2130 - Empowering Inclusivity and Enhancing Workplace Accessibility with Mabely Q's Erin Perkins

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1:05With us right now is Erin Perkins. Erin, you are the founder and CEO of Mabley Q. I am so grateful to have you, and I'm so grateful to share this topic that we're going to be talking about. Your website, by the way, is MableyQ.com. I'm going to spell that. It's M-A-B as in boy, E-L-Y, the letter Q, dot com. Erin, it's great to have you. Thank you, Josh, for having me. I'm very excited to be talking to you today, for sure. So we have some things in common. My wife is severely hearing impaired. And so all of us in the family use a little bit of sign language from time to time. I'm moderately competent at what I would say.

1:57You're decent, right? You're decent, right? to me if you make the effort to know sign language and sign to other people that me honestly means the world to me because I mean I can relax a little bit I don't have to work as hard to understand you but I will say since being online relying on captions then I gotta go out in the real world and meet people and understand them who that's hard like my comprehension has dropped severely. So if anybody can sign a little bit through the alphabet, know some basics, makes my world a better place for sure. 100%. And that's absolutely something I know that my wife really appreciates too in her case.

2:47And again, we'll talk about some of these things here. You know, maybe some just really. So for business leaders, I'm so grateful that you've stumbled upon this episode here. Now, what I will also say, Aaron, is that for our friend that's listening, please check your podcast app. If you are using an app like Apple Podcasts, you should be able to click on a transcript button and it should follow along while you are listening. So that if you want that, you know, most, again, make sure you're, I don't know what, do you actually know what podcast apps are good at captions and transcripts? so like honestly i will say apple transcripts i love them like i am a huge fan of apple but i feel like they've missed the mark in terms of what they've tried with transcripts and because all it does is auto transcribe if i was to just read the transcript and there's two people at least two people speaking on that podcast i would not know who's speaking oh you're right so if you're if you're able to actually go into those transcripts just edit it and add who's speaking for which line but that's why zoom is great because it automatically gives you that and or any transcript app like i like fathom will give you the breakdown of who's talking and it makes it so much easier because all you got to do is pull that put that in clean up a little bit and you're good to go.

4:26That's a great idea. So, um, when to our, to my fellow podcasters, and I happen to know a few, here's how, and we're going to go through a couple of other tips here. Um, so that's easy. So rather than relying on auto-generated captions, um, what you're saying, Aaron is take the transcript that zoom provides because it will specify who is speaking, copy that, paste that, clean it up, paste it into your podcast feed. Most of your podcast providers will have a spot where you can input your transcript rather than relying on auto generation. I love it. Love it. Love it. Let's talk about this. And Aaron, we need to talk about your business and so forth.

5:02We're going to get to that. But I just want to share. These are such big aha things that was brilliant. Can you talk about the setting in Zoom that here I am. I am pretty familiar with deaf culture. Occasionally, it's kind of funny. like you will see me like it to to friends who have seen content like if you ever see me do a countdown i'm always going to do the asl three two one which means you're doing a german three uh which is the thumb uh pointer finger and middle finger as a three rather than the the ring finger oh my god i hate that so much the three with like that because it looks like the assist in ASL.

5:44So I was like, no, that's true. You did do that. Three, two, one. Yes. Habit. Habit that's just kind of built up over the years. But what I was going to say, even as savvy as I try to be or sophisticated as I try to be with technology, Aaron, immediately, you helped me as soon as we got on this Zoom call. And so to our friend that's listening, here's what I want you to do. Aaron, would you please explain how to turn on captioning for all of your guests that now all they have to do is click a caption button in Zoom and they can see a full real-time captioning of who's speaking and what's being said.

6:24This is so helpful. I have hearing loss. I'm actually technically disabled too with the VA because of my tinnitus and also, of course, accompanying hearing loss with that. Aaron, would you talk about the Zoom setting it's so easy it's literally like 30 seconds or less so all you got to do is log on to your doom account via the web browser and then you're going to go to settings on the left hand side you click that you can either search caption or go to in meetings advanced and scroll down to the caption turn on manual caption switch it on turn on auto caption switch it on and i do recommend having the full script available because sometimes I'll miss something and need to kind of like quickly review but have that and you if you find captions distracting you don't need to have it turned on when you have the zoom meeting on because I know some people when I'm talking to them they're like the captions are distracting to me I was like well you don't need to have them on the person who needs them can turn them on on their end so it's easy and then the next time you open up doom it's available and when you are in the app because i'm just now learning this when you go into your settings in the actual app if you're following along there is a tab at the very bottom that says accessibility so now you can move the captions like there's a little caption window.

