Article 19 – Book Talk on Being Heumann: Judith Heumann’s Biography
Full Transcript
Narrator:
Expression is one of the most powerful tools we have. A voice, a pen, a keyboard. The real change which must give to people throughout the world their human rights must come about in the hearts of people. We must want our fellow human beings to have rights and freedoms which give them dignity. Article 19 is the voice in the room.
Kristen:
Hello everyone. I’m Kristen Witucki. Tamman Content Contributor and accessibility specialist and I am hosting our conversation today. About once a month, Tamman employees get together for a lunch and learn to talk about anything in the disability space. Usually a book. And, we felt that it was very appropriate after Embry Owen’s blog entry about all of the contributions from Judith Heumann to talk about her memoir and her life as a disability activist.
Article 19 is a call for others to join us in a bigger conversation around the ADA, digital accessibility, and access to information. At Tamman we are working to build the inclusive web every day. But, to do that, we need all of us working together and learning together. Thank you so much for listening to Article 19 and let’s get to today’s conversation.
Marty:
Kristen, there is quite a bit to talk about when it comes to the life of Judy Heumann. And, this won’t be the first time that Tamman has recognized her life. We do have a remembrance on our website, tammaninc.com/learn. You can do a search for Judith or Heumann H-E-U-M-A-N-N. But let me turn it over to you to do an introduction of who she was and start our conversation.
Kristen:
Thank you, Marty. Thanks for everyone who could make it today and thanks to everyone on the podcast who is listening now. And, the ADA was passed with a lot of struggles to get it passed. And actually, possibly even more struggle for the section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973 and I think that that a lot of times we forget just how far we’ve come. And at Tamman, we’re always talking about where we have to go and what still has to be done. We should always, but this is a little bit of a history book talk. And, I just actually want to start with the end, because why not, but I just kind of want to appreciate the ADA moment.
This is how Judith Heumann, disability rights activist described the ADA, “July 26, 1990 was a glorious summer day in Washington, D.C. The trees were lush. The sun was out. And the sky was blue. 3,000 people were gathered on the south lawn of the White House. In front standing on a platform was President George H.W. Bush with Justin Dart at his side. As President Bush began to speak, a hush fell on the enormous crowd. “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down,” he said. He sat down at a desk and signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. Our time had come. After nearly 20 years of protesting from one coast to the other, under five presidents, republican and democratic, we had created what I believed to be the strongest, most comprehensive civil rights legislation for disability in the world. I was 41 years old and, finally, I was an equal citizen.” I mean just to sit with that is pretty amazing when I think about the White House proclamation, for instance, which was a very worthy proclamation, but also mostly talking about the politicians and less about the people. And so, this was a real from the people moment of reading about the ADA. My memory of the ADA as a blind woman came two years later, maybe three, two and a half. When President Clinton was inaugurated, I was in sixth grade, fifth grade, maybe fifth grade. And, we were watching it and I remember somebody was extolling President Bush’s on the way out and one of the things that was mentioned was that he signed the ADA into law. And, some kid was like, “oh, for people like you?” to me. I just remember feeling terribly ashamed and like, you know, oh my god. I didn’t even know what the ADA was, or like what it had done, or what things were like before. I was just like, oh my god, it was just for weirdos like me. And, I remember like just feeling kind of shame.
So, like, 33 years later, I’m reading about it like wow, this is pretty cool legislation that got passed. So, I think I’m always newly appreciating it. But I also wasn’t aware of what people had to go through before. So, it’s really interesting to read a book from somebody who remembers literally what it was like not to go to school. What it was like not to be allowed to work. You know, what it’s like to be stuck outside of a building because you can’t literally get in the building. And, it puts everything in a very humbling perspective for me. And so, I would love to turn it over to all of you. I don’t even know where to start. Do any of you have any thoughts about the ADA or where we are, or where we’re going, what’s happening?
