Do you care and want to change things? Join us for an insightful conversation with Angie Rajani, CPACC, an inclusive design strategist with expertise in digital accessibility. In this episode, we delve into the nuances of working in government versus corporate settings, as well as the inspiration behind Angie’s work. We also tackle important questions, such as whether accessibility should be included in DEI initiatives and how to approach intersectionality. And, if you’re curious about the connection between cake and understanding people’s identities, you won’t want to miss this episode! Plus, we’ll explore co-designing and how it can lead to more innovative ideas. Tune in to this week’s podcast for all this and more.

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Transcript

[00:00:05] Sam Proulx: Welcome to season two of Disability Bandwidth!

[00:00:12] Nikki Nolan: A show where we talk with experts in disability about their journey, life and inspiration.

[00:00:17] Sam Proulx: I’m Sam Proulx.

[00:00:18] Nikki Nolan: And I’m Nikki Nolan.

[00:00:20] Sam Proulx: Let’s get started.

[00:00:21] Nikki Nolan: Would you like to introduce yourself?

[00:00:22] Angie Rajani: Hi everyone. My name is Angie Rajani. I am wearing a black beanie with pastel colored mushrooms of different varieties. It’s a little bit chilly, which is why I’m wearing a hat inside. I would describe my skin as a darker caramel. I have black hair, which is a little bit beyond shoulder length.

[00:00:44] It’s long and kind of wavy. I have black eyebrows. My glasses are round and black. I have a sep piercing. I am not wearing any makeup at the present moment. And I have a blue cardigan with a blue knit top inside.

[00:00:57] So, my day role is to work at the government of Canada at the Canadian Human Rights Commission as a web accessibility technical advisor. But I’m gonna focus on what my non-day job is, which is the consulting I continue to do and which led me to the day job that I have.

[00:01:15] I am an inclusive Design Strategist. I came from the School of Digital Accessibility. But my roles have given me opportunities to weigh in on topics like inclusive recruiting, employment, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), procurement of software, hardware, and technology training. So now I consider myself someone who can operate, I would say inclusive design strategy from a corporate perspective while still having the technical skills to support developers and designers with code or content changes. As well as speaking to HR on, how is it that we dismantle time tests or how do we make sure that we’re reaching the right populations so that everyone can apply.

[00:01:59] Sam Proulx: Seems like you’ve had the opportunity to work in both government and corporate and we hear a lot of things like, oh, government is slow and hard and, oh, corporate only cares about profit. I’m interested, what do you find to be the differences in, in the two environments and which do you think is maybe more challenging?

[00:02:23] Angie Rajani: So for me, I think each one has its own challenges. I think entering government, there are certain structures that you will have to navigate. And I understand, if we think about a government not being a profit producing place, and not that like our government is or isn’t, it’s just, where do the funds go?

[00:02:39] Right? It’s people’s taxpayer dollars. They’re paying for products and services and that’s where that money goes. So being able to allot that money fairly across however many branches, departments, for me, I think it’s just getting people trained up and people fully aware and understanding that it’s happening.

[00:02:57] It just might take longer because of the amount of resources that we have and who we’re able to recruit. I know that the government recruitment process takes a little bit longer because, if we think about being risk averse, right? You’d wanna make sure that you hire the right people with the right skills and that they’d be able to hit the ground running. Whereas in corporate, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot more opportunities to move around and learn digital accessibility on the job. I’ve noticed that there’s a general culture towards encouraging training, or people to make it part of their role.

[00:03:28] So it’s a cross-functional thing, which I’m super excited about. I think the challenges for me in corporate are, not having to use legal and financial as the reasons for why people should do things. And really, really focusing on things like your reputation, the public, the relationship that you have with the public, or your clients or your future clients.

[00:03:48] Understanding that you work in symbiosis with the communities that you operate within and that you don’t just take, but you also give back and create opportunities. And understanding that from a diversity perspective as well. Canada being this diverse country, you want to make sure that your business is future-proof by facilitating opportunities and environments that allow everyone to be employed, work, and benefit from your products and services.

[00:04:18] Not be disappointed by your ads, being able to recommend you. So that relationship with the public and understanding, what does that look like in 5, 10 years from now? As opposed to like, we have a lawsuit, we have compliance. You know, this is gonna cost us this much now, but if we do it in like 2 years, maybe it’ll even cost us much more. So this is why we’re gonna do it now.

[00:04:36] Sam Proulx: It’s interesting that you mentioned accessibility, as well as DEI in there. I know there’s been a lot of controversial discussions with really smart, reasonable, passionate, folks on both sides of the issue of should accessibility be included in DEI or should it be its own thing?

[00:04:55] And I’m interested in your take on that.

[00:04:57] Angie Rajani: For me, I will always say that it should be included in there, but I think right now the current environment requires this sort of idea approach where it’s inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. Because people don’t know how to create that. They don’t understand what it looks like. Not everyone has that expertise, and I’m not saying it’s acceptable.

[00:05:18] I just feel like in order for that to really fold into the D, the E and the I, there has to be this understanding that accessibility exists when they’re within there. And it’s not just from a disability perspective, right? It’s like literacy, gender economic, socioeconomic status and access, education, life experiences, age, those things do play into how accessibility and disability play out in our real world experiences.

