Shownotes
What if accessibility isn't a checklist to complete, but one of the most powerful ways we create belonging?
We love to talk about community — how to build it, grow it, and sustain it. But here’s the truth: you can’t have community without access. And too often, accessibility gets reduced to a narrow conversation about compliance, accommodations, or disability when it’s really about something much bigger.
In this episode of Find Your Freaks, Tonya Kubo sits down with learning experience designer and online education expert Dr. Catrina Mitchum to explore what accessibility actually means and why it matters far beyond legal requirements. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience teaching adults online, Catrina shares how thoughtful course design, clear communication, and a willingness to ask better questions can help more people participate, learn, and belong.
Together, Tonya and Catrina unpack the hidden barriers that often prevent people from fully engaging in learning communities, from cognitive overload and unclear instructions to assumptions about technology, culture, and prior experience. They also challenge the idea that accessibility is something extra we do after the fact, arguing instead that it should be woven into the foundation of every community and learning experience from the start.
At its core, this conversation is a reminder that accessibility isn't about perfection. It's about making intentional choices that help more people feel seen, supported, and welcomed into the room.
In This Episode, We Explore
- Why accessibility is foundational to belonging and community
- How accessibility extends far beyond captions and compliance checklists
- The hidden role cognitive load plays in learning and participation
- Why clear instructions and context make learning more accessible
- How providing options helps people engage in ways that work best for them
- The connection between accessibility, inclusion, and community building
- Common mistakes course creators make when trying to be accessible
- Why asking people what they need is often the most powerful first step
- How accessibility benefits everyone, not just those with disabilities
- Practical ways business owners and educators can make immediate improvements
Episode Highlights
[03:15] Why accessibility is really about belonging
[08:20] Expanding accessibility beyond captions, ramps, and compliance
[19:30] The role cognitive load plays in learning and participation
[24:40] Why learners need to understand the purpose behind what they're doing
[30:15] How accessibility strengthens communities and invites diverse expertise
[44:15] The simple question that can make any space more welcoming: “What would make this a pleasant experience?”
Meet Our Guest
Dr. Catrina Mitchum is on a mission to revolutionize the online course creation space. A recovering academic who has been teaching adults online since 2009, she combines her expertise in learning experience design, instructional strategy, and accessibility to help overwhelmed small business owners create courses that actually support learner success. Through her work, Catrina helps aspiring course creators build engaging, accessible learning experiences that prioritize people over perfection.
Meet Your Host
Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, writer, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. She’s spent nearly two decades building online spaces that feel more like chosen family than comment sections, and she’s not afraid to call out the fluff in favor of real connection. As the founder of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers, builders, and bridge-makers who believe that “normal” was never the point. When she’s not hosting the show, she’s raising two daughters, leading client communities, and making meaning out of the mess.
Key Quotes
“Accessibility isn't optional. It's foundational to belonging.”
“When we make things accessible to more people, it helps far beyond the people we were originally trying to serve.”
“You are not the only expert in the room, and that's exactly how community should work.”
“It's okay if you don't know what people need. Asking is a really good first step.”
“What would make this a pleasant experience?”
Resources & Mentions
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You can purchase Find Your Freaks merchandise online through Abilities and Attitudes.
Let's Stay Freaky
What's Next
In the next episode, Tonya explores what accessibility really means beyond captions, transcripts, and compliance checklists. Building on her conversation with Dr. Catrina Mitchum, she examines how removing unnecessary barriers creates stronger communities, deeper belonging, and better experiences for everyone.
Transcripts
[Speaker 1]
When you're building a community, you are not the only expert in the room, and that's how it should be. Like, if it's done well, that's how it should be. And when you think about accessibility broadly and build it into your foundations, you can bring people from different walks of life in ways that make your community better.
Remembering that there are other people outside of your sphere, outside of your experience, that have had different experiences, you won't ever be able to think of all of them. But asking is a really good first step. It's okay if you don't know what other people need.
You can anticipate some of those needs, but asking is the best way to understand, you know, what someone might need. I really think that asking, you know, hey, what do you need? How can I make this accessible to you?
