May 21, 2024 • 52 mins
This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching.
This week's guest is John Griffin.
This was one of those shows that veered in an unexpected direction -- for the better!
As we settled into our seats some 1,000 miles apart for the interview, I dropped the first topic on John and we were off with no holds barred.
A quote "Disability isn't about pity, it's about paychecks" from one of his podcasts got us going on what could have been two guys literally on a road trip or sitting in a pub.
This was a two-pint discussion that would have called for at least a third as we continued our discussion after the recording ended.
After listening to the show, take a gander at the episodes of John's Accessibility Interview Series HERE.
During our discussion, we looked at one of John's shows that features the future of wheelchairs, the Revolve Air Wheelchair. You really should take a look HERE.
Digging into John's background, I came across a book that he wrote titled This'll Be The Day That I Die which is a Sci-Fi straight from the early 1960s black & white television show, The Twilight Zone, or the 1950s radio classic X Minus One. Interested? Pick it up on Amazon HERE.
Perhaps one day John and I will have another discussion -- this time in a pub!
Note: Oftentimes, links are not available on platforms such as Apple, iHeart, etc.. They are available within this episode on our website at https://lifesaroadtrip.podbean.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio for this road trip is John Griffin.
John is the founding publisher at accessibility.com which focuses on providing information and
resources that inform businesses how to empower disabilities towards becoming more accessible.
It's through my preparation for a recent guest on life's road trip that I first encountered
him.
(01:17):
As I dug into John's background, I found that researching him was like piecing together
a puzzle, a corner piece, a few borders, multiple inner pieces, and then it dawned on me to
go back through my notes and use the list of values I found on accessibility.com's website.
And those are equality.
All individuals without bias and discrimination deserve their full human rights.
(01:39):
Integrity.
Ethical principles should guide, not hinder, internal action and external claims.
Progress, information, action and commitment to a worthwhile cause, creating positive change
and growth.
Progress is a collective effort building on success and learning from missteps.
(02:00):
That caught me.
Hi John, how are you doing this morning?
I'm doing fine Scott.
Thanks for the nice introduction.
You bet.
I was intrigued by that.
Sometimes when I research a person, it comes down to simplicity and I don't have to dig
as deep as I thought I had to.
Now I recently came across an interview on you that gave an in it.
(02:22):
You stated that your background, you had a fruitful and fun life in publishing.
Touch on that.
How fruitful and fun was your publishing experience?
Well, it began sort of almost by accident.
(02:44):
I originally started my business career prior to publishing with IBM and did several different
things.
One of them was a challenge to me to try my hand at retailing and that didn't turn out
(03:14):
to be so fruitful.
At the time I was married and we had three or four children, I forget what year it was,
but somebody introduced me to fair child publishing where there was a need and I met a very exceptional
(03:35):
man who became my mentor and gift giver in so many different ways.
It was time for me to grow up, stop being adventurous.
He guided me into a love for technology, audience targeting, service integrity.
(04:03):
A lot of the things that I kind of had under my belt but didn't understand how to use them.
He passed away recently in the 90s and he was great lost to me.
His name was Zachary Dicker and he was a man I will always thank.
(04:26):
That's interesting how certain people at times in your life when you don't expect it come
across and put a finger on you to make something happen.
That continued.
I worked at Fairchild for several years and I got my basic education there.
(04:48):
One of the principles about communication, one of them was how to present information
and I came to realize that whether it was print or online that all of us kind of gather
(05:11):
our information in complete stories and to complete the story there needs to be what
we defined as five different elements.
News, analysis, perspective, opinion and prediction.
(05:33):
The story is not complete until all of those five components somehow work into what you're
delivering.
We become kind of unaware that the New York Times and Forbes and the Wall Street Journal
actually do those things.
(05:56):
They're there to be found, they're there as part of the service and it makes the story
compelling otherwise it's a baseball score four to three.
Four to three what?
Well, okay.
The news is four to three.
Who played?
You begin to pull it apart a little bit and it becomes very obvious that there's a methodology
(06:23):
to read complete stories for the way it should be.
Now also in researching you, I came across a book title, This Will Be The Day That I
Die and the summary reads on Christmas Day, December 25, 2012, four scientists working
at the Cold Springs Harbor Labs on Long Island and now it's a discovery that would change
(06:44):
the course of humanity and pit science against the theological beliefs that have existed
since time began.
The team of genetic scientists have located and defined a human gene that can accurately
identify the length of a human life from its first day to the last day it will come about.
Now I read that and sat back in my chair and immediately the Twilight Zone, the black
(07:11):
and white TV show from the early 60s came across and also because I like listening to
a radio class on SiriusXM, X minus one was a radio show back in the 1950s came to mind.
So what spurred you on?
I just love the context of that.
Well, here's the truth.
(07:35):
My mother always used to say that she believed that the day you're born somewhere in the
universe are higher power, whatever you perceive that to be, writes your name in a book and
puts a date on it and that's the day you're going to go back.
(07:57):
So I never really made much sense out of that.
But I lived near the Cold Spring Harbor Labs and I stopped at a light one time and I knew
that they're a world-renowned group of scientists working towards advanced scientific solutions
(08:20):
that will affect Alzheimer's and so on and so forth.
But they do a great deal of work in studying genetics.
And in that at the time that I got this thought for a book there was a lot of stem cell research
going on and they were creating calves and sheep and so forth, stem cell research and
(08:47):
growing them in labs.
And I wondered about how much more is there to genealogy that is possible?
And that began to open my mind up.
If you can create life, if life exists within our genetics, which it does, does death also?
(09:11):
And is that predictable by reading the tea leaves of the genetic structures?
Well, we don't know yet, but maybe we will someday.
So the idea came up in my head and I was actually flying back from London and how sometimes
(09:36):
you have a song in your head and you can't get rid of it.
So I had, this will be the day that I die.
And all of a sudden it just occurred to me, okay, that could be a title for the book that
maybe I could write and what would it be all about?
So while it's spoken about as a discovery of the genetics that can predict that by accident,
(10:11):
by the fictional scientists that I created, the fact is that it just may be out there
at some point in time and I've discussed this with various different medical persons and
they say it's certainly within the realm of possibility that that might be discovered
that within our genetic pools, there are certain markings that could someday be what cancels
(10:38):
us.
Now would that be, you know, you can take that anywhere.
You know, the obvious ones are easy, you know, disease, cardiac things, cellular diseases,
what have you, but the fact is that it's possible.
So apply that to sudden understanding for different human beings.
(11:07):
So the book really revolves around five persons who volunteer to have their genetic structures
studied and they have to do so anonymously.
They've paid us a fee and the five persons have absolutely nothing in common with each
(11:31):
other.
One is a centimillionaire with a little bit of a suspicious background in his life, how
it became so wealthy.
And he's a very trustworthy citizen of the world.
There's a priest who was wounded heavily in combat as he was serving with the Marines
(11:59):
in one of the Gulf Wars and it's left him very withdrawn and bitter.
The other, the third person is kind of an ordinary typical housewife with two kids and
a husband and the fourth and fifth people, you know, remain part of just typical people.
(12:26):
And then suddenly in the analysis that gets reported back, they are identified as all
with a date and it's all Christmas day, exactly one year from today, from a Christmas day
day.
