool. Yeah. What did you want to know about Christine?   Michael Hingson ** 55:24 Well, no, I was just wondering if you had I mean, I've met Christine. But again, that might be a way to, to get some context, but I just was curious if you'd met her and had her on because she'd be a natural, that would be a good person to be on the show.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 55:41 Yeah, she, she wanted to be on the podcast. So she was on the podcast, it's quite interesting with her. She, they thought she had they, they thought she had multiple sclerosis at first. And then it went into blindness. And, you know, some of the medications she was taking, wasn't working, weren't working. And but, um, you can always, as I said, go to our YouTube channel. And she's there   Michael Hingson ** 56:10 to tell us if people want to watch the show exactly. Where do they go? Do you have a web address that you can give? Or do you have a website they can go to and we start from   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 56:19 the website, the main place they can go is a Cooking Without Looking YouTube channel, go to YouTube, and then type in cooking without looking. We have a website, which is w w w . cooking without looking TV,  .wordpress.com. And if that's a lot for you to remember what it is for me. You can always just Google cooking without looking TV show on or bring it to our, to our web.   Michael Hingson ** 56:52 Great. Well, and I assume that if anyone wants to reach out to you, they can go to your website and and make contact with you there.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 57:01 Yes, or, you know, we also have a Facebook page and cooking with the cooking without looking TV show Facebook page, and I can email me there.   Michael Hingson ** 57:13 And what is it called?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 57:15 What was that?   Michael Hingson ** 57:16 What is the Facebook page called? Specifically?   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 57:18 The cooking without looking TV show. Okay, cool.   Michael Hingson ** 57:23 Well, I want to thank you for being on unstoppable mindset today. This has been fun. We've done some good cooking talk here. And a body is now getting hungry.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 57:36 Well, Michael, thank you. I'm so grateful for you to invite me over and and talk to you. I'm really humbled by you asking me so thank you so much.   Michael Hingson ** 57:46 Well, it's been an honor. And I really appreciate it. And I hope you listening out there enjoyed this as well go check out cooking without looking in all sorts of places from YouTube, to Facebook and everywhere in between, and go to the website. Reach out to Ren'ee. And we, we will I'm sure be hearing more from her as the show progresses. And hopefully we've given her and you some things to think about. Blindness isn't the problem. It's our attitude, that is really the issue that we have to address. So really appreciate Ren'ee again, you being here. And again, for all of you listening, we'd love to get your feedback and your comments. We would appreciate you giving us a five star rating wherever you're listening to our podcast. And if you'd like to reach out to me feel free to do so at Michaelhi at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com. Or go to our website. www dot Michael hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast. And we'd love to have you rate us there and listen to all of the podcasts that are there. You can binge listen and spend a whole lot of time at it now. So we what we really appreciate you listening to us and all the wonderful comments that you've gotten. And again, Ren'ee, one last time, thank you very much for being here with us today.   Ren'ee Rentmeester ** 59:14 Thank you, Michael. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 59:21 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Every day we read and talk about Diversity. We hear how our population is diverse and how we must work to understand and accept our diversity. As we discuss our diverse population, we consistently leave out persons with disabilities. We talk about different racial and ethnic groups, people with a variety of different sexual orientations and we discuss the need for equality of women. However, persons with disabilities are left out of the conversation. In this podcast, Mike Hingson, a thought leader on the inclusion of people with disabilities, takes up the topic of inclusion. You will discover just how often the rights of persons with disabilities are subverted throughout society. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit: https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessibe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast we're inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:19 Welcome to Episode Two of unstoppable mindset. Thanks for joining us. I hope that you were able to listen to last week's episode. And if you weren't, please go to www.michaelhingson.com/podcast where you can listen to that episode as well as just signing up for information about any of the podcast shows that we will be providing and all things podcast for unstoppable mindset. Today we're going to talk about the concept of moving from diversity to inclusion. So why do I talk about that? Why do I bring that particular title into it? Well, it is the title of a speech that I gave in 2019. And you will be hearing that speech in just a few moments. But if you think back to last year's presidential campaigns, if you look at the news today, and the discussions about various groups who are being disenfranchised, in one way or another, you hear about all this diversity in all these diverse groups, but you don't hear about disabilities, we who are blind, who happened to be in wheelchairs, who happened to have any other so called disability are not generally included in those topics of discussion. And there's no reason for that, except people still fear disability. I don't like the term disability By the way, but I haven't come up with something better, differently abled, and other kinds of things like that are just hiding the reality. And I'm not differently abled, I'm just as able in the same way as everyone else. I may not do tasks the same way. But I'm not differently abled, I have what society tends to call a disability. And until someone comes up with a term that doesn't strike hearts, or I shouldn't say doesn't strike fear into the hearts of people, then I'm going to accept and use the term disability. And I'm going to use that term to try to get the fear out of being stricken into the hearts of people. The reality is, just because I happen to be different in the way that I have some sort of so called disability, that doesn't really matter. I still can do the same things that most people do. I don't do them the same way. But we don't talk about that we're afraid of it. Michael Hingson 03:49 Our president, our Vice President, don't talk about disabilities regularly. We see so much of a discussion about other kinds of minority groups. But we're not included. And we should change that. I was at a conference this week where we talked about accessibility and disability. So it was all about dealing with the whole concept of accessibility, about websites about universal design, about how artificial intelligence is helping to create better access, so many different topics, all about disabilities. And no one was afraid to talk about it. They're one of the speakers was actually from the administration. And and he talked a little bit about the fact that we need to have more of a conversation about disabilities and everything that we do. And when it came time for questions and answers, I asked him what the administration was going to do about that, and how the administration was going to step up the level of conversation. Well, the answer really was kind of innocuous, and he didn't really Make any commitments as to how the administration would be able to do it. And that's so very frustrating because my response to that would be, why isn't President Biden or vice president Harris or anyone else, just including disabilities in the conversations, when they talk about some of the different