Marty:
Yeah, this is Marty. I’ll jump in as folks are gathering some of their thoughts just on the first part. And that is that certainly in my lifetime, it’s not just the most important civil rights legislation for people with disabilities, but I think it’s the most important civil rights legislation in my lifetime. I was not born in the 60’s. So obviously, that is pretty important too. We’re still building on it. We’re still improving it, the three decades plus later, which is remarkable. And, I think that that is typical for, you know, the United States, but it’s also frustrating, and I’m impatient. You know I want more, especially from that digital accessibility standpoint and from the employment standpoint, which I think are the two areas where I think the ADA really hasn’t made progress. But so as not to focus too much on the negative on this day, I do think that there is something to celebrate when it comes to the overwhelming transformation that has happened in buildings and the overwhelming transformation that has happened in our physical spaces. I think that is really worth celebrating. And In 30 years, to transform so much, whether it’s ramps, or buttons on doors, or the bathrooms, et cetera. There’s so much to celebrate there. 30 years is actually a short period of time when it comes to physical spaces. So, I think that that’s exciting for sure. I would love to hear from other folks as well.
Kristen:
And despite my very negative education memory attached to the ADA, I think education in general has come a long, long way since it was passed.
Marty:
Yes, great point.
Kristen:
Markus?
Markus:
In the beginning of the book, they were talking about the stigma of disability and with the polio epidemic happening, there were a lot of other children, and even adults, that were a lot like Judith who caught polio and then had to spend three months in an iron lung. And, one of the things that Judith’s family encountered was that she was going to have to go into an institution, which is what they did with many children and adults at that time. And, they even discouraged their parents from visiting the children when they were in the institutions. And, it was spun as these kids are a social and physical and economic burden on their families and made it feel as if the family had done something wrong. It was kind of hard to wrap your head around that and reading that and it was very upsetting. I’m glad we’ve come a long way from that, but it gives an explanation of how we got to the ADA and why we got to the ADA, because of how we were treating people that were different than us and stigmatizing people that were different than the quote unquote norm. And again, as it’s come up in other book talks, it seems very much like a capitalist value.
Kristen:
Oh yeah. And I think it’s an interesting reminder is that there may still be those emotions from many family members of people with disabilities, especially when they’re newly diagnosed or from the people themselves. And, that before the solution was, well just put away this person. Like avoid this person. Don’t face the “problem.” And some things have changed. I mean now it’s like people with disabilities are part of our communities. We live with each other. We all live together. But there’s also – you know that aspect is still the same is some of the emotions that people have about disability still exists.
Markus:
That comes into like the disability culture, which was explained on pages 22 and 23. And, it’s the essence of what the outspoken religious people speak up about and then turn around and do the opposite. And then she wrote that Buddhism and kid culture are the closest to disability culture, because if you think about it, kids just want to be kids and play with everybody and get along. And they don’t care if somebody is different. They find ways to include each other. And, the other values are learned values that are taught.
Kristen:
No, it’s true. I’m going to jump in and read about the kid culture real quick. That’s a great segue. This is from the beginning of the book, after the introduction, the first chapter. It says, “in 1953 I was six. Dwight D. Eisenhower was President. Elizabeth Taylor was a box office star. Jackie Robinson had just recently broken the color line in baseball and World War two had ended a mere eight years earlier. Elvis Presley had three years to go before his breakthrough on the Ed Sullivan Show. The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and much of America celebrating the advent of peace and prosperity was in the throes of having seven million babies, the baby boom. Less obvious than the general sense of prosperity, was the discontent that simmered below the surface, among the people living lives segregated from the wealth of post-World War Two America, whether African Americans, Latinos, or other minorities.
In 1953, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was in the midst of taking its class action suit, Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka to the Supreme Court. Two years later, Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. To my parents, the events of the new country were of great interest. And, they, along with all the other immigrants of our Brooklyn neighborhood, followed the news closely. I, on the other hand, at six understood very little of the national news. But from my six-year-old perspective, I could have told you a great deal about what life was like for someone like me. One of nearly 43,000 American children affected by the 1949 polio epidemic. I was a quadriplegic. Though my life wasn’t marked with the little whites only signs that signaled segregation in the south, the life I lived was also a segregated one. Of course, I didn’t understand this for a long time, shielded as I was by the love of my family and friends.