8:01And then I see what you're saying with the live transcript on the right-hand side. Aaron, this is remarkable. And thank you so much for teaching me this. But what I was going to say is you can adjust the colors, the size, all of that stuff. Always show captions. There's a lot of really good settings here that are very practical. Aaron, and this is where we're going to start talking about what you do. These are benefits that are just not just for someone that may be hearing impaired. Like these are things that will improve your total quality of service. And listen, it's just the right thing to do, right?

8:40We're big proponents of the Americans with Disability Act that passed in the 1970s. And there are in digital businesses, there are things that we can do. Listen, you may not have to put a wheelchair ramp in. You may not have to provide an interpreter because all of your business is digital. But these are really simple, free things that you can do that will make the world of difference. And Erin, and this is where I would really love your take on this, there is a business justification for doing this. Do you mind talking about this? Yes. So, first, like, I am Erin. I am deafblind. However, you look at me on video, you will not be able to tell.

9:23You'll be like, oh, she looks pretty normal. she looks like she can see she can speak yes I realize I have that privilege but if you were to meet with me in person you will start picking up on those cues like oh I don't have full profile vision so I have about 40 to 50 degrees most people have 180 degrees so that makes a huge difference like so I would normally never see someone sitting next to me or if someone is coming up to me. I've been spooked many times. I've also run into polls on the street because I did not see them. So this, yeah, it hurts. And I would also put this because my parents recognize that, okay, we have two deaf kids need to make sure they have access.

10:11And this was back in 1980. So they made sure we had speech therapy, we got hearing aids, we learned sign language, so we got that. But not all deaf people had that access. So like a lot of my friends did not learn sign language until they were 18 years old in college, which like is shocking to me because I feel like every deaf kid should know sign language. But as a business, I did not get into this as an accessibility educator because that was not my background. I was a graphic designer. I still am a graphic designer. But when I wanted to start learning from other businesses, that's where the barriers started coming up.

10:58Yes, we were interacting online, but I could not understand their videos because they weren't captioned. So I would have to reach out to them and they would be like, oh, how do you do that? And I was like, well, I'm not quite sure because I've always had that given to me through school, corporate, all of that. So from there, I decided to make it my mission to support small businesses and how to be accessible through all aspects. Most people think accessible needs to just be your website, but it goes so far beyond that. It goes social media, email marketing, events, podcasts, a brand, all of those things count.

11:49Already, Aaron, I'm just picking up so many great ideas. Do you mind maybe talking just for a little bit about our role? Because a lot of folks who listen to this are in senior leadership. They're the founder of a company. They are in charge of people. And you're absolutely right that some of the different abilities, different levels of abilities out there are invisible. And I think for us as leaders, if we want, you know, everyone within our, we don't want to lose good people, right? And we want everyone to feel like this is a great place to work and that we can support them and we can help them do a better job.

12:29But I think as leaders, would you mind maybe just imagine that you're addressing a room of 100 CEOs and maybe just share with them a little mini TED Talk, a little like a two-minute mini TED Talk about the importance of maintaining visibility for all people? So the big thing is like you as a CEO have to recognize that every single person at one point in your life, whether it's like when you're born with it, you became disabled as an adult or as a senior citizen when you hit your 60s, 70s, 80s, you are going to be disabled at one point in your life. you are going to need that support. Most people with disabilities have gotten to that point of I don't want to reveal my disability in fear of retribution or like or being like nope you can't do it you're not good enough for this job but the reality is a lot of people with disabilities want to work.

13:45It's just they can't work the way society has embedded in us, a nine-to-five job. A nine-to-five job might not work for them, but maybe they can work for like three, four hours in the morning and for four hours in the evening because that works for their disability. Or say they learn better by listening to stuff or reading stuff based because of their learning disability, they're not going to share that with you because they don't want to find where they're positioned. So you as a CEO have that responsibility to give them the option to be like, you know what, this business is giving me the option of being flexible with my work hours, being flexible with how I'm learning how to do things better, how I can position myself in this company and still be influential with despite or because of my disability.

14:51The reality is people with disabilities do help companies be more innovative in the long run. Absolutely. You know, it's the same thing with, listen, do you want to run a company where everybody is exactly the same? They all come from the same small town. They all have the same beliefs. They all have the same backgrounds and ideas. You don't want that, right? Because now that then becomes the only population that you can really serve well because, you know, someone from another geography or ability or background or race or whatever, like it's just like, all of a sudden they feel like, oh, I guess it's not really set up for people like me.

