August 14, 2024 • 53 mins
In this episode, Beth Cougler Blom talks with Yasser Tamer Atef, a disability advocate and facilitator, about strategies to make learning spaces accessible and inclusive.
Beth and Yasser also discuss:
- involving people with disabilities in the learning design process
- creating accessible documents
- strategies for facilitating inclusive virtual sessions
- the importance of asking participants about their specific needs and preferences individually, and making adaptations accordingly
- designing flexibility into learning experiences for participants
- building inclusive communities and fostering a sense of belonging and safety for all learners
Engage with Yasser Tamer Atef
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasser-tamer-6880911b8/
- X: @yasser_tammer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yasser.tamer2002
Other Links from the Episode
- Equity Unbound
- Soliya Connect program
- MyFest 2024
- Intentionally Equitable Hospitality series
- Dr. Maha Bali
- Dr. Mia Zamora
- Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo
- Teaching in Higher Ed podcast with Bonni Stachowiak
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) on the CAST website
- Priya Parker's Art of Gathering book
- Yasser's article for Mind Brain & Education magazine on "Care and Equity: The View From the Lens of Disability Inclusion"
- Heather Kretschmer
- Verna Rossi's Inclusive Learning Design book
- Dr. Amy Kavanagh
- Radha Agrawal's Belong book, available on her website
Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose podcast:
- Follow Facilitating on Purpose on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube
- Show notes and transcripts available at facilitatingonpurpose.com
Connect with Host Beth Cougler Blom:
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to Facilitating on Purpose,
where we explore ideas together about designing and
facilitating learning.
Join me to get inspired on your journey to becoming and
being a great facilitator wherever you work.
I'm your host, Beth Cougler Blom.
Hello, welcome to Season 3 of the podcast.
(00:24):
If you're just joining us, welcome.
I'm glad you've decided to check out Facilitating on
Purpose.
If you have been a regular listener with us through S
eason 1 and 2, thanks for coming back.
I am so excited to bring Season 3 episodes to you.
In this episode, you're going to meet my guest,
Yasser Tamer.
Yasser is a disability advocate, a researcher,
(00:48):
and an accessibility consultant.
Yasser is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in
the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the
American University in Cairo.
He has embarked on his facilitation journey through
attending what's called the Mid-Year Festival, MyFest,
something that I have now been able to be a part of as a
(01:09):
participant and have enjoyed learning from all of the
varied folks around the world, actually,
that facilitate and participate in MyFest through a common
connection.
I was able to meet Yasser and invited him to come on the
show, and I'm so pleased that I was able to do that.
This conversation that I had with Yasser is all about how
we can make caring learning environments for people with
(01:31):
disabilities.
I think it's an important conversation and a good one.
Enjoy the show.
Yasser, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you so much, Beth.
I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so happy to chat about different things,
facilitation and learning and disability.
(01:52):
I'm more happy to always talk about disability when there's
someone who's motivated like me to chat about these things.
I'm so motivated and I know that you're going to teach me a
lot today and give me food for thought.
So let's get right into it and get started.
As I think about our conversation today,
(02:12):
I just want to know a little bit more about who you are in
the world.
Who are you, Yasser, in the world?
And who are you right now as a facilitator?
Yasser Yeah, that's interesting because I've never thought about facilitation when I was really young. My name is Yasser Tamer. I'm a student, I'm still doing my undergraduate degree here in Cairo, at the American University in Cairo, in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. And I'm a disability advocate.
(02:39):
So that's really my part of my identity is that I do disability work all the time and I'm advocating always for the rights of people with disabilities in every context and all the opportunities and in the best way possible that I could do.
To answer your question about who am I as a facilitator, I would just say it started for me, it was in 2022, I got to know one of my closest friends now, who is Professor Maha Bali, who is a professor of practice at the American University in Cairo as well.
(03:12):
And she was doing the Mid-Year Festival, part of Equity Unbound, which is a grassroots movement, a community building resource for all educators and faculty developers and all people interested in education.
And I found my interest in this and I found myself even more inclined to explore it. And then shortly after I got to know Professor Bali, it just went that she told me like, oh there's a Mid-Year Festival, are you interested to attend?
(03:43):
And then I attended. That was in 2022. And when I attended that it just I felt like, oh wow, that's the community I feel like I belong to. And that's the way I want to grow myself and that's the way I want to see myself developing.
That time I was only an attendee just like everybody else in the room, just like everybody in the community. It just had occurred that I was mostly a person who attended a lot of sessions in the program
(04:10):
and then I took Professor Maha Bali's class, the class at AUC, the class that she teaches and part of that is the Soliya Connect program. And SULIA is an organization that does virtual exchange programs for students who are interculturally marginalized who are placed in different parts of the world.
(04:33):
And it just connects people from the US and Europe with people from the Middle East and North Africa like myself. Because, as I said, I'm based in Egypt, I'm based in Cairo. I'm a person who never traveled abroad.
So I took the SULIA program, I finished that program and then I took the facilitator training afterwards, you know, in the organization. The facilitator training, I took it because I felt like that really resembled the mid-year festival experience, the MyFest experience,
(05:05):
we call it MyFest and then I took the facilitator training and I found myself really attached to how adults can be constructively, you know, facilitated and organized and communicated.
Next MyFest came, 2023, and this time I worked as a co-organizer of the whole program. So I facilitated sessions, I led discussions, I hosted other people's sessions so I was actually responsible for welcoming participants into the room as a learning space holder
(05:38):
and that's what the Intentionally Equitable Hospitality entailed which is the facilitation practice that a facilitator is responsible for holding the space.
That's actually coined by also Professor Bali and one of
the people who are responsible for the program,
who are also one of the co -leaders, Mia Zamora,
(05:58):
who is also a professor at Kean University.
So I tried to imitate.
I tried to be intentionally equitable.
And I tried to be as mindful as possible with people and
with being welcoming, with being included,
like welcoming in the space,
with being inclusive of whoever will come to my space.
(06:20):
So that's in a nutshell,
my way or my journey into my station.
And I sort of feel very bad because I just summarized this
in one, two minutes,
but my feelings towards this journey are really great.
It just goes beyond being explained in like two, three,
four minutes.
I don't mind at all,
and I'm happy to hear about the journey because I feel like
(06:43):
you got such an excellent start.
I've heard of Maha Bali,
I've heard her speak several times on particularly the
Teaching in Higher Ed podcast that Bonni Stachowiak runs,
and I think she's so widely respected in the world for
probably many things, but wow,
to have her as a collaborator, perhaps as a mentor,
(07:04):
as you got started in your facilitation practice.
It feels like you're pretty lucky,
nice start to the facilitation world.
Do you feel that?
I would say I'm pretty lucky.
I'm very fortunate to have someone like her with me in this
world, every day just a learning experience.
I'm going to really go back to this later, I know.
(07:26):
But it's the way that you have something and then develops
because you have a wonderful mentor who works to develop
your innate skills in that particular area.
I'm going to tell you something, three years ago,
I just gave a class presentation and I was really not
confident enough to give it.
(07:48):
I stuttered. My language skills were very bad.
I kept moving back and forth between my slides because I
didn't have digital literacy skills.
Speaking of Bonni Stachowiak, it's just also wonderful to, one of my very proud moments was that I was one of her guests on her podcast.
(08:16):
When she sent me, I felt very proud that, oh, wow, just coming on one of the prominent teaching podcasts. Same as when I got this invitation to be on this podcast as well. It just feels so surreal to get to know people and to feel that what you're doing is recognized and that you're not only doing it for yourself as a person to develop and to learn, but you're holding an intentional space.
(08:42):
You're emerging as not only a person,
but you're emerging as a person who aspires to change
something in the world and to be intentionally equitable.
Absolutely.
And I saw that you were on Bonni's podcast when I was
researching you before we had this conversation and I was
on it as well so we have that in common. But I do want to
(09:04):
recognize that you have so much experience already that
you're bringing to this practice because of your background
in equity, disability,
and inclusion and the lived experience that you bring to
this work as well.
Would you share a little bit more about you yourself and
the skills and abilities that you bring as Yasser,
the facilitator?
(09:26):
Actually, just to disclaimer,
which I actually forgot to mention is that I'm a totally
blind person.
I was born blind.
I became blind due to a medical issue that happened when I
was really a newborn.
And then it was this way that I never saw something from
that world, which gets me to your question actually.
(09:46):
So the skills that I always feel like I want to bring into
a facilitation practice is that you want to always apply an
emergent strategy/intentional adaptation into your
facilitation.
So what does this mean? What this means to me is that we all go to spaces. We all recognize some barriers that might occur last minute into our facilitation. But being blind, just when we come to the room as facilitators, and then you'll find a blind person coming in as a participant,
(10:26):
you start panicking,
you start feeling the world is so bad that the session will
not go smoothly because it's the,
how can I just handle this person?
And then by the way, it happens in the learning environments.
Just one particular time, I can recall a professor who said, oh, how can I teach with you? So this is my goal. Just in facilitation I want to convey that I'm not different as a person, but maybe I'm different with my disability, but my disability has been imposed by the society. Because it was imposed by the society,
(11:01):
let's work together to eradicate it and to try to make it inclusive and to try to start on this journey to make me welcomed and make me feel that there is no such inequality in your space. So I hope that answered your question about what I bring.
I bring all the skills that everyone brings actually. So whatever everybody is required to be, everybody is required to be warm. So that's one of the key elements in facilitation, right? I try to be warm.
(11:31):
I try to be motivated.
I try to be inspired by what people's thoughts are.
I try to be creative.
I try to be critical thinker.
I try to be intellectually ready to meet whatever the world
is bringing.
And then that's the sort of skills that they would focus
(11:51):
on.
