Ep 79 How to Make Your Podcast + Audio Content 'Accessible' to the Deaf Community with Erin Perkins | WHYA PS Ep 3

Hello. Thank you for listening to I'm speaking with Elizabeth West. I am your host, and today I'm going to be talking with Erin Perkins. And Erin, if you can tell us a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and who you do it for?

Sure, thanks for having me. I'm Erin Perkins, and I am the founder of Mabely Q and also Successible. What I do. I do want to make a side note. I am deaf blind. But this confuses a lot of people because you really can't tell because one, I do speak. I do wear a hearing aid and a cochlear implant one on each ear. And my vision is about 40 degrees. To put it in perspective, most people see 180 degrees.

So I still have clear central vision, but it's a lot less than what a normal person would see. I teach independent business owners about how to be accessible in their business. Most independent business owners think about accessibility as, oh, it's my website, but I push people beyond that. I teach them about how to be accessible on email, social media, in your event, your website, for sure, just the way you interact with people, all kinds of stuff like that.

That is amazing. And it's like, I didn't realize also your vision was wow. So we can talk about so many things on how you can school us, so to speak, on a lot of things, especially like virtual. I was going to go according to audio projects, which podcasting, podcasters, audio summits that are on the rise. Podcasting is on the rise. But we can cover even more ground because there's virtual summits are on the rise and everything like that reels on Instagram, making it more accessible, and yeah. I would like to ask you, how long have you been an advocate for is it okay to say the deaf community?

Yeah, I was born deaf, so I've always been somewhat a part of the deaf community. I will say there was a time from fifth grade until I went to college was in fifth grade. I was actually bullied by some people in the deaf community because they considered that I was not deaf enough. And I ended up going to a mainstream school where I was around other hearing kids. And so at that point, I did have a lot of mistrust in the deaf community because it was like, oh, because you can hear, because you can speak, you're not like us. You can kind of straddle the rules. But it's challenging no matter what because there are times where I'm like, I don't feel like I fit in the hearing community. I don't feel like I fit in the deaf community.

But as I've gotten older, the last probably five or six years, I've actually owned my identity of being deaf, and the last two years has been deaf blind because it really is a spectrum. And I think the pandemic taught me a lot about that because everything is a spectrum in regards to your disability. And that was, I think, a huge eye opener for me.

Wow. I love that word spectrum. I'm glad that you brought that up because me being someone that I talk a lot about, being an introvert and being an empath and being a highly sensitive person and how it's all on a spectrum. We're not like everyone thinks, oh, you're.

Either not all zero or 100. We can be in between.

And most of us, if not all of us, are we're all a little bit of everything. So we're not like one thing or the other thing. Exactly, yes. Love that word spectrum. And it also reminds me of being biracial, how you said they didn't accept you in the deaf community at first when you were younger, and then you were but then they were like, well, no, you're not like us. Oh, wow. My heart. I just felt that same thing of being biracial how it's like...

I would get basically racism from both. Both races.

uAnd that's like, tough because that was a big thing. I would be in a group of four other black women, and we all really connected because of the fact that there can be the racism thing. But I also recognize the privilege of my disability it's hidden, it's invisible. And when it comes to race, it is a very different level of experience because you can see your race. And that was one thing we did make sure we recognize from the beginning. You can't necessarily compare it from apples to apples, but there is that likeness in the two experiences. But I'm at this point where everybody has all kinds of disabilities, everybody had all kinds of race.

We're going to be even more mixed. The generations that are coming, there's going to be even more mixed race kids. So it's almost like, who cares? You're going to have an ability or disability or whatever race you are. Just accept everyone as they are.

Exactly. Exactly. And being more inclusive. This reminds me of another Maya Angelou. I don't have the words verbatim, but one of her poems that talks about we have more alike than we do. We have more similarities than we have differences as a human race. Yeah, that's great. And I'd also like to talk to you about one thing very important for me, just because of what we talked about just in the last couple of minutes, inclusivity.

We both talked about how we both felt excluded from even our own communities.

Yeah, our own community, for sure.

And it's like, how can we me being a podcaster, how can we, as podcasters content creators, audio Summit hosts, the like, how can we be more inclusive to those that are deaf and hard of hearing, for one. But I mean, I'm sure you can go on and on about visually.