[00:05:48] But by not considering disability and accessibility in any of those DEI experiences or those knowledge competencies, we automatically just don’t include it. And then disability gets completely removed as a category of an opportunity to create equity.

[00:06:05] Sam Proulx: I’m pushing back because I’m interested in your thoughts and I think ideas are a really interesting way to talk about things and a way to think about things. But how do we embrace intersectionality in that kind of framework and make space for all of the conversations that need to happen and that we want to happen?

[00:06:29] The thing I’ve sort of heard from folks on the other side is that I want accessibility to be separate because if I show up with a cane or in a wheelchair, that’s all anybody ever wants to talk about. And we don’t talk about racial issues or we don’t talk about feminist issues because that one piece of someone’s identity can be all consuming in some ways. I think it’s kind of the primary criticism I’ve heard of including accessibility in the DEI space. So have you thought about that and how do we build space for all of the conversations that need to happen?

[00:07:08] Sometimes they feel like they need to happen all at once, right?

[00:07:10] Angie Rajani: Yeah, I totally understand that perspective because I myself would not want my race to be the thing that’s the focus or my own disability. Because I have what I would know to be invisible disabilities. I would not want that to be the topic if that was the only thing. And that’s my lived experience and it’s not the only experience.

[00:07:23] I think not wanting the “A” there, from a personal perspective, I can understand exactly why someone would not want the “A” there at all. Because why would you want that to be the only thing that people talk to you about? But I want to push back and maybe go back to a time where gender-based analytics was the thing that a lot of places or people were looking at when it came to intersectionality and people making it really important because then it starts with gender-based or whatever, right?

[00:08:02] And it’s an analytic plus framework and it’s a theoretical framework. I mean, yes, it starts with gender because of what’s in the name, but it really does force you to look at the intersectionality of these different equity deserving experiences, or lived experience lives. And looking at not just someone being impacted, but also someone being able to navigate these different communities or these different experiences without having their disability be even a question about it, right?

[00:08:34] Or understanding that their disability in conjunction with being like a racialized person, in my thing or even my age, might be a me thing. I think what I’m understanding is people don’t understand that they’re not in competition.

[00:08:53] It’s almost as if we were to think of someone as like a cake to put people as, what object am I today, but like as a cake, right? There’s all these ingredients. You are not tasting just the sugar, you are not tasting just the eggs, right? It’s like we are these people, everything folded in and mixed in and then baked in together. And there’s like so many different types of cakes, so many types of ingredients that can go in, different brands that go into things.

[00:09:19] People are these unique beings that aren’t just one thing. And I feel like understanding that the “A” forces you to only look at this person as like a product of sugar or a dessert rather than a person, right? Or this one version of cake rather than a dessert or a food option.

[00:09:44] You know what I’m saying? This person is a whole person. I feel like people want to isolate these issues and not understand how they impact each other because it can be overwhelming. and there’s different histories that compete. If we think about the racialized experience, or the lack of education around who gets to know what about who, access intimacy is also important, right?

[00:10:07] Like I don’t understand that asking for your needs to be met, from an accommodations perspective versus just I’m a human being, I require this level of respect. I’ve been noticing that once you have these kinds of really real conversations, people can understand how accessibility fits into all these categories and why it doesn’t need to be on its own.

[00:10:26] And then at the same time, understanding that not everyone has that maturity model in their organization. Not everyone has that education or awareness around disability and why. Depending on who you are and where you’re at and where you’re working and what communities you operate in, that might need to stand out for you. For you to understand why you might need to create equity of access, even if you don’t agree with the position, why you understand people around you might need that “A” to stand out so that they can get their needs met.

[00:10:54] Sam Proulx: Yeah, exactly. I’m loving this because it’s a place where reasonable people can disagree, but I love your approach of sort of the right tool for the right time. I think it’s also interesting the way you mentioned competition in that we kind of see things as a competition.

[00:11:13] We also sometimes kind of see things as a limited resource competition, right? Like, if we are creating equity for gender and sexuality, then they’re gonna take all the resources and we won’t create equity for disability, right? Or vice versa. And so sometimes I think people with different needs feel like they’re in competition in ways which they aren’t.

[00:11:36] How do we get people past that?

[00:11:40] Angie Rajani: I think first figuring out is it a money cost thing? Is it a people cost thing? Like in terms of who gets to sit at what table? Is it that you don’t wanna hear whose perspectives and why? Is it a time thing? Is it a lack of awareness? For me, it’s when I think about resources being limited, I always try and go back to what are the goals?

[00:12:04] What resources do we have? Where can we be innovative? Right? What do we already know that already exists in the space that we can leverage? I think people are always afraid to ask for help in terms of hey, I’m running this event. I don’t know how to do this. Or, I don’t know where to look for this.

[00:12:21] Or, I’m running this event. These are the goals for the event. I don’t know how to get there. Or I have a product I’m working on right now and it needs to be able to do X, Y, Z, but I feel like I’ve been given these requirements. How do I make sure that these requirements are also met? So ABC, let’s just say for example, I’m being very abstract because I don’t want to point to anything specific and maybe create no inclusion in my own discussions.