For me at six, my city block was my whole world. There was no place I would rather have been. In the summer of 1953, you would have quite likely found me on my way to Arlene’s house next door, pushing myself in my manual wheelchair, down the sidewalk in tiny increments. To get to Arlene’s, my journey started with my mother pushing me down the ramp from our house to the sidewalk. Once there, I would grip the rims of my wheelchair tires and inch my way along. It would be another 15 years before I would have an electric wheelchair. At that time, a Canadian, George Kline, motivated by the needs of returning World War two veterans, was in the process of inventing the electric wheelchair. But the chair was still four years away from mass production. Because my bout with polio as an infant had left me with very little strength in my arms, moving my manual wheelchair took all my effort.
The key to getting to Arlene’s and back, was a miniscule incline in the sidewalk between our two houses. It was the tiniest incline you could imagine. It would have been invisible to any pedestrian walking by, but I knew that if I could get myself to the top of it, I could then coast down the other side. As I worked my way up the sidewalk, I could hear the radio through our kitchen window where my little four-year-old brother, Joey, was eating a cereal with my mother and my baby brother, Ricky. My father having left for our butcher shop in the wee hours of the morning. Nearly at the top of the incline, I held my breath as my chair crept up the last infinitesimal rise. The sun got on the back of my head, hair falling over my eyes. Without thinking, I took one hand off the wheel to brush my hair off my face. The wheel, without a stabilizing force of both my hands slipped. And I rolled all the way back to my original spot. Sighing, I lifted my head and look around hopefully. Any kids out yet? I looked for anyone who might be able to give me a little push, but the street was quiet. I took a deep breath, bent my head, and started over. Some time later, five minutes, 10, 30 – time has a different meaning when you’re six. I landed in front of Arlene’s stoop and looked at the three steps up to the door. This was the part of the expedition that made me feel awkward. I couldn’t get my wheelchair up the steps to ring Arlene’s doorbell, which meant I had to sit on the sidewalk in front of her house and yell for her to come out and play.
I sat for a few minutes. Arlene’s house had a narrow, red brick front with white siding on the upper level and a small patch of flowers on a small rectangular lawn. It was just like ours, minus our blue hydrangeas. If the car was in front of the house, I knew the family was home. With any luck, someone would come out and see me. I shifted my gaze to our house. I could hear Uncle Frank, who wasn’t our uncle, but we called him uncle anyway, yelling on the other side of Arlene’s, but no one came out of the house either. Eyeing Arlene’s bedroom window on the second floor, I watched for her shadow. Her white curtains stirred gently in the wind. I glanced up and down the street one last time to see if anyone had come out to play. A bird chirped, flew across the empty street, and landed on the roof. Gathering my courage, I called out. Arlene, can you come out and play. I waited, embarrassed. I had to yell loud enough that Arlene or her mom or dad or brothers would hear me and didn’t want to yell so loud the whole block would hear me, but nothing. I couldn’t hear anyone inside the house. I tried again and yelled a bit louder. Arlene, could you come out and play? I paused and watched the house. Still nothing. I stopped worrying about whether or not the whole block could hear me and hollered. Arlene, I shouted as loudly as I could, come out and play!”
You know, so you just imagine, like any little kid would just run out the door and run to the other kid’s house, jump up the steps, ring the doorbell, but that’s because steps are designed for people who run. And, you know, there was no alternative for her. It took her like an hour to get somebody’s attention. That’s just unimaginable in a way to me. And also, later in the book she talks about she wasn’t allowed in schools. Her parents did their very, very best to get her into any school they could. And, they just kept being told no. Then she got home instruction. Home instruction was two and a half hours a week from a teacher who like had to go home instruct a bunch of kids. So, you know, there was this expectation all through her life that she wasn’t going to work and wasn’t going to go to college and you know any kind of education was auxiliary for people with disabilities. So, it’s just very heartbreaking.