Yeah. So when we think about a podcast, this is something I've actually been talking with a lot of people lately, and I do say it would be great if you had a transcript. However, the more I talk to people in the last month or so, they're like, yeah, I have a podcast. I've got a transcript up. I'm like, my challenge had always been to them, can you read that transcript without listening to the audio? And how much of that do you actually understand? And some of them were like, because my perspective is the way we talk just off handed, handedly, like we're doing this interview right now is very much different than the way we write or the way something is scripted. When something is scripted, you have those built in brace. You have those sentences. You have a flow.

When you just talk on a podcast, besides your introduction, everything can sound like a run on sentence, especially when you have otter or your transcript device making a transcript. It's all going to look like a very long run on sentence. There's a couple of things you could do. The easiest way to me is actually read your transcript and edit it. And I'm not saying you have to change everything and revise everything word for word. I'm saying clean it up, break up the sentence, make it more easier to read. Change the grammar mistakes, any spelling mistakes. Make sure you change those.

That should be a thing. Do that. Make that part of your process. The other thing, I would say you could teach each other as podcasters how to stop and slow down as you speak. But I know that could annoy people because sometimes you just write, I have a thought, I just want to get everything out. So you start talking, and that's totally fine. That's why I suggest, really just focus on the transcript and editing that. And then the other thing is, how many clicks does it take for someone to find your transcript? Many people end up realizing it's like five or six clicks.

I feel like you've lost that person by the time it's the second or third click.

Wow. It made me think of so there's all these companies yeah. That would lose me. I have undiagnosed I mean, I haven't been diagnosed yet, but I'm pretty sure I have it like ADHD. So I wouldn't even click past one or two clicks just from that because I'm like, okay, didn't find it. Next.

Yeah. And I think that's, like a lot of people, if you can't find something quickly, you're going to move on to the next thing. I have one favorite podcast right now. She has made it so easy for me to find the transcript that I'm immediately loyal to her because I'm like, you do this really well. Honestly, any podcast platform, if you're listening to me, please hire me. Hire me so that I can come in and teach you how to make it accessible to deaf people. Because I feel like I'm missing out on consuming podcast information.

Well, and it makes me think how much of the population like, I know my mom, for one, she's hard of hearing in one year. So I'm like, that is a lot of people that we're leaving out, is what it makes me think of.

I'm going to Google the statistics. How many deaf because.

If people's ears weren't perked up already, I'm sure they're going to be perking up now.

How many people go, all right, so right now it says that 15% of American adults aged over 18 are deaf and hard of hearing. 15%.

I feel like it's more, but..

I mean, this is just adults..

Yeah. I feel like they like left out because I feel like we all know someone. If it's not our parents, it could be like an uncle or an auntie or friend or colleague, you know what I mean? That's a lot of people that we would be leaving out.

Well it does say 1.5 billion people worldwide are affected by some sort of hearing loss.

Wo w.

And honestly, this number is going to keep going up because the number of people that are exposed to noise levels, it keeps going up because the world is very noisy. And I even think this as a deaf person, I'd much rather go out in public in quiet because when I put it on, I'm like, oh, my God, everything's so loud. Going on the metro, going in the city. Everything is really loud. And this is me as a deaf person. I'm a profoundly deaf so if I think this is loud, I don't know how you hearing people function, honestly.

Wow. And I see people with their I'm not going to go off on a tangent, but people with their earbuds and I'm all like, they have it really loud. I can hear it without just standing. I'm all like, they're making themselves. I feel like hard of your hearing.

Your hearing is going to decrease over time. And yeah. As you get older, your hearing loss is one of the things that does happen as you get older.

So eventually it's going to if not now. Yeah. Wow. If you can share that podcaster, if you don't mind, I would love to have..

Yeah it's Cubicle to CEO by Ellen Yin. She is amazing. The way her podcast is set up is just a great it's so easy.

Good to know. I'm writing it down. I'm going to put it in the show notes so that those as podcasters that are listening and we can see, okay, this works well. So let's copy this. Or let's try to yeah, let's try to as close as possible. Speaking of these companies, because there's a lot of companies, there's CastMagic now. Like there's these AI companies. There's Descript.