[00:12:50] But understanding what is the priority? Is it A, B, or C? And who is the most impacted? So if we do A , do we facilitate more access or if we choose C over whatever, who gets what? I think we always have to prioritize not just who our target is, but if we were to look back on this in five years, how would we regard our decisions?

[00:13:18] What would we need to achieve our goals? And you know, if we’re gonna hit the mark, how are we going to make sure that we’re going to communicate that we’re not gonna be able to meet the mark? Because sometimes if you have limited resources, but you communicate what is happening, why sometimes the people that are gonna participate might help you find solutions.

[00:13:38] And then that goes back to asking for help. I also think about co-design, right? On unlimited resources. Co-design is a very, very powerful framework tool because you are literally working with the people that you want to provide the access for or give the opportunities to or have participation from.

[00:13:55] Who better to know what you need, how you might need it, what has worked in the past or what they might wanna see in the future than working with the people that you literally wanna create for.

[00:14:04] Nikki Nolan: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:05] Sam Proulx: Yeah. I love what you said there so much about transparent communication because it’s something that organizations don’t seem to want to do because there’s this oh, well, if we say we didn’t meet the mark here, now we’re gonna get in trouble. Right? And nobody wants that.

[00:14:18] But from my own lived experience, if there’s like a notice on a website saying that it’s not currently accessible with screen readers, at least I’m aware that they are aware of screen readers and that they know they have a problem. And I’m not gonna waste the next hour and a half of my life trying to use this website, right?

[00:14:37] I’m just gonna move on and either ask for help or go elsewhere. So anyway, that really resonated. Nikki, I think you’ve been trying to jump in and I keep stepping on you and I apologize.

[00:14:46] Nikki Nolan: No, no, no. It’s totally fine. I’m really into this co-designing. I love this method. I wrote a blog post about how important it’s important to include people, but I think a lot of people struggle with being able to co-design because they just run into barriers. Like, where do I find people? What should I do?

[00:15:04] What are some things that you would tell the people who are like, I really wanna co-design, but I don’t know how.

[00:15:09] Angie Rajani: I think the first thing is to understand why you want a co-designer because if you don’t know why, then what are you doing? Is it kind of performative? Is it just so that you can say that this has been co-designed? Is it so that this is your new opportunity?

[00:15:22] So understanding your reason for co-design will help facilitate your goals for who you wanna reach out to. Knowing that co-design is literally every single time I think I’ve seen it done, it’s almost like an innovation, right? Because you just get all these minds at the table, you get all these ideas, and then you get to work. You actually get to work with, I don’t say real people, real ideas, real solutions, but nothing that’s really in the hypothetical that someone wouldn’t have thought of as being a real potential solution. You get the collaboration at the very least. But I think the first thing is can you collaborate?

[00:15:59] Do you want to collaborate? Then when it comes to reaching out, Fable was one of the first places I had ever heard of that facilitated this. But, thinking about who you wanna collaborate with and why them, or the organizations that support these types of people or their organizations or communities that you’re aware of, if you don’t have access to them, do you know people that might? If you don’t, Reddit is a wonderful place.

[00:16:23] Twitter is a wonderful place. LinkedIn is a wonderful place. I always go back to the internet because as a millennial that’s my safe space. But let’s just say you’re not so comfortable with the internet and you’re not so tech savvy. How hard is it for you to go to the library or call a library or call a community center?

[00:16:42] Even in your city, right? The city is Toronto. The city has so many helplines for different things for people to get the support that they need. Social media is wonderful. I know I’ve seen people post on certain access or disability groups to recruit people for co-design or for testing.

[00:17:00] Then looking at other businesses that have done it. If you’re not in competition with a business, but they’ve done something innovative and they said that they co-designed it, how hard is it for you, the marketing person of X to go to the marketing person of Y to be like, hey, we wanna do this.

[00:17:15] We saw your awesome campaign. Would you be open to a coffee chat or would you be open to an email or even just messaging somebody, actually reaching out instead of trying to do everything within. Because again, another opportunity for collaboration, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

[00:17:32] And by talking to people you actually learn more.

[00:17:44] Nikki Nolan: Yeah, this is amazing. I’m gonna get us back. I mean, we’re halfway through the time and we haven’t really asked any of the questions.

[00:17:42] Angie Rajani: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:44] Nikki Nolan: I wanna pull us back into what are some of the key moments that sort of led you to this place? People, ideas, books, media events.

[00:17:53] Angie Rajani: I can start with my grandparents. So, my grandmother was a person with a limb difference who lived with diabetes. I think understanding as a child how this woman had lived as a successful business person within her communities and had modified her life because of, at that time, medical support.

[00:18:17] And just seeing how much she talked about her life changing as a child. It was so easy to understand that this person had a whole life, that people didn’t understand or had no idea about because they only saw her in this one way. And it really made me realize at that time, like how hard it was for her to be able to tell her grandchild that I used to be this person.