Marty:
Kristen, this is Marty again. I am curious and I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m struck by the note in the beginning of that reading around the person who invented the mechanized wheelchair. That he was moved by veterans and returning veterans. In our militarized society, I can imagine that that bond between those that may have permanent disabilities from birth for Judith and her activism being able to build that with the military and the returning vets that have issues. Is that a theme in the book, this idea of the importance of veterans for moving things forward?
Kristen:
It’s not a large theme, but it’s definitely mentioned a few times. You know for instance, with the sit-ins, there’s this idea that she could maybe get veterans support to increase the visibility of things, and actually there is an incident early you know when she’s trying to become a teacher. She tries to bring a friend with her who was a veteran, because she thought that would give her more weight and people would respect her more, but I was very struck by how much Jimmy Carter and Secretary Califano who was the Health and Education Welfare Secretary at the time and Maldonado in California didn’t really care or didn’t want to face this. And, I think, I’ve heard this off and on from veterans, like they’re supposed to have benefits, but do they actually get them? And, how does this work? I saw it go both ways in the book for sure, but she definitely wanted to reach out to veterans with disabilities for that reason for sure.
Marty:
I would imagine that the work moving it forward would have to come with, you know, as veterans sort of walk on water in America, that – and Tammy Duckworth, Senator Tammy Duckworth being a veteran who became disabled in her service. I could see that being the mechanism that finally pushes things forward in a different way. Steve, go ahead.
Steve:
Thanks. Yes, thank you. It kind of cuts both ways, Marty, I think, because I’m the son of a veteran whose father was in a prison camp for one evening. Escaped, got shot in the leg, and lost the use of his leg. And, you know, we look at veterans in two different ways sometimes. He wasn’t Vietnam. He was Korea, but it was still a different time. It was the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. And, sometimes veterans weren’t always presented in the best of light. So, I think it kind of works both ways. With that being said, what really has impressed me in doing my own research when Kristen introduced this topic was the bipartisan nature that we had to make these things happen. And it was, I’ll even call it nonpartisan in many ways, which it should be, you know. There shouldn’t be any partisan politics when it’s coming to things like this. When reading about some of these people, I just think there were just so many unsung heroes. Like I was reading about Justin Dart. I was just amazed by how he spent his life, just incredible.
Kristen:
Yes, Justin Dart and others, there were a lot of key republicans in that legislation. There’s a great sketch somewhere in the book about how much he did for the movement. There’s certainly this thanks for your service feeling. I think that there’s also occasionally a very misguided thought that, oh well they’re not useful anymore. They’ve done their service and they can’t help us anymore and let’s forget about those people. That veterans share a part of the feeling about people with disabilities in general, especially at that time.
Marty:
Agreed. I think Jon Stewart does a good job in really trying to put that point of view across.
Kristen:
Does anyone else have any thoughts about the book or Judith Heumann, ADA, disability?
Markus:
Yeah, this is Markus again. Another area that really struck me in the book, well there were quite a few. I found myself getting upset reading this book. On page 153 she talked about equality versus equity. This area just totally blew me away. Equality is not about treating everyone the same. It’s about fairness. The equity of access. The equity of access for education, food, healthcare, shelter, everything, jobs, and more. And a s a society, we fail to differentiate equity versus equality, whereas there are people who think that equality means everybody’s on the exact same playing field no matter what. It’s like a 100-yard dash with somebody who has no legs going against somebody who has legs. Equality really isn’t fair at the end of the day. It’s the equity part that makes it fair. She really, I think, hammered that point home quite a bit throughout the book, but she also pointed out that people who ask for equity are deemed difficult or selfish and it’s spun to make them look bad too.
