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The Accessibility Advantage

The Accessibility Advantage

Di: The Blind Blogger Maxwell Ivey
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Advocating for more accessibility for and inclusion of people with disabilities through communication & collaboration instead of compliance & shame.Maxwell Ivey Economia Gestione e leadership Leadership
Episodi
  • Improving Financial and Physical Independence: My Conversation with Jarrett Gist

    Improving Financial and Physical Independence: My Conversation with Jarrett Gist
    Oct 2 2026
    Hello again, I'm so happy that you are continuing to join me and my guests as we explore the benefits of improving accessibility and advocate for more fullsome inclusion of people living with disabilities. On this episode of The Accessibility Advantage, I sat down with Jarrett Gist, an Independent Financial Advisor and Investment Advisor Representative with D.H. Hill Wealth Management. Jarrett was diagnosed with Stargardt disease at 19, and his path from that diagnosis to where he is today helping individuals and families, including many with disabilities, build financial independence made for one of the most practical, hands-on conversations I've had on the show. On With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen to the Podcast From the Texas A&M Corps to a Life-Changing Diagnosis Jarrett's vision changes first surfaced during his freshman year in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M, after a minor accident with a bungee cord drew him to an eye doctor for the first time. What followed was a referral to a retina specialist, and eventually a diagnosis of Stargardt disease a juvenile form of macular degeneration. Jarrett had to leave the path he'd been on and figure out, from scratch, what came next. A visit from a state orientation and mobility instructor someone Jarrett initially waved off, insisting he could still ride a bike and get around fine ended up planting the seed for his entire career. He went on to earn a degree in blind rehabilitation from Stephen F. Austin State University, worked as an orientation and mobility instructor for 14 years, and later earned both a master's degree in special education with an emphasis in visual impairment and an MBA. The Tools That Actually Work Jarrett and I compared notes on assistive technology from our very different eras of vision loss his diagnosis came with far more available tools than mine did decades earlier. He talked about relying on ZoomText for magnification and a built-in reader, along with a CCTV magnifier for reading physical materials. His guiding principle was one I appreciated: find the fewest tools that get the most done, since constantly switching between devices or platforms eats up time and energy that could go toward actually living your life. From Orientation and Mobility to Financial Advising Jarrett's shift into financial advising grew out of a long-standing personal interest in investing, combined with what he saw repeatedly in his O&M work: clients on SSI or SSDI who were afraid to accept raises or pursue new opportunities for fear of losing their benefits. That tension wnting to grow financially while staying protected became the problem Jarrett wanted to help people solve. Getting there wasn't easy. Studying for the Series 65 securities law exam meant 12 to 15 hour days for nine months straight. When he finally sat for it, the testing center had his allotted time wrong and wouldn't let him use his ZoomText hotkeys, forcing him to manually adjust magnification throughout the exam. He missed passing by one question and had to wait three months to retake it which he did, and passed. Building a Financial Foundation, Whatever Your Starting Point Jarrett laid out a clear, practical framework for financial independence: a checking account to handle regular bills, a savings account for the unexpected, a retirement account even a modest Roth IRA starting as early as age 18 and, when ready, an active investment account. His point about retirement accounts stuck with me: it's not about how much you can contribute each month, it's about how much time your money has to grow. Starting small and early beats waiting for a bigger paycheck down the road. He also shared a couple of lesser-known tax advantages available to people who are legally blind, including a tax exemption and the ability to freeze property taxes regardless of age. Vetting Accessible Platforms and an Unexpected Business Advantage Jarrett intentionally partners with custodians like Fidelity and Schwab in part because of their accessibility, and he makes a point of getting on the phone directly with clients rather than relying solely on digital tools. He also shared a genuinely surprising story: using a Tesla with full self-driving capability enabled by a bioptic lens that gets his vision to the legal 20/40 driving threshold has let him pick up clients and bring them into the office for in-person meetings. More than one potential client, he said, has been sold on working with him before they even reached the boardroom, simply from seeing what he's able to do. Why Accessibility Should Matter to Financial Companies I pushed Jarrett on something I ask most of my guests in some form: why should companies care about accessibility beyond the bare minimum the law requires? He was direct that compliance and regulation matter, but also pointed to something simpler people with disabilities deserve the same access to tools and services as anyone else, and companies that build genuine relationships with ...
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    59 min
  • Inside the American Council of the Blind: My Conversation with Michael Babcock

