Accessibility at Irresistible Podcast
The Zapatistas, a revolutionary indigenous movement in Chiapas Mexico, give us the vision of “a world where many worlds fit.”
Our goal is to make our movements and our world places where all people can belong, our full dignity realized and our needs met. Disability justice is an intersectional lens created by disabled people of color that has deeply shaped healing justice work. And as Alice Wong, Sandy Ho, and Mia Mingus teach us: Access is Love.
From that commitment, we are making consistent efforts to prioritize accessibility in our work and our movements. Here’s what you need to know to navigate our resources, learn more about our internal practices, and let us know how we can better meet your access needs.
Navigating this space: Our Access Statement
Here’s what we practice to increase accessibility:
Podcast: Our biggest access commitment on a weekly basis is to share full transcripts of each episode. Access transcripts, links to listen, guest information, and additional resources here.
Website: Our website is partially optimized for screen readers and other access needs.
Social media: We used Alt Text, Camel-Case for websites and hashtags, and image descriptions in the captions of our posts, and captioned videos whenever possible.
Virtual gatherings: We formed a team of volunteer closed captioners to offer closed captioning on Care Circle and Book Club virtual gatherings. Unfortunately we did not have ASL interpretation in place.
In-person gatherings: We tried to ensure all our public events are ADA accessible, low-scent, and have gender neutral bathrooms. We included Access Statements clearly outlining the specifics for each event, and asked for access needs upon registration to create possibility for emergent access accommodations.
Language: We aimed to use inclusive, plain, and welcoming language that is not overly jargon-y, and to offer practices in guests’ native languages in addition to English when possible & desired.
Iteration: Increasing accessibility with our community is a collective process. We held a feedback form open during our years of operation that allowed us to hear requests and to learn from and iterate with our community.
Resources on Accessibility
our process & commitments
Listen to our “Access is Love” episode with Alice Wong
Listen to our “Practicing Accessibility” episode with reflections from our Access Team
Read Decentralizing Access: Learnings from the Healing Justice Podcast Access Team, and use our Open Source Social Justice Transcription Manual
Disability Justice & Healing Justice
Disability Justice: a working draft — Patty Berne of Sins Invalid
This is Disability Justice – Nomi Lamm with significant input from Patty Berne & Kiyaan Abadani
A Not-So-Brief Personal History of the Healing Justice Movement, 2010–2016 — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Disability Visibility Podcast — Alice Wong
Podcast Accessibility
Hearing Out Podcast Accessibility for the Deaf Community - Vivian El-Salawy
The Podcasters’ Guide to Transcribing Audio - Bello Collective
Equity-Based Reasons for Podcast Transcripts - podcast episode & transcript by Cheryl Green
Social Justice linguistic Style Guides
Progressive Style Guide — SumofUs
Radical Copyeditor — Alex Kapitan
Accessibility Feedback Form
Because our organization has sunset, this form is no longer active. We leave it posted here as an example in the spirit of open source movement accessibility learning:
Thank you to our Volunteer Access Team
Our Access Team consists of brilliant volunteers from all over the world. See some of their images and all of their names in our access team learnings article. Special thanks to Access Team Coordinator Erika Wolf.
Thank you to Resist for a grant of $2240 that supported part of this process, and our most reliable and meaningful source of funding, our monthly sustainers on Patreon.