THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion
🎙️ Welcome to The SJ Childs Show Podcast! 🎉
Join Sara Bradford—better known as SJ Childs—as she bridges understanding and advocacy for the neurodivergent community. This podcast shines a light on autism awareness, empowering stories, expert insights, and practical resources for parents, educators, and individuals alike.
Brought to you by The SJ Childs Global Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting autistic individuals and their families worldwide, this show is your weekly dose of inspiration and actionable ideas. Visit sjchilds.org to learn more about our mission, find resources, and connect with our growing community.
Catch us on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Goodpods—or tune in Fridays at 8:30 AM EDT on the Helium Radio Network’s Life Improvement Radio (Channel 1). Together, let’s foster a brighter, more inclusive world! 🌟
Go here to download training materials! https://sjchilds.myshopify.com/
Angela Fowler, a totally blind accessibility consultant from California, transforms our understanding of digital inclusion in this compelling conversation that challenges common misconceptions while offering practical solutions.
The eye-opening discussion begins with Angela sharing her evolution from passionate disability rights advocate to dedicated educator. This transition occurred when she realized that most designers, developers, and business leaders aren't deliberately creating inaccessible experiences—they simply lack awareness about accessibility needs and benefits. Her realization highlights a critical messaging problem in society: we're not educating people effectively about why accessibility matters and how to implement it properly.
Angela brilliantly dismantles two harmful myths about accessibility. First, she explains that accessibility isn't just for "those disabled people over there" but creates better experiences for everyone. From clearly labeled buttons that help all users navigate websites to wider store aisles and quieter restaurants that enhance everyone's experience, accessibility features have universal benefits. Second, she challenges the notion that accessibility is prohibitively expensive, advocating instead for a harm reduction approach that prioritizes fixing critical barriers first while gradually implementing other improvements.
For businesses and website owners, Angela offers invaluable practical advice: WordPress provides more accessible options than drag-and-drop builders; hiring developers who prioritize accessible user experiences saves money in the long run; and taking small, consistent steps toward accessibility demonstrates good faith efforts that can provide both practical and legal benefits. She also shares thoughtful guidance on interacting respectfully with disabled people—ask if help is needed rather than assuming, respect autonomy, and remember that disability is just one aspect of a person's identity.
Looking toward the future, Angela envisions a cultural shift away from models that emphasize dependency toward an approach that celebrates unique capabilities and contributions. Ready to make your digital presence more accessible? Visit RealLifeAccess.com to connect with Angela and start your accessibility journey today.
The SJ Childs Show is Backford's 13th season. Join Sarah Bradford and the SJ Childs Show team as they explore the world of autism and share stories of hope and inspiration. This season we're excited to bring you more autism summits featuring experts and advocates from around the world.
Speaker 2:
Go to sjchildsorg hey everyone.
Speaker 3:
I wanted to take a second to talk to you about the International Autism Summit coming up in April April 25th and 26th. It's going to be streaming free from all of my channels. If you haven't already gone to follow me, go to sgchildsorg. Click on any of the social media icons and go follow me so that you can be with us at the International Autism Summit 2025, April 25th and 26th. Can't wait to see you then. Hi, thanks for joining the SG Child Show today. We're going to have a wonderful conversation. It's already started out so nice to get to know Angela, for you know two minutes, so I'm excited to dive a little deeper and get to know you so much more. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for the work you do, and we'll get to that in here in a minute, but before that, let's have you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4:
Well, hello and greetings from Southern, from sunny California. Not Southern California, certainly not Southern California, but sunny California, even though it is threatening to rain today. But yeah, I'm Angela Fowler, I'm an accessibility consultant and, fun fact, I'm also totally blind.
Speaker 3:
Wow, and I love that we are being able to meet like this and have this conversation so that you can share your amazing work and really help our listeners understand the importance of what you're doing. So tell us your kind of backstory what brought you to this point?
Speaker 4:
Well, and it truly does come down to a lack of understanding in terms of why the general public does not embrace accessibility. People just don't understand the importance. But I didn't always realize that. I spent a lot of time in the advocacy movement and you know people with disabilities have, you know, professional organizations just like every other group does, and the disability organizations often take the attitude of civil rights organizations. So we can get in our own echo chambers and you know frustrations build and you know other perspectives aren't taken and we can get very antithetical toward um, uh, toward others, um, very, very um. We develop an us against them attitude. It's typical of communities that have a common challenge and that form their own echo chambers. Um, on one hand it's a good thing because we can all relate to each other, and on the other hand, sometimes we let it get a little out of control. So I spent some time in that, a lot of time in that environment, and so when I would come across something that didn't work properly, so the way blind people navigate, I mean let me take a step back and get into that before I go any further so I can give a little context.