disenfranchised groups, we hear a lot about what's happening with race, we hear about LG, bt Q, and so on, but we don't hear about disabilities, why it's easy to include us in the conversation. It's easy to raise the level of awareness or at least start to raise the level of awareness by putting us in the conversations and including us regularly, Then, and only then, when we start to see some people like our president and vice president, Attorney General and others, normally, including us in the conversation, then and only then are we going to really see a change in how we're included. Well, enough about that. Let me let you listen to the speech and then we'll come back and again, the title of the speech, as you will hear is moving from diversity to inclusion. MC 06:16 Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming today. We do have a little housekeeping to do first, I know they're not here, but I would like to apologize to the other presenters during this hour for having to be pitted up against our speaker today. I would like to introduce to you a scholar, comedian, a gentleman. And I don't have all the facts, but I hear he's blind. When are you introducing Michael Hingson? Michael Hingson 06:52 Well, with all those things, he said, I was wondering when he was going to introduce me and said but Okay, so I want to welcome you to our class on quantum mechanics this afternoon. Today we are going to discuss the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and its impact on the relative behavior of cats in the 21st century. I'm really honored that all of you came and we'll try to make this interesting for you. I want to start with a video. Some of you may have seen this before. But let's start with it. And then we will get into our discussion. And it will be a discussion of moving from diversity to inclusion. So here's a video for you to watch. Video Narrator 07:36 There's trouble brewing at smart world coffee in Morristown, New Jersey. These two women are trying to apply for a job opening in the kitchen. Coffee Shop Owner 07:46 Are you here for coffee, or Applicant #1 07:48 no, Job application? Video Narrator 07:50 Only to find out it's not open to everyone. Coffee Shop Owner 07:54 I noticed you were signing. Applicant #1 07:55 Yeah. That's right. We're deaf. Video Narrator 07:59 And because of that the manager rejects the application. Video Narrator 08:07 what he's doing isn't just unfair, it could be illegal. Coffee Shop Owner 08:12 I'm not gonna hire a deaf person. I'll just let you know now. So we'll save you some time. I mean, your deaf. It's gonna be really hard here to work here. Video Narrator 08:21 It's the kind of thing that usually happens in secret behind closed doors. But we're putting this discrimination setters stage right out in the open. To answer the question, what would you do? Video Narrator 08:36 The bias barista, and the deaf applicants are all actors. Hannah Warrick and Maya erielle. Attend the National Technical Institute for the death in Rochester, New York. With more than 1500 students. It's the second largest college for the deaf and hard of hearing in the country. The school helped us develop this idea for the scenario. Students there say finding equal opportunity in the workplace is a big challenge. Hannah Warrick 09:06 Let me count on my really fantastic Botha to have a really keen understanding of what it means to be a deaf person how to work with deaf people, but at the same time, there are others who should not want to thin or open themselves up to that. Maya Arielle 09:24 It would be nice for them to think about what what is it like to be a deaf person? I mean, how would they like to go into a place and want to apply for a job and then be discriminated against just because of who you are. Video Narrator 09:35 Jerry Buckley is the president of MTI D. Jerry Buckley 09:40 When the President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, many of us hope that would be the last barrier. What we found out though is that attitude, no barriers were still there, that we have much work to do to educate people. Video Narrator 09:57 Back at the coffee shop, our cold hearted Manager is busy building his own barriers. Coffee Shop Owner 10:03 I know I fill out the application, but I'm going to be honest with you, I'm probably not going to hire you. Video Narrator 10:11 Remember, it's not a question of communicating with customers. This is a kitchen job. Coffee Shop Owner 10:18 Sure you want to work here? Applicant #1 10:19 Yeah, it's a kitchen job. Right, Coffee Shop Owner 10:21 right. Can you hear me? Applicant #1 10:24 I can't really hear. But I read lips. Video 10:26 You read lips? Applicant #1 10:27 Yeah, Video Narrator 10:28 it's easy to read the look on Kristen gobies face as she watches and growing disbelief. Coffee Shop Owner 10:34 I just don't think this is the right place. Like if I yell something to the kitchen. You can't hear me. Video Narrator 10:42 But the manager ignores all those daggers. Christian shoots his way, Applicant #1 10:47 so I shouldn't even bother with this. Coffee Shop Owner 10:49 I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm not gonna hire you. I can fill it out now. Sorry. Sorry. Is this yours? Ma'am? Video Narrator 10:57 Coffee isn't the only thing steaming as Christians storms out. The manager played by both male and female actors continues serving up the discrimination. Shop Owner #2 11:08 We can't hire you. Video Narrator 11:10 Many customers are right next to the action. Coffee Shop Owner 11:13 Yeah. But if you can't hear me, how are we going to communicate? Applicant #1 11:16 You can write stuff down, like make a list there. Coffee Shop Owner 11:18 But what if I need something done right away. Video Narrator 11:20 But most don't openly object. A few do stand up to the discriminating manager. But the most surprising reactions come from three customers with something in common. They work in recruiting and human resources, HR Patron 11:46 human resources, let me give you a piece of advice. Coffee Shop Owner 11:48 Yeah, HR Patron 11:48 I probably wouldn't have done that. HR Patron #2 11:50 you cannot say that. Coffee Shop Owner 11:52 I want to be honest with HR Patron #2 11:53 you can't say that. And we can't handle it like that you can come after you can't discriminate. Coffee Shop Owner 12:00 If only they had stopped right there, these hiring and firing experts would have been heroes, but they didn't listen to the rest of our hidden camera recording. And you'll see why we're not showing you their faces. 12:15 I probably wouldn't have done that. Only because because when you think about it, everybody has rights. Coffee Shop Owner 12:23 So let her fill it out. 12:25 I just probably would have let her fill it out in your writing note on the back and say not a fit. Video Narrator 12:31 That's right, the outrageous advice from human resources. write a note on the back of the application that the deaf girl is not a fit. Now listen carefully to this recruiter, HR Patron #2 12:43 I mean recruiting you can handle it like that you can come after you can't discriminate, just accept it and don't call handicapped people they have no rights and anybody that you have to just accept your application. Just don't call. Video Narrator 12:59 Just don't call as they continue talking to the managers. Some might wonder if it's discrimination these employment experts disapprove of, or only open discrimination. Coffee Shop Owner 13:17 So it's not a problem to not hire her because she's deaf is just saying it out loud to her. Video Narrator 13:26 He did tell the manager that the owner might want to try out the deaf applicant. Still, in the end, it's not a recruiter or someone from human resources. Who takes the strongest stand of all, it's a guy just taking a coffee break. A man who's heard enough, Coffee Shop Owner 13:44 because you can fill out the application. Feel free to fill it out. I can't stop you from doing that. But I'm just trying to be honest with you. Coffee Shop Patron 13:51 That's absolutely discriminatory. Coffee Shop Owner 13:53 If she can't hear me, though, she's Coffee Shop Patron 13:55 really shocked. And if this is the case, I'm not bringing my business back here. I'm telling you, Coffee Shop Owner 14:00 