Article 19 – There Plant Eyes Book Talk
A review of Leona Godin’s book on the cultural history of blindness.
The Tamman team talks about the book, “There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness,” by Dr. M Leona Godin. This book delves into scientific, historical, religious, and cultural phenomena, that have led to the ocularcentrism of our world, a term that Leona Godin coined to mean a visual perception and way of thinking whose impact people who are blind or low vision still feel today.
Host Kristen Witucki and other members of the Tamman team chat about the many different topics discussed in this book including echolocation, which led to us further exploring echocolation in this episode of Article 19!
Listen to more Article 19 Podcast Episodes
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, and welcome to Article 19. I’m Kristen Witucki, content creator and accessibility specialist at Tamman, and I am co-hosting the conversation today. We spent some time at Tamman doing a book talk on a book, “There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness,” by Dr. M Leona Godin. This book delved into scientific, historical, religious, and cultural phenomena, that have led to the ocularcentrism of our world, a term that Leona Godin coined to mean a visual perception and way of thinking whose impact people who are blind or low vision still feel today. So grab the book in whatever format you choose. If you use Audible, Dr. Godin reads the book. 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, and all of you, working together and learning together. Thank you so much for listening to Article 19, and we will get the conversation started with data analyst Emma Barker and content creator Kristen Witucki hosting today.
Emma:
I guess we’ll start with the idea of what does the term “ocularcentrism” mean and, Kristen, if you have anything you’d like to say about how does that relate to the larger themes of the book?
Kristen:
So I would be interested to hear from all of you about how you feel ocularcentrism pervades our culture, but I think one of the overarching themes of this book that’s repeated through many different cultural contexts, from literature to the performing arts to philosophy to science, is that the blind perspective—which, perspective itself is a visual word, as are many—it’s glossed over because we as a society are so dependent on our visual sight and our visual interpretations of things, and the other senses are certainly important, but we are a very visual culture, as Westerners, in general, and I think the book kind of traces this from ancient Greece to the present, and interestingly, when we think about blind people, on the one hand, blindness is sort of treated as like, “Wow, so you don’t see, so you don’t fall into these visual traps that our culture has.”
Kristen:
Which, to a certain extent, is true and a certain extent is not, and then on the other hand, certainly, it’s up to the individual which visual traps they fall into. But then—and that’s kind of given this spiritual elevation or feeling that people who are blind or have low vision, like, we’ve kind of got this—the “otherworldly” understanding of things, like we know the future, we know what’s really important. And then on the other hand, it’s like, “Well you don’t see anything that we see, so you don’t know anything.” Then it can affect people’s ability to get a job, to find a relationship, especially with someone who can see, all kinds of random hiccups in daily life, so. I think that’s kind of the fastest way to explain it.
Emma:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I was realizing, I don’t think before this book, I had ever heard or read the word “ocularcentrism,” but as soon as I read it, I was like, “Yeah.” I didn’t know the word for it ahead of time, but once I read it, it was like, “Oh yeah, it’s everywhere.” And there was the link that I thought was really interesting, and Chapter Five starts off talking about Galileo, and when Kristen and I were talking ahead of this lunch and learn, I was saying that taking the idea of ocularcentrism and then also thinking about what is considered the norm, what is considered typical in terms of vision, and there was a phrase in here where it was talking about—I’m going to read just a sentence, from Chapter Five—it’s talking about Galileo and his discovery of the telescope, and it says, “The telescope, as a visual prosthesis, starkly demonstrated how the limited focal range of humans limited our understanding of the cosmos.” And so I think that that’s just a really interesting pairing of ocularcentrism and vision being such a kind of central part of our society, or what’s assumed in terms of ability as like, “normal,” quote/unquote.
Kristen:
Right.
Emma:
And there’s so much limitation to it. We—before microscopes, before telescopes, there was so much outside of our ability to visually perceive. And—I’m stacking a bunch of ideas—but the other connection that this had for me was things like, well, we don’t usually think of glasses as assistive technology, and they are. But until we had—so I think some of it speaks to that, there was that hubris, was mentioned in the intro, of what we usually see and assuming that that is the norm, and that anything that allows us to—you know, glasses that allow us to correct, you know, some vision to be quote/unquote “normal” are just seen as a normal everyday thing.