So the scientists get together on an emergency call and say, we've got to study this anomaly,
(12:51):
which means we have to reveal to these people that they're marked for one year from now.
What's the common link?
What's the reason why they're all linked together at the same time?
Are they going to be in a train station on the same day, on Christmas day and maybe an
explosion or a terrorist attack?
(13:13):
Is there anything we can do to prevent them from this fate?
And so it's about the revealing to these people that we have irrefutable information
that you're going to die one year from today and we'd like to help you avoid that.
So what do people do when they get this sentence?
(13:38):
And the scientists, they're kind of a subplot because they're, you know, the human beings
too.
They want to attend to this issue.
And so it becomes a, you know, a storybook of each person and how they react and what
they do and what would you do?
(14:01):
You know, you think about it yourself.
You know, if somebody said you got 365 days to go, what would you do?
Where would you go?
Who would you talk to?
What would you share?
Certainly something for Twilight Zone and X minus one.
Just so listeners know that there definitely will be a link to John's book on the Life's
(14:22):
of Road Chip website.
Got to be able to get into that.
Now I want to do a little different show, a much different show than I usually do.
And what I'm going to do is I've gone through a bunch of your episodes for which you're
the host of Accessibility Matters interview series.
And I want us to be here, like we're sitting across the table and just BS and all throughout
(14:46):
some of these topics that came up or say we're at a pub.
I mean, this might be a two-pinture for us, you know, John.
So I want to start by first looking at episode one, which is with Meg O'Connell.
And Meg was the person that I was studying to come on to my show and came across your
(15:07):
interview with her.
So it's serendipity how we cross paths through an interview.
And I was very intrigued by your interview with Meg.
And in it, I'll throw this out, you state disability isn't about pity, it's about paychecks.
Whoa, that just caught me.
And it's so true as I'm getting into doing the show and learning more about the disability
(15:33):
community.
So let's talk about that.
I mean, a lot of the listeners will probably know exactly what you're talking about.
But let's throw it out from your perspective.
What does that mean?
Well, not about pity.
Disability is about paychecks.
Well, you know, people have, for the most part, people have a very broad band of empathy
(16:00):
that resides within all of us.
You know, we're all fundamentally good and we're all fundamentally empathetic towards
other people's trials, tribulations, whatever we perceive them to be.
And one thing that I learned, actually I learned this came to me from Meg O'Connell.
(16:24):
She said, most people think about considered disabilities, disabled people, as the worst
case they've ever observed.
Somebody really in very strenuous format of disability, whatever that might be.
(16:47):
They're in a wheelchair that's formed and they're not audible.
So, you know, and that's sometimes the only introduction that human beings have to other
human beings.
And it leaves them somewhat with an opinion form that, well, you have to pity those people.
(17:13):
Well, most disabled people are extremely adaptable to their environments where they can be, do
have the cognitive and physical resources to be able to adapt to what has been dealt
to them, whatever their disability is.
And they want more than anything to become normal, quote unquote, like you and I.
(17:43):
So their goal, you know, our goal is to go through life and do fun things and do the
kinds of things that you and I are doing today.
But for disabled persons, their prize can sometimes become, we want to be like you.
(18:06):
We want to have a job.
We want to get it.
You know, we want to be able to get on the bus and pay the fare ourselves.
So when we formed accessibility.com, it wasn't about what was out there.
It was about what was missing.
(18:28):
And what's missing is, you know, we're coming up on the anniversary of the American Disabilities
Act in short time in July.
It's been there for a long time, but it hasn't been enforced for a long time.
(18:51):
And so you have a population on the globe of one and every four persons.
That's a billion three.
If they were taken as a nation, it'd be the third largest country on the planet.
Interesting, yeah.
(19:14):
So how is it that 97% of the known websites of billion six are not accessible, fully accessible
to one of the largest demographic groups in the world?
Why?
Because people don't care?
No, because they don't understand.
(19:36):
They don't, in our rush-lived lives, business has joined itself to the internet and every
business is a business now, regardless of what it is.
I mean, if you're a shoemaker in a local town, you probably have a website.
(20:00):
So it's pervasive across all forms of economic endeavor.
And it's, you know, the need to educate business is the only way that it's the only route forward
(20:29):
for the disabled.
And it's really going to turn around on the understanding of how to work with training
and certification.
You've learned how to get on the internet.
Now you have to learn how to reach all persons with the internet.
Not just guys like you and I.
You've got to reach all persons.
(20:51):
Well, that brings to mind just yesterday.
So I'll go back a little bit.
I used to teach social studies and history.
And then I left to coach college soccer.
And that's when I became ill with group-based strep and I ended up losing both hands and
parts of both feet.
Came back and I still coached and everything.
But I left when I started adopting up my five kids.
(21:15):
And I've come full circle and back to coaching and doing real well.
But there's a teaching position that opened up at the high school in our town where I
substitute teach all the time.
And I went into apply and I can't because in order to renew my license, the Wisconsin
Department of Public Education has a process of doing fingerprints in order to do a background
(21:38):
check.
Well, they can't do my fingerprints.
So they've been sitting on their hands, so to speak, for over a week trying to figure
out how the heck to do this when all you have to do is let me come down and look at me
and then research me.
But I can't apply for this position that came up.
So I wrote to the building principal and I know him quite well and I know he respects
(22:00):
me.
I'm still waiting for a reply from him.
Let's find a simple get around.
And no response.
I trust the guy.
I believe he's probably trying to find a get around for me.
But I wrote to him and saying, for the first time in a long time, I really feel disabled
because society is not allowing me to do something that should be easy.
(22:24):
Let me apply for a freaking job.
Get me to come in for an interview as well.
But it's falling down and it's not helping me in my situation.
So this is the first time I've really come across feeling disabled because I can't do
something.
So anyway, it's a reality of our systemic.
(22:48):
I want to blame capitalism, but it's not capitalism because it's a global issue.
Even where in occupied nations under totalitarian governments and so forth, it's almost feels
at times like, hey, we're up, we've pulled up the ladder, everything's fine now.
(23:14):
Well it's not.
And in business today, you can't find a person that runs a business, especially corporate
business with shareholders and responsibilities that they have to report on their economic
status with.
(23:36):
You can't find a business where they would consider an internet site, a website for themselves
without securing their data.
So there has to be security measures and storage measures and certain, there are certain component
pieces that have to be contained in the software in order to secure the business.
(24:00):
Well along the lines now, you have tremendous, everybody's talking about DEI, diversity,
equity and inclusion.
Here's a tip guys.
Yeah.
Diversity, equity, inclusion, all stops in its tracks if it's not accessible.
(24:21):
Good point.
What's your intent is there, okay.
But the practice also has to include accessibility.
If, why do we have racial division hundreds of years after the Civil War because of accessibility?
(24:42):
Okay.
You won, we freed the slaves.
Now that's it.
We have no other obligation.
We only in the last couple of years passed a law outlawing lynching.
A hundred years to pass a law outlawing lynching.
Just to close the mind.
One of the more sophisticated nations on the planet, we have gone to wars across the world
(25:06):
and won them and rebuilt those economies and so on and so forth.
It took us a hundred years to pass a law to outlaw lynching.
So don't tell me that inclusion is on the front lobes of everybody's minds.