[00:18:40] Also being a child and thinking oh wait, this is like a real thing that actually my grandma can’t run her business anymore. Or I mean, this was in a different country, so there’s like different access things, and this was in the early nineties. But understanding that perspective, having someone literally share their experience with you, like family member to family member. Then my grandfather as well, he had hearing loss since he was like 19.

[00:19:07] So seeing someone who eventually got hearing aids and had technology completely changed their experience in their life as an entrepreneur, that made a really big difference. Then for me it was actually just doing things in Girl Guides such as planning events. Girl Guides of Canada had requirements for accessible events like camps.

[00:19:29] In the early 2000s, even before AODA, right? So that was creating equity for participation. In my time at UFT, there was a requirement for any conferences or events to be held at accessible venues. So understanding the built environment and marketing and accommodations from the school that understood how important it was to facilitate that for the educational milieu.

[00:19:55] I was really thankful to go to the place that did that. And then my own experiences, being diagnosed in my twenties, and my thirties with different disabilities and neurodiversity. Having that self-compassion and understanding that I operated in a certain way and that there were reasons why I couldn’t do certain things or why I couldn’t meet certain goals.

[00:20:19] Or why I had to now ask for accommodations and understand that I’m just asking for equal participation. I’m not asking for anything that is above and beyond that is being seen a certain way. Hopefully that shapes my personal experience in terms of books.

[00:20:33] I started in the technical space, especially the coding and design space. Inclusive Design, by Regina Gilbert, that was one of the first books I ever read and it totally helped me understand theoretically and also just example wise, how to do digital accessibility from ideation to execution.

[00:20:51] Laura Berg’s Accessibility For Everyone, another book that has both the process and corporate aspect as well as the technical. Inclusive Design Patterns by Heydon Pickering. I will evangelize that book forever because it is literally the thing that allowed me to test actual components and figure out how to code my own components and give good direction to developers once I kind of got my hands off the developer space.

[00:21:16] Mismatch by Kat Holmes. That one is really great for practical examples, but like approaches and frameworks and understanding how innovation is so critical in this space because you can leverage what you know from certain products and experiences and take them elsewhere and replicate them. Then from lived experiences, Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century, edited by Alice Wong has plenty of stories.

[00:21:42] That really helped me understand, I would say the perspective of people who I would’ve never come across in my entire life, on an accessibility disability journey. And it really helped inform not just my practice, but my future career in terms of what I wanna do or where I can take my knowledge or the types of things I wanna be researching or looking into when I have downtime.

[00:22:06] My favorite book to recommend to people is Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau. That one is my favorite because it’s so accessible. It’s like plain language. It’s very practical. It almost talks to you like no matter what age you are, I feel like you can read this book and walk away learning something.

[00:22:27] I definitely recommend reading it multiple times. It’s definitely an easy read, something that you can give as a gift. I feel like no matter who reads it, you learn something whether you’ve been in this space for 30 years or you have been recently diagnosed, you’re a president of a company, there’s something in there for everybody.

[00:22:47] And then events. So, I think a11y, both the conference and the camp, all those talks have been so phenomenal in terms of giving me the knowledge and perspectives that I was missing out on and learning from like industry professionals. In terms of Fable being one of the first critical events, I don’t remember what it was now.

[00:23:07] I remember writing a cover letter about it, but it was in October, 2020. I was working at a company and they had posted about this event, and I don’t remember who was at the event, but I remember it was like literally people talking about ideation to execution. What does that process look like to do inclusive design?

[00:23:28] Who needs to be aware, when, why, how to get people on board in your company, your maturity model. What does that look like? So for me, that was like one of the biggest things that made me really, really want to get into the space, knowing that there were companies that were doing this and not just advertising for roles, but didn’t know how to execute it.

[00:23:48] Then the ID 24 (Inclusive Design 24) playlists. That conference that comes out every year. I love that. I think I never stop learning from that, but it’s something that exists on the internet forever or as long as YouTube is gonna be around and they keep that up. That playlist that comes out every year.

[00:23:05] Or the conference that gets produced every year is something that I think allows people to continue producing knowledge around this, but also helping people see different perspectives and continue education in this space. This is one of those free ways to do it, that you don’t have to pay for a course.

[00:24:21] Sam Proulx: Yeah. What an amazing list. Note to ourselves, let’s get some links in the show.

[00:24:26] Nikki Nolan: Yeah. Because I was taking notes. I was like, oh my God. Oh God.

[00:24:30] Sam Proulx: I’m just picturing all the podcast listeners in their cars commuting to work, trying desperately to write this down. Don’t do that, folks. We’ll get stuff for you.

[00:24:38] Nikki Nolan: Yeah. We’ll definitely put in the show notes.

[00:24:40] Sam Proulx: Yes. Be safe out there. I gotta say, I love Laura and Hayden and their work.

[00:24:48] You know, a11y to, ID 24. I feel like we’re hanging out in the same spaces. Is it just me or did Alice Wong edit an anthology of disability and science fiction, or am I thinking of someone else?

[00:24:59] Angie Rajani: I probably need to keep up with my lived experience books. I feel like I keep going back to the theoretical. I didn’t give another set of books, which was the Ryerson Press books or I guess the TU books now. The Toronto Metropolitan University books, those have been phenomenally helpful as well.