Emma:
But the limitation of our vision, we didn’t even know what we couldn’t see or perceive about the universe without it, so there is a limitation that is invisible to us, because we don’t look for it.
Kristen:
Yeah, and now that we have these prosthetics, which are very powerful, and have brought us many images, science is traditionally considered visual. Like if you can’t see it, then it’s not scientific, so. You know, it’s just really interesting.
Emma:
Did anyone have any thoughts on this section? Yeah, Markus?
Markus:
Later on, in Chapter Five, to continue what you were saying about ocularcentrism, Francis Bacon was quoted a couple of times, and—on pages 63 and 64, he said, “It is evident that sight holds first place among the senses as far as information is concerned,” and he identifies the three main functions of scientific visual instruments—“to see what has not been seen, or to see further, or to see more accurately and distinctly.” So he showed that ocularcentrism big time in that quote, and it seemed that throughout history, you see quite a bit of it. Kristen, I was wondering how that made you feel, reading that, and how is it incorrect to you?
Kristen:
Well, I’m just thinking now, that—wouldn’t it be so cool if instead—I mean, I’ve never seen anything through a microscope—first of all, my sight is—I don’t have any sight or light perception, which is actually a minority within the blindness community, as is shown in that book. So a lot of people have some form of some vision, or kind of random dots of light at the very least, like flashing through. So blindness and low vision is a whole spectrum, and I’m at the far end, so I can’t imagine a lot of these things, but I just am thinking now like—you know, imagine if there was something like this to augment hearing, or imagine if—I know at one point in one of the chapters, because this whole book is now kind of a blur—but the idea of the cane as kind of extending your reach to be able to feel things was not seen as odd, but it’s kind of a necessity for everybody. Like imagine if those things were more widely available, like what differences there would be in the ways we think of everything. So I think that’s just something to sort of imagine. And even when we think about websites, they’re kind of visual first and then audible second, and after that, they don’t take in the other senses at all, so you can’t really ever go to a clothing store in virtual reality and feel what a piece of clothing would feel like. You know, and that’s not prioritized. So just thinking about that, those are the thoughts that run through my brain.
Emma:
I’m just going to read this little section because I think that that’s an interesting segue about what is or isn’t available as acceptable tools or available tools.
Emma:
So, this is talking about James Holman, who uses echolocation. It says, “Holman figured out the usefulness of echolocation, as many blind children do, often by emitting clicks with their mouths as soon as they begin walking in order to avoid walls. This active kind of echolocation has historically been downplayed by many blind organizations. In my many adventures with mobility instructors over the years, echolocation was never mentioned, and I’ve heard from friends who were born blind that they were dissuaded from using their own voices to echolocate. Similar to arguments against braille, the fear with regard to echolocation seems to be that the use of clicks or other sounds to help determine space is too different and potentially alienating, likely to erect barriers between the sighted and the blind. At least, that has by and large been the prevailing ideology until very recently.” So I found that part really interesting, talking about this almost active limitation of useful aids and techniques because of the fear of othering.
Kristen:
I’m a braille reader. There was never any question that I would read braille. A lot of people who have some sight have to fight for their braille, or their parents have to, because they may have very little vision, they may fatigue easily, or just their eye condition could get progressively worse over their lifetime, but if braille is not fought for, you know, then they might just have to struggle with print, or they’ll be like, “Oh, well, just listen to it.” That was not the case for me, but I know for sure that I was discouraged from echolocating and I think it’s really fascinating, like, what I have lost, probably. So our next question is a common thread throughout the book is that impressions of blindness are far more threatening to blind people than the blindness itself, as sonar expert Daniel Kish says. What do you think about that proposition? What can you personally do to change these impressions, and what can society do? You can answer any of those or none of those, you can go off on a tangent, but I’m curious what you all think about that.