It's not.
Yeah.
It hasn't been, and it won't be until it becomes something that is teachable, practiced.
(25:35):
And that's where we see ourselves.
I, in my publishing career at one point was fortunate enough to be the publisher of Bite
magazine, which was all aimed at developers, those developers who at that time were leading
our world into the information age.
(26:03):
And in there, what I observed and learned, and I'm no technocrat, not at all.
But I did learn that software and technology is a trinity of three activities.
It starts from the same thing a movie starts from.
(26:26):
It starts from a storyboard.
It starts from what do we want to accomplish?
What do we need the software to do?
Okay, so you begin to design it and you lay it out and you build in the elements that
you want that to perform.
From there, you have to develop that.
And then from the development, you go to deployment and hopefully you have something that's a
(26:48):
product.
Those three components, that trinity of activity, puts together solutions that become software.
Now that's a very simple and short term situation, you know, description of it, but that's kind
of how the function works.
(27:09):
Why can't it be made accessible from the start?
Make the project accessible.
If it's designed to be inclusive, make sure that it's accessible to every person that
would need it.
So it sounds like that goes back as simple as education.
Yes, yes.
(27:32):
And in the world of able and disabled, education, not only, I learned this from Judy Eumann,
God rest our soul, the world of education has to open up.
It's not just the university level.
It's not just, you know, along the way.
(27:54):
One year old children who live in a home with disabled grandparents need to understand
what disability is.
They need training.
They need to understand.
They need to be.
So start at the beginning.
You know, I mean, as madness, as mad as it may sound, start at the first grade level,
(28:20):
start at the beginning, because these kids are, they're exposed to disabled persons.
Mommy, why is that man have a dog and a stick in front of him?
So it's not a simple.
It's not a simple.
It's a social issue.
(28:41):
It's an economic issue.
It's a governmental issue.
It's something that I believe we believe that will be resolved in our time, because when
I mentioned before, what that uncovered demographic is, they also represent $8 trillion of the
(29:04):
world economy.
Yes.
So it makes no sense for it to not somehow get canceled out and become a reality.
I'm going to make a promise here, and I'll do it right on the show.
If I get an interview for this position, I'm going to make it known to them that they
need to start hiring a disabled person such as myself and all these kids know me, and
(29:28):
they've learned about disability through me.
And I spoke with my wife this morning.
You know what?
Because I substitute all across this large high school.
There's not a single disabled, you know, openly disabled person teaching, instructing,
or as in the office or anything.
So again, I'm going to promise that if I get an interview, I'm going to steer the conversation
(29:50):
to bringing this up, that it has to happen, and Doug on it, start with me.
So we'll see how this goes.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
I mean, it is what it is.
They're not intentionally saying, okay, Scott, we can't look into this.
(30:14):
They have no reason to do that.
They have every reason to accommodate you.
And that's one of the things that I'd like to talk about.
Yeah, let's do it.
Everybody doesn't need full accessibility that meets all of the technical requirements
(30:37):
of the software and the regulations and so on and so forth.
But everybody could use reasonable accessibility.
Yes.
I wear hearing aids and I use glasses.
Okay.
I don't need everything that is, I'm not deaf.
(30:59):
I can hear, but I have to have my hearing aids on.
I can see, I have to have my glasses.
Those are reasonable accommodations for me.
Offices, businesses, buildings, shopping centers.
There's this wonderful product that's been introduced in Europe by this magnificent man,
(31:20):
Gavin Neat, which is called Welcome Me, where businesses can use a software device that
they would put on their website and disabled persons who want to shop, for example, at
a Nordstrom's in their local town would go into that site and talk about their disability
(31:44):
and what their needs are to come in and be a customer.
Yes.
And so the store then receives a, let's say, a Ryu Scott, you fill that out and now you're
going to go birthday shopping for your wife.
You let them know and you are met at the door by somebody who has been trained properly
(32:08):
to assist you through your experience until you find what you need and regardless of what
your handicap might be or your disability, I should say, you're obviously not handicapped
if you're there.
So it's a matter of education, it's a matter of training and our greatest ambition is to
(32:34):
try and use accessibility.com to bring the physical and the digital worlds together through
understanding what the needs are that need to be met and how they can find their way
through that maze of resources and the correct information that would make them conversant
(32:58):
and how to do that.
So I have a question for you, John, regarding this.
If we're talking about starting with education and things, boy, let me back it up a little
bit, does this education or providing direction have to start with our laws?
Because it seems I've had a few different guests on that work their business is about
(33:23):
working with other businesses about how to comply with laws and they're scared of breaking
laws, which is the only freaking reason why they start and changing things.
Where does it start?
What happened first?
The chicken or the egg?
It's the same thing.
So what is it?
Well, here in America, the ADA is there and it forbids discrimination against disabled.
(33:56):
So if you don't have a wide enough toilet booth in your restaurant for somebody, you
could be subject to a lawsuit because somebody claims comes into your restaurant, they're
might be in a wheelchair or they don't have the ability to whatever.
(34:19):
Unfortunately, the number of cases we track that every single year and the number of cases
increase every single year.
And what also goes up tremendously is the amount of demand letters that businesses receive
because they've been found to be in violation and there are literally hundreds of thousands
(34:45):
of those demand letters that never get to court.
But they are part of the noise around businesses and disabilities.
And they're aimed at governments, they're aimed at small businesses, big businesses,
commercial centers.
And in many cases, it's a very, very successful business because you own a restaurant along
(35:16):
Route 95 and you may not be fully accessible to persons traveling across there.
You also have a lawyer.
And you get a demand letter and your lawyer is called and they say, yeah, you have to
take this seriously.
But if you do that, then you're going to have to put an addition onto the restaurant.
(35:39):
You're going to have to do this.
You're going to have to do that.
My suggestion is that we try and sell.
And sadly, there's way, way too much of that that goes on.
And we look at the statistics on that and we find out that the number of the numbers
(36:02):
of the cases that never get to court seem to be centered by what is unfortunately known
as ambulance chasers.
People that they've stuck their nose into part of the economy that's there to be had
(36:24):
to be taken advantage of.
It's legal for people to complain.
It's legal for people to respond with an offer to stop the complaint.
There's no law against it.
So and in between, there's the negotiator and the negotiator can sometimes be very clever
people who see an opportunity and that's where that sits.
(36:49):
So it's not a it's a solvable problem, but it's a it's a systemic issue that, you know,
I mentioned before DEI.
DEI needs the letter A attached to it for accessibility.
(37:13):
If the mentality of our society accepts the fact that the intention of DEI is worthy and
it's something that we need to honor and there's a lot of hope for that across our society,
across the world, then accessibility has to be a function that gets woven into the solution
(37:42):
as a permanent fix.
It's not something you cancel because you say, Oh, no, no, no, you mean we we we have not
to make this accessible?
No, we want to.
We want to discriminate against people.
No, they don't.
You know, I mean, Delta Airlines just this last 30 days introduced a refashioned seat
(38:06):
in their in their planes where a wheelchair can be turned around and locked in to a refashioned
seat so that that person doesn't have to surrender their mode of transportation to get on the
plane after they get on and then wait for somebody to come and pick them up when they're
written when another and they're a horror story is going around that.