What would make this a pleasant experience?
[Speaker 2]
We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I'm Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. We love to talk about community around here, how to build it, how to grow it, how to sustain it.
teaching adults online since:So Katrina specifically works with overwhelmed small business owners and aspiring course creators who actually care about their learners' success. Katrina, I feel like what you're really here to do today is to remind us that accessibility isn't optional. It's actually foundational to belonging.
Would you agree or disagree?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, absolutely. It absolutely is. It's foundational to being part of a community.
You introduce this as spaces for communities. And if you don't feel like you're included, like you were considered, like somebody thought of you, then how are you going to really feel like you're part of a community?
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I couldn't agree more. So let's get into it with, why don't you tell us who are your freaks and why do you love them?
[Speaker 1]
My freaks are people that actually care about learning. And so it's a very small nerdy group. But really, I think everybody cares about learning, right?
Everybody that I talk to has a learning experience in their past that was horrible. For some people, it was scarring. For other people, it was just, it emptied their wallet.
But everybody has something in their past learning history that made learning harder for them, right? And we join or sign up for learning experiences because we want something to change. We want new information.
We're interested in something. We want to do a deep dive. We want to change something in our lives.
Like when we get to be an adult and you buy courses, that's usually what it's for, whether that's like you're buying a certificate, a degree, just a one-off course from Jane down the street. It's to make that change. And if we are putting up barriers to access, then we're not helping enough people make the change that they want to make.
And when we make things accessible to more people, it helps beyond the people that we're trying to help, right?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, say more about that because I don't, I'll be honest, coming from working in the online space prior to the pandemic, you know, I was one of those people that got tapped a lot when the pandemic hit from so many people who didn't know how to take what they were teaching in person to teaching it online. And I don't encounter resistance as much now as I used to, but there seems to be this resistance of, but I already work hard enough. That's harder.
Why should I make it harder? Why do I have to make it harder on myself?
[Speaker 1]
You and me both. I'm not alone. Part of the reason I left the full-time admin faculty gig was the amount of tapping that happened when everybody shifted online.
And I get that, right? As a teacher, I get you are doing a lot. And to me, if you're in a formal situation, that institution better be helping you make things accessible.
It is their duty. They are being paid to help you make things accessible. So that's my first to that point of people saying I'm already doing a lot.
But also 27% of the U.S. population has some sort of disability. And if you think about that statistic, how many, you're leaving out almost a third of your potential client base from whatever it is you're doing, if you are not making things accessible. And you can go crazy trying to do every little thing.
And so I always encourage folks, every time that you jump into your course to make a change, every time you run it, one step at a time, you don't have to go in and overhaul everything. That would burn you out to the point where you can't help the people that you're trying to help. And we don't want that either, right?
But if that's the looking back retroactively, right? If you know your course isn't accessible. If you're just starting now, you can build it in a way where it's already accessible without having to do too much extra work.
Especially now. Thinking back to when I first started teaching and having to caption my own videos, oh, my gosh, I had to listen and write everything I said. Nowadays, there are so many programs that have really good speech to text.
You still have to change things. You still have to listen, pop in and change a word. I always have to change my name.
It wants me to be Katrina with a K. And it wants to spell Mitchum with an EM. All of them do.
But there's so many tools that can make it easier to make things accessible. And the example I just gave is a very easily seen kind of accessibility issue, right? You say captions on something, people automatically understand.
But captions are not the only way to make something accessible, right? So let's say I'm just going to stick with the video. Let's say you do the video, you do the captions.
If you pull out that transcript and give them access to this transcript as well, then you're also helping people who, one, want to skim, do better skimming, don't have the time to actually watch the video because they can't read it the two times speed that the captions show up, but they want to be able to skim what it is you're saying. And so that's a really remembering that it's not just about, it is always about people who have disabilities. I have one.
And it's always about the people that have disabilities. But also, it's about helping people that don't have disabilities as well as a byproduct. It's a very pleasant byproduct.
