Natalie has always wanted to save the world. With over twenty years of web accessibility experience, they realized early on that there was way more internet than there was accessibility. This has led Natalie from non-profit organizing to the government sector, to her current role as Senior Accessibility Lead at Spotify, all with the goal of improving access to information for everyone.

In this episode of Disability Bandwidth, Nikki, Natalie, and Sam discuss discourse around advocacy, inclusion, and equity, Natalie’s career trajectory and passion for the web, and how to keep pushing digital accessibility forward.

References

Transcript

[00:00:00] (Music)

[00:00:05] Nikki Nolan: Welcome to season one of Disability Bandwidth!

[00:00:11] Sam Proulx: A show where we talk with disability leaders each week about career, life, and technology.

[00:00:17] I’m Sam Proulx.

[00:00:17] Nikki Nolan: And I’m Nikki Nolan

[00:00:19] Sam Proulx: Let’s get started.

[00:00:20] Nikki Nolan: Would you mind introducing yourself?

[00:00:22] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I am Natalie Patrice Tucker. I serve as the Senior Accessibility Lead at Spotify. My pronouns are she and they. And I look like a black woman with graying locks up in a messy ponytail with a pink sweater on and gray turtleneck. That’s me.

[00:00:42] Nikki Nolan: It’s lovely to have you here.

[00:00:44] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Thank you.

[00:00:44] Sam Proulx: Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to doing this interview because so many times people think about accessibility as screen readers and screen magnification and that’s it. And that’s important and we have those guests and we want to hear those voices. But I, myself, as a screen reader user, sometimes think that we spend too much time talking about screen readers.

[00:01:04] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well great!

[00:01:05] Nikki Nolan: I would actually love to know a little bit more about you. What is your story around getting into your line of work?

[00:01:10] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Oh, absolutely. So I started way back in the early 2000s. I wanted to save the world and I started off as a political organizer, but that was really hard. It was backbreaking, heartbreaking work, talking to strangers constantly.

And, I didn’t think that was the way that I was going to save the world, but the tiny little non-profit that I worked for had a database that wasn’t, it wasn’t being used very effectively because nobody really knew how to query it or get it to produce the kind of reports we needed.

[00:01:42] So I taught myself SQL and from there, I was like, you know, this is what I can do. I can support nonprofits with technology stuff because that was something that I was really great at. And so eventually I was filling up databases. I was doing administration and eventually, one of my clients asked me to build a website and I was like, hell, I can do that.

[00:02:05] And taught myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript just enough to be dangerous. I got really excited about standards. And the possibility of an interoperable worldwide web, semantic web. And, just at that time, WCAG 1.0 was just getting off the ground. And I was obsessed with standards and guidelines and eventually, so I was building websites for folks who had constituencies in developing countries.

[00:02:39] Older browsers, you know, slower internet connection. So we have to be really concerned about how folks are going to access the important information that we want to share with them. So at a time when folks were using flash to get their point across, which made everything horrifying, and all kinds of shims and what not to build a sort of a visual presentation for the web.

I was really concerned about standards and semantics and those kinds of things. And eventually, the federal government started hiring folks who had a background in building for WCAG 1.0. As they sought 10 section 4 508. And I went into the federal government and was like, okay, great.

[00:03:23] This is how I’m gonna save the world. But the sort of strict hierarchy and slow pace of working in the federal government was not best suited for me. So, I decided to reach out to someone I had respected for a long time. His name was Tom Babinski and he ran an accessibility consultancy called Even Grounds at that time.

[00:03:49] Now he’s off doing, you know, amazing, wonderful things at other places, but he was a blind business owner and accessibility consultant. And I reached out and I was like, I think you’re fabulous, can you teach me everything you know? And so I started working with him for a bit and learned a great deal and then started my own consultancy and started working with folks.

[00:04:11] And then, 2.0 jumped off and it was like a whole sea change. Whereas the people, I loved thought I was a front for terrorist activity because what do you do and how did you do it? It was just like, it made no sense. All of a sudden I was able to do the work that I loved and have really interesting projects and work on, you know, really tough stuff. And the reason why I started doing it was that back in the early days, I thought, oh, if everybody knew about this, then surely if they knew and they understood, surely we have this whole semantic thing, you know what locked down, like overnight. So I thought it was just a matter of education, which I think is still today, but, there’s, you know, there’s, it’s a lot more complex than that. So that’s how I kinda got started.