Emma:
Yeah, I’d love to open that question up, thinking about the impressions of blindness and how that can actually be the more isolating, stigmatizing aspect than actually being blind. So if anyone has any thoughts on that and wants to take themselves off mute, feel free. Think about what is it we can personally do to shift these impressions and what is it as society—broader, what could society do? Harper?
Harper:
Hi. So something that in the book that really struck me was—I believe it was the author—she was in a cafeteria and she looked lost, she was trying to find her way to a table, something of that nature, and someone pulled her aside and said, “Are you looking for your friend?” and she kinda just went along with it, and was like, “Yeah, sure.”
Harper:
And this guy took her over to the table with the only other blind person in school, thinking that because they’re blind, they have to be friends. And that really struck me as like almost being like pigeonholed into friendship by association. That’s frustrating. So I think as a society, maybe even just taking the time just to talk to someone instead of saying, “Here, you go over there.” That’s not fair. No one deserves or wants to be treated that way. You know? I would love to go into things like architecture or a more inclusive model of disability, but if we’re talking just people treating people well, you should never treat someone as like they’re this way, so they automatically must associate with that person of another group. That’s just astounding to me.
Kristen:
Yeah, exactly.
Emma:
That section definitely jumped out to me, as well. I think you’re right. It touches on something that I feel like I’ve been reflecting on since joining Tamman, which is how much our society, the way it is structured, tends to only be built or function for people that it sees within its idea of the norm, and how anyone who falls outside of that definition really, many times, gets kind of pushed into a special classroom or a special school, and while some of those can be extremely beneficial, especially if a person is wanting to find, you know, people who have similar experiences to be able to bond with and share with, I feel like one piece that seems like something that we can do and we can push for society to do more is just to bring together people who have different experiences, because the more you get to know a person who is blind, a person who is deaf, a person who is different from you in some way, the more you see them as a full person, not just like “Oh, they have this thing that’s different, and that is the category they fall under in my brain,” which when it happens individually can have impacts and when it happens as a society can obviously have huge impact.
Harper:
I totally agree. As you’re saying this, I’m—my brain, the gears are turning just trying to think how would that play out in real life? And I’m trying to think—if we’re going with someone who’s still in school, an assembly is totally the wrong answer, because that’s just singling someone out and someone may not like public speaking, but to have something that is akin to finding a mutual activity that someone who is blind and someone who is sighted can both do, and really bonding over that, and actually talking to them. I know someone in my family, they have a disability and they can be treated as if they’re helpless or incapable when they’re not, it’s just that this part of their life simply needs a workaround or a different way to approach the problem and find a similar if not the same solution. It’s really just having that initial conversation and getting over that initial, “This is different, I don’t know about it” inertia. Once you get past that feeling, I feel that it’s much, much easier to build and bridge that gap.
Emma:
Yeah, absolutely.
Emma:
And that’s a really beautiful segue into one of the things we wanted to talk about next, which is really the idea of seeing people as full people and not just seeing them as their condition, or an aspect of their personality, but seeing them as a complete person who has complexities. So Kristen, would you mind doing a little intro into what we wanted to talk about, about Helen Keller?