[Speaker 2]
It really is. And so I think before we go too much further, because there are a million questions that I want to ask you. And part of them aren't necessarily being an advocate for the listener.
They're just like, Ooh, this makes me wonder.
[Speaker 1]
I love that about you.
[Speaker 2]
But I think we still in:And I bet I don't even know how much more it is. So can you just sort of paint a picture of all the things that fall under that umbrella of accessibility that you think are pertinent? Because I know we could be here, it would be like Bubba Gump, right?
You'd be like talking about shrimp for an hour. So we don't need to do that.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly, exactly. I think if we're pulling it back into thinking about people who are creating courses, part of it, or a good umbrella to think about these things is the previous experiences that they're coming to you with. Right.
And so one of my favorite examples was actually a study. And they did a study on this was back when Microsoft Word first came out. But so what we would say is this is historical data.
But so it's about the experiences that you have helped define the experiences that you're going to have. So if you didn't have experience with a word processor at all ever, right, and then you're thrown into something like Microsoft Word, how do you navigate it? How do you process it?
Like now it's easy to go back and forth between Word, and Docs and all of the different processors, because they all are similar enough, right. But if you came into a word processor without that previous experience, how is that going to impact your ability to use it and use it as efficiently and effectively as someone that already has that background knowledge? That's basically the premise of it.
So if I have never attached, this is a question I get a lot, still adjuncting in higher ed, I've never attached something to an email before, it might take me 10, 15, 20 minutes, an email to the professor to say, hey, I don't know how to do this. Right. And so as someone that's designing learning experiences, getting out of your own sphere of experience and remembering that not everybody got to the point where they need your help from the same path.
They're all coming from different areas. And that's just within US culture, right? If we start to expand beyond that, different cultures have different experiences of time, they have different experiences of what it means to make an argument, there's lots of different things that culture shapes in us.
And so those things are also going to impact the experience that they have. And so designing, not for you, but for other people is probably the broadest way to make sure that things are accessible.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. So I think what I'll ask first is the barriers, because I think, from my perspective, at least there are some common boxes to check, I am creating something for an online audience. And so I think of things, for instance, like internet connections, how is this going to work for somebody who has, who lives in South Africa, where they still turn the internet off and on for the whole country at various times?
How is this going to work for somebody who maybe lives in an apartment complex? And so there's a lot of people tapping into that internet bandwidth at the same time. I'll think of different styles of learning.
I think my perspective, though, is a little bit more generous than most people, because I live in a neurodiverse household, I've got kids on IEPs and 504 plans, my husband teaches special ed. So that's a non-traditional perspective. And then there's things like time zones and languages, and just life.
Like, your point was, some people just do better reading than watching video. The big joke in my peer group is, Gen Xers, we can read a lot faster than you can talk on a video, so can you just give us the transcript and we'll call it a day. But for other people with life context, not everybody lives in a quiet place where they can listen to a video.
What would you list out? Are there any other kind of common barriers to people accessing your material?
[Speaker 1]
Yes, and it's less about accessing content, and more about accessing the doing, right? Any good course should start with what they're going to do first, and only give the content that they need to be able to do the things that they're trying to do, accomplish the task that they came to you to accomplish. And when we start thinking about it that way, we also need to think about the ability to access the course without increasing cognitive load, right?
So cognitive load is this idea that we can only hold so many things and do so many new things at once without, like, our brain going, yeah, no, we're done. And so sometimes content is the thing that gets in the way, but a lot of times it's overwhelmed. So content they don't need, or activities and content that don't talk to each or activities that don't give enough context for them to be able to do the thing.
So saying something like, why do you get up in the morning? Well, for me, it's because my kid has thrown up all over me or, right? Sometimes it's your kids.
Some mornings, it's my hip hurts because I slept on it wrong, or my neck hurts because I cough. When you're not giving enough context for people to latch on to the thing that they're supposed to be getting out of the activity, that becomes a cognitive load and accessibility issue because the instructions aren't clear, right? So accessibility isn't just about being able to consume the information in a course, because I would argue if you only have information, then you don't have a course.
It really is about being able to use it and use it in ways that are going to help your clients to get to the goals that the course set out for them.