I, I understand Coffee Shop Patron 14:02 You basically said I am not hiring a deaf person. You're not saying I'm not hiring a person that's not qualified. Coffee Shop Owner 14:08 I'm just trying to be honest with you. Coffee Shop Patron 14:10 I can appreciate that, sir. But I don't see how you expect things to change in the country, when no one will give anybody a chance. It's an affront, it's an affront to America, or you Coffee Shop Owner 14:21 can't she can't hear. Coffee Shop Patron 14:22 So what? Video Narrator 14:23 Hannah and Maya catch up with him outside. Maya Arielle 14:27 I really felt so great when you jumped in and tried to help. Thank you so much just for your willingness to do that. Video Narrator 14:38 You wanted to hug him? Maya Arielle 14:39 Yeah. Video Narrator 14:40 What message do you have for people who didn't say anything? Maya Arielle 14:44 What I would say to those people, is that if you feel that you want to say something, please say something Video Narrator 14:51 that would be giving you a voice. Maya Arielle 14:55 Absolutely. That's right. Video Narrator 15:00 And so as they continue their struggle for equality at work, this reminder to all of us in American Sign Language from students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, what would you do? Michael Hingson 15:17 And there you go. I deliberately call this presentation moving from diversity to inclusion, because as I mentioned this morning, diversity tends not to include anybody with disabilities, it doesn't happen. Over the past year and a half or two years, we have seen any number of situations where there has been discussions of discrimination against women against different races, and so on. And all of that is appropriate to discuss, and all of those battles are absolutely appropriate to fight. But what we never see in all of those discussions, is how anyone with a disability is included in those same battles. If you watch the television show in the dark, which is a new show that I think wb is putting out, it's not a blind person playing the, the woman in the show, it's a sighted person, all they have a blind consultant, but they couldn't find any blind people they say, who could be an actor in the show. I know that, for example, they did not consult with the major consumer organizations of blind people. I have had conversations with people in the movie industry about blind people acting in films. And the comment that is made is well, but the problem is that they're not necessarily qualified to do it. And my question, when I hear that is why have you, for example, tried to find someone, have you included blind people and I'm going to talk about blindness specifically, although it could apply to other disabilities, but I think there is more of a track record of by blind people being excluded in the movie industry. Then in other persons with disabilities. There are people in wheelchairs who have played all in films and so on, although a number of those parts have been played by people not in wheelchairs, they play people wheelchair, quote, bound people. One of the ones I think of most is Raymond bird playing and Ironside's years and years ago, and others and sometimes it happens with deaf people. There is a deaf actress that I know of, and I'm sure there's well there are more than one but Marlee Matlin is, is certainly death, but you don't hear about blind people being included. And the reality is, it won't change until society recognizes that the disability isn't the problem. It's their attitudes. I want to read to you something and again, this is from Dr. Tim brick I mentioned earlier and it is something that is about blind people. This is from an address given by Dr. Tim brick, are we equal to the challenge, and it was delivered at the 1967 convention of the National Federation of the Blind one year before he died of cancer. And Dr. Tim Brooks says, the blind have a right to live in the world. What a concept, the right to live in the world. That right is as deep as human nature as pervasive as the need for social existence, as ubiquitous as the human race, as invincible as the human spirit. As their souls are their own. So their destiny must be their own. their salvation or failure lies within their own choice and responsibility. That choice cannot be precluded, or pre judged. Those lives cannot be pre determined or controlled. Michael Hingson 19:36 And Dr. Tambora made those comments to talk about the fact that we have the same as blind people or any person with a disability, the same right to live in the world as anyone else. And that was what those three HR people I told some of the HR people outside I was gonna probably be in Trouble, sorry. But that is what those HR people were challenging and what they were really saying, they don't truly believe we have the same right to live in the world. They were saying ultimately, that we don't really have equal status with everyone else. If they truly believed that we did, they would never have given the advice that they did to the actor barista. And that is what inclusion is all about. Diversity has already moved on and not included us. So it is time that we really talk about the concept of inclusion. And as I said to all of you this morning, you are on the front lines, because you are in schools, teaching children, teaching other adults, and hopefully taking this stand to say, we truly believe in inclusion. And it is true that not everyone has the same capabilities as everyone else. But if we're going to talk about developmental disabilities, for example, let's talk about every politician in Washington somehow they take dumb pills, I'm not sure what it is. But when they go to Washington, they do something to dumb down. That has to be the case. But the bottom line is that we have to demand higher criteria and higher expectations. For every person with a disability, it doesn't necessarily mean that every person with a disability is going to be able to do every single job. Just like every sighted person or every so called person with it and who is not one with a disability can do every job. Most people wouldn't even have the first clue about what Schrodinger equation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are all about. I do. But I got that training. Michael Hingson 22:01 Many people don't have the courage to step out of of their own comfort zone in their own environment. When I lived in New Jersey, I knew people who live within 10 miles of New York City, who were adults, and had never ever been to the city and never wanted to go because they didn't want to be in that environment. They were afraid to go. My wife on the other hand, growing up in California, being in a wheelchair driving all over the place one day had to drive me into New York. It wasn't her first time. But it was one of the first times that she drove us into the city. We came through the tunnel and came out at 40 a street turn left to go north. And I said you realize that we have to turn on 41st Street. And she slammed on the brakes, turned all the way across five lanes of traffic and made it right onto 41st Street and is very proud of the fact that she did it with a single person honking their horn at her. She arrived with a far as a driver. My wife had the courage and has the courage to take those steps. My wife was very much involved in as I was the International Year of the disabled year many many years ago in terms of helping to celebrate it, helping to assist people and celebrating and, and so on. We both in various ways we're involved in a variety of efforts to deal with various issues regarding persons with disabilities. And not everyone can do that. I've spent time in Washington debating with congressional types, and others about issues concerning persons with disabilities. One of the more recent issues regards the fact that under the Fair Labor Standards Act in this country today, section 14 C, which created sheltered workshops, says that you can pay a person with a disability if you can prove that they can't work as competitively as anyone else, you can pay them less than minimum wage. When that act was formed in 1938. The rule was you could pay no more no less than 75% of minimum wage because workshops were set up to be training institutions. All over