But my asset is always about how to recognize the
disability community when they are attending your space or
when they are coming to your space.
Yes.
You mentioned the fear that maybe we have as instructors or
facilitators of learning when we realize that there is
(12:11):
going to be someone in our classroom or in the room that
has a disability and maybe we're not prepared for that.
I mean, I hope that we can get to a point where,
when we learn that,
we've already prepared for that and we just say to
ourselves, okay, that's okay.
They can participate fully in the thing that I've designed
and planned to teach here or this experience I want to
(12:32):
facilitate.
So I don't think we're there yet,
but we're working towards that.
And this is part of the biggest part of your work or some
of it?
Very much so. We are not yet there and we will never be
there because we can't be 100% inclusive,
but we can do the very basic stuff to be.
And then the golden rule was the advice that I always give
(12:56):
to people is that always ask, always ask,
ask people whatever they need,
ask people what do they need from you to make their life
more easier.
If you ask and you end up feeling you kind of can't
understand,
ask again. Or if you researched and you feel like, okay, you did the very basic one stuff, but then the basic stuff are not really optimal for the person or was different in your space, ask.
(13:26):
And when you ask, they will tell you what they need.
And then when you do what they need,
so you're 100% inclusive for them.
You're 100% inclusive for them,
but you might not be 100% inclusive for me.
If I have Beth in my podcast and ask this, okay,
what do you need back from me?
And then she said, oh,
(13:46):
I just need closed captioning enabled because I'm a hard of
hearing person.
Okay, I enabled closed captioning for Beth.
But if X would come to me then afterwards and says,
this is not inclusive,
although I've enabled closed captioning from last time,
still, you haven't known their needs.
(14:07):
You haven't known what the person needs from you to be
included.
And this is our role.
It's always to serve the community the way they want us to
serve them.
And not to assume things that we carry from previous
experiences.
I hope that's understandable.
(14:28):
I conveyed my point.
Absolutely.
And the word assumptions was coming up in my mind and then
you said, don't assume.
And so I think that's a great learning for us all that we
can think we know what the person needs and maybe we do
something to prepare,
but we will never know because everybody is an individual,
aren't they?
(14:48):
So what I think a person needs is it could be what they
need, but it might not be.
And that's really important to find out. [Yes.] But if I'm
designing a workshop or a course and I don't have access to
a person or I just want to design inclusively so that
everyone can come and participate in the experience I'm
(15:08):
facilitating,
what are some of the things that you want us to think about
when we're in that design stage so that we can be
inclusive?
I designed courses at my universities.
I worked with the Center for Learning and Teaching team to
design courses for both faculty and teaching assistants.
(15:28):
The thing that I myself look into is that who my audience
are, who are my audience?
And then if I don't know my audience,
or if I'm creating something that is open for the world,
then again,
I just go ahead and do the most well-known accessibility
requirements.
(15:50):
So let's give this example.
In facilitation,
we as facilitators sometimes have handouts.
Is this right?
Yes, yes, for sure.
Yeah, or or visuals of some kind.
Yeah.
I'm going to elaborate on visuals later.
But we have handouts here.
The UDL, you have Google Slides, whatever.
(16:11):
The handouts would always include
visuals, or not, depending on your time. So what do you need to do?
You need, for example, to do alternative text.
That's the very basic.
For someone who's blind,
it's just to do alternative text for them so their screen
readers can recognize the visual that you're including.
If you have a document,
(16:31):
you have to go ahead and use headings.
You have to use hyperlinks and label the hyperlinks as
clearly as possible instead of saying, click here.
So what is this here?
What is this here talking about?
If you tell me, click on this video,
so I know that this link is a video.
If you have a document,
then you have to make sure that you're using a sensory font
(16:55):
so everybody will not be irritated by your font.
It's just visually comfy for them.
So the way that they see it goes well with the site.
So colour contrast, font, accessible font.
Colour contrast is like, OK,
you use a good colour that is comfortable for the eye.
(17:17):
Both applies to slides and docs and all that in the actual
facilitation of an activity and that something happens a
lot of times.
And you're sharing the screen on Zoom or whatever platform
that you're hosting on, you start feeling, start saying,
this points out to x, x, x, x, x.
(17:37):
So what is this?
For a blind person who cannot see the screen,
they cannot really see what is this.
Or if you're showing a photo and then they say,
I'm showing a photo on the screen. If you guys can look at
the photo and then tell me x, x,
and then you deprive the person with visual impairment to
(17:59):
know what is in the photo.
So perhaps you have to say, OK, this photo, which is an x,
x, x, x, x, x, x, full description.
And then you now gave the description orally to the person.
Or perhaps if you have a handout,
you just include the description on the handout for the
person.
(18:20):
Or sometimes it's always helpful to include it in the chat.
Why?
Because, OK, if the person was blind, it's fine.
They heard the description.
But then we have another person who has a mental disability
and they can't retain memory.
So now send the description,
but the person cannot really grasp because their memory is
pretty short.
(18:40):
Then if you include it in the chat, it's there.
They can look at it whenever they want, however they want.
They can even take notes.
They can even take the chat message copy and then keep
annotating.
It's always helpful to keep it lasting for a long time and
(19:01):
not deprive people of the deaf community.
And this really happened to me, personally, in a session.
We were just facilitating a session.
We were just dealing with the people who are attending a
session as normally as possible.
We were just describing an activity.
(19:21):
But we found out that a person who is in the participants
is deaf.
We didn't have closed captioning on.
We didn't know that she's deaf.
So what could we have done at that time is that either we
lose or we lose, but we didn't, thankfully.
What we did is that we kept adding things in the chat.
(19:42):
By doing so,
applied something called intentional adaptation,
which Priya Parker talks about it in her book,
The Art of Gathering.
And then we intentionally adapted the session to suit her
needs, to meet her learning goals,
and to be able to at least welcome her the way we can in
(20:03):
the best way possible.
I like the idea of using the chat even more intentionally
that I might be doing myself even because I've talked about
this before in different ways,
but we have chat post documents that we create where we pre-
plan all of the chat posts that we want to go in there,
right,
like activities instructions and all that kind of stuff.
(20:25):
It's always upsetting when people turn off the chat in
their meeting.
Yeah.
Oh goodness.
Yeah.
But you're just making me think, okay, well,
if I showed a photo, yes,
I'm going to describe it verbally,
but I also can pre-plan that I put a description of that
photo in the chat.
It just kind of ups the game a little bit from what I've
even been doing to make more information go into the chat
(20:46):
to be helpful.
Either you do a pre-planned,
it's either you improvise and write it at the moment.
You know why?
Because sometimes people say very different things,
very different things,
and then it can inspire your description.
It doesn't matter.
What matters most is that you know that you have to include
(21:06):
it in the chat.
And sometimes, by the way,
the chat doesn't stop and the chat doesn't really function
when dealing with photos.
You know, when you describe an activity,
you can also include it in the chat.
For example, Liberating Structures. And you have Liberating Structures and you say, okay, we're describing the following activity which will take X and the activity entails X and you will do X.
(21:31):
Why not include bullet points in the chat so people also
can, who doesn't really, even people,
let's forget about disability,
people who have weak language skills,
who accents are very difficult for them so they can read
it.
So the chat is always wonderful.
A handout is always wonderful if you're not comfortable to
chat.
A handout is always wonderful to include.
(21:52):
Yeah,
and I liked how you brought up the memory retention piece
because putting things in the chat,
how many times have we experienced that the group goes into
the breakout room and people go,
what are we supposed to be doing again?
So they have it there.
It's in the chat.
They know they don't have to have held that in their mind
for so long.
And while screen readers often pronounce the chat at the
(22:14):
time it's being sent and this might also overlap with the
voice of the facilitator,
it's always advisable that the facilitator just stops
talking for like a second or two until the chat is done or
gives pauses, not stops talking.
Like if people,
if the facilitator recognizes that the chat is really is
(22:35):
going so quickly, it's just going on, it's just on fire,
they can just do two things.
You can just give pauses,
give pauses and do nothing or just act as the reader.
I'm just going to read the chat out loud,
so just in case someone is driving or someone is not able
to read.
That's a wonderful way for facilitators to get out of this
(22:57):
dilemma and then say, okay,
I'm going to read out some of the things that came in the
chat to just see what people had said.
In case someone is driving or someone cannot read it,
so I'm going to read some of this.
That's wonderful.
So let me think about how this works practically.
So you're using a screen reader yourself to participate in
an online workshop, right?
Or facilitate one.
(23:17):
And so you're listening to what's going on in the chat
through your screen reader.
And so the fact that the facilitator is talking and the
screen reader is talking to you,
that is probably a little bit distressing sometimes.
There's a lot going on.
So yeah, we have to help you out there.
I actually sometimes go out of sessions with a very bad
(23:38):
headache because of this.
Three voices are talking in my head, the facilitator,
the screen reader, and my phone screen reader.
It's a very important thing because sometimes I have to use
phone to take notes, to sometimes open Mentimeter,
to sometimes open the slides.
If we're doing a Slido, three,
four different things to talk in just a few minutes of the
(24:03):
session.
And then you have to handle this on your own.
Yeah.
Thanks for bringing up that extra device because you're
right.
People will say here, pull out your phones.
We're going to do a Mentimeter.
And just to be conscious that that's a lot of devices that
are now talking to a person or even just to engage with if
you are a sighted person.
That's a lot, isn't it?
And we need space.
(24:23):
It's another argument for putting more space in silence,
maybe in learning spaces as well.
Yes.
Now you talk a lot, I think, about caring for people.
So put your facilitator hat on now as the facilitator and
you're crafting this caring learning environment for
people.
(24:43):
What does that mean to you?
You talk about hospitality and learning spaces as well.
So what does it mean to foster care and hospitality in
learning spaces?