[00:25:15] Angie Rajani: And I think anybody who’s thinking about getting into space will give you the business case, they have code, they have everything from beginning to end. But I really wish, I need to look. Maybe I can go look it up afterwards.

[00:25:27] Sam Proulx: Yeah, I’m, I’m sitting here wondering if I’m maybe thinking of someone else. Because we do have so many great folks working and thinking and talking in this space. Did you say you went to OCAD?

[00:25:39] Angie Rajani: No, I went to, University of Toronto, but I would love to go to OCAD’s Inclusive Design program or their Strategic Foresight program. Those are future goals of mine.

[00:25:48] Sam Proulx: Sweet. Yeah. Sorry as we talk Canadian baseball here.

[00:25:51] Before we continue this conversation, it’s time to pause for just a minute for a word from our sponsor.

[00:25:56] Noah (AD): Hello, my name is Noah. I’m a full-time voice control user. I’m a member of Fable’s community of Accessibility testers. If you’re listening to this podcast, you already know just how important it is to integrate the voices of people with disabilities into every aspect of your product development journey. Fable can help you do this. From improving your team’s accessibility training with Fable Upskill, to working directly with assistive technology users, with Fable Engage, we can help you take the next step in building amazing websites and apps that are accessible and easy to use for everyone. To learn more, check out what we do at www.makeitfable.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

[00:26:38] Sam Proulx: And we are back.

[00:26:39] Nikki Nolan: I feel like you answered a lot of the questions that we sort of had, and so what I’m really curious about is, what are some of the outcomes you experienced while exploring and talking about disability? Has the space opened up as you’ve started to be more open about disability?

[00:26:55] Angie Rajani: For me, I think once I was ready to come to terms with the fact that I had been diagnosed with a disability and now I was no longer just someone who was planning events and trying to create access that way because I knew about the importance of it. From, you know, the 360 perspective around, the GBA analytics, making sure things are financially affordable, making sure that people can actually participate.

[00:27:20] I really understood, for me, I’m not going to take this as an opportunity to lean back. I’m gonna take this as an opportunity now to change any ableism I’ve put out there without realizing it. And to advocate from my own voice, like from my own genuine voice, and my own experiences.

[00:27:43] And I think it allowed me to listen better, if that makes sense. Not because its voices weren’t important before, but because I could fully understand what that experience was like without even realizing I had been experiencing it all along. So in terms of outcomes like self-compassion, empathy, helping other people understand that that is part of the journey.

[00:28:08] And that there’s no space for sympathy here. We are not asking for that. No one wants that. And if you come to us with that and you are not received well, that is because you do not have the best intentions. I don’t wanna say that, but you’re not really looking at it from the lens of wanting to change things.

[00:28:32] Angie Rajani: It’s more of like, I don’t wanna go back to liking the disability models, but really like the medical model, with a charity model. I really try to help people understand why those views are problematic. But in terms of outcomes, for me, it’s understanding the variety of perspectives, how people approach it, and how to change their minds.

[00:28:52] I really hate to say change their minds. I know that you are an evangelist, Sam, so I try not to use that word. But I really do believe in winning cards, changing minds, getting them over to the good side.

[00:29:05] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely hear you about the freighted and weighted problems with the word evangelist. I use it because I work basically entirely on the corporate side.

[00:29:17] Angie Rajani: Yeah.

[00:29:18] Sam Proulx: Titles matter, right? Like for my own career advancement, I have to have the same title as all of the other people who do the thing that I do.

[00:29:25] I really do in a very real way feel that I don’t necessarily have the choice of title just because you’re in that corporate kind of hierarchical world and you have to sometimes make the change that you wanna see. You have to dance the dance. I love what I do, but I hear your hesitancy towards evangelism.

[00:29:43] Angie Rajani: I think for me the outcome is not the diversity of perspectives, but the ongoing education. The biggest thing is that people actually care and wanna change things. They’re not interested in upholding these old models of institutionalization and segregation.

[00:30:01] People really understand the importance of integration awareness, where they’re sitting, where their gaps are. And I think that’s just been super fruitful because when you have these different people, different places in different areas of getting to the accessibility or inclusive design spectrum. You see these sort of chains of support, networks of support, where people are connecting, understanding that they might have the goals of one company, but they only have the resources of the company that they are at.

[00:30:33] So it’s like, what does it look like to do it at our level? Or there are places that are like, okay, we’re we really got this goal down. But we wanna be, I don’t wanna say like any one business, but like whatever business or like the head of whatever, like the leader in this.

[00:30:49] So what does it look like to scale and get there? What else can we be doing differently? I think for me the outcome is like seeing the change, even if it’s slow at times or it’s not always what we expect. The fact that there is a desire to change and facilitate and create equitable access and understanding why that’s important from a non-charity model, non-medical model. That’s what I think I wanted to say maybe earlier, but I couldn’t quite articulate.

[00:31:16] Sam Proulx: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting that you talked so much about changing hearts and changing minds and educating and all of this stuff. It really calls out to, earlier in the discussion, you’d brought up your experiences with the Girl Guides and with University of Toronto, and we talk a lot about shifting left inaccessibility in web development in all this stuff and getting the voices of the community involved early.