(38:30):
So that Delta airline reasonable accommodation needs to become a law of the aviation industry.
Right.
Worldwide.
Right.
Well, you just touched on something I want to get into.
I believe it's pronounced Andrei Mosaleen.
Episode 14 is the founder and inventor of Revolve Air.
(38:53):
Right.
Folks, there's going to be a link to this and it's going to blow your minds on the Life's
A Road trip website and that was one of the I want to see this thing collapses down so
small.
It's just amazing.
But here's the problem and I and this is where money comes in John and it makes sense
that he's running a business.
These things are only available.
(39:15):
It seems for rent at some of the large airports and I believe very just in Europe.
I don't know if they've come up to the US, but they take up 60% less space.
It's amazing how his product collapses down.
There are other ones out there and I went on Amazon in some places that are collapsing,
(39:37):
but they don't come nearly as close and they're 1700 bucks.
Nothing.
What Andrea did was just totally change in industry.
But again, the money aspect, how is this going to come into play?
But he's trying to you can rent these at some airports.
(39:59):
He is a marvelous individual and he's his I book.
I kid him about that.
You're the guy that reinvented the wheel.
Exactly.
Which is exactly what he did.
He reinvented the wheel so that it becomes adaptable to providing a service to persons
(40:20):
that need to be wheeled.
As far as the money is concerned and as far as creativity and innovation in service to
products that support the disabled.
(40:41):
The one thing that I would, you know, that the disabled understand is nothing about us without
us.
That's saying that exists across all of us in this community.
If you wanted to build a product from the ground up that would resolve an issue, whether
(41:05):
it be cognitive issues or physical issues, whatever they happen to be, or a combination
of those things.
In the design, development and deployment include persons who can tell you as experts
what to do and where it will fail and where it goes over a tripwire that will make it
(41:28):
not work.
And that intelligent approach to it opens up employment.
There's so many examples of practical products that you and I use every day.
The remote TV was created by a solution for persons who could not function by changing
(41:58):
the channel on their TV.
That was service to a disability that became a standard product in everybody's household
and changed in industry.
There's others.
We could talk forever on that kind of thing.
But it's really a function.
You must respect the source of the problem before you can decide to educate yourself,
(42:22):
before you can decide to participate in the process.
And Andreas does.
He wasn't naive in terms of the reality.
What he was was determined that he was going to make a product that would provide a service
(42:44):
that somehow would break the code of economics and get further down the road.
Now, there's other products similar, not like to his, but there's other breakthroughs
that are still barred from popular use and wide distribution because business primarily
(43:13):
is not, hasn't opened the gate yet, they haven't opened the gate yet.
Now I'm going to jump to episode 13, but I think our server is going to bring over our
second pint because I think that's where we are in our discussion.
This is great man.
So episode 13 by Lori Samuels, she's accessibility director at NBCUniversal.
(43:36):
She stated in the interview she had with you, we can have people coming out to design and
build the next generation of technology who've never heard about accessibility.
This goes back to what we were talking about earlier about education.
She went on to say, so for a long term solve, we've got to get our education systems, again,
teaching about accessibility, teaching about inclusion, making sure that kids with disabilities
(44:02):
can get all the way through higher education successfully, not facing the barriers that
they face way too many barriers today, still in our education system.
So it goes back to, again, what we were talking about, but going back to the wheelchair and
that address, necessity is the mother of invention.
(44:24):
When I was teaching and sometimes it would come up in class, I would tweak that to say
necessity and money are the parents of invention.
So I think they do go hand in hand, you don't just always trip over a new idea on things,
or you can come up with out of necessity and happen, but it does a lot of times money
(44:47):
does help.
And I think going back with what Samuel said and Andreas and what he accomplished.
Laurie Samuels deserves to be knighted for her.
No, she's one of the more passionate and intelligent persons in the community.
(45:13):
And she also said something and she resonated with me and it has become one of the cornerstones
of accessibility.com.
It's not about compliance.
Accessibility is not about compliance.
It's about people.
And that's something that really resonated because in the discussion and the dissuasion
(45:47):
of trying to move business from the factors that I talked about earlier where you've got
the global touchstones of the global economy are over a billion websites that are not fully
accessible.
Now there are regulations and there are laws and there's all kinds of good consciousness
(46:13):
that should go on that says here's what you have to do to become fully accessible.
Here's what you can do to become reasonably accessible.
All those things are correct.
But this is the businessman, Mr. Profiteer.
You must focus on the fact that this is about human needs and people.
(46:36):
Would you close your doors anymore in society to persecuted Jews, to segregated blacks?
No, that's part of our history.
It's gone.
Yet you do it to persons with disabilities.
(46:57):
If you said that to a reasonable person, wow.
That's going to put a dent in their armor.
So the people like Judy Eumann, people like Caroline Casey, Laurie Samuels, Hugo Connell,
(47:26):
Mike, I mean I could go on and name people for an hour.
But these are the brethren of opportunity.
People who will open the door of accessibility, which doesn't take anything away from the
businesses, it only brings things in.
(47:48):
It only helps.
It brings full employment.
It brings spending, expanded opportunity.
It just doesn't take all of those things away.
It only helps you.
That's where it seems that the struggle tends to be ongoing there.
This has been great.
(48:10):
It didn't go where I thought it would go.
I'm grateful to that because I think we were able to just sit at a pub and just chat and
talk about some things.
I wish there were a lot of people sitting here with us.
We have come to the point in the show where that sound means we're coming up to the road
trip round up.
(48:31):
John, it's going to be five questions I'm going to talk to you and just come with whatever
may regarding you in road trips.
When you're road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Do I tend to do what?
Fast food or local diners?
Both.
Yeah.
It depends on where you're going to and how much time you have.
(48:55):
Yeah, pretty much and my wife's discretion or indiscretion is the case maybe.
Gotcha.
What's your dream car for road trip, John?
That could have been something you grew up with that your parents had or something you
have now or something you'd like to have in the future or maybe even rent if you were
just going on a special road trip.
(49:19):
I would like to visit countries in the world like Italy, Ireland, England, that I would
like to get in a car and just go really out of the cities and live with people.
So something comfortable, something that's easy to maneuver because when you're talking
(49:44):
about Europe, you're talking about you better have a car on the smaller side compared to
most of America.
Sure.
I'm not afraid to drive on European roads.
I've done it throughout my history.
Yeah.
What's Alaska set or CD that played while you were on a road trip?
(50:06):
It was probably something by Elton John.
Okay.
Have you seen him live at all?
Yes.
Oh, he does a really good show.
I saw him in Vegas.
Oh, yeah.
He's a great show.
He's the other takes her back to.
I think that when history looks back on this century, this time that Elton John and guys
(50:28):
like Billy Joel and Paul Simon will be the Mozart's and the Beethoven's of history in
our time.
That's a great way to look at it.
It is.
Okay.
Colker Pepsi.
Coke.
Okay.
We're getting close to 80% are Coke lovers on this show, man.
I wonder if anybody in Atlanta listens to this.
(50:50):
I hope no one in Pepsi headquarters us.
All right.
What's your favorite road trip memory?
Go wherever you want to go on this, John.
Favorite road trip memory?
Getting off of the beaten path and driving through the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland and
(51:17):
passing dunky carts and seeing the last century the way it really appeared.