the years since 1938. Workshops organized themselves loosely together and got the law changed originally so that the floor dropped from 75% to 50%. Then it went down lower to the point where today, the floor is at zero. And there are people who have disabilities including some blind people who get zero. And they work at the sheltered workshops. I know of college graduates who are blind who couldn't find a job and their departments of rehabilitation, put them into sheltered workshops, where they're getting paid to $2.50 $3 an hour to do the work that other people get paid much higher salaries outside of the workshop environment and Of course, the workshop owners say but, you know, we don't want them to lose their SSI. These workshop people are the same ones who created their workshops as 501 c three nonprofit organizations and solicit donations to help fund the workshops. They get special subsidized contracts under the the federal government programs, including what is allowed under Section 14 C, and they have developed ways to make sure that their workers can't possibly do the job so that they can get the exemptions to pay people less than minimum wage. And they get guaranteed contracts, they have ways of triple dipping these owners or managers of these workshops to get six and seven figures, while their employees may get 20 cents an hour. It happens today. It happens because people with disabilities are not included in society. And and it are not viewed as having the same rights as everyone else. It won't change until all of us take a stand and say, yes, it doesn't matter whether someone has a so called disability. I don't like the term disability. But you know what, it doesn't really matter. It's just a word. And it doesn't necessarily mean in competence or a lack of capability. It is just one way that people describe a subset of society, just like people who are left handed are called left handed and it describes a certain segment of society. And in the past, there were times that people who were left handed were viewed as less competent, or certainly had problems that normal people in society don't have. Michael Hingson 26:46 The fact is that we collectively have to make that change. And I'm challenging you and putting the pressure on you to say you are part of what that change has to be. Jimmy Carter, former President Carter once said, We must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And if the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean anything, then those principles must include all persons. All of us have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as the Declaration of Independence says, I'm not trying to be sexist, all men are created equal. But we really know that that means all persons are created equal in today's society. We have to change it. And it won't change unless we take some stands and make those changes occur. I know it's a tough job. I told you all this morning about my parents who took some stands regarding me and being blind. But I also there are a lot of parents who won't do that. I don't dare let my child go out on their own. They're blind. After all, how could they ride a bike, I rode a bike when I was growing up. I wrote it all over the neighborhood. Let me tell you a story about riding my bike one day. So there I was out riding my 20 inch bike I was seven years old right now all around the neighborhood having a good old time, right? going anywhere I wanted to go going up Stan Ridge Avenue, going over to Third Street East going, going west to Glen Raven, and two Second Street and all that riding all over the place. In many days, I would ride my bike to school to yukka school, but I was in the first second and third grade. Well, second third grade because I didn't have my bike when I was in the first grade, but riding my bike to school along with my brother riding his bike, and we had a good time doing that while I was out riding my bike one day. And I came home after being out for a couple hours having fun and just doing what I did. And as I walked in the door after putting the bike in the garage, the phone rang. My father picked up the phone. By the way, if you bought Thunder dog, you'll see this story in there. It's still one of my favorite stories. My father picked up the phone said hello. And here's the way the conversation when I picked up from his side and what he told me later. So he answers again and he says hello. And this guy says I'm calling about your kid riding his bike out on the street. And my dad said, Okay, what about it was out riding his bike? And my dad said, Well, yeah, all the time. What's the problem? No, no, I'm not talking about the older kid. The one that can see I'm talking about the blind kid. He was out riding his bike. And my dad said, Well, yeah, what about it? Well, but he's blind. Yeah, he's out riding his bike. Yeah. What about it? bass blind? My dad said, Did he hit anyone? Well, no. Did anyone hit him? No. Did he? Did he pass cars? Or did cars come down the street? And did he have any problems with any of them? Well, no. Did he hit any Park cars? No. Did he get hurt in any way? Well, no. Well, then what's the problem? The guy hung up. He could not deal With the fact that there was a blind child riding a bike out on his Street, I was in 1957. Let's fast forward to 2000 well to 1997. My wife and I moved to New Jersey. And we joined the Cranford United Methodist Church. And we went to the first yearly meeting of the church with the essentially the meeting of the corporation. And during the meeting, they talked about one thing and another. And they finally got to the fact that they were very interested in making accessible restrooms available at the church. Right now. They had a very steep ramp, it had a slope of probably about 45 degrees. So it was certainly not something that was truly accessible, you had to fold it down, and then go down the three steps on this ramp to get to the fellowship hall unless you walked all the way around, outside and in which didn't work well and snow. And there really wasn't an accessible restroom down there, there was something that kind of served as one but there wasn't. And they were very concerned about wanting to make accessibility possible in the church. And they were proud of the fact that in the last 10 years, they had raised $10,000, toward making accessibility possible 10 years to get $10,000, which wouldn't even be enough to probably get functioning legitimate, approved architectural drawings. However, they were very excited about that. And my wife spoke up and said, What are you guys doing? Michael Hingson 31:38 Well, we want accessibility. We want accessible restrooms, not with $10,000. You know, what are you going to do about that? Well, we're working on it. And my wife said, Look, you guys, we need to get true accessibility in the church. Let's start a fundraising campaign. Well, they wanted to put her in charge of it, of course, churches, and everybody always wants to do that. So they, they discussed it one side up and down the other and so on, and my wife agreed that she would be part of it, but only if some of the other leadership in the church would be involved. Within three months, they raised over $100,000 in pledges, and they actually started getting the money in and they began work on the accessible process. It included making elevators that would go from the congregational. Well, from the main church, the synagogue, that not synagogue, but from the main church down to fellowship hall where they wanted to put the accessible restrooms, and they started, the first thing they did was to make some accessible pews in the church. And the way they did that was they cut a couple of sections out of a couple of the pews in the middle of the church so that people in wheelchairs would have a place not off to one side, but right in the middle of the place to sit with everyone else. As that process started some of the old guard in this Cranford United Methodist Church that was nearly 150 years old, started taking exception to cutting up their pews a little bit. And they called the fire marshal. They call it the fire chief in Cranford. And they said, they're messing up our church, they're cutting up the pews. They're putting the possibility of people in wheelchairs sitting in the middle of the church. And if there's a fire, how are they going to get out? Well, there was one accessible way to get out. But to go out the front of the church, you couldn't because it was down steps. And the fire marshal said, well, sounds pretty serious to me. You know, we need to deal with that. The pastor wouldn't confront the fire chief. Some of the other people on the committee's wouldn't confront the fire chief. So finally, my wife decided if you guys aren't going to do it, I will. And she called up the fire chief said, I understand you've had some complaints, can we talk about it? And he said, Sure. Here's the problem. If you want to get out of the church, you're in your wheelchair, how you going to get out if the exits blocked? And my wife said, Well, if you're going to shut the church down and stop our efforts for doing that, are you going to go to the local Pathmark grocery store that has only one accessible exit and you're going to close it down? Well, no, we've approved it. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the fire marshal said, but you know, how? How are you making sure that you're obeying all the architectural rules? Do you have an architect drawing up all the drawings? Do you know the name Ron Meeks, sir? Yeah, he's the architect for the city. Yeah, he's also the guy that's doing our drawings Hello. The people couldn't tolerate a person in a chair being in their church. It got worse. The church had a Boy Scout troop. And as the elevators started to go in some of the exits that people would normally use to go into fellowship hall directly from the church were blocked. So they had to go outside and walk around just like people in wheelchairs. had to do. And one day my wife was confronted by one of these people saying you are messing up our church, and he and we have a scout dinner coming up, you better have this cleaned up by the time our scout dinner comes. Where's the priority? Where is their true belief in God, much less Anything else? Folks, it happens today. There are constantly blind couples who have children who are challenged by departments of family and social services. And there are attempts and sometimes successful ones, at least for a while, take take children away, because the presumption is blind couples cannot possibly raise children. It takes battles in the courts to change it. And they go on today, I'm only telling you all this, and I'm only talking about this because I want you to see that this is an ongoing problem. And it isn't going to change. Until we start having discussions. I'm looking forward to getting home. And watching the view we watched the view every every day or most days, a lot of fun will be is is a hoot. And all those people are last month Ace celebrated Spanish Heritage Month, gonna be interested to see if they're doing anything about the fact that this is blindness Awareness Month meet the blind month and nationally built national disabilities Awareness Month. Michael Hingson 36:28 Are they talking about successful persons with all sorts of disabilities? I wonder they haven't in past years, I hope they are this year. But if they're not, we'll just have to see we can write on Facebook about it. And I urge you, if you have the opportunity to watch the show, record it and see and if they're not call them on it. Put it out on Facebook, why aren't you celebrating the fact that we have a rich heritage of persons who don't have the same abilities as some of us who may have senior or super abilities compared to some of us? But why aren't you celebrating those people like you do other parts of society, we have African American Awareness Month, black, our Black History Month in February, we have all sorts of different things. So I'll be interested to see when I go home, if in fact, they're doing anything with disabilities, we'll see. But all of you, I recognize also have a challenge. Because if you start talking about some of these things, and really start encouraging your students, and your parents aren't ready to step out. They're going to challenge you. But I go back to Jimmy Carter, somewhere along the line, we have to hold to unwavering principles and blindness or other disabilities are not really the issue. It's attitudes. blind children ought to be able to come to school, there are blind kids in this country who are in high school who have guide dogs, and school administration has tried to keep the guide dog out of the school. Well, we don't know we can't be responsible, excuse me, chair here, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Do you know what a guide dog is? Do you know what a trained service animal is? And do you understand that under the law, people can bring those dogs to school. So it is a challenge in a lot of ways. And I've seen parents mightily fight back when teachers want to teach Braille, and teach Sally to read Braille, not just print, because Sally will never be a good reader of just reading print. And Sally might in fact, at some point go blind, totally blind in her life. And are you going to give her the training in advance? Or is she going to have to go back and psychologically readjust, not recognizing that blindness is just as normal as everything else. And that's the kind of thing that we need to look at. And we need to address. I could go on and give you other examples. But I think I'd like to stop, because I'd like to hear some of your thoughts. I'd like to see if you have questions and open this up for discussion a little bit. And I don't know that we have a roving mic. So I'll repeat questions. But if any of you have a question, why don't you speak up? And or if you want to say something, speak up or come up here and use the mic or whatever, just don't raise your hands because we know that doesn't work, right. Anyone? MC 39:22 And I do have a roving mic. 39:24 Oh, you've got a roving mic. All right. So we have the man with the microphone who'd like to start this off. Audience Member #1 39:30 I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you giving me a different perspective of looking at challenges that everybody has. We talk a lot about emotional challenges. We talk about physical challenges, but I love the way that you bring humor to it. And the real the real way that you talk about it, not making it politically correct. Not trying to appease everybody, but your perspective and your strength and doing that. So thanks Michael Hingson 40:00 Thank you, I believe that I will sell say that I believe that my perspective is one that is evolved over time, one with which many persons with disabilities, blind people, for example, have go to nfb.org website of the National Federation of the Blind, you'll read a lot there, you'll read about the Fair Labor Standards Act, we could talk, we just don't have time about the fact that until the mid 1980s, no person with a disability could buy life insurance, because insurance companies said that we were a higher risk. That's a longer story than we have time to tell. But, you know, invite me to your districts, and I'll be glad to tell that story. It's a great story. Today, we can buy life insurance. And it's because people who were blind with other disabilities prove to the insurance industry that they were simply prejudice, and that they in fact, weren't even obeying their own precepts and criteria for providing insurance. Another story, though, next. He's walking, so we must have someone Audience Member #2 41:03 Hi, thank you. I'm a low incidence disability specialist. And oftentimes, we have challenges. I'll use the word challenges with Jenna teachers. You know, they'll say, Well, you know, according to Union, I only have to plan like a week in advance. And oftentimes, it's shorter than that. And that doesn't give our Braille technician a whole lot of time to Braille. What are included blind students need in the gen ed classroom? Do you have suggestions for bringing humor to the conversation, so that the gen ed teacher can come a little bit more to our side and and meet in the middle. Michael Hingson 41:50 Under the law today, textbooks are required to be stored in a repository at the state and the federal level, and made available to anyone who needs them, and they're in electronic form. And point being that