Maybe things you haven't said yet.
I actually wrote an article for the Mind Brain Education
magazine, thanks to Heather Kretschmer,
who was also an English teacher who works in Germany.
(25:03):
She invited me to write this piece.
And I actually drew on the intentionally equitable
hospitality by Dr.
Bali and Dr.
Zamora.
I drew on Verna Rossi's book, Inclusive Learning Design.
And she says one of the things that she brings up is she
divides inclusion or inclusive into an acronym which is
(25:26):
intentionally equitable, co-creating, liberating,
user-friendly, socially responsible, integrative,
and value-based, and ecological.
And I think these nine values are the representative of
cares.
I just need to credit that again to Dr.
Verna Rossi, who works in the UK,
(25:46):
who is a learning designer.
She's the author of the Inclusive Learning Design book.
But for me, if I could reflect on these points,
is that all these points I tried at least integrating them
into my practice or receiving them as part of something or
(26:06):
as a part of a caring environment that I was in.
For example, I took a class of literature and cinema.
And I'm not that person who can watch films.
Even if they are packed up with audio descriptions.
And I took that class because, honestly,
I took it because I loved the professor.
I learned a lot from the professor.
(26:27):
I just took it because I loved the cinemas.
I loved the variety.
But mind all that, she just, the movie, the films were all not audio described digitally. But the way we handled it is that she acted as an audio describer.
We used to sit together in class besides each other.
And then she used to describe all the scenes while they
(26:48):
were screened.
And this is sort of how the intentionally equitable.
She was intentionally equitable.
She also, she let me co-create the class with her.
So in case there was something very hard and in the class,
she let me, okay,
let's co-create this together to be inclusive for the whole
(27:08):
class and for you as well.
And by the way,
the element of co-creation was went above and beyond even
with Dr. Bali because the work that I co-designed courses
with her and her team from the Center for Learning and
Teaching is just the way of co-creation that I co-create
with them as a student,
(27:29):
as a person with lived experience in disability and as a
person with values that are related to disability.
I think socially responsible also contributes to this,
that I'm socially responsible for these marginalized people
that I want to bring my experience for,
like in order to benefit them as much as possible.
(27:51):
And so this is how I think in summary,
as much as I could recall,
the inclusion means to me when it comes to being a person
who crafts. So I just think of those descriptions or
criteria in which I think inclusion would be done.
It's actually not the, it's not everything,
(28:14):
but at least that's how we can work with it.
I love that you speak so much about co-creating and it
makes me think about dismantling power structures.
And, you know,
because you can have a professor and have a student and
that could be very hierarchical and they don't work
together to craft the learning experience together,
(28:34):
but you're telling me stories of the opposite that you have
been drawing in and been drawn in to create with your
faculty.
And, you know,
now they're probably friends and colleagues and it's just
it is so equitable.
So what's the word equalizing or balancing out of
(28:54):
experience and expertise?
Yeah, it's actually equalizing.
It's actually drawing on the most needed at the moment.
So I actually feel like it's also the element of co
-creation even between students together.
So what I really wish to do is that I wouldn't stop at this
point.
I just wish to create something where I even pay the favour
(29:18):
back to the whole world.
And then why not establish something that I can co-create
with people from different parts of the world that could
benefit or help the society community that I can believe in
people, like how people believed in me.
It's like I've had people who championed me,
(29:41):
who believed in my dreams,
who didn't take my experiences for granted.
So the element of co-creating is not always momentum.
It's just for the future as well.
How can I take this element above and beyond and co-create
with people in order to keep the passion and the vibe
(30:03):
going?
I do see that as perhaps a strength of yours. You know, not knowing you very well, Yasser, we've just met. It's our second time meeting and talking with each other. But in looking at what you put out in the world, it does seem clear to me that you really care about sharing your expertise and well, these things that are you're helping to co-create, you're really intent on sharing them out widely so that other people can benefit from them.
(30:32):
Does that seem like it describes you?
Yeah, very much so. It's just sharing, it's just keeping the loop going. It wouldn't be only Dr. Bali or her team, it wouldn't be only my other friends who helped me, it wouldn't be only me who even contributes to the field or to the momentum of disability inclusion or the, you know, hopefully going to be something that is developing and imagined and reimagined and defined and redefined in ways that hold everybody accountable and hold everybody responsible to take the whole vibe more and keep it going.
(31:17):
It's just,
if I end up being in this world for a few years doing
things until I die and then the passion is not shared,
the element of co-creation is not shared,
so that's too bad and I don't really hope for this to
happen, I don't aspire for this to happen,
I just hope that there will be a lot more who can continue
(31:41):
on and on and on co-creating, believing in people,
caring for them, caring for their needs,
including them and welcoming them in their spaces.
Mm-hmm.
I think you talk a lot about communities and you're,
you've been talking a lot about it,
but not actually saying the word community,
but you've perhaps received the support of a community
(32:03):
around you,
but you're contributing to that community as well,
for sure.
Can you say something about just the importance of
communities and for all of us as we learn about inclusion
and try to do more effective work in this way?
For someone to recognize the value and significance of
community in their lives, I think, ask yourself,
(32:26):
who are the people with whom I always feel a strong bond
towards?
I hope I'm framing the question right,
but I'm actually thinking about it in the sense of,
who are those that I always tend to feel very close,
and without any reservations and boundaries,
(32:46):
I feel like everything melts down to being comfortable and
being very open and free,
liberating and rejuvenating, if
I can use this word. That's the element of community for
me,
is just with different people from different parts of the
(33:06):
world.
But then I feel like the presence makes me happy.
This is the community for me.
Unlike being, for example,
with people who are in the same community,
physical community, I mean, from the same country,
and the element of love for the community is not really
(33:27):
there, so that's not a community.
I wouldn't really say that's a community.
Mm, that's a nice way to say it.
And you talk about being comfortable,
makes me think to ask you, okay,
so if you and I were going to facilitate something
together, and we hadn't worked together yet,
how could I make you feel comfortable working with me?
And what would you do to make me comfortable working with
(33:48):
you?
Like,
what does that look like as we begin to develop our community
together?
Honestly,
I wouldn't talk about me as a person as yesterday because I
tend to adapt with people easily and I feel like I'm that
person who can open up easily,
that person who's really comfortable to share things even
(34:11):
with strangers whom I don't know,
I can just talk about everything, really everything.
I'm not that closed off,
but I would say if I'm facilitating something with a
disabled person, but I don't know them,
I will probably try to first examine closely from my
(34:32):
interactions with them how they deal with the world,
how they like to talk,
how they like to do conversations and then ask them.
Because I repeated the word ask a lot,
but it's really the key with everything.
It's actually the key even in physical help that when we
meet a disabled person in the streets struggling,
(34:54):
we always advise against going and grabbing them
surprisingly.
We always tell them ask, don't grab.
This is something that done by Amy Kavanagh.
It used to be a big campaign on Twitter, X, well,
Twitter formerly, X now.
And then she used to advocate for the rights of women even
through this campaign because she used to say, like, okay,
(35:17):
I'm not really,
I shouldn't be prone to harassment as a visually impaired
woman, as a disabled woman.
By being grabbed out of the motivation to help me.
Go ahead and ask me first, what do I need?
And then the same concept could apply to facilitation,
the same concept could apply to basically everything.
(35:39):
Don't assume, but just ask.
What mistakes do you think I might make with maybe good
intentions in working with you like making an assumption
about something that are there common things that we should
be on the lookout for and just stop doing.
I wouldn't really be personal with this question as well. I would say some people tend to be more offended by some language. So reviewing the language element is really important. Some people like those in the US, for example, like 'people with disabilities' and 'disabled people'.
(36:14):
'Disabled people' is more favoured in the UK because they say that disability is ahead of us because of the society. The disability is created by the society, which is the social model of disability.
Unlike the US, they say, okay, we value our disability, so our 'people with disabilities'.
And then this is the language element.
(36:36):
So sometimes the language element makes a huge sort of gap when we interact with people who are "different"/"disabled".
But in terms of facilitation,
I think not involving disabled people in the design would
be a huge mistake believing that they cannot really
contribute or it would be too much for them,
(36:58):
that they cannot really handle work or tasks or whatever.
I think also that's a huge mistake is that, okay,
when we design,
we often have to anticipate who is involved in the design
and when and then we know that we have a personal
disability,
so then we have to go ahead and involve them and giving
them the space.
Okay,
we don't have to also go back and assume that they can't
(37:19):
facilitate basically just their presence and then they are
present and then their presence will make it.
No, they can do whatever they want.
You just have to make sure that everything for them will
work smoothly,
that they have the accessible tools to facilitate,
that the workshop content is accessible for them because
sometimes when we exclude them from the design slash
(37:40):
facilitation process, it will turn out to be inaccessible,
it will turn out to be fully instead of beneficial,
turn out to be ineffective and you can put it that way.
Yes, exactly.
You've shared so many great suggestions.
I want to talk about activities.
So when we're designing workshops or courses,
(38:02):
what do you want us to think about to make inclusive
activities?
It just depends on what we are facilitating,
but accessibility would be the heart of ideas when we
create activities.
It's that we have to create it accessible.
We have to make sure that it's accessible.
We have to make sure that we're doing something that would
not be really presenter-centered or facilitator-centered,
(38:24):
but rather this is not really disability-related,
but this is something that I would really be concerned
with.
It's that if I'm creating something,
I would make sure that it's not facilitator-centered,
but rather participant-centered,
where the words of the participants are very important,
and they are actually one of the core tenets of the
session.
(38:45):
If I'm just speaking as a facilitator without hearing
people,
it wouldn't be too effective and it wouldn't be too welcomed.
It feels so bad,
it feels so disconnecting and disconcerting for the
attendees.