    Inside the American Council of the Blind: My Conversation with Michael Babcock
    Sep 19 2026
    Hello again, I hope you have had a good week. On this episode, I caught up with an old friend, Michael Babcock, who is now the Membership Engagement Specialist for the American Council of the Blind. Michael has been blind since birth and has spent 26 years working with assistive technology, dating back to when he was 10 or 11 years old and first started troubleshooting his way around the internet. We hadn't recorded together in about a decade, so this conversation was overdue in more ways than one. On With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen On Podcast Players Teaching as a Way of Learning Michael's approach to assistive technology has always been hands-on. He described a habit that's shaped his whole career: whenever he figured out how to solve a technical challenge, he'd immediately go teach someone else how to do it — not just to help them, but because teaching something forces you to understand it more deeply. He was talking and teaching about accessibility, in his words, "before I knew accessibility was a thing." He doesn't have formal professional training in the field, but he considers his lived experience more valuable than credentials the kind of knowledge that only comes from actually hitting a barrier yourself, like reaching the final step of booking an expensive flight only to find the credit card field won't accept keyboard navigation. How ACB Is Structured Michael walked through how ACB is organized: local chapters feed into state and regional affiliates, which feed into the national organization. ACB currently has around 62 or 63 affiliates nationwide, including 45 state affiliates and 18 special-interest affiliates built around specific communities groups like ACB Teachers, ACB Radio Amateurs, ACB Diabetics in Action, ACB Families, the Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America, and the Independent Visually Impaired Entrepreneurs affiliate. If someone reaches out looking for a local connection and there isn't a chapter in their state, ACB will help match them to a special-interest group instead, based on what they're already interested in or used to do before losing their vision. ACB Community: Daily Connection Born Out of COVID One of the most valuable resources Michael described is ACB Community, a program that grew directly out of the isolation of March 2020, when blind and visually impaired individuals suddenly lost the informal support of neighbors, caregivers, and everyday outings all at once. What started as one or two calls a week on a conference line has grown into something remarkable: since 2020, ACB Community has held more than 29,000 events, averaging around 100 events a week, running from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern, seven days a week. Membership isn't required to participate anyone can join an event, and anyone can propose to host one, as long as the content stays family-friendly. Events range from Braille instruction and technology discussions to cooking shows, religious services, and even a weekly community karaoke night. ACB relies on around 150 volunteers to keep things running smoothly, including trained hosts who moderate conversations and make sure everyone is treated respectfully. Michael also walked through the structure of ACB Community's daily schedule email in detail and I made a point of flagging why that mattered beyond ACB Community itself. The email uses clear heading levels, consistent formatting, larger bolded headings, and specific font and color choices drawn from ACB's own low-vision guidelines. That's not just good practice for an email blast it's a direct, practical example of the same heading structure and formatting principles that make websites navigable for screen reader and screen magnifier users. Advocacy Made Accessible ACB's advocacy work happens on two fronts. Accessibility consulting and compliance services, led by Colby Garrison, work directly with organizations to identify and fix accessibility barriers in their websites, apps, and tools. Separately, ACB's advocacy platform lets anyone member or not contact their legislators about federal legislation using a "Speak For" tool. The letters come pre-written, so all a person has to do is fill in their information, review the message, and hit submit. Michael said he's used the tool over a dozen times himself and regularly gets real, substantive follow-up responses from lawmakers' offices, not just form replies. Free Wills and Audio-Described Entertainment Two other ACB programs stood out. ACB covers the cost of a fully accessible online will-writing tool, available to anyone regardless of membership. And the Audio Description Project, accessible at ADP.acb.org, functions like a searchable, accessible programming guide for audio-described content across streaming platforms, cable, and over-the-air TV tracking more than 14,000 described titles. ACB also hosts an annual awards gala recognizing outstanding work in audio description. AI, Just Try It Michael shared a story from ACB's national ...
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    51 min
  • Digital Accessibility as a Right: My Conversation with Mellissa Green