[Speaker 2]
Okay, do you have a maybe a common example or a recommendation of what that could look like in a specific instance?
[Speaker 1]
What an activity, an accessible activity might look like?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, like what would be an example of an accessible activity versus a non-accessible activity?
[Speaker 1]
Okay, so an accessible activity would look like your content speaks to the activity. So just giving the information that they need to do it and also talks about the activity, draws the connections between this is why we're doing this, right? It's very transparent.
Transparency creates buy-in and also helps people to make those connections between what your course is having them do and what their real life is, right? And that to me is also, I think everything is an access issue, Tanya, but to me that's also an access issue. If I can't access the why behind what I'm doing in order to make it useful to me, then I'm not going to be successful.
So anything that prevents me from being successful would be an access issue. And so making those connections, explaining why, having the activity be something that is, I'm going to go back to my earlier example of why do you get out of bed in the morning? Usually that question, right, is to help you figure out what to do with your life, with your purposes, what your job might be.
That's a very simple question for a really big answer. And so painting a scenario or painting a few scenarios, giving options, remembering that people like to have options. When they have an option that feels easier to answer, that also reduces cognitive load.
And not just easier to answer, but easier to answer in a way that makes sense. So something that I like to do is I like to give, I like to give reflective questions because they're a good way to think about your thinking in a way that makes things stick. And so I'll say you could write or voice note or draw a picture, right, like giving different modes and methods of doing the work can make it more accessible because they're going to choose whatever feels easier.
If writing makes my eye twitch, and I like to just talk things out, I'm going to pick up my phone and I'm going to talk those answers. If I've got coughing kids in the background, and the idea of like catching that in a voice note, like, just causes the anxiety, then I can write it out. If I just like to doodle because words are hard, then I can do that too, right?
And so that makes the cognitive leap of the thing they're trying to learn to do lower, because we've removed a second cognitive barrier for them. Does that make sense?
[Speaker 2]
It does. So it's interesting, because at first when I heard, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense, right, is as instructors, whether we're doing a workshop or an online course, I think online courses, to me, it's a little bit more important to get them right, because so much of that is self study, whereas when you're teaching a workshop, people can ask questions in the moment. And so you have a better chance of preventing them from getting off on the wrong track too quickly.
But it's important to tell people what to do, how to do it. But what you're adding is they need to know why. And they need to know not just why you're asking them to do it, but why it's going to matter in their life.
It's like the classic eighth grade answer of I'm never going to use algebra when I grow up, because I just, I want to be in agriculture. And you're like, actually, everything's algebra. And if you learn it really well, right now, you'll never know everything is algebra, because it'll be so intrinsic.
But then what you're also adding to that is an acceptance as an instructor that just the very act of learning is going to be a struggle on some level for everybody, because learning is hard. And so whatever you can do to minimize the struggle benefits everybody. So I mean, that to me is community building.
It's like at its very core. How do you think rethinking accessibility shifts how we can build community in these learning environments? Because I think learning community is really popular right now.
I don't think that's ever going out of style. So how does it shift with rethinking accessibility?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, when we rethink accessibility, and what it means, and how broad it should be, right. And we also build it into our foundations, then we're already creating spaces that invite more people in to be successful, and to lean on each other and to come from different walks of life, because community isn't just about gathering people, right? It's about gathering people that can help and support and love on each other, for lack of a better phrase.
But everybody, when you're building a community, you are not the only expert in the room. And that's how it should be. Like if it's done well, that's how it should be.
And when you think about accessibility broadly, and build it into your foundations, you can bring people from different walks of life in ways that make your community better.
[Speaker 2]
Well, I could not have said that better. I mean, that is like, thank you. I think I might have you like, write my life's beliefs for me, because you are so just so good at synthesizing what that value is.
Now, one thing I'm curious about, because I think that, you know, sometimes we meet somebody like you, and especially if this is not on your radar, right? If you've never thought about accessibility, you've really never thought about, hey, there are people like, this is not as plain spoken to others as it is to me. I think they think like, oh, well, you were just born like that at four years old.