And the scenery.
The scenery in Ireland is every turn is another photo ops and it's been forever.
But in my memory, that was one of the more significant things I've ever done.
(51:42):
It seems that your, a piece of your heart is in Europe and the Britain Peninsula.
Yeah.
I know it's true.
Well, we're going to wrap it up.
I want us to stay on after we hit stop, but I just want to say challenge likes everybody
and keep listening to life's road trip.
(52:04):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website at lifesarroadtrip.podbean.com.
For more information on this week's guest, this is your host Scott Martin reminding you
that life's a road trip.
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio for this road trip is John Griffin.
John is the founding publisher at accessibility.com which focuses on providing information and
resources that inform businesses how to empower disabilities towards becoming more accessible.
It's through my preparation for a recent guest on life's road trip that I first encountered
him.
(01:17):
As I dug into John's background, I found that researching him was like piecing together
a puzzle, a corner piece, a few borders, multiple inner pieces, and then it dawned on me to
go back through my notes and use the list of values I found on accessibility.com's website.
And those are equality.
All individuals without bias and discrimination deserve their full human rights.
(01:39):
Integrity.
Ethical principles should guide, not hinder, internal action and external claims.
Progress, information, action and commitment to a worthwhile cause, creating positive change
and growth.
Progress is a collective effort building on success and learning from missteps.
(02:00):
That caught me.
Hi John, how are you doing this morning?
I'm doing fine Scott.
Thanks for the nice introduction.
You bet.
I was intrigued by that.
Sometimes when I research a person, it comes down to simplicity and I don't have to dig
as deep as I thought I had to.
Now I recently came across an interview on you that gave an in it.
(02:22):
You stated that your background, you had a fruitful and fun life in publishing.
Touch on that.
How fruitful and fun was your publishing experience?
Well, it began sort of almost by accident.
(02:44):
I originally started my business career prior to publishing with IBM and did several different
things.
One of them was a challenge to me to try my hand at retailing and that didn't turn out
(03:14):
to be so fruitful.
At the time I was married and we had three or four children, I forget what year it was,
but somebody introduced me to fair child publishing where there was a need and I met a very exceptional
(03:35):
man who became my mentor and gift giver in so many different ways.
It was time for me to grow up, stop being adventurous.
He guided me into a love for technology, audience targeting, service integrity.
(04:03):
A lot of the things that I kind of had under my belt but didn't understand how to use them.
He passed away recently in the 90s and he was great lost to me.
His name was Zachary Dicker and he was a man I will always thank.
(04:26):
That's interesting how certain people at times in your life when you don't expect it come
across and put a finger on you to make something happen.
That continued.
I worked at Fairchild for several years and I got my basic education there.
(04:48):
One of the principles about communication, one of them was how to present information
and I came to realize that whether it was print or online that all of us kind of gather
(05:11):
our information in complete stories and to complete the story there needs to be what
we defined as five different elements.
News, analysis, perspective, opinion and prediction.
(05:33):
The story is not complete until all of those five components somehow work into what you're
delivering.
We become kind of unaware that the New York Times and Forbes and the Wall Street Journal
actually do those things.
(05:56):
They're there to be found, they're there as part of the service and it makes the story
compelling otherwise it's a baseball score four to three.
Four to three what?
Well, okay.
The news is four to three.
Who played?
You begin to pull it apart a little bit and it becomes very obvious that there's a methodology
(06:23):
to read complete stories for the way it should be.
Now also in researching you, I came across a book title, This Will Be The Day That I
Die and the summary reads on Christmas Day, December 25, 2012, four scientists working
at the Cold Springs Harbor Labs on Long Island and now it's a discovery that would change
(06:44):
the course of humanity and pit science against the theological beliefs that have existed
since time began.
The team of genetic scientists have located and defined a human gene that can accurately
identify the length of a human life from its first day to the last day it will come about.
Now I read that and sat back in my chair and immediately the Twilight Zone, the black
(07:11):
and white TV show from the early 60s came across and also because I like listening to
a radio class on SiriusXM, X minus one was a radio show back in the 1950s came to mind.
So what spurred you on?
I just love the context of that.
Well, here's the truth.
(07:35):
My mother always used to say that she believed that the day you're born somewhere in the
universe are higher power, whatever you perceive that to be, writes your name in a book and
puts a date on it and that's the day you're going to go back.
(07:57):
So I never really made much sense out of that.
But I lived near the Cold Spring Harbor Labs and I stopped at a light one time and I knew
that they're a world-renowned group of scientists working towards advanced scientific solutions
(08:20):
that will affect Alzheimer's and so on and so forth.
But they do a great deal of work in studying genetics.
And in that at the time that I got this thought for a book there was a lot of stem cell research
going on and they were creating calves and sheep and so forth, stem cell research and
(08:47):
growing them in labs.
And I wondered about how much more is there to genealogy that is possible?
And that began to open my mind up.
If you can create life, if life exists within our genetics, which it does, does death also?
(09:11):
And is that predictable by reading the tea leaves of the genetic structures?
Well, we don't know yet, but maybe we will someday.
So the idea came up in my head and I was actually flying back from London and how sometimes
(09:36):
you have a song in your head and you can't get rid of it.
So I had, this will be the day that I die.
And all of a sudden it just occurred to me, okay, that could be a title for the book that
maybe I could write and what would it be all about?
So while it's spoken about as a discovery of the genetics that can predict that by accident,
(10:11):
by the fictional scientists that I created, the fact is that it just may be out there
at some point in time and I've discussed this with various different medical persons and
they say it's certainly within the realm of possibility that that might be discovered
that within our genetic pools, there are certain markings that could someday be what cancels
(10:38):
us.
Now would that be, you know, you can take that anywhere.
You know, the obvious ones are easy, you know, disease, cardiac things, cellular diseases,
what have you, but the fact is that it's possible.
So apply that to sudden understanding for different human beings.
(11:07):
So the book really revolves around five persons who volunteer to have their genetic structures
studied and they have to do so anonymously.
They've paid us a fee and the five persons have absolutely nothing in common with each
(11:31):
other.
One is a centimillionaire with a little bit of a suspicious background in his life, how
it became so wealthy.
And he's a very trustworthy citizen of the world.
There's a priest who was wounded heavily in combat as he was serving with the Marines
(11:59):
in one of the Gulf Wars and it's left him very withdrawn and bitter.
The other, the third person is kind of an ordinary typical housewife with two kids and
a husband and the fourth and fifth people, you know, remain part of just typical people.
(12:26):
And then suddenly in the analysis that gets reported back, they are identified as all
with a date and it's all Christmas day, exactly one year from today, from a Christmas day
day.
So the scientists get together on an emergency call and say, we've got to study this anomaly,
(12:51):
which means we have to reveal to these people that they're marked for one year from now.
What's the common link?
What's the reason why they're all linked together at the same time?
Are they going to be in a train station on the same day, on Christmas day and maybe an
explosion or a terrorist attack?
(13:13):
Is there anything we can do to prevent them from this fate?
And so it's about the revealing to these people that we have irrefutable information
that you're going to die one year from today and we'd like to help you avoid that.
So what do people do when they get this sentence?
(13:38):
And the scientists, they're kind of a subplot because they're, you know, the human beings
too.