Speaker 4:
We use screen readers, and what a screen reader is is. It's a piece of software that quite literally reads the screen and in order for it to work properly, things have to be built properly. So labels have to be there and be understandable. Links have to be labeled, and buttons and things have to be labeled according to their purpose. Images have to be described, the form fields need to be labeled and if you're going to use really fancy pants, things like you know, like accordions and things like that they need to be coded so that, a they're accessible via the keyboard and, b they work with screen readers. Screen readers actually know what the heck they are. Excuse me, so you know and that's something you know what I just said there is going to be news to the overwhelming majority of your audience.
Speaker 4:
We have a messaging problem. Right, we're not out there educating people as much as we should be. But when I was younger, I'd get really frustrated and I'd think you know what are you doing. Why are you not doing these things that are so simple that would allow me to have equal access? Yeah, but my perspective was changed when I started actually working with designers and developers. Right, I saw people with varying degrees of knowledge about accessibility, but who all wanted to do the right thing. They just didn't know what the right thing was. So I went from this firebrand advocate to, I guess you'd say a firebrand educator advocate to, I guess you'd say a firebrand educator.
Speaker 3:
That's so important, and is that what started the?
Speaker 4:
website and the continuing education for the communities. Yeah, I realized that if designers and developers don't know what the right thing is, what about business people? You know how do you talk to business people who don't know what a screen reader is, let alone the benefits to businesses of investing in accessibility.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely, and you know there's so many types of accessibility that need to be available, types of accessibility that need to be available and, just like you said, we don't know until we do, sometimes even that we need it or that we it should be in place. What types of misconceptions are there from the general public, from businesses that you see, that you know we can kind of shed some light on?
Speaker 4:
Well, I think there's two that are, you know, that are prevalent and that are really, really harmful. The first is that accessibility is just for those disabled people over there. You know, we got to make the website accessible to help the poor disabled people.
Speaker 4:
And that's not what accessibility is really, Though it certainly does give people with disabilities equal access to things. It certainly does allow us to use your products and services just like everybody else does. The things that you do to make your website accessible to people with disabilities also make them more user-friendly for everybody. I talked about labeling. You know a lot of people don't understand iconese. A lot of people benefit from having the word there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
You know form labels, the ability to click on the label and have a focus and be able to type into your form field. You know that helps a lot of just regular old people.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely.
Speaker 4:
Not having store aisles that narrow helps a lot of revenue. I had my hands like six inches apart, Not having aisles that narrow. It sure seems that way, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
You know, not being on the laps of the people sitting at the table next to you in a restaurant. Yeah, you, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't, you, aren't, aren't, are you? Aren't you more likely to go to a restaurant where you got room to breathe? Yeah, a little bit of privacy yeah, yeah, you can actually have a conversation without the people you know next to you, you know exactly if we wanted that, we would go to a busy sports bar possibly well, that brings me to the topic of loud media.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, oh, man, you know I go to the bar and they say, oh, the band will be playing in 30 minutes. I say thanks for the warning.
Speaker 3:
Give you a heads up on that.
Speaker 4:
Give me a heads up, let me know. Let me know what's coming, so I can get the heck out of there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4:
You know, more people have stated I'm not going back to this restaurant because of loud music than because of poor service, and that's an accessibility thing. You know people that are hard of hearing. If you wear hearing aids, if you go to a restaurant and want to actually have a conversation with somebody, you would rather the music not even be on. It's just amplified. Huh, we're willing to compromise at a very low background level. But the second misconception about accessibility is that accessibility is too expensive. I say, oh, if we start doing accessibility, we're going to have to redesign everything. We're going to have to bulldoze our building and rebuild it and no. Most accessibility fixes cost little to nothing and for the things that are more expensive, so you do have to have somebody come in and fix some of the components on your website so they're actually keyboard accessible.
Speaker 4:
I like to take a harm reduction approach. I like to say okay, what are the actual blockers here? What are the actual things that are keeping people from using your site, as opposed to the things that are just annoying? So we'll tackle the actual blockers first. Also, if there's things that we can tackle easily and for free, that significantly improve the user experience or low cost, we'll do that too. So you know, the blockers and the easy wins are what we go for first, and the rest of it can be taken care of.