I talk a lot about that too,
and I sometimes call it or ask the question,
(39:05):
where does the content come from, you know,
does it have to come from,
we wouldn't even really say facilitator in that experience,
would we,
we'd probably just say lecturer or presenter or something,
but how do we design so that all people are included and we
really hear more from the people in the room rather than
the person standing up in front of it or leading it.
Maybe the word included wouldn't really be restrictive for
(39:29):
disability people only just including pretty much
everybody.
And we'd also liberate ourselves to be more welcoming for
other things such as, for example,
we would say people are welcome to eat when they are in the
session.
People are welcome to go off camera in the session.
(39:50):
People are welcome to bring their own kids in the session.
So it wouldn't be like, okay,
it's so bad and it's not working well and kids are good.
So why not excluding kids from the session?
People are welcome to bring elders.
So some people are taking care of their elderly parents or
are taking care of their elderly grandparents or such.
(40:11):
Why not excluding those?
So why not including them instead?
Why not designing our content to adapt to those who are
different but they still want it to be there because they
want to learn about they have some things to respond to in
life.
Why do we always assume that everybody should be in front
of the camera in their office opening their camera wearing
(40:33):
very formal clothes suits and stuff?
No.
If you want to attend my sessions in bed,
you're welcome to attend in bed and you're welcome to go
off camera.
You're welcome to leave without asking for an excuse.
You're welcome to say,
if the session is like two hours or more,
you're welcome to say, okay,
I'm going to leave by the hour if I'm creating breakout
(40:54):
rooms.
So I as a facilitator feel it's important to create a quiet
room for people.
That's something I've learned from Equity Unbound and from
a lot of facilitators and Equity uUnbound would do this.
Okay, they create the including Dr. Bali
as well.
They actually create a quiet room for people who are not in
(41:17):
the mood to talk.
That's basically it, you know,
someone who's really not locked in the mood to talk to
participants or partake in a specific activity or something
like this.
Someone who's deaf and they cannot really say it on the
note,
you know. Someone who is driving a car and they still care
to attend,
(41:37):
someone who's in a public space and they cannot really open
their, you know, mic and talk.
Someone who's not a good speaker of the language in which
the session is held,
but they still wanted to listen because they believe that
this will improve their language skills,
which is important, by the way,
is the listening improve listening skills.
(41:58):
That's something we always know.
But if you put them on this part and let them talk, no,
I wouldn't think that's a good idea.
I'm so glad you mentioned all those different things and
there are so many more of them,
but it helps all of us remember,
all the people listening to this episode,
remember that this thing that we want,
that is inclusive learning spaces,
(42:20):
it's not just about ability or disability, is it?
It's about circumstance.
It's about context.
It's about, yeah, feeling how you feel that day,
the technology you have.
There's so many elements within,
it's just not a disability thing, is it?
It's not a disability thing, but because, you know,
(42:41):
the word inclusion is an umbrella term.
When we say now inclusion,
it doesn't really signal only disability.
It signals a lot of things.
It signals people who are minorities, people who are Black.
Like mostly minorities in Europe/the Global West,
Christian minorities in the Global East.
And then, okay, what do we need from the world then?
(43:04):
Is that we would recognize where the inequality is situated
and then try to, as much as possible,
eliminate it by making inclusive environments.
I was really keen on talking about this idea of inclusion
when you asked the previous question,
because I just wanted to emphasize that it's not only about
(43:26):
disability.
It's just everything else that works alongside this
narrative.
But I just mentioned these examples to make sure that,
you know,
try to make the space for people to attend without you
imposing on them different restrictions.
That's right,
that they can show up as who they are with their whole
(43:49):
selves, whatever that is.
Yasser With their whole selves, with their guests, with their kids, with their parents. For example, a mother who's watching her child studying. Why do we have to deprive her from attending because she's watching her child?
It just doesn't make any sense. That's an example. And many more are there that we, if we can speak about this, I think you and I can just record I think many episodes about this ideas of wrong practices and facilitations and all that.
(44:21):
Beth Yeah. And we're sort of judging things based on some sort of paradigm that's been put in our head from long ago or from our culture, wherever we're coming from. There's certain, you know, do's and don'ts that we think we have to adhere to.
And it's wrong, isn't it? A lot of them from those days of yore. [chuckles]
Yes, it's wrong.
(44:41):
But actually,
I would like to always acknowledge the challenges that the
facilitators themselves meet because there are a lot of
challenges or encounters.
There are a lot of challenges that are really hard to go
along.
And then one of them, for example,
is that if someone is disrupting the flow of the community,
(45:02):
how the facilitator would act,
are they going to disconnect them from the community,
just protect the whole people,
or are they going to shun them?
And I think it stems from being intentionally equitable as
the idea of, in order to make it a safe space, as I said,
and as Dr. Bali and Dr. Zamora put it,
(45:23):
in order to make it a safe space for all participants,
I think it's important to,
part of the safety that you create is to eliminate all the
harms that come across your space.
That's also a challenge,
is that you need to protect your space.
And if you face the protected, the space will be dangerous,
(45:45):
and then people will not, by the time,
feel it's safe anymore for them to share their insights.
Absolutely.
So it's really, you mentioned being welcoming before,
but I think you've also mentioned in other spaces,
it's about belonging and you just said safety.
That's our ultimate goal, isn't it?
That all learners feel that.
(46:06):
And we try to create that when we design and facilitate and
sometimes we'll fail, but we keep learning how to do it,
don't we?
Yes, it's an ultimate goal to be learning,
and it's an ultimate goal to belong.
Speaking of belonging, actually,
I would just recall the book, Belong, How to Find People,
by Radha Agrawal.
(46:27):
It's called Belong by Radha Agrawal.
Then this book talks about energy,
that we bring a lot of energies to the spaces in which we
inhabit and which we attend.
I think that if we create the wholesome space or the space
(46:48):
that is inclusive,
I think it helps people bring their own energy in as much
way as possible and as widely as possible,
and in the most way comfortable as possible, I think,
to put it that way,
is that we help people bring their own energies and moods
(47:09):
into the conversation.
That feels like a lovely place to start,
what you just said there,
and I want to thank you for having this conversation with
me today and sharing a lot of your own experience and the
learning that you've done so far in this field,
but also what you've brought to it as well.
Thank you so much, Yasser, for chatting with me today.
(47:32):
I just want to thank you for giving me the space to talk
and to just try to help put some of these points in this
podcast and to make it clear that we're all learning and
we're all trying to be inclusive,
but there has to be the efforts and the intention to be.
(47:53):
And I just want to thank you so much for giving me the
opportunity that you believed in my sort of little
experience and to draw on them in this podcast that feels
so much power and I'm feeling loved and I'm so grateful for
the opportunity and I would just like to thank you again
for having me today, thank you.
(48:16):
Well, thank you.
Your experience doesn't feel little to me.
So I just want to say, say that, right?
It feels very big and very important.
So it's been wonderful to learn from you today.
Thank you so much and I really wish you all the best and
what I truly wish is that this this episode would help
someone you know change their attitude, behaviour, values,
(48:39):
beliefs.
If it even makes someone smile I would be really happy
about that.
I would be really feeling that I did my job that I changed
someone's even mood.
I love that.
It made me smile, absolutely,
and you've helped really ground me and propel me forward
too in my thinking around this topic.
(49:01):
It's been great. [Thank you.] [Outro] As I look back on my
conversation with Yasser and think about all of the things
that he taught me during our conversation,
I'm really struck by all of the resources that he mentioned
throughout the conversation.
I just want to remind you that in the show notes,
I always put the resources that are mentioned in the
(49:24):
episode in the show notes.
You can see those hopefully through the app that you're
using to listen to the podcast or going to facilitatingon
purpose.com where I have show notes for every episode and
the transcripts as well.
So go and check out all those resources and those great
books that Yasser mentioned in this episode.
A couple of things I want to reflect back to you that were
(49:46):
things that Yasser said.
One of the things was the phrase he used about how his
disability has been imposed by the society.
I don't think we often think about a disability being
imposed by society such as how Yasser phrased it.
I'm so appreciative of the way he said that and just
(50:07):
highlighting that for me.
He said,
I want to convey that I'm not different as a person,
but maybe I'm different with my disability,
but my disability has been imposed by the society.
Because it was imposed by the society,
let's work together to eradicate it and to try to make it
inclusive and to try to start on this journey to make me
(50:29):
welcomed and make me feel that there is no such inequality
in your space.
It's such a great thing that Yasser said.
I mean everything he said was great,
but I think it's just an overarching,
wonderful statement to say this is something that society
has given us all to figure out what to do about so people
(50:51):
can come to learning experiences no matter what's going on
for them.
A disability in a physical way or something else that is
present for them in their life.
And how do we just keep trying to make every learning
experience inclusive for everyone?
On a related note, of course,
Yasser just kept reminding me, you heard him do it,
(51:13):
that every single person is an individual.
And so even though we might know someone who is blind,
we might know someone who is deaf or hard of hearing or
have something else that they're going through life with.
Just because we've met some person with whatever that
circumstance is doesn't mean that the strategies that will
(51:34):
work for the next person with perhaps the same situation,
it doesn't mean they're going to work, does it?
So every time we need to check in with the particular
person or group that we're working with and just say,
please tell me, you know, tell me what you need,
you particular person or you as a group and how can we keep
(51:54):
doing this thing we call learning or providing learning or
creating learning spaces just that much better all the
time.
It's very iterative, isn't it,
as we continue to learn and grow in our facilitation
practices and in our learning design practices around being
able to prepare for and then facilitate experiences.
So things again,
Yasser for reminding me and all of us around the
(52:18):
individuality that exists with disability and beyond.