You were like this, Katrina. I find that's rarely the case. It's usually some kind of evolution.
For you, where did the passion for accessibility come? And at what point, if any, did it shift from being compliance focused to actually more about caregiving? Because what you just described is very much caregiving in a professional and collective sense.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well, I think it always started there. So my youngest sister, we found out later in life, has hearing loss.
And we're seven kids, we were allowed. So she didn't get noticed, didn't get picked up right away. It was very nuanced.
But that was the first time like, oh, well, she can't hear that sound. Oh, we have to make her look at you so that she can see. She's scary good at lip reading.
But those kinds of things. And then my husband's sister is completely deaf. Same thing, like making sure that I'm looking so that she can see and understand what I'm saying.
So it kind of started there. And then when I was an undergrad, I was a reader for a blind professor in the sociology department. And that was such a such a fun job, because I've just always been good at reading out loud.
Right. And so he he liked me as a reader, I would read student papers, I'm old enough that I read a textbook onto a cassette tape for him, almost put myself to sleep. I was like, you should this isn't the book that you should adopt, because I'm reading this out loud and I'm dozing off.
him. I worked for him between:And he didn't know that keyboard shortcuts and his current reader didn't know how to go find them. They weren't easily accessible. He couldn't control the room, he couldn't control the room, he didn't know who wanted to nothing, he couldn't quote unquote, see anything, because he didn't have his keyboard shortcuts.
I been teaching online since:And so just the simple act of having to be in those spaces and be as accessible as possible to the student population that I always liked to serve. And that was non traditional, community college students who were often not served the first time they went into formal education, right? For whatever reason, but it was often because of an accessibility issue, either the language, or they had an undiagnosed disability, or whatever it was, they were living out of their car.
Sometimes that was the access issue. And so for me, it's always been about people. And then, as I learned more and progressed in my, you know, in my studies, I realized, oh, yeah, there's legal compliance, that's good.
But it's also not enough. Because all of these people were supposed to have been served by this legal compliance and aren't, they haven't been. And so that's kind of when I got a little angry.
But even there is a popular system for evaluating courses in higher education, and they do have accessibility as part of their checklist. And it doesn't always include the things that to me would really make it accessible, like that pulling out the transcript. That's not part of it.
But it's a very small, simple step. If you've already got captions, that can just make something that much more accessible to that many more people.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about tactics.
But I feel like in order to really do this conversation justice before I can talk about tactics, because I do think there are people who would do better. And because they don't know what they don't know, they aren't even aware of what's out there or possible. But before we talk about how to do this stuff, I want to talk about something that I don't see as often as I used to, but I still see it enough that makes me feel like it needs to be addressed.
And that is and I'm going to use my own language around it. But forcing people to pay premium prices for accessible information, when I'm talking about, you know, this is a podcast, I have seen for years, right, if you want to get access to a podcast transcript, you've got to pay a certain amount to the Patreon or some kind of membership listener supported thing, right. And a lot of times that premium content or what is pitched as premium content is a recording that you can watch at 1.5 or 2x speed. It's the transcript. Sometimes it's backstory, right to really give you context to the interview. Give me your thoughts on that.
And I guess I'll leave it there. I don't want to put too much of my it is all bullshit.
[Speaker 1]
I'm just gonna call it like it is. Nobody should be doing that you should not be withholding that kind of information, right? Because all of those things paint a full picture for different people coming from different perspectives.
And so some people need that context to really understand the episode, knowing my background is going to help you a lot in understanding this episode, the thought of withholding a transcript from someone for a podcast that just makes my blood boil. I'm just gonna put that out there. Because that really is like a whole group of people that can't get the information.
They can't be part of the conversation, right? Like a good podcast. I want to jump in on that conversation.
I want to ask questions. I want to participate. And they can't be part of that asynchronous conversation if they don't know what the conversation is.
So yeah, that's my answer. All right.
[Speaker 2]
I like your answer. So let's talk to the business owner, because this is the follow up, right? Because I always hear like, you have to charge for that, you know, before platforms just auto caption things, that would be the same thing as it costs, it costs to create these things, even if you're using something like, say, Otter, which will do machine transcription for you.