[00:31:40] But I wonder if maybe we don’t talk enough about shifting left in people’s personal journeys, as in, making sure they’re taught about these things in high school, in university, in college, before their career starts. Instead of suddenly being at a job. And now accessibility lands on your desk is a thing that you have to do.

[00:32:01] But how do we make movement there and how do we get early accessibility and disability education that is effective and that does the thing is something I wonder about. You seem like someone who’s done thinking about similar things.

[00:32:20] Angie Rajani: So I wanna talk about this a lot because it’s something I’ve been obsessed about for the last year in my career. And I think it came from doing this DEI project at Canada Post, where I was looking at, what does it look like to put a DEI page together for this organization? What are best practices in the space?

[00:32:39] And it really came down to, what does it look like from the inside? And then I kept coming back to this issue of education or people not being aware of it. I have thought about this in multiple ways, and I think it comes back to curriculum design and understanding the goals of the people in power at that time. Or your political parties or whoever’s responsible for education, what their goals are for the next 10/20 years of Canadians.

[00:33:04] And not just from an education perspective, from an employment perspective, from an economic and community participation perspective, like economic and employment opportunity. What does it look like to live with a disability and participate equally, and why is that important?

[00:33:22] So I think it, unless that’s a concern for the people who are designing curriculum at the time, it just doesn’t come across. But in terms of really, really practical ways, I’ve thought about how we educate in Ontario students around indigenous and first Nations and their history.

[00:33:45] What does that look like from a grade 1 through grade 12 perspective? There’s multiple opportunities in the curriculum to do that, right? And there’s different modalities through which you do that, right? Whether it’s reading a novel, you’re doing a history lesson, you might be doing it in social sciences.

[00:34:00] Now look at that as, or if we think about the history of black Canadians, histories of slavery, segregation, if we think about immigrants, how immigrants have been treated like that. I remember in grade 10 history, we had a unit on that. So having those equity deserving people be part of the curriculum, their histories, looking at what has happened in Canada’s history, we can do the same thing for people with disabilities, or inclusive design and access. And understanding that-I don’t know when people learn PowerPoint and Word now, back in my day, we did like Word Perfect…

[00:34:42] Angie Rajani: So, I don’t know when these students are learning these technologies, but I think that by starting to teach them how to structure their documents or being able to use the different tools, things like headings are a color contrast.

[00:34:55] Whenever they start to learn these softwares, that’s one place to start.

[00:34:59] So I remember in grade 6 we started learning PowerPoint and Word for writing these like 5 paragraph essays or putting together PowerPoint presentations. That would’ve been a perfect opportunity to teach us a little bit about color design. Why wouldn’t we want to use animations, or if we do use animations, how else can we talk about what’s happening on the screen?

[00:35:19] I think really from a practical perspective, when you show a movie in class, when you have that opportunity to either watch an educational movie- I remember back in my day, it was like, Bill Nye, the science guy, right? Asking do people need captions or saying we’re gonna have the captions on because some people read better.

[00:35:34] Angie Rajani: And just educating around that. I think about grade 10 history, the history of Canada having a unit on the history of people with disabilities. What does that look like? The inception of Canada or what does it look like from the indigenous perspective to post colonization?

[00:35:49] I think about grade 8 geography, right? I remember learning about social geography and how people plan to live, where they do, what things are important to them. Thinking about the built environment being a very important part of that, that’s a greater opportunity for integration. So I thought about it from a really practical perspective and where it might fit into the Ontario curriculum.

[00:36:07] But I really do agree with Sam in that there has to be a way for the curriculum or the people who design curriculum to understand why we need to change curriculum because those outcomes impact how people live, operate, and employ work in the world. And how they include people and how they do not include people or how they design experiences and the sort of biases that are encoded that they’re gonna have to challenge now as adults, rather than understanding it from a children’s perspective where you have like 12 years to rewrite how you might view something.

[00:36:41] Sam Proulx: It’s also really interesting to me that you talk so much about history, about the history of colonization, about the history of native and indigenous folks. And in some ways, I think maybe one of the problems that we’re also struggling with, and I think about this a lot, I’ve mentioned it I think on other episodes of this podcast, is the erasure of our history as a group of people with disabilities, right?

[00:37:05] Because it’s only recently that we’ve really even recognized it as an identity, as opposed to a medical condition. You can find, I don’t know, on YouTube, like four hour documentaries about the design and construction of a gaming console that was released in 1980 and only ever sold 10. You can find almost nothing about the first magnifier, about the first screen reader from a Canadian perspective.

[00:37:34] How our thinking about disability has changed culturally and legally, recolonization and post colonization and French versus English and all this stuff. And it feels like there is a lot of group knowledge that has been lost or destroyed because sometimes it feels like only in the past 30 years have we even recognized ourselves as a group that has contiguous history and knowledge and sometimes it’s a depressing thought because how do we overcome that? The history’s already happened.

[00:38:09] Angie Rajani: Yeah, I think first actually, documenting it somewhere and looking for it in places like- during my masters, I did it in South Asian studies and religion. There were didactic stories that had people with disabilities and there were certain things that were trophies, but like the lack of community that would’ve existed there, really putting people, I would say, on pedestals or treating them for the other gifts that they had.

