Episode 35: Season 4 Trailer

[snap of a beat and the swish of snare drums]

‍

Voice 1: Technology is one of our main tools as disabled folks. We are its innovators and  we are perhaps its greater practitioners. 

‍

[electronic chords, with a sense of possibility, kick in]

‍

Voice 2: Remote access has been literally my lifeline to the world. Like everything other than sex is remote access for me. 

‍

Aimi: Hey there, I’m Aimi Hamraie. And this is Contra*. Contra* is a podcast about disability, design justice and the lifeworld. This season, we’re bringing you stories from the Remote Access Archive. From navigating COVID lockdowns….

‍

Voice 3: People’s ability to communicate over Twitter sometimes could mean the difference between having access or not, having help or not. 

‍

Voice 4: If you had told me that I would have enjoyed, sitting on a zoom, having a drink with some friends, I would have said, you’re full of crap. But I enjoyed it. 

‍

Aimi: To finding community across virtual space.

‍

Voice 5: One of the things people often say to me, aren’t you lonely? Seeing someone’s face, sharing this digital space, fills my need for the human connection to them and with none of the downsides of, my body has to be more exhausted. 

‍

Aimi: To innovating, explore and building new ways to connect with one another. 

‍

Voice 6: They are having disabled people build avatars and they’re trying have the avatars meet your access needs. And so, when your avatar moves, it’s like, I will always want to hear the alt text.  

‍

Voice 4: With the audio description, to me, it’s the simplest thing. If a sighted person can see it well why can’t I have access that?

‍

Aimi: Remote access has opened up a new world. 

‍

Voice 1: I’m part of a lot of different task forces. Because I had access. I fought like hell for my captions. I fought like hell for ASL. In every space I would go in. 

‍

Aimi: But disability communities have also relied on remote access for decades. 

‍

Voice 7: There was this narrative that quote unquote normal means in person. And disabled people have been fighting this forever because face to face is often the most inaccessible form for us.   

‍

Aimi: Remote access continues to be a space where we explore, experiment, find joy and community. 

‍

Voice 8: Having camera on when I was doing those disability hangout actually normalised showing up in ways that disabled people are shamed into, like, hiding. There was power and utility to me, in making visible the hard days inside of chronic illness. 

‍

Aimi: And fight for disability justice. 

‍

Voice 1: Nothing about us without us means we need to be wherever those conversations are happening. And this platform allowed that to really happen. 

‍

Voice 5: For the first time we were having conversations across disabilities in a ways that allowed us to, if you will, share space. 

‍

Aimi: And we want to share it with you. I hope you’ll join us for new episodes every other week. And be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts and other show notes, please visit criticaldesignlab.com.

‍

Voice 9: Once you climb to the top of the access mountain, it’s really hard to be marched down and be told you have to expect something less. Part of the reason the culture is slowly, slowly, slowly changing is because we, as a disability community, don’t tolerate not having access. 

‍

Voice 4: I still get a kick out of it, my kids still make fun of me, the first time I interviewed this woman on Skype, I was like this is fantastic. And they were like, Daddy, it’s the internet. 

‍

[electronic chords deepen and fade out]