[00:05:00] Sam Proulx: I mean, that story is so interesting to me. And I think it’s so common for us, for those of us who got into the tech industry right in the late 90s and the early 2000s, you picked up a book and you started learning some XHTML and you started building things for people.

[00:05:19] I wonder based on your experience in the industry, as we try to get more diverse folks into the industry, promote more diverse voices, is there still the opportunity for that like there was when we were coming up? Where you just pick up a book and start learning it and you build your own path? Right now, it’s all about frameworks and abstractions, and far more complex.

[00:05:43] Are we hurting diversity, or like, I don’t know. It’s just something that I wonder about. Cause I don’t think it’s this, the story that the next generation is experiencing.

[00:05:54] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I think that’s a brilliant question. And in some ways, I think it’s a lot easier because there are so many formats to learn from. You can learn via video, you can do a self-taught class. You can do a boot camp. You can go to a formal program. You can get a mentor. You can, you know, make projects until you figure it out on your own.

[00:06:17] I mean, there’s just so many ways to come at it. Whereas, in the beginning, there were a lot of resources, but it was a lot to wade through. and not all of it was particularly accessible to lots of different kinds of learning styles. And also the barrier for entry, you know, in terms of just being able to afford a computer or afford assistive technology.

[00:06:39] Now you don’t have to buy a thousand dollar JAWS, licensed to begin to understand how assistive tech works. And so I think there’s actually more. But that kind of opportunity also presents some challenges because it makes it seem like, oh, well, you know, because there are so many opportunities, surely, you know, marginalized folks are going to find their ways to them. Which is not often the case.

And yet, you know, there’s still work to be done to make sure that we’re thoughtfully making opportunities available for all kinds of folks and looking at the diversity of experience and what that makes available. But I think where there’s a will, there’s a way. And you know, there are just more pathways now. So yeah. I encourage it. I think it makes the internet more democratized, like tech more human.

[00:07:27] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe it’s that there’s more to learn today, but the barriers to learning it are slightly lower.

[00:07:33] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah, exactly. So true.

[00:07:35] Nikki Nolan: So I’d love to roll into our next question, which is, you talked about this in the bio that you sent over for our Disabled and Tech event that you both were on the panel which was great. And people should check that out if they haven’t seen it. You talk about how you build an army of developers and stakeholders who carry out, making sure digital accessibility is possible. How do you go about doing that?

[00:07:57] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well, so I sort of alluded to this in the beginning. Right? You know, accessibility is not for the weak of heart. It’s real. If you’re going to devote lots of your time to it, you’re definitely going to have to have a thick skin and. I realized early on that there was way more internet than there was accessibility.

[00:08:16] And so in order to sort of expand that, if my goal was a web that works for everyone, which I decided to sort of pick, to like that caused me to have a career, career. Right? If I was going to make a web that works for every way, I can’t do it by myself. And the way to do that was to find folks who were naturally excited about it and support them. And also to inspire other folks, about what’s possible when we can all contribute.

[00:08:48] Sam Proulx: Absolutely. And you’ve sort of seemingly done this thing you know, in government, in nonprofits and now in Spotify, which I guess is still pretty startup.

[00:08:58] What are the kinds of differences in these very, you know, different sectors when you’re trying to build that engagement and that cultural education and interest?

[00:09:06] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I think that’s where I can really sort of introducing people to actual human beings and the impact of their sort of poor choices on actual human beings. It makes the most impact. And that’s true, whether it’s a developer or less technical or someone more in leadership.

In the early days, I found that tough to sort of bring to life. How do we do that outside of user research? This is very important and has its place, but not everyone can always be involved. So I started building relationships with folks who I could introduce people to, or direct folks to their work, or sort of stay on top of what was happening in the communities I’m not directly a part of.

[00:09:54] I think that that work has been absolutely fruitful. Cause mostly folks don’t want to be wrong. They don’t want to not know something. Right? So the biggest difference from moving from nonprofits to the sort of tech industry, if you will, is that you’ve got smart brains with big degrees and not wanting to be wrong. And there’s an outsized impact on every single person because millions of people use this or that app or that sort of thing.

[00:10:30] So that can be a lot of pressure. Along with everything else, there is to know to be good at your job. And I like to sort of take that pressure off by being kind of a Cyrano De Bergerac in folks as ear, if you will. And just be like, you know what, this is the truth. You know, like if they send me a message on Slack, then they get the answer in five minutes and they can go off and be the superstar and get things done.