    Digital Accessibility as a Right: My Conversation with Mellissa Green
    Sep 17 2026
    Hello again, I hope you are having a good week so far. On this episode, I sat down with Mellissa Green, a digital accessibility advocate and host of the podcast Uniquely Abled: Disrupting Disability. Mellissa was born with retinopathy of prematurity and has been blind since birth. We swapped a lot of stories from our early years navigating assistive technology, and talked candidly about what it takes to break into digital accessibility work without a traditional professional background in it. On With The Show Watch On Youtube Listen On Podcast Players A Trip Down Assistive Technology Memory Lane Mellissa and I spent a good chunk of the conversation reminiscing about the technology we grew up with from four-track cassette tape recorders and Perkins Braille typewriters to dedicated notetakers like the Keynote and the Braille'n Speak, back when getting anything printed off of them was its own ordeal. Mellissa didn't get access to JAWS until after she graduated high school, since it hadn't been released yet when she started using computers. Before that, she used an early computer simply to transcribe her Braille homework for teachers. Breaking Into Accessibility Without a Traditional Background One of the most honest parts of our conversation was Mellissa's description of trying to break into digital accessibility work. When her family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, she learned that some universities were looking for people with digital accessibility skills — but she felt she only had her lived experience to offer, not formal training. I pushed back on that framing hard: lived experience navigating assistive technology every single day is not a lesser qualification. It's knowledge no textbook can teach. Mellissa eventually took training through a program called Abler, which taught her the formal system for auditing websites things like how to write specific, actionable feedback to a web developer instead of just flagging that "a button isn't labeled." She learned to identify exactly which button, and to specify exactly what the label should say instead. The Trouble With Accessibility Overlays We got into a conversation about accessibility overlays those widgets that promise to make a website accessible at the click of a button. Mellissa has run into them on her own web host, and while she's had more success with them than I generally have (my experience is usually an echo and a slower browser), we agreed that overlays are, at best, a starting point rather than a real substitute for addressing accessibility at the back-end level where it actually counts. Where "A Blue Green Galaxy" Comes From I was curious about the story behind her website's name, the same way people are often curious about "The Blind Blogger." Turns out there isn't a deep hidden meaning Mellissa simply likes the colors blue and green, and writes interplanetary culinary thrillers and other science fiction on the side, which inspired the "galaxy" theme. Speaking Through Toastmasters Mellissa is a member of VIP Online Toastmasters, a group specifically for people who are blind or visually impaired. She recently gave a talk there on audio description, drawing on conversations she'd had with people actually working in the field, including audio describer Roy Samuelson and Joel Snyder of the Audio Description Project. One detail from Samuelson stuck with her: the audio description field itself needs more diversity, with more people of color and more women doing the describing. Uniquely Abled, Not Disabled Mellissa explained the philosophy behind her podcast's name: rather than framing disability as something someone simply "has," the idea is that everyone has unique abilities some people are born with a disability, some acquire one later in life, and some experience a temporary one. Recognizing that spectrum is part of what her training helped clarify for her, beyond what she already understood from lived experience alone. Accessibility Is a Right, Not a Privilege Mellissa closed with the philosophy that shapes her whole approach to this work: accessibility isn't a privilege reserved for people with disabilities, it's a right that benefits everyone. She used a clear example someone who doesn't speak English needs an accessible, translatable website just as much as someone using a screen reader does. Her advice to businesses and developers was direct: if you want as many people as possible to use your product or shop your site, you need to put yourself in the position of the many different kinds of people who might visit it. About Mellissa Mellissa Green is a digital accessibility advocate who was born with retinopathy of prematurity and has been blind since birth. She hosts the podcast Uniquely Abled: Disrupting Disability and is an active member of VIP Online Toastmasters, a Toastmasters group for people who are blind or visually impaired. Mellissa believes accessibility is a right, not a privilege, and works to help websites and ...
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    46 min
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