[00:38:39] I think about there not being disability erasure in those stories being super important to me being able to always bring this sort of historical perspective to it. Like understanding that people have existed since the beginning of time, with disabilities and that they do get woven into stories depending on how that plays out.

[00:38:59] That also changes how people perceive and how people learn about disability. But I wonder if there is an opportunity in both literature, things like history of science, just history in general, other disciplines like psychology, sociology, anthropology, to take on disability and accessibility as communities of not just practice, but of identities that have existed for a long time and that maybe have been not included.

[00:39:29] Because the people who end up writing history are not necessarily people with disabilities or they don’t wanna include them because they don’t see certain things as personhood or it’s not part of what we think of the history of Canada where there was segregation and institutionalization. You didn’t experience that person in your world.

[00:39:47] How are you gonna write about them? How are you gonna be aware of them? And that sucks because that’s the erasure part that unfortunately this kind, I’m trying to be very careful with what I say here because of where I work, but, certain institutions have put forth and unfortunately created those experiences or histories that have been obliterated or completely not included.

[00:40:09] Sam Proulx: But we also have trouble with group identity and with changing of understanding, right? If we think about famous figures in the past, often because of the state of the culture or the state of understanding, people would either not identify as people with disabilities or would not have been diagnosed as people with disabilities. And yet they would have been, I feel like this is something that the gender and sexuality community struggles with a lot, right? Like, assigning a particular sexual orientation to someone in history, based on circumstantial evidence, because it’s important to have that group narrative.

[00:40:48] And I think we sometimes run into the same thing as people with disabilities. I bet a lot of the most famous scientists probably were affected by autism, but for us in 2022 to go back and make that determination feels uncomfortable. And it feels like there’s, there’s a lot of maybe disability identity that’s wrapped up in things like that as well.

[00:41:10] Angie Rajani: I think there’s the people who don’t wanna challenge their perspectives because then it would challenge a bunch of other things, and that makes people feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately. I’m not saying it’s acceptable, but I realize that not challenging these narratives is exactly what makes it seem like we’ve only existed for the past 30 years.

[00:41:29] Right? Or like we are only now a group or an identity of the past 30 years or 50 years or whatever. I remember learning about things like Martha’s Vineyard in linguistics and understanding the sign language community that existed there. And if it was not for my linguistics class, my historical linguistics class, I would not have known about sign language existing before.

[00:41:49] Like the history of Canada, no idea. So I really think people have to be comfortable to both have their narratives and their ideas challenged. But then people also have to be really open to challenging these narratives or these identities and understanding that because we only have so many traits to identify with, it’s okay to claim them as part of the community or recognize that they might have been, and that’s perfectly acceptable.

[00:42:21] Angie Rajani: Disability is not a dirty word. Why are you telling me when you don’t wanna do that? When you don’t wanna have that uncomfortable conversation or that conversation that might challenge your whole worldview.

[00:42:32] Sam Proulx: Yeah.

[00:42:33] Angie Rajani: What power are you holding onto by not doing that?

[00:42:39] And why is there no power in you changing your mind and you being able to understand something through a completely different lens?

[00:42:47] Sam Proulx: Yeah, that’s super interesting. My gut reaction is that I don’t want to misrepresent or misidentify people. But also they are no longer with us. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s an interesting balancing line. Regardless, we’ve got, like 8 minutes left, so I had better turn it over to Nikki to do what she does best and bring us back on track from these amazing tangents that we’ve been privileged to go on together.

[00:43:12] Nikki Nolan: Well we have three questions and I’m really curious about what you discovered that sort of surprised you along this journey?

[00:43:18] Angie Rajani: For me it’s all the people that I received support from. I’ve reached out to so many people around mentorship, just questions here or there. People who are not necessarily people with disabilities or people who’ve worked in the environment for such a long time, the industries for such a long time.

[00:43:36] They have no problem giving me support and helping me with career questions or how to approach something or am I using the right resources or am I missing something? I really thought that if I’m gonna say that I’m something like a digital accessibility specialist or an inclusive design person, that I would be expected to always deliver a hundred percent and always know.

[00:43:55] I just realized that people are so welcoming and inclusive. I come and show up in the community. They’re as amazing as I want them to be. But that is also how I aspire to show up, for me, lived experience is something that is so underrated. I think that that is the biggest, underrated thing I’ve ever experienced in the whole community.

[00:44:18] People don’t realize that a lived experience is where it’s at. And by talking to people, listening, actually including these experiences, not just through co-design, but participatory culture. Even choosing to open up your mind. You have an opportunity to change the way you approach things completely because you took someone’s lived experience and not just a textbook case of X, Y, Z, or this is coded like this because this is how it’s always been.

[00:44:50] I think for me, those are the two facts that the community is as amazing as people say that it is, but that I experienced that myself and then lived experience being this really, really missed opportunity that people don’t realize the value of.

[00:45:06] Nikki Nolan: That makes a lot of sense. So if people wanted to start, what are some small ways people could move on that path towards inclusion access and furthering the rights of people with disabilities?