On the next episode of the podcast,
I'm joined by Fernando Murray and Carolina Almeida.
Fernando and Carolina and I have a great conversation about
a topic that will be wonderful to listen to right after
this one.
It's on safe learning spaces.
(52:39):
I know both Fernando and Carolina through the Li
berating Structures community here in British Columbia.
They are both seasoned facilitators and I can't wait to
share this conversation with you.
Catch us next time on the show.
We will see you then. [Podcast outro] Thank you for
listening to Facilitating on Purpose.
If you were inspired by something in this episode,
(52:59):
please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them
expand their facilitation practice too.
To find the show notes,
give me feedback or submit ideas for future episodes,
visit facilitatingonpurpose.com.
Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions
for producing this episode.
Happy facilitating.
Welcome to Facilitating on Purpose,
where we explore ideas together about designing and
facilitating learning.
Join me to get inspired on your journey to becoming and
being a great facilitator wherever you work.
I'm your host, Beth Cougler Blom.
Hello, welcome to Season 3 of the podcast.
(00:24):
If you're just joining us, welcome.
I'm glad you've decided to check out Facilitating on
Purpose.
If you have been a regular listener with us through S
eason 1 and 2, thanks for coming back.
I am so excited to bring Season 3 episodes to you.
In this episode, you're going to meet my guest,
Yasser Tamer.
Yasser is a disability advocate, a researcher,
(00:48):
and an accessibility consultant.
Yasser is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in
the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the
American University in Cairo.
He has embarked on his facilitation journey through
attending what's called the Mid-Year Festival, MyFest,
something that I have now been able to be a part of as a
(01:09):
participant and have enjoyed learning from all of the
varied folks around the world, actually,
that facilitate and participate in MyFest through a common
connection.
I was able to meet Yasser and invited him to come on the
show, and I'm so pleased that I was able to do that.
This conversation that I had with Yasser is all about how
we can make caring learning environments for people with
(01:31):
disabilities.
I think it's an important conversation and a good one.
Enjoy the show.
Yasser, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you so much, Beth.
I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so happy to chat about different things,
facilitation and learning and disability.
(01:52):
I'm more happy to always talk about disability when there's
someone who's motivated like me to chat about these things.
I'm so motivated and I know that you're going to teach me a
lot today and give me food for thought.
So let's get right into it and get started.
As I think about our conversation today,
(02:12):
I just want to know a little bit more about who you are in
the world.
Who are you, Yasser, in the world?
And who are you right now as a facilitator?
Yasser Yeah, that's interesting because I've never thought about facilitation when I was really young. My name is Yasser Tamer. I'm a student, I'm still doing my undergraduate degree here in Cairo, at the American University in Cairo, in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. And I'm a disability advocate.
(02:39):
So that's really my part of my identity is that I do disability work all the time and I'm advocating always for the rights of people with disabilities in every context and all the opportunities and in the best way possible that I could do.
To answer your question about who am I as a facilitator, I would just say it started for me, it was in 2022, I got to know one of my closest friends now, who is Professor Maha Bali, who is a professor of practice at the American University in Cairo as well.
(03:12):
And she was doing the Mid-Year Festival, part of Equity Unbound, which is a grassroots movement, a community building resource for all educators and faculty developers and all people interested in education.
And I found my interest in this and I found myself even more inclined to explore it. And then shortly after I got to know Professor Bali, it just went that she told me like, oh there's a Mid-Year Festival, are you interested to attend?
(03:43):
And then I attended. That was in 2022. And when I attended that it just I felt like, oh wow, that's the community I feel like I belong to. And that's the way I want to grow myself and that's the way I want to see myself developing.
That time I was only an attendee just like everybody else in the room, just like everybody in the community. It just had occurred that I was mostly a person who attended a lot of sessions in the program
(04:10):
and then I took Professor Maha Bali's class, the class at AUC, the class that she teaches and part of that is the Soliya Connect program. And SULIA is an organization that does virtual exchange programs for students who are interculturally marginalized who are placed in different parts of the world.
(04:33):
And it just connects people from the US and Europe with people from the Middle East and North Africa like myself. Because, as I said, I'm based in Egypt, I'm based in Cairo. I'm a person who never traveled abroad.
So I took the SULIA program, I finished that program and then I took the facilitator training afterwards, you know, in the organization. The facilitator training, I took it because I felt like that really resembled the mid-year festival experience, the MyFest experience,
(05:05):
we call it MyFest and then I took the facilitator training and I found myself really attached to how adults can be constructively, you know, facilitated and organized and communicated.
Next MyFest came, 2023, and this time I worked as a co-organizer of the whole program. So I facilitated sessions, I led discussions, I hosted other people's sessions so I was actually responsible for welcoming participants into the room as a learning space holder
(05:38):
and that's what the Intentionally Equitable Hospitality entailed which is the facilitation practice that a facilitator is responsible for holding the space.
That's actually coined by also Professor Bali and one of
the people who are responsible for the program,
who are also one of the co -leaders, Mia Zamora,
(05:58):
who is also a professor at Kean University.
So I tried to imitate.
I tried to be intentionally equitable.
And I tried to be as mindful as possible with people and
with being welcoming, with being included,
like welcoming in the space,
with being inclusive of whoever will come to my space.
(06:20):
So that's in a nutshell,
my way or my journey into my station.
And I sort of feel very bad because I just summarized this
in one, two minutes,
but my feelings towards this journey are really great.
It just goes beyond being explained in like two, three,
four minutes.
I don't mind at all,
and I'm happy to hear about the journey because I feel like
(06:43):
you got such an excellent start.
I've heard of Maha Bali,
I've heard her speak several times on particularly the
Teaching in Higher Ed podcast that Bonni Stachowiak runs,
and I think she's so widely respected in the world for
probably many things, but wow,
to have her as a collaborator, perhaps as a mentor,
(07:04):
as you got started in your facilitation practice.
It feels like you're pretty lucky,
nice start to the facilitation world.
Do you feel that?
I would say I'm pretty lucky.
I'm very fortunate to have someone like her with me in this
world, every day just a learning experience.
I'm going to really go back to this later, I know.
(07:26):
But it's the way that you have something and then develops
because you have a wonderful mentor who works to develop
your innate skills in that particular area.
I'm going to tell you something, three years ago,
I just gave a class presentation and I was really not
confident enough to give it.
(07:48):
I stuttered. My language skills were very bad.
I kept moving back and forth between my slides because I
didn't have digital literacy skills.
Speaking of Bonni Stachowiak, it's just also wonderful to, one of my very proud moments was that I was one of her guests on her podcast.
(08:16):
When she sent me, I felt very proud that, oh, wow, just coming on one of the prominent teaching podcasts. Same as when I got this invitation to be on this podcast as well. It just feels so surreal to get to know people and to feel that what you're doing is recognized and that you're not only doing it for yourself as a person to develop and to learn, but you're holding an intentional space.
(08:42):
You're emerging as not only a person,
but you're emerging as a person who aspires to change
something in the world and to be intentionally equitable.
Absolutely.
And I saw that you were on Bonni's podcast when I was
researching you before we had this conversation and I was
on it as well so we have that in common. But I do want to
(09:04):
recognize that you have so much experience already that
you're bringing to this practice because of your background
in equity, disability,
and inclusion and the lived experience that you bring to
this work as well.
Would you share a little bit more about you yourself and
the skills and abilities that you bring as Yasser,
the facilitator?
(09:26):
Actually, just to disclaimer,
which I actually forgot to mention is that I'm a totally
blind person.
I was born blind.
I became blind due to a medical issue that happened when I
was really a newborn.
And then it was this way that I never saw something from
that world, which gets me to your question actually.
(09:46):
So the skills that I always feel like I want to bring into
a facilitation practice is that you want to always apply an
emergent strategy/intentional adaptation into your
facilitation.
So what does this mean? What this means to me is that we all go to spaces. We all recognize some barriers that might occur last minute into our facilitation. But being blind, just when we come to the room as facilitators, and then you'll find a blind person coming in as a participant,
(10:26):
you start panicking,
you start feeling the world is so bad that the session will
not go smoothly because it's the,
how can I just handle this person?
And then by the way, it happens in the learning environments.
Just one particular time, I can recall a professor who said, oh, how can I teach with you? So this is my goal. Just in facilitation I want to convey that I'm not different as a person, but maybe I'm different with my disability, but my disability has been imposed by the society. Because it was imposed by the society,
(11:01):
let's work together to eradicate it and to try to make it inclusive and to try to start on this journey to make me welcomed and make me feel that there is no such inequality in your space. So I hope that answered your question about what I bring.
I bring all the skills that everyone brings actually. So whatever everybody is required to be, everybody is required to be warm. So that's one of the key elements in facilitation, right? I try to be warm.
(11:31):
I try to be motivated.
I try to be inspired by what people's thoughts are.
I try to be creative.
I try to be critical thinker.
I try to be intellectually ready to meet whatever the world
is bringing.
And then that's the sort of skills that they would focus
(11:51):
on.
But my asset is always about how to recognize the
disability community when they are attending your space or
when they are coming to your space.
Yes.
You mentioned the fear that maybe we have as instructors or
facilitators of learning when we realize that there is
(12:11):
going to be someone in our classroom or in the room that
has a disability and maybe we're not prepared for that.
I mean, I hope that we can get to a point where,
when we learn that,
we've already prepared for that and we just say to
ourselves, okay, that's okay.
They can participate fully in the thing that I've designed
and planned to teach here or this experience I want to
(12:32):
facilitate.
So I don't think we're there yet,
but we're working towards that.
And this is part of the biggest part of your work or some
of it?
Very much so. We are not yet there and we will never be
there because we can't be 100% inclusive,
but we can do the very basic stuff to be.