Speaker 4:
You know, over time and again, if you can afford to just fix your whole website, that's great, you know. But you know, as far as I'm concerned, if you're making progress especially small businesses right. If you're making progress, especially small businesses right. If you're making progress, if you can demonstrate that you're making progress, not only does that stand you in much better stead in the court of public opinion, but legally you're protected too for the most part. You know I can't say definitively this is legal stuff we're talking about, but for all intents and purposes you know I can't say definitively this is legal stuff we're talking about, but for the for all, for all intents and purposes, and you know we should be, and I hope that maybe, after listening to this, people can get some better ideas.
Speaker 3:
We should be for those of you who don't have a website yet setting things up ahead of time, preparing and getting things set up accordingly, so that you aren't having to go and change things and you're doing it from the start, Just as I think that we need to do the same with buildings.
Speaker 4:
Absolutely it costs you the money.
Speaker 4:
Absolutely so it takes. It costs you just as much money to build an accessible website as it does to build an inaccessible website. So let me go through this. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, I recommend using WordPress. Avoid the drag-and-drop builders like Wix. Avoid those. The advantage of WordPress is you can pick accessible themes and plugins and if you make a mistake, it's a hell of a lot easier to fix it. If you're going to hire a web developer, make sure that they prioritize accessibility. You know some developers oh, we'll build you a good-looking website, okay, but nobody can find anything. You know. Make sure that they build for user experience first.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
And accessible user experience first. Yeah, and accessible user experience first. And also, once it's built, take a spin through your own website, you know. Make sure that it makes sense to you.
Speaker 3:
And that's something that you do for companies is that you go in and take a look at their website and help break those things down so that they can create better accessibility experiences.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I don't just say, oh, you're doing this and this and this wrong. I point out the errors and I point you to resources that tell you how to fix them. And I point you to resources that tell you how to fix them. You know, we do have a done for you option, but you know, we'd rather, we'd rather teach you, I'd rather do it with you, I'd rather teach you how to make your website accessible, because if I do that, you won't break it and inadvertently, next time you update it isn't that the truth?
Speaker 4:
yeah you know, but teach you to fish that's.
Speaker 3:
You know, that's the saying. What can we do, just kind of, as community members in our own communities? How can we start to be, you know, better perceiving or understanding how to help the members of our own community? Hmm?
Speaker 4:
you mean, like if you run into someone with a disability.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, just in general. What do? What do you think is is good for advice for people?
Speaker 4:
The biggest mistake that a lot of people make is they assume that someone with a disability needs help. So say, you see someone with a disability out in the community. They're trying to find the entrance to a store, for example. And you know, if you're blind, it might take you a little bit longer to find that entrance because you can't. You know if, if you're blind, it might take you a little bit longer to find that entrance because you can't. You know, you. You have to actually explore one way and then explore the other and and find it. You can't. You can't if you can't see it. Um, but a lot of people assume that that means we need help. In fact, it might just mean we guessed wrong. So you know, just ask. You know, and sometimes people have assumed that I've been going somewhere, that I actually wasn't going.
Speaker 1:
You're not assume.
Speaker 4:
We all know what it means to assume right, that's for sure. And a lot of people, because we do things differently, a lot of people assume that we're not as capable as we actually are. So you know, let's take the lead, ask if we need help, be okay with the answer. Don't be offended if we reject the help. Really, yeah, your ego should not depend on whether a blind person accepts your help or not, but unfortunately, a lot of people do.
Speaker 3:
That's interesting.
Speaker 4:
It's incredible really. And you know, if we need help say, for example, you want to help us get from one place to another you know, don't be what I call a grabby draggy. Oh yeah, you know, don't do that. That was okay when my son was a toddler, when he didn't have the words to like tell me what he wanted. But you know, once people get to about age five, they usually grow out of that behavior yeah um, you know, assume competence unless proven otherwise.
Speaker 4:
Um, and see us as more than our disability. You know, I'm a sports fan. I like to argue about sports. I'm interested in current events. I don't necessarily like to argue about those, because most people are crazy.
Speaker 3:
I won't argue with that.
Speaker 4:
You know him and I go back and forth all the time. It's fun, but you know I like to barbecue Like a little true crime. There's so many things that are essential to who I am. I got a wicked sense of humor, that's for sure. I'm not outspoken at all, I'm a quiet little church mouse.
Speaker 3:
That's what you've been told your whole life?