15:34And a lot of this, I think, Erin, is pretty subconscious or unconscious. Yeah, it's like an unconscious bias. Yes, yes, yes. We have that bias of how we grew up, how things are supposed to be. But with how today's world is, how diverse we are, not just in race and gender, But in so many other things, we have to look past that and realize that when we talk about inclusion, we are also talking about people with disabilities. People with disabilities tend to be the last people that people think about, companies think about. And yet we are the world's largest, largest minority. So, and that number is only going to keep going up.

16:24Yeah, yeah. Well, Aaron, would you mind talking about Mabley Q, the work that you do? Obviously, it looks like you consult with companies and how valuable this is going to be. And I have to imagine, you know, to our leader that's listening, you likely have maybe folks like me that my hearing loss is not profound. but boy, I sure appreciate if I must, or if I have to have the written word, but you know, in a time when I'm like, there was too much background noise at the time, it's usually something like that. So aging populations, obviously, you know, you know, again, they're going to have more hearing related, you know, folks that went to far too many concerts you know, my ears got damaged in the military and then, you know, people just born deaf.

17:11Would you mind maybe Aaron talk about Mable EQ and how you, who you work with and what that looks like? Sure. So I've really tried to, over the past seven years, tried to hone in on what are some different ways that can meet businesses where they're at. So one of the things I've created is Accessible, which is an online learning platform where you can watch small mini videos or read the text based on how you learn of how you can apply accessibility. in all aspects of your business. So that's like a DIY approach. You can do it yourself. You're like, well, but I need Aaron's support. You can also book me for like a quick 50-minute to 90-minute consulting session where we can actually strategize like where to get you started so that you can feel like you're moving through accessibility without feeling that overwhelmed because that is my number one thing.

18:11I do not want you to feel overwhelmed and try to do all the things at once because you're not going to get it done. You're going to feel like I'm a failure. The next thing is I can also do an audit, a mini audit on your business and review one or two areas of your business. Review it, give you points of how you can improve without changing how you work. You spent years of honing how your business works. I'm just there to help you introduce where you can improve. I'm not here to change the map because you built a business that works. We're just here to make it better. And then that also includes a strategy section to kind of make things better.

19:00And finally, we have a whole thing. You want to go all in. We're going to audit. We're going to set up a game plan. we're going to do that do all the things or you can just bring me on as a consultant and we can just like work over the month and year and really build in accessibility and all that so there's many different ways that we can work together the goal is to work in a way that feels good to you and that feels financially affordable as well yeah yeah um well erin how did you start Mabley Q. How did you get into this? I got laid off from my corporate. I had been working for the corporation for 12 years.

19:47You can easily find that on my LinkedIn. We're not naming names, but there they are. Right. So I was laid off. I truly believe because I was disabled that they decided to go with somebody else that was in the same position as me which was like really messed up so I decided because I didn't want to end up in the same cycle again doing the same thing for another corporate which would end up in the same cycle over and over again so I decided let's try to my hand at my own business and I did and then I kind of like fell into accessibility education, and there was a huge gap with that. And really, I love it because it's the way I do it.

20:39I explain it. I'm not telling you just to do it. I really explain it. I help you understand why. And then it actually makes your business a lot better because you're much more thoughtful about how you're doing things. You have a fantastic blog. Your website, Erin is mableyq.com m-a-b-e-l-y-q.com your blog by the way is called read my lips which I think is cute and uh have you tried reading your lip have you tried reading lip reading lip is really hard it it's definitely something that takes a lot of practice uh and my wife is actually quite good at it. And fun fact, that sometimes comes in handy.

21:28I love it. Love it. I can't read with anything. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a superpower for sure. Maybellicue.com, there is right on the page, you could see where you could grab a 15-minute discovery call. If nothing else, I think it's probably pretty important for our leaders that are listening right here, at least explore and just see maybe are there any gaps? Because Aaron, as you mentioned, there's no reason to feel bad or shame over this stuff. Like even just like with the caption setting in Zoom, you don't know unless you learn this, right? And unfortunately, there are just so many things to learn in the world.

22:07And sometimes things kind of just, you know, they're not in our immediate field of vision or in our forefront. So it's okay. But at least please do grab some time with Aaron. Aaron, again, your website, mableeq.com. You're the CEO and founder. Thank you, Aaron, so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh. I really appreciate it.

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