[00:10:56] But I love supporting folks in the ways that they need in the moment that they need to get things moving forward. It’s all about philosophy and connecting folks to the impact of their work.

[00:11:07] Sam Proulx: Absolutely. I mean, often when we, as accessibility folk try to do it because of either convenience or budget or time, there’s this thing that happens where you look at the people with disabilities, who already work in your company and you try and get them involved in disability, even when it’s perhaps not their job.

[00:11:32] You know, Joe in accounting uses a screen reader. We’ll make him test.

[00:11:35] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right. Yeah.

[00:11:37] Sam Proulx: Have you found that to be a thing that happens and what’s the approach to when that starts happening and to solve for that to work?

[00:11:45] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I think, you know, in the back of folks’ minds, the biggest fear is that I’m going to bring up the fact that there are no people with visible disabilities. And I do it often, you know like I am just that one. So in some ways, I want to make opportunities for folks, like you said, for Jim in accounting, to be able to come in and do whatever wonderful contribution there is.

[00:12:15] But I also once inside the organization, you have to guard and support folks so that they can really focus on what they’re doing. That’s not the job, you know, that’s not explicitly someone else’s job. And so you have to be playful. We have to be thoughtful and we have to build the kinds of relationships that make it possible for folks to want to come and talk to us about the products that they’re using every day.

[00:12:38] Sam Proulx: What you said there is so key right? The diversity of the team to build a diverse product.

[00:12:42] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m so glad that those studies have come out recently that show that so that you can point to them and be like, see, this is what I’ve been saying all along.

[00:12:53] Sam Proulx: Yeah, exactly. We have the data to back up the truth that we have, emotionally, always known.

[00:12:59] Nikki Nolan: I do think that it’s really, really interesting, sometimes, so I’m the co-leader of our ERG for people with disabilities at my company. And I think people don’t necessarily realize that just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you’re going to be an accessibility expert.

[00:13:15] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right.

[00:13:16] Nikki Nolan: And I’m not…

[00:13:17] Natalie Patrice Tucker: So real.

[00:13:18] Nikki Nolan: I feel like there’s sometimes not the consideration that there are full companies that focus on accessibility. There are people who are trained in accessibility. Just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you could be necessary even a guinea pig for a product.

[00:13:32] It’s about opting in creating that space, allowing people to open up if they want to, but also not having that expectation on your employees that may have disabilities. I think that’s super important for companies to know.

[00:13:45] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Absolutely.

[00:13:46] Sam Proulx: As I’ve worked with Fable, it’s been super important to know in my personal journey, which, you know, just because I have a disability means I have lived experience and I am an expert in my own disability. But I think we also fall into this trap as people with disabilities where we now figure, well, we’re an expert in disability.

[00:14:05] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right. Exactly.

[00:14:05] Sam Proulx: We can only speak to our lived experience.

[00:14:08] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah, exactly.

[00:14:09] Sam Proulx: Which my lived experience is going to be very different from yours.

[00:14:12] Nikki Nolan: Oh, yeah. Sam and I have had these conversations. Sam and I have such different lived experiences having a visible and non-visible disability. I’m gonna go to another question that we have, what do you see is the downstream impacts of not including people with disabilities in the process of developing product ideas?

[00:14:30] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well, I think it’s a myopic really just ultimately deeply myopic stifles innovation. Of course, limits the amount of people who are gonna get to use your products. At this stage and late capitalism people using your product is kind of an important part of the whole shebang.

And so I think for the most part, it’s starting to dawn on folks mostly because of the hammer that is sort of a legal approach to accessibility inclusion in some first-world countries. But also just because folks with disabilities are being more vocal and being more, included and in general, more a part of our sort of day-to-day conversations.

And so do you know, like the needs of the folks that we live with and work with every day are not sort of special needs. Just think about when somebody reminds you it’s your uncle, it’s your aunt, your governor of the state of Texas or whatever. It’s people that we interface with we can make real on the way that they do their job or not.

[00:15:40] Sam Proulx: I suspect you may have encountered it. A certain type of my myopic thinking, that I’d love to bring up and maybe talk a little bit about. And it’s the myopic thinking that says that, well, we can’t, shouldn’t make our product accessible to people with certain disabilities, because they won’t use it.