They want to attend to this issue.
And so it becomes a, you know, a storybook of each person and how they react and what
they do and what would you do?
(14:01):
You know, you think about it yourself.
You know, if somebody said you got 365 days to go, what would you do?
Where would you go?
Who would you talk to?
What would you share?
Certainly something for Twilight Zone and X minus one.
Just so listeners know that there definitely will be a link to John's book on the Life's
(14:22):
of Road Chip website.
Got to be able to get into that.
Now I want to do a little different show, a much different show than I usually do.
And what I'm going to do is I've gone through a bunch of your episodes for which you're
the host of Accessibility Matters interview series.
And I want us to be here, like we're sitting across the table and just BS and all throughout
(14:46):
some of these topics that came up or say we're at a pub.
I mean, this might be a two-pinture for us, you know, John.
So I want to start by first looking at episode one, which is with Meg O'Connell.
And Meg was the person that I was studying to come on to my show and came across your
(15:07):
interview with her.
So it's serendipity how we cross paths through an interview.
And I was very intrigued by your interview with Meg.
And in it, I'll throw this out, you state disability isn't about pity, it's about paychecks.
Whoa, that just caught me.
And it's so true as I'm getting into doing the show and learning more about the disability
(15:33):
community.
So let's talk about that.
I mean, a lot of the listeners will probably know exactly what you're talking about.
But let's throw it out from your perspective.
What does that mean?
Well, not about pity.
Disability is about paychecks.
Well, you know, people have, for the most part, people have a very broad band of empathy
(16:00):
that resides within all of us.
You know, we're all fundamentally good and we're all fundamentally empathetic towards
other people's trials, tribulations, whatever we perceive them to be.
And one thing that I learned, actually I learned this came to me from Meg O'Connell.
(16:24):
She said, most people think about considered disabilities, disabled people, as the worst
case they've ever observed.
Somebody really in very strenuous format of disability, whatever that might be.
(16:47):
They're in a wheelchair that's formed and they're not audible.
So, you know, and that's sometimes the only introduction that human beings have to other
human beings.
And it leaves them somewhat with an opinion form that, well, you have to pity those people.
(17:13):
Well, most disabled people are extremely adaptable to their environments where they can be, do
have the cognitive and physical resources to be able to adapt to what has been dealt
to them, whatever their disability is.
And they want more than anything to become normal, quote unquote, like you and I.
(17:43):
So their goal, you know, our goal is to go through life and do fun things and do the
kinds of things that you and I are doing today.
But for disabled persons, their prize can sometimes become, we want to be like you.
(18:06):
We want to have a job.
We want to get it.
You know, we want to be able to get on the bus and pay the fare ourselves.
So when we formed accessibility.com, it wasn't about what was out there.
It was about what was missing.
(18:28):
And what's missing is, you know, we're coming up on the anniversary of the American Disabilities
Act in short time in July.
It's been there for a long time, but it hasn't been enforced for a long time.
(18:51):
And so you have a population on the globe of one and every four persons.
That's a billion three.
If they were taken as a nation, it'd be the third largest country on the planet.
Interesting, yeah.
(19:14):
So how is it that 97% of the known websites of billion six are not accessible, fully accessible
to one of the largest demographic groups in the world?
Why?
Because people don't care?
No, because they don't understand.
(19:36):
They don't, in our rush-lived lives, business has joined itself to the internet and every
business is a business now, regardless of what it is.
I mean, if you're a shoemaker in a local town, you probably have a website.
(20:00):
So it's pervasive across all forms of economic endeavor.
And it's, you know, the need to educate business is the only way that it's the only route forward
(20:29):
for the disabled.
And it's really going to turn around on the understanding of how to work with training
and certification.
You've learned how to get on the internet.
Now you have to learn how to reach all persons with the internet.
Not just guys like you and I.
You've got to reach all persons.
(20:51):
Well, that brings to mind just yesterday.
So I'll go back a little bit.
I used to teach social studies and history.
And then I left to coach college soccer.
And that's when I became ill with group-based strep and I ended up losing both hands and
parts of both feet.
Came back and I still coached and everything.
But I left when I started adopting up my five kids.
(21:15):
And I've come full circle and back to coaching and doing real well.
But there's a teaching position that opened up at the high school in our town where I
substitute teach all the time.
And I went into apply and I can't because in order to renew my license, the Wisconsin
Department of Public Education has a process of doing fingerprints in order to do a background
(21:38):
check.
Well, they can't do my fingerprints.
So they've been sitting on their hands, so to speak, for over a week trying to figure
out how the heck to do this when all you have to do is let me come down and look at me
and then research me.
But I can't apply for this position that came up.
So I wrote to the building principal and I know him quite well and I know he respects
(22:00):
me.
I'm still waiting for a reply from him.
Let's find a simple get around.
And no response.
I trust the guy.
I believe he's probably trying to find a get around for me.
But I wrote to him and saying, for the first time in a long time, I really feel disabled
because society is not allowing me to do something that should be easy.
(22:24):
Let me apply for a freaking job.
Get me to come in for an interview as well.
But it's falling down and it's not helping me in my situation.
So this is the first time I've really come across feeling disabled because I can't do
something.
So anyway, it's a reality of our systemic.
(22:48):
I want to blame capitalism, but it's not capitalism because it's a global issue.
Even where in occupied nations under totalitarian governments and so forth, it's almost feels
at times like, hey, we're up, we've pulled up the ladder, everything's fine now.
(23:14):
Well it's not.
And in business today, you can't find a person that runs a business, especially corporate
business with shareholders and responsibilities that they have to report on their economic
status with.
(23:36):
You can't find a business where they would consider an internet site, a website for themselves
without securing their data.
So there has to be security measures and storage measures and certain, there are certain component
pieces that have to be contained in the software in order to secure the business.
(24:00):
Well along the lines now, you have tremendous, everybody's talking about DEI, diversity,
equity and inclusion.
Here's a tip guys.
Yeah.
Diversity, equity, inclusion, all stops in its tracks if it's not accessible.
(24:21):
Good point.
What's your intent is there, okay.
But the practice also has to include accessibility.
If, why do we have racial division hundreds of years after the Civil War because of accessibility?
(24:42):
Okay.
You won, we freed the slaves.
Now that's it.
We have no other obligation.
We only in the last couple of years passed a law outlawing lynching.
A hundred years to pass a law outlawing lynching.
Just to close the mind.
One of the more sophisticated nations on the planet, we have gone to wars across the world
(25:06):
and won them and rebuilt those economies and so on and so forth.
It took us a hundred years to pass a law to outlaw lynching.
So don't tell me that inclusion is on the front lobes of everybody's minds.
It's not.
Yeah.
It hasn't been, and it won't be until it becomes something that is teachable, practiced.
(25:35):
And that's where we see ourselves.
I, in my publishing career at one point was fortunate enough to be the publisher of Bite
magazine, which was all aimed at developers, those developers who at that time were leading
our world into the information age.
(26:03):
And in there, what I observed and learned, and I'm no technocrat, not at all.
But I did learn that software and technology is a trinity of three activities.
It starts from the same thing a movie starts from.
(26:26):
It starts from a storyboard.
It starts from what do we want to accomplish?