Speaker 4:
I'm sure, yeah, that's what you've been told your whole life, I'm sure. Um you know, uh there, there is so much more to us than just our disability.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, and, and how has that been? You know, I'm sure times have changed. Just as you know, our whole family is autistic and ADHD and so much has changed in the decade or two decades of our, you know, in the community, with their understanding, with a little bit more education. And there's still so much work to go, isn't there? But you can appreciate the appreciate the changes over time. How would you say now, you know, in 2025, how are we looking now as far as being more graceful, more understanding, a little bit more human, you know, dig, a little bit more dignity towards everyone? Are we headed in the right?
Speaker 4:
direction. I think it varies from place to place. I think COVID robbed us of what little social graces we all had.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
Um, so we're still. We're still trying to recover from that. It really does vary from place to place and situation to situation. You know, the one change that I've seen has really been in myself. I try not to get and I still do. I'm human, but I try not to get as frustrated by the weirdness of people on the street. I try to just laugh it off. You know people freak out when they see a long white cane come as if it was a rattlesnake. The weird questions you get, you know like wow, but you know, you really you really got to just laugh it off because you can't, you can't affect you, can't let it affect your. You know the way you relate to the next person. Yeah, sometimes you just got to go home, have a couple of beers and be like you know what I'm done with people for a while, let it go.
Speaker 3:
Yep, I hear that and sometimes it's family. You know that's too funny. What can we do globally? How can we scale this? What do we need to look? How do we need to look at this on a global scale?
Speaker 4:
I can only speak for people with disabilities. We need to become less dependent on government and more dependent on ourselves, and here's why and I'm talking collectively, okay this perceived incapability, this perceived need for charity, a lot of it stems from the fact that we are associated with the need for government assistance and when you're doing, you're dependent on something or somebody. That thing has, or person has, power over you. So if we, as people with disabilities, want to claim our power, we need to, we need this, and I'm not saying everybody. You know there's still going to be times when we need the government, but you know we need a hand out, a hand up rather. But overall, we need to break free of that control and it's going to take a cultural shift.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, Globally you know, we the shift needs to be and again, this is a cultural shift it needs to be away from the, the model of oh, we need to help the disabled people and more toward a model of let's appreciate everybody for their unique gifts and talents. You know, let's focus on what people can do, not what people can't do, and DEI has really hurt us. Dei has really hurt us. Hire me, accept me, promote me because I'm awesome. Don't do it because I'm blind. Right? Yeah the wrong message is taken away from that?
Speaker 3:
yep, yep, I do agree. I agree with that and I like what you said about you know it'll be a cultural shift and it may take who knows how long generation to do so. Yeah, and it's all about what we now are teaching our younger generations and how to shift and how to shape the future. For accessibility, accommodating, but independence, you know, having both sides of that. How can we create this independence with whatever? You know, accommodating as a human factor rather than as a need for you know, like you said, a a care to type of type of way. So, yeah, and of course, it's individual to to everyone, literally individually. So that has to be taken, you know, into account, for sure, um, but you know it's your own lived experience and I appreciate you sharing that with us and sharing those vulnerabilities and helping us understand how we can, um, move forward today, tomorrow, with a different mindset. And maybe some actionable tasks we can do to take away? Yep, definitely. Some actionable tasks we can do to take away?
Speaker 4:
yep, definitely well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to come on here and share my experience and rant and rave a little bit and it's been great.
Speaker 3:
I'm really I appreciate it and I'd love to get together and just chat sometime and and have a good laugh and talk about some Trips to Bucks Lake or something. It's been so nice. And you know, I'm putting up your website right now Reallifeaccesscom. Yep, that's where you can go to See what Angela is working on to make. I went and support all my wonderful guests, so I appreciate that so much. It's been such a pleasure to get to know you today. It's been super fun. Yeah, yeah, you have a great personality and I really just I think you're, you're doing everything right, you know doing everything the way you're supposed to be doing it and it just it comes across and it's so authentic, it's so really. I want people to go and, um, you know, look at your websites, check them out, make sure that you're being accessible. Uh, I'm going to double check mine. Maybe I, you know, am I accessible now? I need to. Now. I need to know. Hopefully, hopefully, that is the case, but maybe I'll have to.
Speaker 4:
Well, and if you ever want somebody to take a quick look at your website, just fill out that contact form on my site and we can. We can set up a meeting and we can figure out where to go from there.
Speaker 3:
I love it. Thank you so much. I look forward to staying in touch and, yeah, some great conversations to come. All right, sounds good. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 4:
All right, you too.
Speaker 2:
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