The example maybe is like, oh, well we’re a car buying website. We shouldn’t be available to blind people. We worry about that. You would probably get a music audio website. We don’t need to worry about being accessible to the deaf they’re not going to our product.

[00:16:13] Is that the first thing, something you’ve encountered? If you have, how do you respond to it?

[00:16:19] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well, I have been deeply blessed, in that those were not the kinds of sentiments that I deal with at all. Which is brilliant and delicious. Folks are just hungry to know how we can move things forward. And I’m working to do that work, which is absolutely just a dream come true, to be honest with you.

Because I have encountered that before and generally, this is enough to push back and say, you don’t know who your customers are today, much less who they will be in the future.

[00:16:51] And, it’s just as likely that you will need these accommodations as your customers. So, I pretty much, you know, easily dismiss it because what I do is make something possible. Right. Make it possible for somebody to want to use your product.

[00:17:10] Nikki Nolan: Yeah, I love that. We talked with Sherry earlier and she had, yeah, I know she’s the best. We sort of talked about how, if you’re not hearing from people that have disabilities, it’s not necessarily a sign that your product is accessible.

[00:17:26] Natalie Patrice Tucker: It’s so true. People will set up all kinds of blocks and barriers to people like providing feedback and be like, oh, everything’s fine. Like actually no, that can’t get through the 14 hoops to convince a feature team to add a label. Yeah. No.

So what’s important is at every stage you’re thinking about how we can get more feedback. How can we set up a panel of folks who are always sending us tweets about our accessibility? Have a specific forum on our user forums for providing feedback and ranking the kinds of improvements to accessibility, all kinds of things. Right?

A user conference just for people who are concerned about accessibility and inclusion, that sort of thing. If you want to know, there are lots of ways to make that happen.

[00:18:22] Nikki Nolan: Oh, I love those.

[00:18:23] Sam Proulx: One thing that it makes me think of is, and this is like an ongoing discussion in the disability community and the accessibility community is around privacy versus disability, right?

[00:18:36] If you’re a big company, now, it is possible for your app to detect if I have voiceover turned on, right?

[00:18:42] Or it is possible for you to guess based on the videos I watch or the podcast I listened to or whatever, whether I’m a person with a disability. People, I think, want to access that data with the best of intentions, right? Cause like, oh, we want to see useability and to make our product better.

[00:19:00] How do you feel as someone at a company? Like, I’m sure you could, you could potentially use big data to figure these things out. And is that a win? The privacy line? What are your thoughts?

[00:19:13] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah. You know, it’s kind of a big debate. And I think it’s a slippery slope, right? I really, I want for my developers or for folks building products to think that at one point or another, everyone is going to be using assistive technology. Everyone is going to have a dexterity issue.

[00:19:34] Everyone was going to need, you know, one or another feature. And so it’s interesting because at the same time we want to also get telemetry and begin to access. And get a sense of AB testing, whether our, our improvements are working and those sorts of things. So, I don’t know if it’s solved.

[00:19:54] We sort of take it on a piece by piece basis and sort of, err on the side of data privacy.

[00:20:06] Nikki Nolan: It’s a hard question. I was trying to answer it in my head.

[00:20:10] Natalie Patrice Tucker: This is not a fluff piece.

[00:20:12] Nikki Nolan: Yes, It’s just sort of like if you can read that someone’s using a screen-reader and then you pop up, hey, we’ve detected using a screen reader. Do you want to set up our product to make it more accessible to screen readers?

[00:20:25] It’s like that reduces friction, but also introduces data privacy. Oh, my mind is just sort of like (make sound)…

[00:20:34] Sam Proulx: Right. It’s a hard question. I was just thinking about it as I was, prepping for this interview as I do. And it just suddenly occurred to me, you know, based on the three podcasts I’ve listened to today, somebody could look at that and oh, there’s a blind guy, right?

[00:20:47] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right. Chances are.

[00:20:50] Sam Proulx: Yeah.

[00:20:51] Natalie Patrice Tucker: But see, the thing is, that’s the super silver so that we can do that around everything, right? You’re a basketball player and you are a green person who only recycles, you know, like all of those sorts of things. And, do you know, some of that is useful and some of that’s not.

[00:21:08] And how do we determine what is, and what’s not the signal from the noise if you will, and do that ethically, that’s really a deep consideration.

[00:21:17] Sam Proulx: Absolutely. Absolutely. Didn’t come for answers on that one. I just wanted to put it out there because I think it’s a discussion that, that is worth thinking about and glad to hear and I think it’s something that all accessibility practitioners are starting to think

[00:21:30] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah, definitely.