What do we need the software to do?
Okay, so you begin to design it and you lay it out and you build in the elements that
you want that to perform.
From there, you have to develop that.
And then from the development, you go to deployment and hopefully you have something that's a
(26:48):
product.
Those three components, that trinity of activity, puts together solutions that become software.
Now that's a very simple and short term situation, you know, description of it, but that's kind
of how the function works.
(27:09):
Why can't it be made accessible from the start?
Make the project accessible.
If it's designed to be inclusive, make sure that it's accessible to every person that
would need it.
So it sounds like that goes back as simple as education.
Yes, yes.
(27:32):
And in the world of able and disabled, education, not only, I learned this from Judy Eumann,
God rest our soul, the world of education has to open up.
It's not just the university level.
It's not just, you know, along the way.
(27:54):
One year old children who live in a home with disabled grandparents need to understand
what disability is.
They need training.
They need to understand.
They need to be.
So start at the beginning.
You know, I mean, as madness, as mad as it may sound, start at the first grade level,
(28:20):
start at the beginning, because these kids are, they're exposed to disabled persons.
Mommy, why is that man have a dog and a stick in front of him?
So it's not a simple.
It's not a simple.
It's a social issue.
(28:41):
It's an economic issue.
It's a governmental issue.
It's something that I believe we believe that will be resolved in our time, because when
I mentioned before, what that uncovered demographic is, they also represent $8 trillion of the
(29:04):
world economy.
Yes.
So it makes no sense for it to not somehow get canceled out and become a reality.
I'm going to make a promise here, and I'll do it right on the show.
If I get an interview for this position, I'm going to make it known to them that they
need to start hiring a disabled person such as myself and all these kids know me, and
(29:28):
they've learned about disability through me.
And I spoke with my wife this morning.
You know what?
Because I substitute all across this large high school.
There's not a single disabled, you know, openly disabled person teaching, instructing,
or as in the office or anything.
So again, I'm going to promise that if I get an interview, I'm going to steer the conversation
(29:50):
to bringing this up, that it has to happen, and Doug on it, start with me.
So we'll see how this goes.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
I mean, it is what it is.
They're not intentionally saying, okay, Scott, we can't look into this.
(30:14):
They have no reason to do that.
They have every reason to accommodate you.
And that's one of the things that I'd like to talk about.
Yeah, let's do it.
Everybody doesn't need full accessibility that meets all of the technical requirements
(30:37):
of the software and the regulations and so on and so forth.
But everybody could use reasonable accessibility.
Yes.
I wear hearing aids and I use glasses.
Okay.
I don't need everything that is, I'm not deaf.
(30:59):
I can hear, but I have to have my hearing aids on.
I can see, I have to have my glasses.
Those are reasonable accommodations for me.
Offices, businesses, buildings, shopping centers.
There's this wonderful product that's been introduced in Europe by this magnificent man,
(31:20):
Gavin Neat, which is called Welcome Me, where businesses can use a software device that
they would put on their website and disabled persons who want to shop, for example, at
a Nordstrom's in their local town would go into that site and talk about their disability
(31:44):
and what their needs are to come in and be a customer.
Yes.
And so the store then receives a, let's say, a Ryu Scott, you fill that out and now you're
going to go birthday shopping for your wife.
You let them know and you are met at the door by somebody who has been trained properly
(32:08):
to assist you through your experience until you find what you need and regardless of what
your handicap might be or your disability, I should say, you're obviously not handicapped
if you're there.
So it's a matter of education, it's a matter of training and our greatest ambition is to
(32:34):
try and use accessibility.com to bring the physical and the digital worlds together through
understanding what the needs are that need to be met and how they can find their way
through that maze of resources and the correct information that would make them conversant
(32:58):
and how to do that.
So I have a question for you, John, regarding this.
If we're talking about starting with education and things, boy, let me back it up a little
bit, does this education or providing direction have to start with our laws?
Because it seems I've had a few different guests on that work their business is about
(33:23):
working with other businesses about how to comply with laws and they're scared of breaking
laws, which is the only freaking reason why they start and changing things.
Where does it start?
What happened first?
The chicken or the egg?
It's the same thing.
So what is it?
Well, here in America, the ADA is there and it forbids discrimination against disabled.
(33:56):
So if you don't have a wide enough toilet booth in your restaurant for somebody, you
could be subject to a lawsuit because somebody claims comes into your restaurant, they're
might be in a wheelchair or they don't have the ability to whatever.
(34:19):
Unfortunately, the number of cases we track that every single year and the number of cases
increase every single year.
And what also goes up tremendously is the amount of demand letters that businesses receive
because they've been found to be in violation and there are literally hundreds of thousands
(34:45):
of those demand letters that never get to court.
But they are part of the noise around businesses and disabilities.
And they're aimed at governments, they're aimed at small businesses, big businesses,
commercial centers.
And in many cases, it's a very, very successful business because you own a restaurant along
(35:16):
Route 95 and you may not be fully accessible to persons traveling across there.
You also have a lawyer.
And you get a demand letter and your lawyer is called and they say, yeah, you have to
take this seriously.
But if you do that, then you're going to have to put an addition onto the restaurant.
(35:39):
You're going to have to do this.
You're going to have to do that.
My suggestion is that we try and sell.
And sadly, there's way, way too much of that that goes on.
And we look at the statistics on that and we find out that the number of the numbers
(36:02):
of the cases that never get to court seem to be centered by what is unfortunately known
as ambulance chasers.
People that they've stuck their nose into part of the economy that's there to be had
(36:24):
to be taken advantage of.
It's legal for people to complain.
It's legal for people to respond with an offer to stop the complaint.
There's no law against it.
So and in between, there's the negotiator and the negotiator can sometimes be very clever
people who see an opportunity and that's where that sits.
(36:49):
So it's not a it's a solvable problem, but it's a it's a systemic issue that, you know,
I mentioned before DEI.
DEI needs the letter A attached to it for accessibility.
(37:13):
If the mentality of our society accepts the fact that the intention of DEI is worthy and
it's something that we need to honor and there's a lot of hope for that across our society,
across the world, then accessibility has to be a function that gets woven into the solution
(37:42):
as a permanent fix.
It's not something you cancel because you say, Oh, no, no, no, you mean we we we have not
to make this accessible?
No, we want to.
We want to discriminate against people.
No, they don't.
You know, I mean, Delta Airlines just this last 30 days introduced a refashioned seat
(38:06):
in their in their planes where a wheelchair can be turned around and locked in to a refashioned
seat so that that person doesn't have to surrender their mode of transportation to get on the
plane after they get on and then wait for somebody to come and pick them up when they're
written when another and they're a horror story is going around that.
(38:30):
So that Delta airline reasonable accommodation needs to become a law of the aviation industry.
Right.
Worldwide.
Right.
Well, you just touched on something I want to get into.
I believe it's pronounced Andrei Mosaleen.
Episode 14 is the founder and inventor of Revolve Air.
(38:53):
Right.
Folks, there's going to be a link to this and it's going to blow your minds on the Life's
A Road trip website and that was one of the I want to see this thing collapses down so
small.
It's just amazing.
But here's the problem and I and this is where money comes in John and it makes sense
that he's running a business.
These things are only available.