Kristen:
Yeah, it’s true. That also has to do with the shift from the medical model to the social model of disability. So, she writes just quickly toward the beginning, like “It was around that time that my friends and I were starting to differ from our parents in our take on the barriers we faced. Our parents’ generation associated disability with President Franklin Roosevelt who actively hid from the public his paralysis from polio. He never allowed himself to be photographed in his wheelchair or being helped with his mobility. He talked about disability as something for an individual to beat and conquer. We disagreed with this. We did not see our issue as a medical problem that if we just fixed it would be fine. We were beginning to see our lack of access as a problem with society, rather than our individual problem. From our perspective, disability was something that could happen to anyone at anytime and frequently did, so it was right for society to design its infrastructure and systems around this fact of life. We had grown up with the civil rights movement. I was eight when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the whites only section of the bus and just starting college when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Wasn’t it the government’s responsibility to ensure that everyone could participate equally in our society?” Yeah, definitely. I mean that’s all about equality versus equity and just the idea that we don’t all function the same way or need the same things and that we all need to give to society with what our full potential in our own ways.
Markus:
So, how do we educate people in equity versus equality so that we can make the changes that we need to make that aren’t so difficult, but need to be done?
Kristen:
Yeah, how do we do that?
Marty:
Well, this is Marty again. This may be, that last quote there really struck me. It’s one that I agree with to my core, but I think in terms of government creating a space for everyone to participate equally. But Markus your question I think is a slightly different one. That is, I think we’re in a moment in our society and with our government specifically where things are not going to move in the way we want. And certainly, not from like big amazing legislation, like the ADA and the Civil Rights Act. So, where is it going to come from? And, I think I have two hypotheses for this. Number one, over the last several generations, the baby boomers have changed society and as the baby boomers have moved through different stages – they were the first teenagers. So, we created a whole teenage-dom around them. They were the drivers behind civil rights and music and culture and just so much that this giant group of people have done. And as they age and begin to experience different types of disabilities, I think the market power of that group of people is going to start changing and forcing companies and others, through just the sheer force of their numbers, to make some changes. So, t hat’s the first one and then that leads into the second one, which is – and maybe this is the latent libertarian in me, but I do think that it’s gonna come from the market, from consumerism, from people demanding that accessibility be incorporated into their products and services and employment and other things. And so, the awareness and how you use awareness may change. I think it’s gonna come from those two areas of someone who never had any access or any involvement with someone with any kind of disability and now they have a parent whose had a stroke or has lost mobility in some way or is having cognitive issues for the first time or needs support with their vision from a limited vision and things like that. So, I think that and then they’re gonna be thinking about disability in a whole new way, right? Because now it’s part of their life. And then making those demands on the companies that provide services and consumer goods to say we need a washing machine that has voice recognition and can talk to me or we need different ways in which fire alarms work so that it’s not just auditory, but it’s also visual and things like that that those kinds of things are going to be driven by the market. That’s my – the baby boomers and the market are my two main points there.
Steve:
Thanks, Steve again, yeah. I kind of like the optimism, Marty. I kind of the camp that I see Gen Z sort of changing it. I just think that they’re perspective, their point of view, their heart, their knowledge is in the right place. And, I just see monumental change coming from that generation. Might require a little more patience, but just the data that I look at, that’s where I kind of see -. You go on TikTok and you just see their comments, and you see the things that they say in this area. Very outspoken, in your face. And, it’s not up for debate [laughter].
Kristen:
Yeah, I’m really struck by my kinds in schools. They go to school with kids of many backgrounds and abilities. Yeah, there’s definitely a curiosity about differences. There’s an idea of being open to differences and that people need more than what we’re getting, for sure. Maybe it comes from the old and the young. Like, we’re all in the middle – we’re not doing enough. We’re not doing enough.
Marty:
Gen X is, forget you guys.
Kristen:
Yeah, forget us. I’m not Gen X, by the way. Harper?
Harper:
Thank you, Kristen. Hi, this is Harper. Something that I think is going to be coming down the pike, probably later rather than sooner is – at least for my parents. They’re not – I don’t even want to say technologically fluent. They’re not always technologically literate, especially with things that are becoming more and more complex and coming out day by day, but new disabilities come up over time as you age. They grow. They’re situational. They become permanent. The generations that are technologically fluent and have grown up with technology now, they’re going to age. Eventually, when they find that they are not able to work with and access, interact with technology like they used to, I think that will be a big wake up call of like, hey, we’re used to this. This doesn’t work anymore. We need to adapt for us and that will just – I don’t want to say trickle down, but it will kind of have a chain reaction of this will affect the younger generation and it will hopefully become ubiquitous, because everyone realized oh, this is not going away. In fact, this is coming up for us even sooner, you know for Generation Z and I believe it’s Generation Alpha is the one after that or they, you know, latest generation. I think it’s a matter of time. Hopefully, it’s a little bit sooner than that.