What would you suggest for business owner, course creator, that they could do right now to make their spaces more accessible? Or how is it maybe easier than that?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So for me, the low hanging fruit that I always suggest is two things. One is a checkbox.
Captioning your videos or your audio, getting a transcript for your audio is so easy. Right now, there's really not an excuse to not do it. There are lots of free and cheap programs that will do it for you and do it pretty well.
You do want to make sure they're correct. Because my favorite example is one time I was recording a video, this was years ago. And I said, the rhetorical act and the AI thought that I said rhetorical crack.
And that completely changes the tone of what I was saying. And so you don't want to have rhetorical crack in your videos. So that's an easy checkbox legal issue, right?
The other one is something we've already talked about. And that's the why. It is easy to go in and say, okay, well, why am I having them do this?
And then just tell them why you're having them do this. If you let's say you already have a course, it's something you can go in and just put in text, right? It doesn't have to be like, I have to rerecord all my videos.
No, you don't. You can write why big bold, why this is happening, make it a box in your course, we're doing this because make it a transition from one lesson to the next. So it becomes a little mini module.
And maybe that's just a recording, right? Just an audio recording with a short transcript, a few sentences of this is what we did. We did it because of this.
This is how it's going to help you next. We're doing this because it's going to help you get to that goal. The explaining of the why is another really easy one that can have a really big impact.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, I like how you mentioned just how easy things like transcription and captioning are now. Because this is one of those things, and I've been guilty of it as well. We use software tools, we take some time and effort to learn them when we adopt them.
But then we don't necessarily stay updated with their improvements. You know, now Zoom will auto transcribe and send out notes. So you don't have to pay extra for a tool like Fathom or a tool like Otter.
You know, you used to have to have like rev.com in order to have live captioning. But now Zoom will do that. Google Meet does it not nearly as good as Zoom.
I wish Google Meet did it better. And then you mentioned, you know, I do think the most common mistake is that people trust technology a little too much, and they don't review their transcription. So I'm really glad that you mentioned that.
Do you see any other common mistakes that people make in it, you know, in an honest attempt to be accessible, that they just didn't know what they didn't know?
[Speaker 1]
I would say that those are the big ones, but also having images that don't have alt text.
[Speaker 2]
Talk about that, because I think most people don't understand the way the text. I'm not sure I do, actually, I'll be honest. Like I know what I've read about it, right.
But it doesn't stop me from second guessing myself every time I work with, say, a web designer who tries to get me to just put the SEO keywords in the alt text.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, don't do that. So the way that all text functions, and this is very much for screen readers, is that it will give whatever you put in that box is the description of the image that it will read out loud. And so the things to consider is what's important about that image.
And this really kind of gets to like my rhetoric base, like, why is that image included? Is it adding something to to what you're trying to say? People tend to get in trouble if they use tables, because screen readers and tables have a difficult relationship sometimes in terms of the order in which things are being read.
And that can depend on the screenwriter. Like there's so many things that go into making something accessible in that way. I will leave tables off of the table right now and just talk about alt text.
I saw your face. But really, it's about providing a description that matches the way that you are anticipating the visual working with the text on the page. That's what should be in the description box.
So like I also include like when I post on LinkedIn, right, I have the alt text. But then I also have an image description in most of my posts. And sometimes I'll be like cute and funny about it.
Because it's part of the reason why I included that particular image was to be cute and funny about it. I had a picture of the ocean and I was like, and I think there might be a boat back there. Little things that that tell someone who is listening to your page, what that image is and how it plays into the purpose of what you're trying to do.
That's the goal.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and I have to say, I love it when people put little Easter eggs or injections of their personality in alt text. I picked that up from somebody I follow online. So I'll point it out if there's a picture of me with straight hair, because I almost always have curly hair.
I have straight hair today. But I will say, you know, contrary to her norm, Tanya is pictured here with straight hair, probably because she hasn't washed her hair in five days. And it feels to me like what that does is it invites people who need the screen reader into the full experience of working with you of processing your content versus a light skinned woman with medium brown hair and slight streaks of silver.