if you have access to a Braille embosser, the books are already available, I got news in Boston, you don't have to spend a lot of time transcribing them. They are available today, that law has been passed. Here's an ironic story talking about people with disabilities and some of the myopic views that even they have a former commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, Dr. Fred Schroeder, back in 1997, went to the National Association of persons with disabilities meeting in San Diego. And he said, we are trying to get legislation passed at the federal level and so on dealing with requiring that Braille be taught to all blind children while they're in school using the definition of blindness that I mentioned earlier. And we would like your help in supporting that legislation. The organization said, No, we can't do that. That's a blindness thing. It doesn't deal with people with disabilities in general. So you got to take it to blind people. It isn't just outside of the system. Yet those same people want support when we're dealing with ramps and other kinds of things. But you know, it's and and all should be supported. But I would, I would say that it's an excuse, because the law already requires. And there are already facilities that have all those books in electronic format. And those teachers should know how to access those. So that all you got to do is awesome. It's not magic. And you know what the other side of it is? That isn't even an excuse. What are you talking about? Do you want our children to learn or not? Why are you coming up with the excuse? I would also say, why is it that we only have to have a week, you know, when I was in college, I would go to my college professors a quarter or more in advance, and say, I need to know what textbooks you're going to use in this class, so that I can get them put in Braille. And you know, professors don't want to give you that information. It's not time yet I haven't even made a decision. And it took a lot of effort to get some of those professors to recognize that I wasn't going to have access to the books, if they didn't give me the information up front. And it wasn't, we didn't have the ADA back in 1968 through 76 when I was going through college, and in fact, one instructor gave us a title of a book. That wasn't the title of the book that they ended up using. So I didn't even have the textbook for the first two thirds of the quarter we were studying it. I did get an A in the class. But in spite of what the professor did, I don't think it was deliberate. But, you know, at the college level, even now, in the college level, we're working to get similar legislation passed so that college texts are made available in electronic form and stored in a repository. But that does exist today. So there's no excuse for them doing that. And, you know, I don't know how best to do it with a lot of humor other than to say, you know, well, you know, I'll tell you what we'll we'll start preparing TV shows for you to watch when, you know when we get around to it, and you know, you may miss mom, or you may miss Grey's Anatomy or any other shows, because we're just not going to have them ready in time. And we're not going to let your VCR turn on until we're ready, and we have it ready for you to take. So there's, there's no easy way to do it. Because it's inexcusable. And it's a number of those same teachers who really don't want to teach blind kids Braille, because you don't need them. You don't need to do that you can get the book in electronic form. That's right, so can you and you could put it in Braille. But you can get an electronic form so the students can just listen to it. You ever tried to do a graduate or even undergraduate physics course and study mathematical equations from a recording? It is not trivial to do? It, it isn't the way to do it. Blind people need to learn to read and write and spell and do grammar and math just like anyone else. And teachers have no right to prevent that, or discourage that from happening. And in fact, they should embrace it. And I don't know how else to say it, which isn't necessarily funny. But nevertheless, that's what needs to happen. Does that help? Audience Member #2 46:28 Yeah, I think sometimes. The issue also is, as we're moving into, like a one to one district, Chromebook, a lot of teachers are pulling stuff for Google classroom, and of not textbooks anymore. So right, I mean, we go through and get all the textbooks, and they're available in Braille to the students. But teachers are pulling stuff off the fly. And, you know, it's all I can do to keep up sometimes to get, Michael Hingson 46:56 oh, I hear you to get Audience Member #2 46:57 someone in real time Braille in it as they're reading or, you know, for that student that needs Braille or doing like the, the text to speech. I mean, it's like, I just want to make it accessible. That's all. Michael Hingson 47:10 So let me ask you this teacher. Do you believe in obeying the law? Yes. Great. Glad to hear it. Do you know what the Americans know? I'm, I'm asking you to role model not be yourself. But do you know what the Americans with Disabilities Act? Is? You ever heard of it? You think you've heard of it? Let me tell you about the ADA. It says that, that companies, schools, organizations, and so on, are required under the law to make reasonable accommodations to make material available and to make jobs available and schools available to persons who happen to have a disability, in this case being blind. And the reality is, if you're pulling all this stuff up, and you're using inaccessible material, you are breaking the law. Do you really want to do that? Because if you do, maybe we need to have another discussion. Yes, I know what the teachers are doing. And we have battles with Google and work and are working with Google to make sure that their material is accessible. And a lot of it is and the teachers either have the obligation to pull the accessible material off, or work with you in an appropriate timeframe to find that material, because a lot of it is accessible. And if the teachers aren't going to the right place, then they are doing a disservice to people in their classroom, they cannot discriminate against certain segments of the population. You know, if we're gonna do that, let's turn the lights off. So none of the kids have to worry about wasting electricity. You know, you can't have it both ways teachers, and I hear what you're saying. But they need to do proper lesson planning. That's what it's about. And that's what I learned as a teacher. And if that means I've got to deal with certain things for students who may not use the same material in the same way, if I'm going to be a real teacher in society, I'm obligated to make sure that I work on that. They don't like that, necessarily. But that's what they're supposed to do. Because that's what the law says. And I and I, that may or may not be the answer that you want, that may not be an easy answer to give. But that's what the law says, right? And so push that and educate your principal. And if you need help, I'll find you people who can help with that. But they are breaking the law when they're not making their material available in an accessible form. And most of the time, it probably is available somewhere in an accessible form. So if they can't do it, or they don't want to do it, and you're the expert, they need to give you the time, and give you the information far enough in advance that you can find it or find someone who can help you find it and I can certainly connect you with people who can most likely help you find it if you can't, and I'm glad to do that. Michael Hingson 50:00 Next. Who have we taken such a hard line no one else has anything to say. MC 50:08 We have one over here. Audience Member #3 50:09 This is probably not them. But anyways, when I was about 1718 years of age, my mother worked for a chiropractor who happened to be blind. To be a chiropractor, you have to go med school and everything else. And for a female that's very hard to do. And she was born blind. And my mother said, you want a job? And I said, Oh, sure, I'll make some extra money. You can take her up. This was an Oak Park, Illinois, Chicago native. And I took her up into Barrington because