Blake Geyen, People First of Washington, Accessibility Advocate

Blake talks about his personal challenges from cerebral palsy and how that informs his consulting and advocacy work. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(upbeat music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility,

The People Behind the Progress.

I'm Joe Welinski the creator and host of this series.

And as an accessibility professional myself

I find it very interesting as to how others found their way

into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now

and hear about their journey.

All right, well, here we go on another edition

of our accessibility podcast,

where we meet practitioners in the field.

And as always the main objective of this is

to just hear the stories of different people that have

become accessibility practitioners,

learn a little bit about their journey.

Sometimes people may not be familiar with how

to get involved in accessibility,

but that's what we wanna do here is to invite everybody

into what is a very interesting community of practitioners.

Today I am talking with Blake Geyen.

And Blake is someone who I met.

Originally I was teaching at the University of Washington

in Tacoma, and Blake had graduated from there with a BA

in Urban Studies.

And since then Blake has gone on to do consulting

in the accessibility area,

and has helped out on projects at Blink for accessibility.

And so it was a natural to be able

to have Blake as part of this.

So let's get started and hello Blake,

it's good to have you here.

The first place we could start with is where you're

located and the kind of work that you're doing now.

- Hello, I'm Blake Geyen.

I use a speech device to communicate.

I live in University Place.

I'm the volunteer training development coordinator

at People First of Washington.

People First is a statewide nonprofits self-advocacy

organization for people with disabilities.

We advocate, educate and celebrate people with disabilities.

I coordinate documentation for all volunteers,

prepare meeting minutes, clean up and organize media files

and research videos on self-advocacy

and self-determination skills.

- Well, thanks for being here

and with having mobility challenges,

that's been one of the areas where you've really been able

to provide a lot of great input on projects

that we've worked on

at Blink as an accessibility consultant.

But maybe tell us a little bit more

about your physical challenges and the kinds of devices

that you use to overcome that.

- I have cerebral palsy.

I have a speech impediment

and use an iPad application called ProLoquo4Text

for communication.

I use an iPhone application called Speak.

I have a Mac Book Pro.

I use assistive touch on my Apple devices

to adjust the volume, lock and unlock the screen rotation

and to lock the device.

I use word prediction software on my computers

to help speed up my typing.

I have fine motor impairments.

I also use a power wheelchair for mobility.

- Well, it's the fact that you use

so many devices is actually helped out in our projects

where you've been able to demonstrate

and identify issues with software running

on different device types.

So that's been very helpful.

But yet you've also been to our conference,

ConveyUX in the Seattle area when we were doing

that in a physical environment.

And it's great to be able to have you at those.

And so I know that becoming interested

in supporting accessibility is something

that you want to continue on in your career path,

but maybe let's go back in time and tell me a little bit

about what got you interested in accessibility as a career,

in addition to it being an important part of you being able

to do any and all the other activities in your life.

- I feel like our society has a long way to go before people

with all disabilities are accepted in workplaces.

About two years ago,

I had about eight job interviews over a few months.

I asked for the interview questions ahead of time

and program my responses for the interviews,

but was not selected.

I believe the main reason that I was not chosen was

because I use a speech device to communicate.

I have been successful gaining employment

with disability advocacy organizations.

I would like to work for employers who will accept me

for who I am.

- Well, I appreciate you sharing that.

And it's, you know, been very useful for me as well,

working with you in just in the way

that we conduct this interview today.

Not really a big challenge.

It was just exactly what you say,

just a little pre-planning where we identify questions

and issues that we'll be talking about.

And then set that up in a way that you're able to, you know,

prepare your own questions, your own responses.

So it's certainly the, you know,

these are things that are not major obstacles.

And so hopefully we'll, you know,

we'll continue to improve as a society in that area.

I know there are some things that have come out in projects

that you've assisted on,

where you've talked about issues with accessibility.

Certainly there's lots of different aspects of accessibility

that we need to be concerned about.

But what are some of the things that are most important

to you for accessibility?

- There are many things that are important

for me for accessibility.

I am a power wheelchair user

and rely on accessible infrastructure to get around.

I use paths, sidewalks,

and curb cuts when rolling

through cities in my power wheelchair.

Sidewalks provide a safe way for me to get around.

Curb cuts allow me to get onto the sidewalk.

Street lighting is also important.

It allows me to see the sidewalk well when it's dark

and helps drivers see me.

Accessible technology is also important.

When I type on my laptop, I use sticky keys.

This feature helps me save time typing.

It activates command buttons, like shift,

until I caress the key that I want.

I use word prediction software to help speed up my typing.

I also really appreciate being able

to adjust the tracking speed of my mouse.

If the mouse is too sensitive,

I have a really difficult time using it.

- Yes, so thanks for sharing those issues related

to your experience as a user of software.

And you've brought those into a lot of the projects

that we've worked on together.

In fact, we co-authored an article recently

and I'll include a link to that in the show notes.

All right, well, thank you so much, Blake,

for contributing to this discussion.

It was great to have you on here for this podcast.

As I mentioned, I'll put in the show notes,

the link to the article that we wrote together,

and hopefully we'll work together again soon on a project.

So thank you very much.