[00:21:31] Sam Proulx: Before we get to our next question, let’s take a quick break to talk about our sponsor.

[00:21:35] Hi, I’m Tin. I’m the Platform Coordinator at Fable. I’m also a full-time voice navigation user. And before becoming the Community Manager, I started out as a member of our community of accessibility testers. Now I help build and support the community of assistive technology users that powers everything we do here at fable.

[00:21:53] If you’re listening to this podcast, You probably know just how important it is to integrate the voices of people with disabilities into every aspect of your accessibility journey.

[00:22:04] Fable could help you do that from improving your team’s accessibility training with Fable Up-skill to working directly with assistive technology users with Fable Engage. We can help you take the next step on your accessibility journey. To learn more, please check out our website makeitfable.com.

[00:22:24] Sam Proulx: And with that, we’re back. Let’s get on with the interview.

[00:22:27] Nikki Nolan: Let’s transition into, what do you feel is your biggest success that you’ve had?

[00:22:31] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Ooh, that’s hard. I mean, it’s hard because right now I’m doing exactly what I’ve wanted to do for so long, which is building a team. And I’ve often been the buck stopper when it comes to accessibility around the thing. So don’t really just have a lot of, say institutional support and I’m not starting from scratch with accessibility 101.

[00:22:59] We’re actually doing the work in hand. It’s just, I’m really loving what I’m doing. And we’re having wins and folks are using the product more and more and that’s delicious. I think that would definitely be a win.

[00:23:16] What else? I got invited to join the WCAG, WC three, the working group around accessibility, and that had been sort of a bucket list thing. To be able to contribute to this sort of standard and standards-making body that I have read every word of the standards, not just our accessibility, and all of those myriad recommendations and those things, but like HTML and ECMAScript and all that.

I love it. I love the whole process. And so that was pretty cool to be invited, I’ve also had the opportunity to support mentoring and mentor some folks in the space. And that feels really, really exciting. yeah, so I feel like those are big successes.

[00:24:03] Sam Proulx: This seems like all successes that are building incredible momentum that you seem to be building.

[00:24:11] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I do what I love because I feel like I get paid to play. I get paid to do what I love and the moment that it starts feeling like McDonald’s, I’m going to stop. No offense to people who love their jobs at McDonald’s.

[00:24:25] And so when I talk about what I’m up to, I’m on a relentless quest for world domination and a web that works for everyone.

[00:24:33] That’s really how I get out of bed, what I’m doing as I’m brushing my teeth. Okay? World domination, where are we coming from? It makes me feel like what I’m doing makes a difference. Even though, like I said, that piece about there’s always more internet than there is accessibility, it makes me feel like I’m carving my way through it.

[00:24:57] And like, that’s probably always going to be the way. We need to perhaps get ourselves to a space where the average person doesn’t need to know about accessibility, right? It’s like security.

[00:25:09] Sam Proulx: It’s built-in.

[00:25:10] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Absolutely.

[00:25:12] Sam Proulx: Get a warning if they’re gonna do an inaccessible thing, they get a warning and it’s built-in by default.

[00:25:17] Is that the ultimate goal of us as accessibility experts is eventually to put ourselves out of a job?

[00:25:21] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Listen, that’s my job. I had no idea it was possible to do this thing for 20 years. No idea. And the things we get to do just become more intricate and interesting. Challenges become more exciting as technology changes. Do you know that I’m always learning?

[00:25:43] I’m always trying to figure things out. Making new connections and that sort of thing. So yes, I do absolutely believe that we need to flip the script so that it’s accessible by default, that the things are accessible by default. And it’s a shocking crime when things are not useful. Right? I think that’s just the way to go. And in the interim, we need the passion and interest and dedication of folks willing to move it forward. So I think it’s also important to sort of open the flood gates of who is, and who gets to be considered an accessibility professional.

[00:26:23] Sam Proulx: Absolutely. And you know, the new technologies are coming, VR and augmented reality and all this good stuff. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last couple of months hasn’t come to any answers.

[00:26:34] Natalie Patrice Tucker: And blockchain.

[00:26:35] Sam Proulx: Another discussion!

[00:26:36] Natalie Patrice Tucker: And all of that. Yeah.

[00:26:37] Sam Proulx: Right. Yeah, exactly. Before I started Fable, I did crypto for a number of years. That’s a whole other conversation.

