The first story that I chose to listen to was titled “The Way I Am”. This StoryCorps podcast episode, hosted by Jasmyn Morris, honors the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act by sharing the lived experiences of people with disabilities and their families. Various people who live with disabilities joined in to tell their stories and how living with a disability has effected them. The entire podcast is about 17 minutes long and has four different segments with each of the guests.
The first guest was Judy Heuman, who was widely influential in the disability rights movement. She told the story of her struggle to become a licensed teacher due to her disability. After being denied a teaching license for being a wheelchair user, Judy’s case was the first disability rights case taken to federal court, later laying the foundation for the ADA. The other guests’ names are Isaiah Acosta, Bonnie Brown, and John Carter Washington.
One aspect of this podcast that I noticed was that many of the speakers communicate in ways that sound different from what podcast listeners may expect, through text-to-speech apps, distinctive vocal patterns, or TeleBraille machines. By including these voices in their raw form, the podcast resists ableist norms about what voices should sound like. Also, because we cannot see the guests and can only listen to them, it allows the audience to stay engaged in their stories, without the possibility of judgment or assumptions made because of their appearances. The podcast also includes unpolished moments with laughter, pauses, overlapping dialogue, which humanize the storytellers and highlight the relationships they have with their caretakers that accomponied them. Lastly, Jasmyn Morris explicitly notes that the podcast episode has a transcript, reminding listeners that the audio medium itself must adapt to disabled audiences.
The second story I listened to was titled “A Time to Speak”, where Jeff Dubre tells the story of how his friend Leonard Matlovich became the first openly gay man to appear on the cover of a national publication which challenged the military’s ban on gay service members. He was a military veteran and a gay activist. After being discharged from the military, he unfortunately died due to AIDS. The story is about 3 minutes long and is accompanied by animations that illustrate the story. This really helped me follow and visualize the story better, even eliciting an emotional response. There is music before and after the story along with the title and credits, giving the audience a moment to settle in and then later reflect.
A Community Audio Journal