And then the golden rule was the advice that I always give
(12:56):
to people is that always ask, always ask,
ask people whatever they need,
ask people what do they need from you to make their life
more easier.
If you ask and you end up feeling you kind of can't
understand,
ask again. Or if you researched and you feel like, okay, you did the very basic one stuff, but then the basic stuff are not really optimal for the person or was different in your space, ask.
(13:26):
And when you ask, they will tell you what they need.
And then when you do what they need,
so you're 100% inclusive for them.
You're 100% inclusive for them,
but you might not be 100% inclusive for me.
If I have Beth in my podcast and ask this, okay,
what do you need back from me?
And then she said, oh,
(13:46):
I just need closed captioning enabled because I'm a hard of
hearing person.
Okay, I enabled closed captioning for Beth.
But if X would come to me then afterwards and says,
this is not inclusive,
although I've enabled closed captioning from last time,
still, you haven't known their needs.
(14:07):
You haven't known what the person needs from you to be
included.
And this is our role.
It's always to serve the community the way they want us to
serve them.
And not to assume things that we carry from previous
experiences.
I hope that's understandable.
(14:28):
I conveyed my point.
Absolutely.
And the word assumptions was coming up in my mind and then
you said, don't assume.
And so I think that's a great learning for us all that we
can think we know what the person needs and maybe we do
something to prepare,
but we will never know because everybody is an individual,
aren't they?
(14:48):
So what I think a person needs is it could be what they
need, but it might not be.
And that's really important to find out. [Yes.] But if I'm
designing a workshop or a course and I don't have access to
a person or I just want to design inclusively so that
everyone can come and participate in the experience I'm
(15:08):
facilitating,
what are some of the things that you want us to think about
when we're in that design stage so that we can be
inclusive?
I designed courses at my universities.
I worked with the Center for Learning and Teaching team to
design courses for both faculty and teaching assistants.
(15:28):
The thing that I myself look into is that who my audience
are, who are my audience?
And then if I don't know my audience,
or if I'm creating something that is open for the world,
then again,
I just go ahead and do the most well-known accessibility
requirements.
(15:50):
So let's give this example.
In facilitation,
we as facilitators sometimes have handouts.
Is this right?
Yes, yes, for sure.
Yeah, or or visuals of some kind.
Yeah.
I'm going to elaborate on visuals later.
But we have handouts here.
The UDL, you have Google Slides, whatever.
(16:11):
The handouts would always include
visuals, or not, depending on your time. So what do you need to do?
You need, for example, to do alternative text.
That's the very basic.
For someone who's blind,
it's just to do alternative text for them so their screen
readers can recognize the visual that you're including.
If you have a document,
(16:31):
you have to go ahead and use headings.
You have to use hyperlinks and label the hyperlinks as
clearly as possible instead of saying, click here.
So what is this here?
What is this here talking about?
If you tell me, click on this video,
so I know that this link is a video.
If you have a document,
then you have to make sure that you're using a sensory font
(16:55):
so everybody will not be irritated by your font.
It's just visually comfy for them.
So the way that they see it goes well with the site.
So colour contrast, font, accessible font.
Colour contrast is like, OK,
you use a good colour that is comfortable for the eye.
(17:17):
Both applies to slides and docs and all that in the actual
facilitation of an activity and that something happens a
lot of times.
And you're sharing the screen on Zoom or whatever platform
that you're hosting on, you start feeling, start saying,
this points out to x, x, x, x, x.
(17:37):
So what is this?
For a blind person who cannot see the screen,
they cannot really see what is this.
Or if you're showing a photo and then they say,
I'm showing a photo on the screen. If you guys can look at
the photo and then tell me x, x,
and then you deprive the person with visual impairment to
(17:59):
know what is in the photo.
So perhaps you have to say, OK, this photo, which is an x,
x, x, x, x, x, x, full description.
And then you now gave the description orally to the person.
Or perhaps if you have a handout,
you just include the description on the handout for the
person.
(18:20):
Or sometimes it's always helpful to include it in the chat.
Why?
Because, OK, if the person was blind, it's fine.
They heard the description.
But then we have another person who has a mental disability
and they can't retain memory.
So now send the description,
but the person cannot really grasp because their memory is
pretty short.
(18:40):
Then if you include it in the chat, it's there.
They can look at it whenever they want, however they want.
They can even take notes.
They can even take the chat message copy and then keep
annotating.
It's always helpful to keep it lasting for a long time and
(19:01):
not deprive people of the deaf community.
And this really happened to me, personally, in a session.
We were just facilitating a session.
We were just dealing with the people who are attending a
session as normally as possible.
We were just describing an activity.
(19:21):
But we found out that a person who is in the participants
is deaf.
We didn't have closed captioning on.
We didn't know that she's deaf.
So what could we have done at that time is that either we
lose or we lose, but we didn't, thankfully.
What we did is that we kept adding things in the chat.
(19:42):
By doing so,
applied something called intentional adaptation,
which Priya Parker talks about it in her book,
The Art of Gathering.
And then we intentionally adapted the session to suit her
needs, to meet her learning goals,
and to be able to at least welcome her the way we can in
(20:03):
the best way possible.
I like the idea of using the chat even more intentionally
that I might be doing myself even because I've talked about
this before in different ways,
but we have chat post documents that we create where we pre-
plan all of the chat posts that we want to go in there,
right,
like activities instructions and all that kind of stuff.
(20:25):
It's always upsetting when people turn off the chat in
their meeting.
Yeah.
Oh goodness.
Yeah.
But you're just making me think, okay, well,
if I showed a photo, yes,
I'm going to describe it verbally,
but I also can pre-plan that I put a description of that
photo in the chat.
It just kind of ups the game a little bit from what I've
even been doing to make more information go into the chat
(20:46):
to be helpful.
Either you do a pre-planned,
it's either you improvise and write it at the moment.
You know why?
Because sometimes people say very different things,
very different things,
and then it can inspire your description.
It doesn't matter.
What matters most is that you know that you have to include
(21:06):
it in the chat.
And sometimes, by the way,
the chat doesn't stop and the chat doesn't really function
when dealing with photos.
You know, when you describe an activity,
you can also include it in the chat.
For example, Liberating Structures. And you have Liberating Structures and you say, okay, we're describing the following activity which will take X and the activity entails X and you will do X.
(21:31):
Why not include bullet points in the chat so people also
can, who doesn't really, even people,
let's forget about disability,
people who have weak language skills,
who accents are very difficult for them so they can read
it.
So the chat is always wonderful.
A handout is always wonderful if you're not comfortable to
chat.
A handout is always wonderful to include.
(21:52):
Yeah,
and I liked how you brought up the memory retention piece
because putting things in the chat,
how many times have we experienced that the group goes into
the breakout room and people go,
what are we supposed to be doing again?
So they have it there.
It's in the chat.
They know they don't have to have held that in their mind
for so long.
And while screen readers often pronounce the chat at the
(22:14):
time it's being sent and this might also overlap with the
voice of the facilitator,
it's always advisable that the facilitator just stops
talking for like a second or two until the chat is done or
gives pauses, not stops talking.
Like if people,
if the facilitator recognizes that the chat is really is
(22:35):
going so quickly, it's just going on, it's just on fire,
they can just do two things.
You can just give pauses,
give pauses and do nothing or just act as the reader.
I'm just going to read the chat out loud,
so just in case someone is driving or someone is not able
to read.
That's a wonderful way for facilitators to get out of this
(22:57):
dilemma and then say, okay,
I'm going to read out some of the things that came in the
chat to just see what people had said.
In case someone is driving or someone cannot read it,
so I'm going to read some of this.
That's wonderful.
So let me think about how this works practically.
So you're using a screen reader yourself to participate in
an online workshop, right?
Or facilitate one.
(23:17):
And so you're listening to what's going on in the chat
through your screen reader.
And so the fact that the facilitator is talking and the
screen reader is talking to you,
that is probably a little bit distressing sometimes.
There's a lot going on.
So yeah, we have to help you out there.
I actually sometimes go out of sessions with a very bad
(23:38):
headache because of this.
Three voices are talking in my head, the facilitator,
the screen reader, and my phone screen reader.
It's a very important thing because sometimes I have to use
phone to take notes, to sometimes open Mentimeter,
to sometimes open the slides.
If we're doing a Slido, three,
four different things to talk in just a few minutes of the
(24:03):
session.
And then you have to handle this on your own.
Yeah.
Thanks for bringing up that extra device because you're
right.
People will say here, pull out your phones.
We're going to do a Mentimeter.
And just to be conscious that that's a lot of devices that
are now talking to a person or even just to engage with if
you are a sighted person.
That's a lot, isn't it?
And we need space.
(24:23):
It's another argument for putting more space in silence,
maybe in learning spaces as well.
Yes.
Now you talk a lot, I think, about caring for people.
So put your facilitator hat on now as the facilitator and
you're crafting this caring learning environment for
people.
(24:43):
What does that mean to you?
You talk about hospitality and learning spaces as well.
So what does it mean to foster care and hospitality in
learning spaces?
Maybe things you haven't said yet.
I actually wrote an article for the Mind Brain Education
magazine, thanks to Heather Kretschmer,
who was also an English teacher who works in Germany.
(25:03):
She invited me to write this piece.
And I actually drew on the intentionally equitable
hospitality by Dr.
Bali and Dr.
Zamora.
I drew on Verna Rossi's book, Inclusive Learning Design.
And she says one of the things that she brings up is she
divides inclusion or inclusive into an acronym which is
(25:26):
intentionally equitable, co-creating, liberating,
user-friendly, socially responsible, integrative,
and value-based, and ecological.
And I think these nine values are the representative of
cares.
I just need to credit that again to Dr.