Do you have any that you would suggest are better than others as far as the transcript?

I will always recommend Otter AI over any other because I feel like that is one of the most affordable ones at this point. I know they are increasing their price toward the end of the year, but even so, with the price increase, it's still like I feel like one of the most affordable auto transcript platforms out there.

Okay.

I do have an affiliate link if you would like it.

Yeah, I'll get that in the show notes as well. We'll share the information. And I'll definitely put that in the show notes as well because there's just so many, especially with this AI, all these companies are popping up and I'm all like something that I've noticed for me, looking at a transcript, sometimes I click on it, I'm like, let me just see how their transcript is. And I'll click on it as more and more podcasters are doing it not enough, but some are kind of doing it slowly but surely. And you click on it and it'll have like, host and then it'll have what they say and then guest or the name of the guest and then that seems to be easy for me. Is that kind of how yeah, okay.

She actually has the person's name in there, but to be fair, she has a team of people that does help her edit it. But if you're one person just doing keeping it, hosting guest is totally fine and just really just spending a little time cleaning it up is good.

Okay, that's good to know. Yeah. Just taking that time just to clean it up, right? Yeah. And another thing that we talked about before is another key word here is accessibility. That's huge. Invisible disabilities, that's another term or two words that are very important as well. And something else that we talked about before was having captions. Like if we're doing a zoom meeting or webinar or master class, whatever it is, having the captions right, which is just a couple of clicks, if I'm correct.

Yeah, you would just go onto your Zoom account on your website and you would just be able to turn it on and it's really simple. Even if you don't think people use it, you'd be surprised at how many people are like, oh, that's really nice, you have captions available and they turn it on and you can move it around the screen. So that it's very flexible as to where the captions show up so they're not covering people's faces. Like, for me, I like to keep the caption at the top near my camera, so I'm looking like I'm looking at the camera, but I'm also reading captions as well. I did want to share a statistic for invisible disabilities. So this statistic is back from 2020, and I know that number has risen due to the pandemic, but it says 42 million Americans have a severe disability. So this is severe, so I don't even know if they're counting like regular mild disability. But 96 of these disabilities are actually invisible, so people do not realize how many disabilities are invisible.

Like I for one, mine is invisible. Most people don't think that there are people that will question whether or not I have a disability. And it's very frustrating because I'm like, how else can I prove myself? Do I need to go back to the way the stereotype for blind people wear dark black glasses, have a white cane. That's not realistic. I could still see, but there are things that if I'm out in public, there are things that do happen when I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't see that. I feel sorry for little kids because I do run into them because I don't see them. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. And they're like, What are you blind? I'm like, well, technically, yeah, I am.

Yeah, I was going to say even in this day and age, whether you're blind or not, you still can miss this just because everything's so fast.

That's true.

We're always rush, rush, rush. Everything's rushing.

Yeah. This is another thing that I tell people. We need to learn to take a step back and think about the different scenario that we're in and instead of yelling out offensive things like, what are you, deaf? And be like, well, actually, yeah, I am. Okay, take a step back. I actually just met someone over the weekend and he is a deaf referee for US soccer team at the pro level soccer team. And he was telling me a story about how for the first half, 45 minutes, the team was like the coach was cursing, yelling at him the whole time. And he had no idea. And then somebody else told him that the coach was yelling him.

So he went up to the coach and just started talking and the coach was like, what are you, deaf? He's like, actually, yeah, I am. And the coach was like, oh. And then the coach kept quiet the rest of the game because he was like, well, kind of like pointless for me to yell. But the rest of the team was actually happy because they were like, finally, the coach is quiet. I was like, I love that there can be positive things that come out from being disabled.

I like that story. Something else that made me think of I'll wear my mask. If I'm in crowds, I will have my mask on. And I notice that if I do notice that someone like, they can't hear me, they're looking at me. Sometimes they'll make a gesture like, take off your mask because they can read lips. So that's something small we can do, which is if we are wearing a mask and the person's looking at you, you know what I mean?