[Speaker 1]
I have an image that I use sometimes on my YouTube thumbnails where I'm like, my fingertips are together and I'm looking at the camera like I'm plotting an evil plan. And I will literally put that in my description.
[Speaker 2]
I love it. I use uploading world domination in mind. Yeah.
I'm just like, there's that little Dr. Evil expression that we can all get. And I feel like you picture that when Yeah, when you hear the same thing we do every night pinky. Yeah, exactly.
See, that's another good one. So we've talked a lot about education, but how do you see accessibility benefiting, even if we're focusing on it in an education environment? How does that benefit outside of education?
Because you've mentioned like, we're all better when we strive to make things more accessible.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Do you mean what do you mean outside of education, like formal or you mean education in the online business world or So I'm thinking of say, okay, so we have an educational perspective, we have an online business perspective.
[Speaker 2]
But I bet you like me go to and sometimes have to organize a parent meeting at our kids school. Or maybe we have a social club that we're a part of, right. And we're planning an event for that social club.
There are things I think about now that I didn't used to think about, right, I think about, if we're communicating important information at the social event, how are the people in the back of the room gonna hear me? Yeah, I didn't used to think about, you know, when I was 24, I was not thinking about that sort of stuff. So that's what I'm curious about is how does that overlap?
What is that practical life application to this accessibility that we may be using an online business?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a good question. And so I think that the practical life application is just getting out of your own head. Honestly, but you know, I, you know, when I was still doing full time higher ed, I had been hired at a distance.
And so I was always a distance employee. And we tried to do meetings that were hybrid. And I had to do a whole proposal about how to actually make the online experience, something that was it can't be the same, because it's different, but it can be equivalent.
Right? We can still have a good experience if they're not forgetting that the group of us is over there sitting on zoom, listening to them in pods, and we were just left to our own devices. And so just remembering that there are other people outside of your sphere outside of your experience that have had different experiences, you won't ever be able to think of all of them.
But asking is a really good first step. It's okay, if you don't know what other people need, you can anticipate some of those needs. But asking is, is the best way to understand, you know, what someone might need in those parent meetings, or if you're organizing the party at school, right for your kids class.
And these are all parent related, because my kids just went back to school this week. And that's all I can, that's all I can think about right now. But I really think that asking, you know, Hey, what do you need?
How can I make this accessible to you? What would make us a pleasant experience?
[Speaker 2]
I think asking, yeah, what would make this a pleasant experience is an excellent question. Because I think sometimes people don't know how to answer because nobody's ever asked them before. Right?
And so when you just, you know, it's like, if you say what do you need? They're like, well, gosh, I've been figuring out my own way all this time. I don't need anything from you.
But you're like, well, what would make it more pleasant? They go, Oh, actually, now that you bring that up, this would be nice. And then I also think following through, even if you're not able to accommodate that request this specific time, because of timeline, budget, whatever, being able to say, Hey, this is what we were looking at doing, we're not able to do, we're gonna try this instead, would that be okay?
Or do you have another idea that maybe we haven't thought of? I think the most important thing is that conversation and not treating it like an elephant in the room that we don't talk about.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Speaker 2]
All right, a couple more questions before we start to close. So I think the first thing, and I know you have a Course Creator playbook, right? Yes.
And you have a pretty extensive YouTube channel that people can get a lot of resources on. So we'll put all that information in the show notes and also on the website. That way, it will be accessible to everybody, no matter where they look for it, because that's how we do things around here.
But if someone's realizing for the first time that their space is not as accessible as maybe they thought before they started listening to the two of us talk, what would be the first step you would suggest that they take?
[Speaker 1]
Prioritizing, right? We have already talked about some of the low-hanging fruit, but it's not just low-hanging fruit, it's low-hanging fruit with the biggest impact. So I would suggest asking who's taken your course, right?