Kristen:
Yeah, so there is—everyone knows about Helen Keller, but what does everyone know about Helen Keller? Most people know that Helen Keller was born with sight and hearing. She had, I believe meningitis, but she had basically a high fever and lost her sight and hearing through her illness when she was like, one and a half. And then, after that, she lived in this dark, silent world where she couldn’t really communicate fully with anyone until Anne Sullivan came out and lived with them. There’s a big scene about them, you know, having a fight about eating correctly, and then all of a sudden, Anne Sullivan poured water over her hand and Helen Keller remembers the water from when she was a little kid, and then all of a sudden, she can communicate, and ta-da, it’s the end. You know? So—and that’s the end of her life, and she’s like, seven. That’s all people know about her life, so it’s all they actually wanted to know during her lifetime and later on, in the introduction, in the part that I didn’t get to read because I didn’t want to run over too much, but we basically hear that—and read that Helen Keller, you know, she went on to live a full life. I mean, she graduated from college, she had a very socialist ideology, and she did Vaudeville for about four years and then, you know, also did the lecture circuit. She had a lot of different ways that she made money. She fell in love, but ultimately decided not to marry because she felt that she would be a burden to the person—and also her family, I believe, dissuaded her—and people just sort of thought, “No, no, we want to hear the miracle story, we don’t want to hear what else you have to think about, we just want to know about like, when the water poured over your hand and you became a human.” You know? So it’s just really interesting and the way that Helen Keller has constantly been underrepresented as this little girl. So on the one hand, she’s like, sweet and helpless and innocent, and then on the other hand, she’s kind of this superhero for overcoming her obstacles, but none of those representations take in the complexity of her life and Dr. Godin calls this “inspiration porn.” It’s like when people are so super-inspired by somebody that they just don’t really take them in as a full person. And so, our question is how do these representations of blind people as being either superheroes or kind of being beggars, how do they basically interfere with our understanding of blindness as itself, and blind people as individuals?
Emma:
It’s a thread throughout the book. It comes up in a bunch of places and it comes up when—the chapter that focuses on Helen Keller and Vaudeville and love. It’s also in Chapter 15. It talks about Star Wars and—right?—when Luke actually in the moments when he didn’t use his eyesight, right, when he had that blindfold helmet and he was getting trained, and later when he was trying to—you know, that—the end with the Death Star, Obi Wan said, “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them, use the force,” and this idea comes up in a bunch of different examples. The blind samurai idea, Daredevil, these things, that you’ve got these two extremes. You’ve got this poor Helen Keller girl and she had like, this miraculous learning experience where now she can communicate, like Kristen was saying, and on the other hand, you have the blind superhero idea and there isn’t, in—you know, certainly a kind of popular culture in conversation—there isn’t any acknowledgement of the very broad center of that spectrum of people having complexity and depth and being more than just this one thing. And there is a really great quote at the beginning of Chapter 15. Georgia Cleage [ph] in “Sight Unseen” said, “The blind are either supernatural or subhuman, alien or animal. We are not only different, but dangerous.” And so we thought this was interesting to explore how these extremes, these edges of this continuum, can impact the lives of actual blind people.
Male:
I have one question, and you may have covered this already, earlier, and it is relating to the earlier portion of this discussion, but Kristen was saying that she was greatly discouraged from using echolocation. If that helps, how can someone be greatly discouraged from using that to actually get around and do what you need to do in life?
Kristen:
So they—people call it facial vision, but it’s basically hearing. And if you walk with your eyes closed down a street, you can hear the difference between like, a building or an open area. I guess you hear streets and traffic—which, that, you’re allowed to hear, still—but sometimes there’s a way to augment what you’re hearing is by clicking your tongue or snapping your fingers or clapping, and that makes the sound bounce off the walls. That’s just like, a fast clicking, but you do it kind of methodically every two to three seconds, like—and—or make whatever noise you feel you need to make. It’s considered weird. No one else does it, it doesn’t make any sense, people are like, “Why are you walking around clicking?” You know? So it’s just kind of that discomfort. In the 1800s, when braille was first invented, people felt that blind people should be using raised print because it was the same thing sighted people were using, only you could feel it, so why would you want to use something that’s different? And I think that’s the argument that people make against echolocation.
Kristen:
But they don’t really understand how it can benefit. And I think even teachers of the blind or orientation/mobility specialists are all also pretty mixed in their opinions about it. Does that explain it a little better?
Male:
Yeah, it does, and I find it to be sad that something that could help is considered bad, or weird, just to give someone else comfort that’s not even going through that.
Kristen:
Yeah.
Male:
It’s like—that’s ridiculous.
Kristen:
Yeah.
Male:
Yeah. That’s my take on it.