she was horseback rider. She was getting pay me money, I relate to do that. At that point, I was I loved horses, I said, Forget the money, I'll just take a ride a lesson while you're doing yours. She was a fanatic rider. It was amazing. I was just like, I couldn't believe it. She was better than me. And temper that, that capability to be able to do that. It just at that age, at that point, I had a communication with someone with a disability that I had to help, you know, every weekend. And from there, it was just like, now when people you'll everyone hears this, and I hate correcting people. And I just heard Mike say this. And you'll hear many people say, Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. No, you don't see what you're saying. You can hear what they're saying. You don't see what they're saying. And bring it back. Listen for that. You can listen to the most intelligent person. And then they start saying, Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'm like, Oh, my God. I respect Yeah, I was just like, Whoa, No, you can't. And you're like, catch him on it. But it's true. Yes, you can hear what you're saying. And we have all these senses about us, not just her sight. And we're going to use as many as we can to make us the better person. So thank you, Mike, for bringing that to our attention. Michael Hingson 51:56 I know we're about out of time. Thank you. I've got one more story. One another story. sirius xm 167. Canada talks radio. Gentlemen contacted me, Ari Silva, who has a show, I think his last name was silver on Canada talks every Tuesday afternoon 4pm to 5pm pacific time. And he wanted to interview me about the World Trade Center and on my story, and so on. So I was on for the last 15 minutes of the show. The first part of the show, they were talking about all the problems that Justin Trudeau the Prime Minister is having because he appeared once in blackface. And now people are blasting him for that, which is totally ridiculous. It has nothing to do with his political qualifications. It has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that 20 some odd years ago, he did that. So he did, right. What does it have to do today? Anyway, so the time came for me to be interviewed. And we started chatting, and already started talking all about blindness and blind people and all that we had a great discussion about all sorts of stuff, never did get to the World Trade Center. But we had a long conversation about a lot of the issues concerning blindness. And one of the things that we talked about was the fact that he had the opportunity to participate in a dining and the dark function. y'all heard of dining in the dark, one of the worst concepts in society regarding blind people today. So Ari, starts talking about it. And he said, I walked into this place. And he said, I've got a friend who's blind, a lawyer that I know, he's a young man, and I've been mentoring him some in some areas. And I walked into this dining in the dark thing, and I became totally petrified, I walked out, and ice. And so I said to him, what did you learn? He said, that is a real scary thing to have to do. And I said, wrong answer. But let me ask you this. Why is it scary? Well, because it's not easy to do. I said, wrong answer. The answer really is, you didn't have training, you didn't learn how to function as a blind person. And you're not going to learn it in that environment. And that's the problem with dining in the dark. People go in, and they if they can eat their food, without creating much of a mess, they think they're really successful, but they haven't learned anything about blindness. I told Ari, go get yourself a white cane and a pair of dark glasses, put the glasses on, and walk up and down the streets in Toronto, where he lived. And look at how people observe you and the expressions and the things that they do. And the way they look at you, then you're going to see something about how we're viewed. The reality is dining in the dark is disgusting. It teaches you nothing because you don't have the training, you don't have the background. You don't have the basis for an understanding of what blindness is. And the result of that is you're not going to have a good experience. And all it's going to do is reinforce a lot of poor attitudes and misconceptions about blindness. It isn't going to change anything. We shouldn't have that. And unfortunately, there are so many blindness agencies that think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread because people come and they donate and all that. But all they're doing is an incredible disservice to blind people who want to live in the world, and who have the same right to do that, as anyone else. I think we've run out of time. And so we're going to have to stop. So thank you very much. I'd love to come and work with any of you at your districts. And if you haven't gotten our card yet, come up, I've got a, I've got some business cards, I'd love to speak in your districts. And I hope that we can work together. But thank you again for inviting us to come and be a part of this today. Michael Hingson 55:44 And there we are. I want to thank you again, for listening to unstoppable mindset today. And I hope that you found this presentation pretty interesting, and that you maybe come away with a little bit of a different view about not only disabilities, but how we can and should be included in the conversation. You know, one of the things that I love to do a lot is to ask the question, what is it you think a blind person cannot do? And when I asked that question, one of the common responses is drive a car. And as we discuss on a regular basis, you think so go visit WWW.blinddriverchallenge.org. That's WWW.blinddriverchallenge.org. And watch the video of Mark riccobono, who is now the president of the National Federation of the Blind, driving a Ford Escape completely independently, without any assistance from any sighted person or any autonomous vehicle technology. He drives a car, a Ford Escape around the Daytona Speedway right before the 2011 Rolex 24 race, you'll see it all at blind driver challenge. Next week, we're going to do something a little bit different. And that is that I'm going to be interviewed and we're going to talk a lot about accessibility. We're going to talk about some of the reasons that I got into doing podcasts and other sorts of things. And then after next week's show, will not only have me making remarks from time to time, but we're going to start interviewing other people. So you don't get to listen to me all the time. Or maybe I should say you don't have to listen to me all the time. You'll get to hear other people, but we'll get there. Anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us on episode two of unstoppable mindset. Michael Hingson 57:51 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week

Each year Global Accessibility Awareness Day gives focus to the call for improved access, including  the digital world, for people with disabilities.RNIB Connect Radio's Allan Russell spoke to Fred Schroeder, President of the World Blind Union, to find out what the WBU will be working on around the spotlight event.If you'd like more information about the World Blind Union and it's work, go to https://worldblindunion.org/ #RNIBConnectImage: Fred Schroeder, President of the World Blind Union

December 3rd 2020 is this year's International Day for Persons with Disabilities, a UN day to highlight the work being done, and needed, to support disabled people around the globe.The World Blind Union is celebrating the event and will be looking at work around the global pandemic, and the effects this has had on blind and partially sighted people.RNIB Connect Radio's Allan Russell spoke to Fred Schroeder, WBU President, to talk about the work and possible concerns around accessing the Covid-19 vaccine.www.worldblindunion.org#RNIBConnectImage: Fred Schroeder, WBU President

In this week's episode, we repeat the first part of the keynote speech delivered at the 2017 convention of Blind Citizens Australia.  Dr. Fred Schroeder, currently president of the World Blind Union visited Australia at the invitation of BCA, and gave this educational and rousing speech.  This is a repeat from an earlier New Horizons episode.