It always comes down to like this communication factor, right? Like, hey, I'm considering doing this, this, or this to make my course more accessible right now. Which one would make this a better experience for you or would make you more successful in this program or, you know, whatever the thing is, you know, helping, letting the people that are in your programs help co-create an accessible space with you is a really good place to start because you know that it's having a bigger impact and so should hopefully feel like less of a lift if you're retroactively making things more accessible.
[Speaker 2]
Okay, and then I think there's that person and then there's the person who's already wrestling with it, already knows and just feels like they have so much distance to go from where they're at now to where the ideal is, right? So they feel like they're never going to get this accessibility thing right. What would you suggest to them?
[Speaker 1]
Remembering that it is always a moving target. As painful as that might be to hear, you know, there are always going to be things that we could do to make it better for other people. And so as long as you are taking the next right step for you and your community, then you'll be okay because you burning out is the last thing that we need as well.
And so again, it is about prioritizing but also not letting your brain run away with the 80 million things that you could possibly doing and just focusing on what the next right thing is.
[Speaker 2]
Right, letting that perfectionistic mindset get in the way of you doing anything. Oh, I love that. That's so encouraging, you know, because it it would be easy to say, well, this is the ideal and do this or nothing.
But letting people know that there's there's grace, we're all making incremental progress the best that we can. And technology advances all the time. I mean, there's things like you said earlier, we can do now that we could not do before.
Or at least we couldn't do it as easily before. Like I remember listening to my recordings and hand typing my transcripts. That was fun.
So painful. So painful. I don't know what was worse the typing or the hearing my own voice.
I think it was the hearing my own voice part. Yes, it was.
[Speaker 1]
But you do eventually get used to that. So you do.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, no, you're right. But thank you for taking me down that walk on memory lane there. So okay, now we've come to the end, which is our freak flags fly segment.
And it's just a quick round five fast questions. No wrong answers. You get to just give whatever comes to mind.
Are you ready?
[Speaker 1]
Sure.
[Speaker 2]
All right. So finish the sentence. You're my kind of freak if you've won a trophy for reading.
Oh, I want to see that trophy if you have one. All right. What is something you love that your friends just don't get?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, spreadsheets.
[Speaker 2]
I don't get it, but I appreciate you. What community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
A community filled with the full scale and spectrum of neuro diverse folks.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, that would be a fun community.
[Speaker 1]
It would. And I think that sometimes, like, the diversities, right, kind of grouped together, at least in my experience, by having everybody in a space. So it's a made up space, I think.
But that would be the space.
[Speaker 2]
That would be a fun one. Okay. Two more questions.
Which tool ritual or practice helps you stay most connected to your people?
[Speaker 1]
I write every morning, which sounds cliche. But with a background in writing, I can't help it. But it's also just like a brain dump.
Sometimes it's just a brain dump. And I need to just like, get it all out that with a cup of coffee. If the coffee doesn't come with the writing, then then my my system is messed up.
[Speaker 2]
That's good. I have to be caffeinated as well. All right.
And finally, who is someone doing freakishly good work who deserves a bigger stage?
[Speaker 1]
I think the folks that are helping people in transition. And specifically, the folks that are helping people in transition, that are helping them to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? I think a lot of times people talk about transitioning to things and starting fresh and starting all over.
But as human beings, that's not how we function. And so I know some folks who are doing that kind of work where they're like, okay, but that's that's part of you. And that's okay.
And we don't have to get rid of it just because you're shifting and changing and doing those kinds of things. I think I think they need a bigger stage.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I love that. I love that. All right, Katrina, thank you so much for being here and for challenging us to think differently about accessibility.
What I've gotten out of this is a picture of accessibility, not as a burden, not as a box to check to avoid bad things happening, but as a way to truly care for people and make sure that they belong. And for those listening today, I would just say here's an invitation to look at your spaces. Take advantage of what Katrina said, right?
Your course, your community, even your conversations. Ask yourself who's missing. Ask yourself who still can't get in and then just take one step to open that door.
Right? Normal is not the point around here. It's belonging and belonging can't happen without access.
That's it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you're craving connection, join the Freak Show at findyourfreaks.com.
What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