[00:26:45] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah, I’m going to talk to you offline about all that.

[00:26:48] Sam Proulx: Absolutely.

[00:26:49] Nikki Nolan: So let’s transition to the flip side of this. What do you feel is your biggest frustration in your career and is it still happening?

[00:26:56] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I feel like that’s like a multi-tiered, kind of answer. There are the actual parts of my job that are frustrating or not. And then there’s sort of external circumstances. I don’t need to tell you that being a black woman in tech has been interesting. I say with a deadpan and blink blinking. It’s not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it’s not always been the best thing in the world. So much less, you know, like adding on to that, being autistic, you know, like it’s just been fun, every single day. Let me tell you. So those are the kind of structural things I’m dealing with as a person in the world in general. That’s something that’s not probably not going to change in my lifetime.

[00:27:49] There’s work to move forward, every little piece counts, but now, I’m not expecting utopia, before I kick it. At the same time, I think in terms of my work, I don’t know. I think they’re just so many challenges right? There are just so many challenges to getting folks to have the information that they need, making it a priority, against so many other priorities. That’s always sort of like a perennial. Sometimes I feel like my job is jockeying for positions sometimes more than like actual accessibility work, you know?

[00:28:29] Some days are better than others, but you know, like sometimes you just have to sort of shove your way in there and be like, okay, nope, nope.

[00:28:37] Sam Proulx: Is it, and this is another I think a lot about, I think perhaps that one of the things that was done, and I wonder if you’ll agree with this- one of the wins we’ve had is we have moved accessibility from more a personal problem, as in like people are not interested or don’t want to do it into a systemic problem. Where people feel like the system and the deadlines and the budgets and other systemic problems prevent them from doing that. Have you noticed that?

[00:29:12] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Oh, yeah.

[00:29:12] Sam Proulx: In your career, has it changed the way you’ve had to approach accessibility?

[00:29:16] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well, I think it’s more in alignment with my own sort of way of thinking about my work and doing my work. Because I think of access to information as a human right. And so I’m on a crusade, right? I’m thinking about people, I’m thinking about access, I’m thinking about contribution. And, you know, I start to sort of lose the wind in my sails, if I have to convince you of how many people with disabilities there are in the world and why they’re valuable at all.

[00:29:44] Can we just get past that? I think that aligns with conversations we’ve been having around race and disability in society. And listening to everyone’s voice and ensuring that folks have a seat at the table made it a lot easier to be like, no, no, we can’t not think about people with disabilities now. No.

[00:30:10] Nikki Nolan: Yeah.

[00:30:11] Natalie Patrice Tucker: If you do that now, you sound like someone behind the times, if you are like, those people don’t deserve access.

[00:30:21] Sam Proulx: Or doesn’t matter. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:30:25] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right.

[00:30:26] Nikki Nolan: Yeah. The way we can move towards bringing people to the table and being more inclusive. I don’t see the downsides to it.

[00:30:33] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I know.

[00:30:34] Nikki Nolan: I don’t see the counterargument of making a more inclusive world. I really, I don’t. I am confused.

[00:30:41] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah. That’s where I come to it too, is like, yeah, Convince me that inclusion is not the way to go. Yeah, this is a revolution. Get on board or get rolled over what I’m doing.

[00:30:53] Sam Proulx: The thing that fascinated me though, and I wonder if either of you have seen this is the way that these conversations in ways have been more controversial in the disability groups.

[00:31:03] I think if you talk to perhaps an ethnic minority, they would not say to you, oh, there’s no such thing as racism. That’s not a thing anymore. There are people with disabilities who will say no ableism isn’t a thing,

[00:31:16] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Well, no, no. I think there are many ways to be human as are human beings. And think because the conversation in society in some ways about race is more mature, there’s a lot more stigma to saying racism doesn’t exist. Right?

[00:31:37] Or just because I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist, it must not be affecting other people, but in the same way that ableism can get really easy to be in a silo.

[00:31:50] Right. right. Or they have a little information bubble. And so I think the work there is, you know, is patience, which is not my forte, but also education.

[00:32:02] Sam Proulx: Well, Natalie, maybe what you had to have to say about silos is very interesting because I think too many times in the disabled community, we who will express themselves as “I am a blindness advocate”. Or “I am an advocate for deaf people”. Or “I am an advocate for people with autism”. I wonder if maybe it’s because our community hasn’t quite reached the maturity where we’re saying “I am a disability advocate”.