[00:45:17] Angie Rajani: I think figuring out where your comfort level is with disability first. Actually questioning yourself where you’re at with it. Because I feel like I’ve come a long way in my own journey. But I still know areas that I could be exploring or thinking about, but if you are not comfortable with exploring it, then you need to first question why, and what about it makes you feel uncomfortable?

[00:45:40] And really looking at what are your ideas around accessibility, disability, what power are you building onto? I think the next opportunity is depending on where you’re at in your journey, what are you interested in changing? Or what are you looking to learn about or what are you looking to participate in?

[00:45:57] There’s podcasts, books, blogs, websites, YouTube videos, so much media. There’s people. I think talking to people about it is really important too. So if you’re questioning yourself, being comfortable and vulnerable enough to participate and safe- also making sure that you are coming from a safe space so that you can hold capacity for people to have these conversations.

[00:46:18] Angie Rajani: Because not everyone wants to discuss their disability and not everyone feels comfortable questioning themselves. So having the right people to do that with, but not being afraid to do that is going to get you far, because that allows you to have these dialogues and learn from people, but also maybe share with people your knowledge.

[00:46:36] I think something else is understanding the history of people with disabilities, the legal landscape. What does it look like in your country or where you’re at? How were you raised? What would you like to change? Why do you wanna change it? Why is it important to you? I know these are very, very basic questions and they require a lot of introspection, but I feel like if you don’t know where to start, starting with yourself is like the safest space because it’s just you.

[00:47:01] Right? You’re being safe with you. You’re being real with you. You can Google anything on incognito if you need to.

[00:47:07] Sam Proulx: Yeah. I mean, it sounds kind of similar in some ways. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Finding Your Why, the Simon Sinek kind of deal. It seems like that’s applicable outside of marketing. And applicable in this too. Because if you don’t know why you were doing this, then it’s hard to be either a good advocate as a person with a disability or a good ally, because the vision isn’t clear. This has been an incredible conversation that has given me new thoughts and challenged me. And so, thanks so much for being here and for participating in it.

[00:47:43] Before we close, if folks wanna find you and keep up with your work and what you’re doing and keep the conversation going. Where’s the best place to find you? And, is there anything you wanna promote?

[00:47:54] Angie Rajani: So first I would say my Twitter @InclusionRatedE, I haven’t been tweeting or doing very much social media for the last little while. I’ve just been really focused on actually getting work out at work and figuring out what I wanna kind of do next in terms of the inclusive, design space or like where I see myself fitting in. My LinkedIn is Angie Rajani.

[00:48:12] I think I have my name has like the CPAC beside it. In terms of people or things I wanna promote. Obviously I wanna promote people’s understanding that you don’t have to be perfect to do this, or you don’t have to know everything, but you should start. But specific people- so I actually really wanna thank any mentors in my life, or people who have given me opportunities to participate in this space.

[00:48:36] From Fable, specifically Kate and Perry. From my career, so Juliana Rosel, OV Shaker, David Forney, who is my boss at Canada Post, the ACA committee at the TTC who gave me the best experience doing accessibility UX research and helping me prototype and test web pages that really kicked my career off.

[00:48:59] And then Sidra Mahmood, who gave me my first opportunity to enter the space. And gave me the mentorship I needed to apply for my first role. These people, I am so thankful for their participation in my career and their support. Without them, I would not be where I am and I would cry. I would cry right now, but it’s a podcast, so let’s not. I’m just very grateful that I get to hold this seat because of that.

[00:49:22] Sam Proulx: Yeah. Wait. How have you and I not had a conversation yet? I feel like we’re in the same space. I get to work with Kate and Perry all day. It’s as great as you think it would be.

[00:49:32] Angie Rajani: I need to reach out to you probably. It’s funny, it’s like I look at everyone as like these titans of industry, and I’m so afraid to approach them, but once I start talking to them, they’re my mentors and are my people. I have no problem going back to them.

[00:49:44] Like, why am I so shy?

[00:49:45] Sam Proulx: Right. I’m the same way. It’s like starting a conversation is hard, but then once you’re there, it’s great. Anyway, as we do draw things to a close, final thought I guess: is there anything that you wanted to talk about or tell us or say, that we didn’t ask you?

[00:50:02] Angie Rajani: No. I so appreciate you giving me this space, Nikki and Sam. I am so thankful that you gave me this opportunity and I really hope anyone that’s listening to this, three years ago I was not in the digital accessibility space, but I started having the experience and if you want to enter it, there is always room.

[00:50:19] Just reach out to somebody.

[00:50:20] Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much. This was so wonderful. I learned about so many different books- some I knew. Some I am just gonna pick up. Being dyslexic I have to make sure that there’s audio books so that it’s inclusive to me. But that’s been a big barrier for me, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

[00:50:36] This has been so lovely and thank you again so much for sharing and opening up.

[00:50:40] Sam Proulx: Thanks so much for joining us and for your time and for the conversation. Really looking forward to moving forward inaccessibility through the rest of the year and working together.

[00:50:52] 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. Music is created by Efe Akeman.

[00:51:15] 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 and Instagram @disabilitybandwidth, or on our website at www.disabilitybandwidth.com.

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