One of the things I will say. There are scenarios where I've encountered people wearing a mask, and I never want them to feel uncomfortable in the sense of it's totally fine if you wear a mask, but we need to communicate in a different way because I still want you to be comfortable because people could be wearing a mask for their own personal disability themselves, and that they might have an autoimmune disease, that they're just really just trying to protect themselves. So I think that's something that lies on the responsibility of both people to be mindful of. It would be great if you took off the mask so I could understand you better. But at the same time, if you're not comfortable, let's find another way to communicate. Like touching, writing our notes on the phone and sharing it that way or writing things down. Just like little things that show you that you're willing to kind of go back and forth and communicate with one another in a way that both people feel comfortable.

Perfect. And that's exactly right. Even if that means standing a little bit further apart too, having that distance. Yeah, I was thinking of that too. I was like, well, we can write. There's so many different things. We can use our hands. We can write, we can point to something, a picture. There's ways that we can communicate.

We do really great in foreign countries. We might not know their language, but we're still able to communicate with gestures and stuff like that, so, like, for me, it's like, why not? Why can't we do it in America? I do feel like Americans I struggle with because it's like they become stupid the moment I'm like, I'm deaf, and they're just, ahh, but in Europe, it's like, okay, no problem. We'll just get you we'll communicate. I kind of like Europe better.

Yeah...a lot of a lot of folks think the same thing, and it's just like more basically having empathy and having understanding and I think, the same way what you just said. I always feel like because some people write people off, they're like, oh, well, they can't understand me, even if it is like a different language or language barrier. And I'm always like, yes, you can. You can communicate. You know what I mean? The glass is half full versus half empty. You could think about it that way. Change your way of thinking...

Yeah. I will say full disclosure. Back when I was in my 20's and 30's I did not have a lot of patience for a lot of things. And especially when I left my corporate job, I would always like let's go, let's keep things going. Do not interrupt me when I'm in the middle of things. I was hardcore. Like, no, this is how things are. And transitioning

As a small business owner, I really learned how to be a lot more empathetic and a lot more patient because understanding that life happens to a lot of people, like, you were very patient with me when I was like, look, I have an emergency meeting that came up. Can we just shift the time? We understand that life happens. And I think that's the big thing that corporations need to understand at this point. Our lives do not revolve around your company. Our lives need to revolve around our personal life, and you need to learn to accommodate and adjust to fit people's needs, especially for people with disabilities. It's not that most people with disabilities don't want to work. It's just there are certain things that tend to be a lot harder that we can't work. 24 from a nine to five job, maybe it's like from nine to twelve and then from two to five.

Like having that two hour break in between just because that's how our bodies can function.

Exactly. Yeah. I always think about that. Just having that empathy, having an understanding. That's huge. I feel like we could have another, another chat....I could talk to you all day!

We 100% could!

We totally could. Thank you very much for your information. Thank you for talking with me today. And I feel like there will be a part two at some point and I'll reach out again because there's so much information I feel like we could totally cover. And what if you could tell us, what are you working on next? What's exciting for you?

Oh, gosh, I'm kind of like, so my fiscal year actually ended on September 30, so I'm in Q one right now. For me, I'm right now in the stage of where I'm just kind of like, trying to figure out what I want to do for 2024. And I think one of the things I'm going to do for 2024 is host a bunch of different challenges, like three day challenges that focus on each aspect of the business in terms of, like, we have your podcast, you have your email list, you have your website, you have brand design. And through those three day challenges, we're going to do quick things that you can do to have quick wins and make them accessible at the same time. So I'm just going to walk you through how to make your podcast accessible from A to Z, well A to maybe G. And then those are the things that you can achieve in those three days. And then you can feel like you've actually done something. I recognize that we are in a world where things are moving quickly, that sometimes you just need maybe three days to focus on something and get it done in an hour each day.

And then you feel like you made something happen.

Exactly. Baby steps, little by little. That sounds great. And please keep us posted and where can we find you online?

@mabelyq.com? So it's Mabelyq.com.

Sounds great. And I'll have all of this in the show notes listeners! Thank you very much for talking with me again, Erin, I appreciate you!

Thank you for having me.

And I feel like, yeah, we're going to have to have another one. Thank you very much again, listeners. Cheers to speaking up and for making your voice heard.