(39:15):
It seems for rent at some of the large airports and I believe very just in Europe.
I don't know if they've come up to the US, but they take up 60% less space.
It's amazing how his product collapses down.
There are other ones out there and I went on Amazon in some places that are collapsing,
(39:37):
but they don't come nearly as close and they're 1700 bucks.
Nothing.
What Andrea did was just totally change in industry.
But again, the money aspect, how is this going to come into play?
But he's trying to you can rent these at some airports.
(39:59):
He is a marvelous individual and he's his I book.
I kid him about that.
You're the guy that reinvented the wheel.
Exactly.
Which is exactly what he did.
He reinvented the wheel so that it becomes adaptable to providing a service to persons
(40:20):
that need to be wheeled.
As far as the money is concerned and as far as creativity and innovation in service to
products that support the disabled.
(40:41):
The one thing that I would, you know, that the disabled understand is nothing about us without
us.
That's saying that exists across all of us in this community.
If you wanted to build a product from the ground up that would resolve an issue, whether
(41:05):
it be cognitive issues or physical issues, whatever they happen to be, or a combination
of those things.
In the design, development and deployment include persons who can tell you as experts
what to do and where it will fail and where it goes over a tripwire that will make it
(41:28):
not work.
And that intelligent approach to it opens up employment.
There's so many examples of practical products that you and I use every day.
The remote TV was created by a solution for persons who could not function by changing
(41:58):
the channel on their TV.
That was service to a disability that became a standard product in everybody's household
and changed in industry.
There's others.
We could talk forever on that kind of thing.
But it's really a function.
You must respect the source of the problem before you can decide to educate yourself,
(42:22):
before you can decide to participate in the process.
And Andreas does.
He wasn't naive in terms of the reality.
What he was was determined that he was going to make a product that would provide a service
(42:44):
that somehow would break the code of economics and get further down the road.
Now, there's other products similar, not like to his, but there's other breakthroughs
that are still barred from popular use and wide distribution because business primarily
(43:13):
is not, hasn't opened the gate yet, they haven't opened the gate yet.
Now I'm going to jump to episode 13, but I think our server is going to bring over our
second pint because I think that's where we are in our discussion.
This is great man.
So episode 13 by Lori Samuels, she's accessibility director at NBCUniversal.
(43:36):
She stated in the interview she had with you, we can have people coming out to design and
build the next generation of technology who've never heard about accessibility.
This goes back to what we were talking about earlier about education.
She went on to say, so for a long term solve, we've got to get our education systems, again,
teaching about accessibility, teaching about inclusion, making sure that kids with disabilities
(44:02):
can get all the way through higher education successfully, not facing the barriers that
they face way too many barriers today, still in our education system.
So it goes back to, again, what we were talking about, but going back to the wheelchair and
that address, necessity is the mother of invention.
(44:24):
When I was teaching and sometimes it would come up in class, I would tweak that to say
necessity and money are the parents of invention.
So I think they do go hand in hand, you don't just always trip over a new idea on things,
or you can come up with out of necessity and happen, but it does a lot of times money
(44:47):
does help.
And I think going back with what Samuel said and Andreas and what he accomplished.
Laurie Samuels deserves to be knighted for her.
No, she's one of the more passionate and intelligent persons in the community.
(45:13):
And she also said something and she resonated with me and it has become one of the cornerstones
of accessibility.com.
It's not about compliance.
Accessibility is not about compliance.
It's about people.
And that's something that really resonated because in the discussion and the dissuasion
(45:47):
of trying to move business from the factors that I talked about earlier where you've got
the global touchstones of the global economy are over a billion websites that are not fully
accessible.
Now there are regulations and there are laws and there's all kinds of good consciousness
(46:13):
that should go on that says here's what you have to do to become fully accessible.
Here's what you can do to become reasonably accessible.
All those things are correct.
But this is the businessman, Mr. Profiteer.
You must focus on the fact that this is about human needs and people.
(46:36):
Would you close your doors anymore in society to persecuted Jews, to segregated blacks?
No, that's part of our history.
It's gone.
Yet you do it to persons with disabilities.
(46:57):
If you said that to a reasonable person, wow.
That's going to put a dent in their armor.
So the people like Judy Eumann, people like Caroline Casey, Laurie Samuels, Hugo Connell,
(47:26):
Mike, I mean I could go on and name people for an hour.
But these are the brethren of opportunity.
People who will open the door of accessibility, which doesn't take anything away from the
businesses, it only brings things in.
(47:48):
It only helps.
It brings full employment.
It brings spending, expanded opportunity.
It just doesn't take all of those things away.
It only helps you.
That's where it seems that the struggle tends to be ongoing there.
This has been great.
(48:10):
It didn't go where I thought it would go.
I'm grateful to that because I think we were able to just sit at a pub and just chat and
talk about some things.
I wish there were a lot of people sitting here with us.
We have come to the point in the show where that sound means we're coming up to the road
trip round up.
(48:31):
John, it's going to be five questions I'm going to talk to you and just come with whatever
may regarding you in road trips.
When you're road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Do I tend to do what?
Fast food or local diners?
Both.
Yeah.
It depends on where you're going to and how much time you have.
(48:55):
Yeah, pretty much and my wife's discretion or indiscretion is the case maybe.
Gotcha.
What's your dream car for road trip, John?
That could have been something you grew up with that your parents had or something you
have now or something you'd like to have in the future or maybe even rent if you were
just going on a special road trip.
(49:19):
I would like to visit countries in the world like Italy, Ireland, England, that I would
like to get in a car and just go really out of the cities and live with people.
So something comfortable, something that's easy to maneuver because when you're talking
(49:44):
about Europe, you're talking about you better have a car on the smaller side compared to
most of America.
Sure.
I'm not afraid to drive on European roads.
I've done it throughout my history.
Yeah.
What's Alaska set or CD that played while you were on a road trip?
(50:06):
It was probably something by Elton John.
Okay.
Have you seen him live at all?
Yes.
Oh, he does a really good show.
I saw him in Vegas.
Oh, yeah.
He's a great show.
He's the other takes her back to.
I think that when history looks back on this century, this time that Elton John and guys
(50:28):
like Billy Joel and Paul Simon will be the Mozart's and the Beethoven's of history in
our time.
That's a great way to look at it.
It is.
Okay.
Colker Pepsi.
Coke.
Okay.
We're getting close to 80% are Coke lovers on this show, man.
I wonder if anybody in Atlanta listens to this.
(50:50):
I hope no one in Pepsi headquarters us.
All right.
What's your favorite road trip memory?
Go wherever you want to go on this, John.
Favorite road trip memory?
Getting off of the beaten path and driving through the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland and
(51:17):
passing dunky carts and seeing the last century the way it really appeared.
And the scenery.
The scenery in Ireland is every turn is another photo ops and it's been forever.
But in my memory, that was one of the more significant things I've ever done.
(51:42):
It seems that your, a piece of your heart is in Europe and the Britain Peninsula.
Yeah.
I know it's true.
Well, we're going to wrap it up.
I want us to stay on after we hit stop, but I just want to say challenge likes everybody
and keep listening to life's road trip.
(52:04):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website at lifesarroadtrip.podbean.com.
For more information on this week's guest, this is your host Scott Martin reminding you
that life's a road trip.
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