Kristen:
No, I think I definitely need to go spend some time with Daniel Kish and like, be—I don’t know, indoctrinated, probably, in order to like, get it back. But I think he—he loves to work with kids because kids are completely uninhibited, they don’t care, you know, they’ll just ride their bikes if they can’t see, if they think they can do it, and they can, when they echolocate, so—yeah.
Male:
Wow. Thank you.
Emma:
Yeah, but I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s the idea that like, you shouldn’t do this thing that would make your life easier because it might make someone else feel uncomfortable because it’s not what they’re used to, and how detrimental that is, that if we could open ourselves up as a society to the idea that different doesn’t mean bad, and if we could be a little more accepting of that, then maybe young kids who are blind who start clicking to echolocate when they’re little wouldn’t be trained out of it just because someone else doesn’t understand why they’re doing that, so I think you’re absolutely right.
Kristen:
What if we took it even further, too, like what if other people who didn’t need it started trying it? You know? Just to—not only to be in solidarity, but just to see what would happen? Your sound understanding would increase.
Emma:
Yeah, and there’s an interesting section of the book where they talk about experiments where they have a sighted person wear a blindfold and they actually could measure in the brain that the visual centers in the brain would light up when they were doing things like using more sound to help them navigate, and—so it’s not—you know, it was the section where it’s talking about like, a blind person isn’t a superhero for being able to echolocate. It’s just a practiced skill that they are focusing on and the sighted person using the visual centers in their brain only lighting up when they were getting visual stimuli instead of auditory, like it had been happening when they were blindfolded, so the book drove home that it’s about practice and that it’s a skill. And like Kristen said, maybe sighted people could use that, as well, and it could be beneficial, and it would have the benefit of making it not strange to do it in public, right? For someone who it could be really beneficial.
Markus:
My son would love to learn to echolocate at seven years old. He would have a blast doing that. But to jump back to the superhero label versus the subhuman label, are these labels products of a capitalist society? Either we have a capitalist value or we don’t, and before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about this.
Markus:
And back 100, 150 years ago, if you were blind, you were oftentimes a street performer or you joined a traveling show or a traveling circus, and the founder of the Texas Blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson, started as a street performer in Dallas because he had that gift of sound, and many early Blues musicians were blind, but their affinity to be able to hear the notes at a whole different level than we were able to made an impact, so maybe we’re using these capitalist labels to describe people.
Kristen:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, not to put you on the spot too much, but how has it been for you, I mean, incorporating audio into your life perspective, kind of more than a lot of other people do?
Markus:
I love audio and sound, so it’s been something that I’ve always been part of. I’ve listened to music and loved music since I was a baby. Music’s always been on, so sound’s always been something that’s really been important to me, and I love asking questions, so this is kind of the perfect career for me, in some ways. And I do, I love audio, and it’s fascinating to hear things. I know that because of what I do, I’m trained a little differently to hear things a little differently than most people. I think we all are. I know—like Mike Mangos can look at an image and notice if a few pixels are off or if it needs—you know, some little piece needs to move three micropixels to the left—so we all have that trained ability that we have, you know, something that we’ve worked on, something that we love to do, some skill that we have, and it’s maybe not valued enough.
Kristen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Markus:
In a lot of ways.
Kristen:
I mean, when you’re not editing, do you kind of hear more things on the street than other people?
Markus:
I don’t know. Yes and no. I think I pick up on things, but also because I’ve been to thousands of concerts, my hearing is starting to fade. I’ve been in the studio for 30 years, doing radio. I think I have some issues with hearing, for sure, but there are times when I pick up on things, like I can hear a pen click seven or eight inches off the mic that most people can’t hear just because I’m trained to do that.
Kristen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma:
Any other thoughts on this?
Kristen:
Yeah. So in the final chapter about evolution, modern blind memes, which was kind of more depressing than anything else, but I read it, Godin discusses these problems of language. Like using ocularcentric vocabulary and using blindness as meaning unconsciousness or ignorance, or irrationality. Do you agree with her that this language actually matters?