Verna Rossi, who works in the UK,
(25:46):
who is a learning designer.
She's the author of the Inclusive Learning Design book.
But for me, if I could reflect on these points,
is that all these points I tried at least integrating them
into my practice or receiving them as part of something or
(26:06):
as a part of a caring environment that I was in.
For example, I took a class of literature and cinema.
And I'm not that person who can watch films.
Even if they are packed up with audio descriptions.
And I took that class because, honestly,
I took it because I loved the professor.
I learned a lot from the professor.
(26:27):
I just took it because I loved the cinemas.
I loved the variety.
But mind all that, she just, the movie, the films were all not audio described digitally. But the way we handled it is that she acted as an audio describer.
We used to sit together in class besides each other.
And then she used to describe all the scenes while they
(26:48):
were screened.
And this is sort of how the intentionally equitable.
She was intentionally equitable.
She also, she let me co-create the class with her.
So in case there was something very hard and in the class,
she let me, okay,
let's co-create this together to be inclusive for the whole
(27:08):
class and for you as well.
And by the way,
the element of co-creation was went above and beyond even
with Dr. Bali because the work that I co-designed courses
with her and her team from the Center for Learning and
Teaching is just the way of co-creation that I co-create
with them as a student,
(27:29):
as a person with lived experience in disability and as a
person with values that are related to disability.
I think socially responsible also contributes to this,
that I'm socially responsible for these marginalized people
that I want to bring my experience for,
like in order to benefit them as much as possible.
(27:51):
And so this is how I think in summary,
as much as I could recall,
the inclusion means to me when it comes to being a person
who crafts. So I just think of those descriptions or
criteria in which I think inclusion would be done.
It's actually not the, it's not everything,
(28:14):
but at least that's how we can work with it.
I love that you speak so much about co-creating and it
makes me think about dismantling power structures.
And, you know,
because you can have a professor and have a student and
that could be very hierarchical and they don't work
together to craft the learning experience together,
(28:34):
but you're telling me stories of the opposite that you have
been drawing in and been drawn in to create with your
faculty.
And, you know,
now they're probably friends and colleagues and it's just
it is so equitable.
So what's the word equalizing or balancing out of
(28:54):
experience and expertise?
Yeah, it's actually equalizing.
It's actually drawing on the most needed at the moment.
So I actually feel like it's also the element of co
-creation even between students together.
So what I really wish to do is that I wouldn't stop at this
point.
I just wish to create something where I even pay the favour
(29:18):
back to the whole world.
And then why not establish something that I can co-create
with people from different parts of the world that could
benefit or help the society community that I can believe in
people, like how people believed in me.
It's like I've had people who championed me,
(29:41):
who believed in my dreams,
who didn't take my experiences for granted.
So the element of co-creating is not always momentum.
It's just for the future as well.
How can I take this element above and beyond and co-create
with people in order to keep the passion and the vibe
(30:03):
going?
I do see that as perhaps a strength of yours. You know, not knowing you very well, Yasser, we've just met. It's our second time meeting and talking with each other. But in looking at what you put out in the world, it does seem clear to me that you really care about sharing your expertise and well, these things that are you're helping to co-create, you're really intent on sharing them out widely so that other people can benefit from them.
(30:32):
Does that seem like it describes you?
Yeah, very much so. It's just sharing, it's just keeping the loop going. It wouldn't be only Dr. Bali or her team, it wouldn't be only my other friends who helped me, it wouldn't be only me who even contributes to the field or to the momentum of disability inclusion or the, you know, hopefully going to be something that is developing and imagined and reimagined and defined and redefined in ways that hold everybody accountable and hold everybody responsible to take the whole vibe more and keep it going.
(31:17):
It's just,
if I end up being in this world for a few years doing
things until I die and then the passion is not shared,
the element of co-creation is not shared,
so that's too bad and I don't really hope for this to
happen, I don't aspire for this to happen,
I just hope that there will be a lot more who can continue
(31:41):
on and on and on co-creating, believing in people,
caring for them, caring for their needs,
including them and welcoming them in their spaces.
Mm-hmm.
I think you talk a lot about communities and you're,
you've been talking a lot about it,
but not actually saying the word community,
but you've perhaps received the support of a community
(32:03):
around you,
but you're contributing to that community as well,
for sure.
Can you say something about just the importance of
communities and for all of us as we learn about inclusion
and try to do more effective work in this way?
For someone to recognize the value and significance of
community in their lives, I think, ask yourself,
(32:26):
who are the people with whom I always feel a strong bond
towards?
I hope I'm framing the question right,
but I'm actually thinking about it in the sense of,
who are those that I always tend to feel very close,
and without any reservations and boundaries,
(32:46):
I feel like everything melts down to being comfortable and
being very open and free,
liberating and rejuvenating, if
I can use this word. That's the element of community for
me,
is just with different people from different parts of the
(33:06):
world.
But then I feel like the presence makes me happy.
This is the community for me.
Unlike being, for example,
with people who are in the same community,
physical community, I mean, from the same country,
and the element of love for the community is not really
(33:27):
there, so that's not a community.
I wouldn't really say that's a community.
Mm, that's a nice way to say it.
And you talk about being comfortable,
makes me think to ask you, okay,
so if you and I were going to facilitate something
together, and we hadn't worked together yet,
how could I make you feel comfortable working with me?
And what would you do to make me comfortable working with
(33:48):
you?
Like,
what does that look like as we begin to develop our community
together?
Honestly,
I wouldn't talk about me as a person as yesterday because I
tend to adapt with people easily and I feel like I'm that
person who can open up easily,
that person who's really comfortable to share things even
(34:11):
with strangers whom I don't know,
I can just talk about everything, really everything.
I'm not that closed off,
but I would say if I'm facilitating something with a
disabled person, but I don't know them,
I will probably try to first examine closely from my
(34:32):
interactions with them how they deal with the world,
how they like to talk,
how they like to do conversations and then ask them.
Because I repeated the word ask a lot,
but it's really the key with everything.
It's actually the key even in physical help that when we
meet a disabled person in the streets struggling,
(34:54):
we always advise against going and grabbing them
surprisingly.
We always tell them ask, don't grab.
This is something that done by Amy Kavanagh.
It used to be a big campaign on Twitter, X, well,
Twitter formerly, X now.
And then she used to advocate for the rights of women even
through this campaign because she used to say, like, okay,
(35:17):
I'm not really,
I shouldn't be prone to harassment as a visually impaired
woman, as a disabled woman.
By being grabbed out of the motivation to help me.
Go ahead and ask me first, what do I need?
And then the same concept could apply to facilitation,
the same concept could apply to basically everything.
(35:39):
Don't assume, but just ask.
What mistakes do you think I might make with maybe good
intentions in working with you like making an assumption
about something that are there common things that we should
be on the lookout for and just stop doing.
I wouldn't really be personal with this question as well. I would say some people tend to be more offended by some language. So reviewing the language element is really important. Some people like those in the US, for example, like 'people with disabilities' and 'disabled people'.
(36:14):
'Disabled people' is more favoured in the UK because they say that disability is ahead of us because of the society. The disability is created by the society, which is the social model of disability.
Unlike the US, they say, okay, we value our disability, so our 'people with disabilities'.
And then this is the language element.
(36:36):
So sometimes the language element makes a huge sort of gap when we interact with people who are "different"/"disabled".
But in terms of facilitation,
I think not involving disabled people in the design would
be a huge mistake believing that they cannot really
contribute or it would be too much for them,
(36:58):
that they cannot really handle work or tasks or whatever.
I think also that's a huge mistake is that, okay,
when we design,
we often have to anticipate who is involved in the design
and when and then we know that we have a personal
disability,
so then we have to go ahead and involve them and giving
them the space.
Okay,
we don't have to also go back and assume that they can't
(37:19):
facilitate basically just their presence and then they are
present and then their presence will make it.
No, they can do whatever they want.
You just have to make sure that everything for them will
work smoothly,
that they have the accessible tools to facilitate,
that the workshop content is accessible for them because
sometimes when we exclude them from the design slash
(37:40):
facilitation process, it will turn out to be inaccessible,
it will turn out to be fully instead of beneficial,
turn out to be ineffective and you can put it that way.
Yes, exactly.
You've shared so many great suggestions.
I want to talk about activities.
So when we're designing workshops or courses,
(38:02):
what do you want us to think about to make inclusive
activities?
It just depends on what we are facilitating,
but accessibility would be the heart of ideas when we
create activities.
It's that we have to create it accessible.
We have to make sure that it's accessible.
We have to make sure that we're doing something that would
not be really presenter-centered or facilitator-centered,
(38:24):
but rather this is not really disability-related,
but this is something that I would really be concerned
with.
It's that if I'm creating something,
I would make sure that it's not facilitator-centered,
but rather participant-centered,
where the words of the participants are very important,
and they are actually one of the core tenets of the
session.
(38:45):
If I'm just speaking as a facilitator without hearing
people,
it wouldn't be too effective and it wouldn't be too welcomed.
It feels so bad,
it feels so disconnecting and disconcerting for the
attendees.
I talk a lot about that too,
and I sometimes call it or ask the question,
(39:05):
where does the content come from, you know,
does it have to come from,
we wouldn't even really say facilitator in that experience,
would we,
we'd probably just say lecturer or presenter or something,
but how do we design so that all people are included and we
really hear more from the people in the room rather than
the person standing up in front of it or leading it.
Maybe the word included wouldn't really be restrictive for
(39:29):
disability people only just including pretty much
everybody.
And we'd also liberate ourselves to be more welcoming for
other things such as, for example,
we would say people are welcome to eat when they are in the
session.
People are welcome to go off camera in the session.
(39:50):
People are welcome to bring their own kids in the session.