This week, Dr Fred Schroeder, President of the world blind union, was recently in Australia on invitation from Blind Citizens Australia for its 2017 national convention. While in the country Dr Schroeder  visited other blindness organisations and we were honoured to have the opportunity to speak with him. Stephen Jolley leads this conversation, which ranges from Dr Schroeder's early life; his denial of being blind and his eventual acceptance, to his education and self-advocacy in his early career and his on-going advocacy for all people who are blind or have low vision. It's an illuminating conversation and Dr Schroeder he is an eloquent, intelligent and inspiring speaker. 

Fred Schroeder is a natural leader and superb orator. He has been First Vice President of the National Federation of the blind, Rehabilitation Services Administration Commissioner during the Clinton administration, a state agency director, a lecturer, O&M instructor, champion of Braille and much more. He currently serves as the President of the World Blind Union.Jonathan Mosen sat down with Fred Schroeder when they both attended the national convention of Blind Citizens Australia. We learn about Fred's early life, the influence the National Federation of the Blind has had on him, his work with WBU, the state of Braille, and much more.

Fred Schroeder is a natural leader and superb orator. He has been First Vice President of the National Federation of the blind, Rehabilitation Services Administration Commissioner during the Clinton administration, a state agency director, a lecturer, O&M instructor, champion of Braille and much more. He currently serves as the President of the World Blind Union.   Jonathan Mosen sat down with Fred Schroeder when they both attended the national convention of Blind Citizens Australia. We learn about Fred’s early life, the influence the National Federation of the Blind has had on him, his work with WBU, the state of Braille, and much more.  

The World Blind Union has just concluded its quadrennial General Assembly, this time held in Orlando, Florida, USA. Dan Frye was there. We speak with Dan about some of the issues occupying the WBU's attention, as well as the challenges of meeting the needs of such a diverse group of blind people.Fred Schroeder was elected WBU President for the next four years. We hear an address given by Dr Schroeder at the General Assembly in which he talks about his background, and some of the philosophy underpinning his approach to blindness.

The World Blind Union has just concluded its quadrennial General Assembly, this time held in Orlando, Florida, USA. Dan Frye was there. We speak with Dan about some of the issues occupying the WBU’s attention, as well as the challenges of meeting the needs of such a diverse group of blind people. Fred Schroeder was elected WBU President for the next four years. We hear an address given by Dr Schroeder at the General Assembly in which he talks about his background, and some of the philosophy underpinning his approach to blindness.

In Episode 20, Jay Douglas and Out Of My Mind join with newspapers across the country in celebrating comic strips. Listen as Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder, co-producers of the documentary Stripped talk about the past, present and future of the comics.

Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder created the movie Stripped about the past, present, and future of comic strips and their creators. Dave is the creator and cartoonist of two webcomics titles, Sheldon and Drive, and the co-author of How To Make Webcomics. He is one of a small but growing group of webcomics artists who are self-sufficient. Fred is a veteran cinemographer, nominated for Best Cinematography at Sundance for his work on Four Sheets to the Wind. He has been shooting commercials for much of his career. Together, they matched Fred's filmmaking skills with Dave's personal knowledge of the field and his contacts to create the first feature-length documentary on the topic, funded in part through two Kickstarter campaigns. They don't pull punches about the difficulties of being a comic-strip artist, but they show all the joy and love that goes into the work along with many potential bright lights already illuminating parts of the field and shining on the horizon. This episode is sponsored by: Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. Creative VIP is the exclusive membership club for creative professionals, writers, and designers. Membership includes discounts on world-class online services and apps, and access to a growing library of graphics, vectors, icons and themes. You can also get a regular goodie bag on your doorstep. Save 25% on your membership, forever, by visiting http://creativevip.net/disrupt Abraham Finberg, CPA: From dealing with those pesky 1099Ks to complex accounting needs, go to finbergcpa.com for all your financial support. Services can be as simple as a 15-minute phone consultation session all the way up to outsourcing your whole internal accounting office. Use promotion code DISRUPT to get a free phone consultation today! What do Project for Awesome, the world's most compact e­vehicle, and a baby have in common? They've all been crowdfunded on Indiegogo! Indiegogo has hosted over 100,000 campaigns since 2008 and distributes millions of dollars every week around the globe. Individuals can start raising funds immediately. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees.

Do you love comics? Who doesn't?! Are you sad to see so few of them in newspapers now? What are newspapers?! Do you want to know what the cartoonists think of the whole thing? Trust me, you really do!Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellett (of the webcomic Sheldon) have traveled the globe for 4 years, interviewing some of the best comic artists ever to take you on an incredible look into the world of comic strips. Fred was gracious enough to spend some time with us and tell us what comics meant to him and how this project got started. We could have talked with him for days, but we haven't yet figured out a way to do that without overloading our storage on the server! Instead, we hope you enjoy this hour.NOW, important for our listeners and followers: Stripped launches on iTunes on April 1. We are trying to help them hit #1 on the iTunes download list that day and hope to see everyone go out and get their copy of it then. There are three very important reasons why you should do this:1. Because it's an awesome film that you should see no matter what day it comes out on,2. Because April 1 is Stolendroids' birthday (both the site AND the podcast), and this would be an awesome gift to us. And finally . . .3. The documentary on Justin Beaver comes out that day and it's only right that these guys beat that!Be sure to check out the Stripped website and enjoy the trailer below. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Liz Lutgendorff speaks to Dave Kellet and Fred Schroeder about an intriguing new comics documentary. Originally from episode 102.