[00:32:28] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Hmm.

[00:32:30] Sam: In the same way that I think people of different ethnic backgrounds have reached the maturity to say, “I am an advocate for racial equality”, right? Rather than I am an advocate for people from this country.

[00:32:40] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I mean, I think there’s a lot more of it than there had been. I’m really excited about it. Yeah. But I think that’s just the natural trajectory of things. Right? As we learn from what’s working in other movements and other intersections around our lives, we can apply it.

[00:33:00] And I mean, you know, disability rights and inclusion work has been going on hard and strong for quite some time. There has been this huge sort of societal idea that’s still tough to breakthrough. That people would display these need to be protected in some particular way, like sheltered and protected, more than listened to and involved.

[00:33:30] Nikki Nolan: The infantilization of people with disabilities-

[00:33:32] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah.

[00:33:32] Nikki Nolan: is so prevalent. I want to change topics. How do you feel people can be better allies?

[00:33:37] Number one, listening. If you don’t have anybody to listen to, that might be a sign, right? So you need to open up who you’re listening to, where you’re getting your information from. Who you’re following on Twitter. you know, just basic things have been able to build human connections that forward the work.

[00:34:00] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Cause if you’re trying to be an ally, ultimately you want to be an accomplice. Someone that folks can count on to stand in the gap when privilege will make a difference.

[00:34:10] Nikki Nolan: I heard somebody say, start following people on social media who have disabilities and listen. Don’t comment. Don’t do anything. Just sit back and listen. What’s important for people to do is to seek out the people and just see how people are talking and see what’s actually happening.

[00:34:27] And don’t jump in. If you’re not disabled or if you’re not in that movement, just listen. That’s great advice.

[00:34:36] Sam Proulx: I agree, I think for both of you, this is perhaps an experience that is more unique, but so many people will go through their lives maybe interacting with a person with a disability once every three years.

[00:34:51] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right.

[00:34:52] Sam Proulx: And sometimes I feel this thing that like, if people don’t ask us the questions when they have the opportunity, they will never ask and they’ll never learn.

[00:35:01] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:01] Sam Proulx: And so I am always hesitant. And I get the feeling right now. Sometimes you just want to go about your lives and to answer people’s questions because like they should do their own research. But at the same time, if you don’t, these questions may never be answered. Right? And how do you balance that?

[00:35:20] Natalie Patrice Tucker: And I think that’s the fundamental dichotomy. I think that in the community, there are folks who are like, yes, ask me anything and I will be your Sherpa onto the road of understanding your internal ableism or whatever the hell it is. And then there are folks like me who are like, if you don’t come to me with a certain amount of information, I’m probably not going to entertain this conversation. I just have a limited patience and bandwidth for certain things, that’s true everywhere. You know, there are some folks who just want to teach and folks who want to lead by example.

[00:35:55] And I think there’s a place for all of it. And for all of that to shift, you know, under certain circumstances,

[00:36:03] Nikki Nolan: Yeah.

[00:36:04] Natalie Patrice Tucker: There has to be a place for folks who want to be like- there’s such a great YouTube channel. I think it’s called, like Ask a Blind Guy and he’ll talk about all kinds of things.

[00:36:19] And he’s also got a very great sense of humor and he’s very open, so he doesn’t get offended by people being like, “how do you live without purple?” He just answers them and gives a whole new perspective. That’s delicious. And I think there’s a place for that. It’s a fundamental place. But we also have to invite folks to seek that information out for themselves and ask if they can ask questions. Don’t go touching people or people’s access devices or anything without their permission, just so you can get your questions answered.

[00:37:02] Sam Proulx: It’s a hard balance right? Where are the safe spaces? Where are not the safe spaces? I struggled with it. One of the things I do outside of fable, I moderate r/Blind on Reddit, is kind of the official blind page.

[00:37:11] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Do you? So cool.

[00:37:12] Sam: A blind thing on Reddit. But like half of the posts there are sighted folks coming in with questions. And sometimes it has been expressed to us as moderators that this is drowning out people with disabilities the ability to create a space for themselves to build community. Yet, if you reject these questions, they may never get answered. I don’t know. It’s just something that I think about a lot.

[00:37:37] And so when this was in conversation, I just thought, yeah, let’s talk about that for a minute.

[00:37:41] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Yeah.

