02/27/2024
Monologue Monday Episode 19: Inclusivity and Accessibility. Please add descriptions to your pictures and videos online. I first learned about this from Loni Friedmann, a DeafBlind creator and ASL instructor. I encourage everyone to educate themselves about how and why this is vital for transparency, information sharing and accessibility.
Video ID: Amanda is a white female with short brown hair wearing a burnt orange long sleeve button up shirt with orange waves on it. Amanda is sitting in front of a white wall.
Transcription: Hi everyone, welcome back to my page. My name is Amanda Gaboriault. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of New York and this is Episode 19 of Monologue Mondays. Today is going to be brief, yet so important, about accessibility and inclusivity. There is a content creator and ASL instructor that I follow on social media named Loni, I will tag her below. She is a DeafBlind person and I went in a rabbit hole on her Instagram today where she has an entire series on creating picture descriptions, video descriptions, transcriptions on anything- your personal page, your professional page- and how most content out there is not accessible to Blind people, DeafBlind people, and we can do a lot better and we should do a lot better. It is simple enough to add descriptions and transcriptions to our content and we should be doing more of it. I’m saddened after educating myself and learning more about it today that I don’t see it more regularly. I am part of the problem because it is not part of my current practice when I post online. So moving forward, you’ll see it in my video for today and my videos and pictures moving forward on my personal and professional page having a description of what I’m posting- of the picture, of the video- and transcriptions as well. I encourage people around me to also do that. We can do better to be more inclusive and more accessible to a broader range of people. If that is something, as a provider, you say you care about.. then do better. We can always keep learning and we should keep being better and this is one way that I am going to be better moving forward because I care about providing accessible and inclusive services and being an inclusive person.. a loving, inclusive being and this is one way that I have fallen short. I’m going to do better moving forward. I hope you’ll join me. I’ll see you next week.