Kristen:
Yeah, it makes me think about this very traditional very American idea of self-reliance and we should be able to take care of ourselves or maybe our families and how against progress that ends up being. I don’t know. It’s just hard on everybody, not just people who deadlock over legislation, but also the people who are directly affected, feeling like I have to take care of this alone. Whatever, I’ll just suck it up and not be able to do things. Hopefully, we’re not heading that way, but it scares me.
Marty:
So, do we want to turn this into a massive generational debate? I think that would be fun. Let’s go ahead and – I’m just joking. This is Marty.
Kristen:
No, no we don’t.
Marty:
Kristen, I guess, if I can as a way of moving us forward here. We only have another couple of minutes. What is your one takeaway? As you think about Judith’s book here and what her activism meant, is there anything that you really are walking away thinking about and is there a specific call to action that she leaves to you and that you would leave to us?
Kristen:
Oh! So many, so many things. So, I think her call to action is a reminder that people can do more when they do it together. I would say that’s the overarching theme throughout this book. And, it’s a wake-up call for me, because I am a person who has gone to blindness groups, hasn’t really joined in the things they’re doing, for a number of reasons, but it’s interesting that big groups of people are what really move things in society. We can move things individually with our interactions as people, but on a larger level it’s groups. That’s I would say her largest call.
Marty:
That’s great. Go ahead, David, please.
David:
Yeah, I was just going to tag onto that. It’s not just about having a large amount of people, but a variety of people of different roles and representatives in all facets of life. Like, I remember how in her case against the Board of Education, she made it very clear how important it was that the judge for that case was like the first female, African-American to become a federal judge in the U.S. And so, she was able to very much empathize with Heumann’s plight. That was a kind of a large driving force behind what allowed her to end up winning that case. She kind of ended up juxtaposing that, I think, later on in the book with an incident at an airline where she was taken off. And so, she had gone to court for that. The judge very much did not empathize with her case and ended up calling her litigious and trying to throw it out. And, so it’s important to kind of have people empathize in different roles in life so they can end up coming together and understanding these trials and tribulations.
Kristen:
Oh yeah, for sure. Just to connect with the empathy idea, I’m going to throw a little quote in. I think it’s pretty short. This is when they’re protesting the lack of empathy from government about the section 504 of 1973, which had been built under the Ford administration, but hadn’t gotten passed. And, the Carter administration promised that they would pass it, but then they didn’t. They kept trying to weaken the legislation before they were passing it. The people with disabilities were protesting and wanting these regulations to pass the way there were originally written. But here’s a cool little quote about the meeting itself.
“We’d been in the building almost a week. We were settling into a kind-of routine. In the morning, the committees would meet. The food committee planned meals. The medication committee compiled a list of needs.” Then it’s listing these restaurants that would deliver. Also, I mean it’s just kind of amazing that these people were risking their lives, literally to protest, because of the medications and assistance and things like that. “In the evening, we’d hold a building wide meeting to share what we knew of events happening outside the building and our current thinking on strategy. It had become our practice. The leadership team would hash through an approach and Kitty and I would then present to the larger group. We continued to maintain our policy of not starting the meetings until every single protestor had arrived and the sign language interpreters were ready to start. We insisted the meetings not end until every last protestor had a chance to speak. This sometimes meant that our meetings didn’t end until three in the morning, partly because some of us struggled with forming words as a result of our disability and partly y because we were dealing with issues we took very seriously. The most remarkable thing about our building wide meetings wasn’t their length, however, but the culture of listening that had developed. No matter how long it took for someone to talk, we listened. Every one of us, now 150 protestors, would listen in a perfect and beautiful silence.”