So it wouldn't be like, okay,
it's so bad and it's not working well and kids are good.
So why not excluding kids from the session?
People are welcome to bring elders.
So some people are taking care of their elderly parents or
are taking care of their elderly grandparents or such.
(40:11):
Why not excluding those?
So why not including them instead?
Why not designing our content to adapt to those who are
different but they still want it to be there because they
want to learn about they have some things to respond to in
life.
Why do we always assume that everybody should be in front
of the camera in their office opening their camera wearing
(40:33):
very formal clothes suits and stuff?
No.
If you want to attend my sessions in bed,
you're welcome to attend in bed and you're welcome to go
off camera.
You're welcome to leave without asking for an excuse.
You're welcome to say,
if the session is like two hours or more,
you're welcome to say, okay,
I'm going to leave by the hour if I'm creating breakout
(40:54):
rooms.
So I as a facilitator feel it's important to create a quiet
room for people.
That's something I've learned from Equity Unbound and from
a lot of facilitators and Equity uUnbound would do this.
Okay, they create the including Dr. Bali
as well.
They actually create a quiet room for people who are not in
(41:17):
the mood to talk.
That's basically it, you know,
someone who's really not locked in the mood to talk to
participants or partake in a specific activity or something
like this.
Someone who's deaf and they cannot really say it on the
note,
you know. Someone who is driving a car and they still care
to attend,
(41:37):
someone who's in a public space and they cannot really open
their, you know, mic and talk.
Someone who's not a good speaker of the language in which
the session is held,
but they still wanted to listen because they believe that
this will improve their language skills,
which is important, by the way,
is the listening improve listening skills.
(41:58):
That's something we always know.
But if you put them on this part and let them talk, no,
I wouldn't think that's a good idea.
I'm so glad you mentioned all those different things and
there are so many more of them,
but it helps all of us remember,
all the people listening to this episode,
remember that this thing that we want,
that is inclusive learning spaces,
(42:20):
it's not just about ability or disability, is it?
It's about circumstance.
It's about context.
It's about, yeah, feeling how you feel that day,
the technology you have.
There's so many elements within,
it's just not a disability thing, is it?
It's not a disability thing, but because, you know,
(42:41):
the word inclusion is an umbrella term.
When we say now inclusion,
it doesn't really signal only disability.
It signals a lot of things.
It signals people who are minorities, people who are Black.
Like mostly minorities in Europe/the Global West,
Christian minorities in the Global East.
And then, okay, what do we need from the world then?
(43:04):
Is that we would recognize where the inequality is situated
and then try to, as much as possible,
eliminate it by making inclusive environments.
I was really keen on talking about this idea of inclusion
when you asked the previous question,
because I just wanted to emphasize that it's not only about
(43:26):
disability.
It's just everything else that works alongside this
narrative.
But I just mentioned these examples to make sure that,
you know,
try to make the space for people to attend without you
imposing on them different restrictions.
That's right,
that they can show up as who they are with their whole
(43:49):
selves, whatever that is.
Yasser With their whole selves, with their guests, with their kids, with their parents. For example, a mother who's watching her child studying. Why do we have to deprive her from attending because she's watching her child?
It just doesn't make any sense. That's an example. And many more are there that we, if we can speak about this, I think you and I can just record I think many episodes about this ideas of wrong practices and facilitations and all that.
(44:21):
Beth Yeah. And we're sort of judging things based on some sort of paradigm that's been put in our head from long ago or from our culture, wherever we're coming from. There's certain, you know, do's and don'ts that we think we have to adhere to.
And it's wrong, isn't it? A lot of them from those days of yore. [chuckles]
Yes, it's wrong.
(44:41):
But actually,
I would like to always acknowledge the challenges that the
facilitators themselves meet because there are a lot of
challenges or encounters.
There are a lot of challenges that are really hard to go
along.
And then one of them, for example,
is that if someone is disrupting the flow of the community,
(45:02):
how the facilitator would act,
are they going to disconnect them from the community,
just protect the whole people,
or are they going to shun them?
And I think it stems from being intentionally equitable as
the idea of, in order to make it a safe space, as I said,
and as Dr. Bali and Dr. Zamora put it,
(45:23):
in order to make it a safe space for all participants,
I think it's important to,
part of the safety that you create is to eliminate all the
harms that come across your space.
That's also a challenge,
is that you need to protect your space.
And if you face the protected, the space will be dangerous,
(45:45):
and then people will not, by the time,
feel it's safe anymore for them to share their insights.
Absolutely.
So it's really, you mentioned being welcoming before,
but I think you've also mentioned in other spaces,
it's about belonging and you just said safety.
That's our ultimate goal, isn't it?
That all learners feel that.
(46:06):
And we try to create that when we design and facilitate and
sometimes we'll fail, but we keep learning how to do it,
don't we?
Yes, it's an ultimate goal to be learning,
and it's an ultimate goal to belong.
Speaking of belonging, actually,
I would just recall the book, Belong, How to Find People,
by Radha Agrawal.
(46:27):
It's called Belong by Radha Agrawal.
Then this book talks about energy,
that we bring a lot of energies to the spaces in which we
inhabit and which we attend.
I think that if we create the wholesome space or the space
(46:48):
that is inclusive,
I think it helps people bring their own energy in as much
way as possible and as widely as possible,
and in the most way comfortable as possible, I think,
to put it that way,
is that we help people bring their own energies and moods
(47:09):
into the conversation.
That feels like a lovely place to start,
what you just said there,
and I want to thank you for having this conversation with
me today and sharing a lot of your own experience and the
learning that you've done so far in this field,
but also what you've brought to it as well.
Thank you so much, Yasser, for chatting with me today.
(47:32):
I just want to thank you for giving me the space to talk
and to just try to help put some of these points in this
podcast and to make it clear that we're all learning and
we're all trying to be inclusive,
but there has to be the efforts and the intention to be.
(47:53):
And I just want to thank you so much for giving me the
opportunity that you believed in my sort of little
experience and to draw on them in this podcast that feels
so much power and I'm feeling loved and I'm so grateful for
the opportunity and I would just like to thank you again
for having me today, thank you.
(48:16):
Well, thank you.
Your experience doesn't feel little to me.
So I just want to say, say that, right?
It feels very big and very important.
So it's been wonderful to learn from you today.
Thank you so much and I really wish you all the best and
what I truly wish is that this this episode would help
someone you know change their attitude, behaviour, values,
(48:39):
beliefs.
If it even makes someone smile I would be really happy
about that.
I would be really feeling that I did my job that I changed
someone's even mood.
I love that.
It made me smile, absolutely,
and you've helped really ground me and propel me forward
too in my thinking around this topic.
(49:01):
It's been great. [Thank you.] [Outro] As I look back on my
conversation with Yasser and think about all of the things
that he taught me during our conversation,
I'm really struck by all of the resources that he mentioned
throughout the conversation.
I just want to remind you that in the show notes,
I always put the resources that are mentioned in the
(49:24):
episode in the show notes.
You can see those hopefully through the app that you're
using to listen to the podcast or going to facilitatingon
purpose.com where I have show notes for every episode and
the transcripts as well.
So go and check out all those resources and those great
books that Yasser mentioned in this episode.
A couple of things I want to reflect back to you that were
(49:46):
things that Yasser said.
One of the things was the phrase he used about how his
disability has been imposed by the society.
I don't think we often think about a disability being
imposed by society such as how Yasser phrased it.
I'm so appreciative of the way he said that and just
(50:07):
highlighting that for me.
He said,
I want to convey that I'm not different as a person,
but maybe I'm different with my disability,
but my disability has been imposed by the society.
Because it was imposed by the society,
let's work together to eradicate it and to try to make it
inclusive and to try to start on this journey to make me
(50:29):
welcomed and make me feel that there is no such inequality
in your space.
It's such a great thing that Yasser said.
I mean everything he said was great,
but I think it's just an overarching,
wonderful statement to say this is something that society
has given us all to figure out what to do about so people
(50:51):
can come to learning experiences no matter what's going on
for them.
A disability in a physical way or something else that is
present for them in their life.
And how do we just keep trying to make every learning
experience inclusive for everyone?
On a related note, of course,
Yasser just kept reminding me, you heard him do it,
(51:13):
that every single person is an individual.
And so even though we might know someone who is blind,
we might know someone who is deaf or hard of hearing or
have something else that they're going through life with.
Just because we've met some person with whatever that
circumstance is doesn't mean that the strategies that will
(51:34):
work for the next person with perhaps the same situation,
it doesn't mean they're going to work, does it?
So every time we need to check in with the particular
person or group that we're working with and just say,
please tell me, you know, tell me what you need,
you particular person or you as a group and how can we keep
(51:54):
doing this thing we call learning or providing learning or
creating learning spaces just that much better all the
time.
It's very iterative, isn't it,
as we continue to learn and grow in our facilitation
practices and in our learning design practices around being
able to prepare for and then facilitate experiences.
So things again,
Yasser for reminding me and all of us around the
(52:18):
individuality that exists with disability and beyond.
On the next episode of the podcast,
I'm joined by Fernando Murray and Carolina Almeida.
Fernando and Carolina and I have a great conversation about
a topic that will be wonderful to listen to right after
this one.
It's on safe learning spaces.
(52:39):
I know both Fernando and Carolina through the Li
berating Structures community here in British Columbia.
They are both seasoned facilitators and I can't wait to
share this conversation with you.
Catch us next time on the show.
We will see you then. [Podcast outro] Thank you for
listening to Facilitating on Purpose.
If you were inspired by something in this episode,
(52:59):
please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them
expand their facilitation practice too.
To find the show notes,
give me feedback or submit ideas for future episodes,
visit facilitatingonpurpose.com.
Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions
for producing this episode.
Happy facilitating.
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