[00:37:41] Nikki Nolan: It’s so hard. I don’t know the answers, but I feel like the biggest, hardest space for me in my personal day-to-day is this dichotomy and balance.

[00:37:52] I want to just shift and I’m going to jump into something actually fun. Maybe it’s fun. Maybe it’s not, I don’t know. We’ll see. What is the first piece of technology you remember using and what was it for?

[00:38:02] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Oh, we had, I think, some kind of Commodore and I can’t remember what number it was, but it had a tape deck as the hard drive. So this is like, 86. I swear to God. It was like a long time ago. My mom was like a huge geek and so we had all kinds of electronics. We were like on the internet the day after Al Gore invented it.

[00:38:28] I mean, basically it was Star Treking out.

[00:38:36] Sam Proulx: I had grown up with it, with a father who worked at IBM for over 30 years.

[00:38:40] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Oh, nice.

[00:38:41] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Yeah. And that was also blind. So there have been computers since before I was born.

[00:38:48] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Nice.

[00:38:48] Sam Proulx: Which is a different experience. But yeah, I think that that first piece of technology is right. There’s such a focus on teaching kids to code in school.

[00:38:58] I don’t even know if that’s right. It’s just having kids grow up around technology that they can modify and work on and play with. It’s like reading, if it’s around, you’ll do it.

[00:39:02] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Exactly. Yes. I agree wholeheartedly and I agree. I agree, that’s true for everyone, right? Like that was the thing about the internet. It was like, oh my God, there are so many people. Like I thought I was the strangest person in America. When, like I was definitely the strangest person in my family. I was obviously the strangest person in my city.

[00:39:26] Like I was everywhere I looked, I was the strangest person. And then the internet happened and this is dial-up. We’re talking AOL, you know, the whole shebang. I was on the internet. On, what do you call, BBC’s I think they’re called these little bulletin boards. Yeah. So like, yeah, IRC.

[00:39:49] Oh my gosh. So I was like going into these little chat rooms and meeting other, you know, black queers and all kinds of random stuff I was interested in. I was like, oh my God, there are whole groups of people who were interested in paleoanthropology. This is amazing. A whole new world was possible once I was able to sort of extending my boundaries and that realization, I think everyone should have access to that.

[00:40:18] Like anything is really possible. It’s proof that you’re not alone. Right? People can tell you as much as they want, but you have to learn that.

[00:40:27] Nikki Nolan: I love that all three of us grew up with technology in our house potentially before we were born. I also, my father has had computers and software, like I believe since the 70s and I was born in the 80s.

[00:40:38] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Oh, wow.

[00:40:38] Nikki Nolan: I also came into the world with technology already in my house and getting to play and like to put things together. It feels like that’s really important. The ability to play,

[00:40:50] Sam Proulx: It is. I mean, there’s also that feeling of grumpy nostalgia, right? I mean, IRC was better. Right? Let’s all just keep using IRC.

[00:40:58] Natalie Patrice Tucker: No.

[00:40:58] Sam Proulx: It was all text-based and it was more accessible. And so let’s never do any other chat with an IRC, which is something that I’m prone to, right?

[00:41:06] It’s super important to remember all of the wonderful advances that we are making,

[00:41:11] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Right.

[00:41:11] Sam Proulx: Not only in accessibility, but in UI and UX and usability and lowering barriers and all that good stuff. But it’s fun to talk about what we came from. And reminisce.

[00:41:20] Nikki Nolan: So we’ve come to the end. If people want to find you, how might they go about doing that?

[00:41:23] Natalie Patrice Tucker: I am easy to find on Twitter. My handle is @NataliePatriceT and also, you can find me under Natalie Patrice Tucker on LinkedIn. Those are the easiest ways.

[00:41:36] Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being here.

[00:41:38] Natalie Patrice Tucker: Thanks.

[00:41:39] Nikki Nolan: Thanks for listening to Disability Bandwidth. If you liked this episode of Disability Bandwidth, please subscribe and share it with friends and family. Today’s episode was hosted by Sam Proulx and Nikki Nolan. Edited and produced by Nikki Nolan.

Transcripts are written by Emma Klauber. Feed music is created by Efe Akmen.

Special thanks to everyone at Fable who without their support. This show would not be possible.

You can find out more about Disability Bandwidth on Twitter, @disability_band and Instagram, @disabilitybandwidth, or on our website https://disabilitybandwidth.com/.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Comments are closed.