Marty:
Huge, huge. I wanted to allow that moment to linger for a moment. I want to draw us to a close. Kristen, but before I do. Ms. Barker, go ahead. You have your hand.
Emma:
Hi everyone, this is Emma. Just as you were reading that section, Kristen, it reminded me – I wanted to mention, I don’t think anyone has mentioned this in this call yet is if you have not seen on Netflix, “Crip Camp.” It’s a documentary that follows the protests through the ADA, but it starts with this camp where a lot of people, including Judith Heumann went when they were teens. And, it includes scenes from these protests. It is just incredible. So, anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s called Crip Camp, C-R-I-P C-A-M-P. And, you can find it on Netflix, maybe other places as well. It is excellent. Strongly recommend it. I Just wanted to throw that out there.
Kristen:
She really felt the camp was one place where people with disabilities were at home and they understood each other. The counselors understood them. That was the first aspect of her life. And, I love that that documentary has pulled all those things together, the camp and protests and those connections.
Marty:
Yes, for sure. Great recommendation, Emma. It’s a very good documentary. I highly recommend it. Well, I don’t think that this is going to be the last we discuss the activism of Judith Heumann and what we can learn from her and others who are part of this. The idea that we are a mission driven organization, that Tamman is a mission driven organization is important. And, I think we’ve touched on a number of things that are part of our strategy moving forward. This is really I’m speaking now to all of us on this call who are employees and that is that we are better together. We learn collectively. We share. These book talks are a big part of that, but so is the things that we share on Slack with each other and guiding each other and pushing each other to be a little bit better every day. Externally, working with organizations. That is something that we believe very strongly in, that if we’re going to move digital accessibility forward and create a more inclusive web and more inclusive world, it cannot be only Tamman. And that we need to engage with partners and other allies, pun intended to help transform our digital world, and by extension our world in general. We want people to continue to think about that, that everyone here at Tamman plays an important role in driving all of the forward and making a more equitable world. So, with that, thank you everyone for coming and spending your lunch hour with us and spending a little bit of time. Kristen, I can’t thank you enough for recommending books, for leading these discussions, for being someone who is bringing so much learning to our community. I look forward to our next book lunch and learn. I also want to thank Markus Goldman, who is our producer extraordinaire, but so much more than that, for helping to create the sound and for us to be able to share these discussions with a much broader audience and kind of continue to drive education and awareness forward, but also just someone who has the most inquisitive mind. I appreciate you jumping in and being a participant and not just staying behind the sound booth as it were. Thank you to everybody for being a part of what we’re trying to do. Thanks for another great book lunch and learn everyone. We will absolutely see you next time.
Kristen:
Thank you so much for listening to the book talk about Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir Of A Disability Activist By Judith Heumann. The producers for Article 19 are Markus Goldman and Harper Yatvin. And, I am your host, Kristen Witucki. If you like what you heard today and want to explore more about digital accessibility, technology, our company culture, or anything else, just schedule a time to meet with us. You can find the whole Tamman team at tammaninc.com. That’s T-A-M-M-A-N-I-N-C dot com. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter while you’re there so you never miss an event or an insight from us. And, be sure to rate our podcast 5 stars on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you catch us. It really helps our podcast grow and reach new audiences. Make sure to follow us. Hit that bell icon so you never miss an episode. If social media is more your style. You can also follow us at Tamman Inc. on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, or Facebook. And share our podcast on your favorite platform. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of Article 19. Take Care.
Show Notes:
Judith Heumann’s Biography: Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir Of A Disability Activist By Judith Heumann.
Tamman’s article remembering Judith Heumann and her lifelong achievements.
An introduction to the ADA Civil Rights Legislation.
How the electric wheelchair was created to help veterans returning from war.
Short article on Senator Tammy Duckworth’s journey from a veteran, to becoming disabled, to becoming a Senator.
An introduction to different models of disability.
The Crip Camp documentary, which can be found on Netflix.