Kristen:
And what are some ways that we can broaden our language? I mean, I think the original question—I got some of these questions from her book discussion guide, which I think are great—but, you know, on one level, it’s like how can we be more sensitive to the use of these words? But I think it kind of goes in even deeper, like how we can destroy the visual hierarchy, you know, in our language? How can we pay attention to the other senses, linguistically?
Emma:
Yeah, absolutely, and there was a—in that chapter, Chapter 17—it talked about all kinds of uses of the word “blind.” And one of the things that jumped out to me is that it does seem to be kind of a personal decision. The author was saying, “I don’t pretend to speak for all blind people,” and she quoted a Canadian writer who was like, “I don’t really care.”
Kristen:
Yeah.
Emma:
You know? “That’s not a thing that I’m going to stand up and fight for.” But I think one of the important things is to notice and to like, recognize where it’s being used and where it’s being used without thought and the ways that that could be damaging, or the ways that just that assumption that when you build the connection between the way you’re using the word blind and meaning “thoughtless” or “uncaring” or, you know, all these different kind of ways that it’s used, that creates a link in your brain and the language which could have some real impact. I was just trying to find some of the examples. There was a page in here that I did not bookmark that had a bunch of examples of use of “blind.”
Male:
I believe James has some thoughts.
James:
I didn’t want to say anything because I guess it was more just a thought rather than a question, and I didn’t want to be that guy who’s always, you know, like “I have feedback or something.” But no, just the way it was discussed reminded me of conversations about like, decolonization of language, and I’ve been under the belief that the development of language, at least naturally, is kind of through violence, at least in a colonial and capitalistic structure, so—that kinda happens, so I think there’s kind of intersectionality with approach to making conscious changes to language for both those regards.
Kristen:
No, it’s true.
Emma:
Yeah.
Kristen:
I found this little section that I just loved. This chapter was a little bit bleak, and so this part was fun for me, just personally. “It’s like a mental tic, or a contagious yawn, this use of ‘blind.’ I almost want to deploy it myself. ‘Stop your blind use of the word blind!’ What I mean is, stop your thoughtless use of the word blind. I urge dismantling of such broad rhetorical use because when legions of sighted readers encounter these offhanded yet grandiose metaphors in works of true nonfiction brilliance, it seems to me inevitable that ‘blind’ cannot help but signify something much more diabolical than lack of sight.”
James:
I think there could also be complications, because forces that are maybe resistant to change may find one individual that’s like, “Oh, I’m OK with this language, why are you guys being snowflakes?” or whatever.
Kristen:
Yeah.
James:
That person will then be amplified when most of the population of the individuals would disagree with it, and I think that kinda circles back with what Markus was saying, where the forces that are interested in productivity will try to threshold things there, definitely. I’m just throwing out words and that didn’t really make sense, sorry.
Kristen:
No, I think it totally does. Thank you. No, I really appreciate that. I don’t think any of us have—I mean, we can’t resolve our language in an hour.
James:
Yeah.
Kristen:
So there are a lot of ways that we have to do it.
Emma:
But I think it does, you know, what James is saying, like where did our language evolve? What was the political and social society like when these phrases were being used in certain ways, and examining that, and critiquing that, and thinking about what are those things that we want to keep using and what are the things that we have thought carefully about and considered thoughtfully and we want to, you know, change the way that things are being used, because we can now see that it’s in a way that’s detrimental to someone that we care about, or a population that we care about, that we don’t want to be continuing that harm, even if it could seem kind of minor, or it’s something that—where you’re like, “It’s so deep in my language that it’s a lot of work to get it out of there.” And that can be important work to do, even if it’s hard.
Kristen:
Yeah, and to be fair, I mean, blindness is not the only disability that’s sort of thrown in as a shorthand for ignorance or inability to take information in. I mean, I’ve heard of someone being “deaf” to something, meaning they are refusing to budge on a point, or “lame,” and I am just as guilty accidentally or thoughtlessly using some of these clichés as others. I think about it, and sometimes I can hear it come out, and I’m like, “No, no, no, don’t.” You know? “What did I just say?” So it’s something that we all have learned and the best we can do, I think, is just think harder about it, and do our best.
Emma:
Yeah, well, and I think it’s an opportunity to build up a community like we have at Tamman of people who will notice and gently and kindly call people on it when you make a mistake, because, you know, if you don’t notice or someone doesn’t call you on it, then it’s harder to catch and it’s harder to change, so I think that having that community or building that community, and being the brave person who maybe starts to call those things out in a kind way, can really—you know, it starts small, but it can really build that change.
Kristen:
Any other thoughts or questions from anyone as we finish up?
Harper:
I wanna say that I totally agree with all of you. I think you all make some great and really, really great points that are really salient in today’s society.
Harper:
I wanted to go back to the root question of memes, though, because I have some friends who are really into memes and they just enjoy going through Reddit and seeing the front page of what’s been going on. And I personally follow a Twitter page called “Wholesome Memes,” which is really nice. And just from what I’ve picked up, someone who is going out looking for a meme is going to be more open to learning more and just taking information out of the meme, kind of the implicit this is the information gathering it from it, so I think it could actually be really helpful to make some helpful memes that help educate and contribute to putting language in that direction that we want it to go, and if we can make it go viral and put it on the front page of Reddit—or even just do a community exercise where we all just upvote each other’s wholesome memes? That could totally work. All it takes is for one to go and suddenly, people are educated.
Kristen:
Yeah, and make sure you have alt text.
Emma:
As long as we make them accessible—yes.
Harper:
Yes, alt text and accessibility is very key.
James:
Are we talking about memes in the more modern sense or the traditional language sense of idea atoms spreading from—?
Kristen:
I think the modern one, right, Harper?
James:
OK.
Harper:
The modern one, yes, in this context, but that being said, I do love the old definition of memes where it’s like a cultural stamp about what’s going on at the current time. I think that’s really cool.
Emma:
Well, and the last chapter in the book does—it starts with the original kind of definition and where it came from and then talks about how it evolved into what it is currently.
James:
OK.
Emma:
So it does—the chapter does touch on—.
James:
Sorry I didn’t get that far, or—.
Kristen:
No, it’s fine.
James:
Or start.
Kristen:
No, that’s good. I think that’s the beauty of this book is that you can pick it up from any chapter. It’s not one like a story where you have to start from the beginning and go through to the end to know what’s going on. You could start from Chapter 17 and just, you know, get a little taste of the whole book, or you can skip all over the book, or you could be like, “Maybe I don’t like this chapter, let me try another one,” and you could totally like the next chapter. SO that’s one beauty of this book, for sure. So we hope wherever you start, you enjoy it and however much you consume of the book.
Emma:
And as a teaser, I’ve heard that next month is not as chunky as this book, so.
Kristen:
No.
Emma:
So if you’re looking for something a little—a little shorter.
Kristen:
A little smaller, yeah. No, next month is going to be poetry, and I believe we’re going to do a poet named Ada Limón, who’s our poet laureate, and who has dealt with disability, as well. And the book is “The Hurting Kind.” And we are going to figure out the best way into poetry. But whereas this book is 11 hours audio, that book is one hour and 40 minutes, I believe, so it’s definitely a big difference. This podcast was produced by Markus Goldman and Harper Yatvin. Our Book Talk hosts are Emma Barker and myself, Kristen Witucki. If you liked what you heard today and want to explore more about digital accessibility, technology, our company culture, or anything else, schedule a time to meet with us.
Kristen:
You can find the whole Tamman team at Tammaninc.com. That’s T-A-M-M-A-N-I-N-C.com. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter while you’re there, so you never miss an event or an insight for us, and be sure to rate our podcast five stars on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you catch us. It really helps us 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, 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
There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness, by Dr. M Leona Godin
Dr. M. Leona Godin’s Website drmlgodin.com
Article 19’s episode on Echocolation with Daniel Kish and Derrick Twene
Article 19’s episode on Interview with Dr. M Leona Godin
Up Next
Podcasts
Article 19 – Interview with Dr. M Leona Godin
