I'm Darien Slayton-Fleming, and thank you for joining me on Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel? And how do we speak up for ourselves so we get what we need? I'm Darien Slayton-Fleming, and I'm How do we do this respectfully so that we honor the needs and feelings of others? Together, we'll explore tips, strategies, and resources that when used mindfully and consistently will improve our results and enrich our relationships.

Hello and welcome back to Get Well. What you need and feel good about it. I'm Darienne Slayton Fleming, your hostess. And today I am happy to have on the show someone I met at the American Council of the Blind convention in St. Louis. That was a great networking experience for me. And this person, Sean Welker, I kept running into all over the place at that convention, but I first met him at his booth. So let me just welcome you. Hey, Sean, it's great to have you with us.

Excellent. It is very good to be here. Appreciate the invitation.

Let me just tell people a little bit about you. Sean Welker is the founder and consultant with Visualize Accessibility, your go-to guide for accessible and joyful experiences. Sean works with businesses to help them turn their digital platforms into user-friendly, joyful adventures. He also helps businesses meet accessibility standards, showing their commitment to inclusivity. So, Shawn, tell us a little bit about yourself and to give us a sense of the personal you, and then we'll talk about how that melds with your business.

Yeah, so I live up in Michigan. We've got a dog that keeps us busy. She's a herding dog, working dog. And so that takes up quite a bit of the time. My children are almost to the point where they're completely out of the house. My oldest is going to be 19 and is starting her sophomore year at Western Michigan University. And the younger will be 16 and is going into her junior year in high school. Both of them are definitely pushing on that fiercely independent wannabe teens, and they don't necessarily want to hang out with dad as much these days, which is good because Visualized Access definitely keeps me busy. I got into this kind of accidentally. I had not in any way, shape, or form intended to go into business for myself. 2 years ago, when I was at a blindness nonprofit, they had informed me that my position was going to be eliminated due to a lack of funding. They had lost significant funding that they were using to pay for my position and my program. And I was offered to stay as, you know, a member of the fund development team, which even though I have experience in, it just wasn't the thing that, um, you know, brought me, uh, joy. It's not what I wanted to do. It's not where I felt, um, you know, most drawn to. Um, so I guess you have to go even further back from that. In 2018, 2019, I spent, uh, about a year and a half working with Aira, which a lot of people are familiar with.

Mm-hmm.

That's where I cut my teeth learning visual interpreting. Learning a little bit about accessibility. But it was really after I had left and was with the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired for 4 years that I really dove into assistive technology and web and digital accessibility. And while I was there, I ran a specialized help partnership with Be My Eyes, and we did that for about 3 and a half years. And the thing that we said that we were going to do that went above and beyond, because if we're specialized help, it feels like we should be doing a bit more than just what you get with a regular volunteer, is we wanted to make sure that everybody was background checked and everybody received at least basic training. So we paid on our own dime. We paid for over 200 people to receive background checks, training, make sure that We were putting good quality folks out there handling calls, and I didn't want to see that go. I didn't want to see it disappear. I think there's 2 things that we can do in this space, and that is to provide a good quality experience for folks needing remote visual interpreting, but we can also do that at an affordable rate. And so having kind of seen the writing on the wall, I made that difficult decision to leave. that, uh, stability of that, uh, position with a nonprofit and kind of struck out on my own. And, uh, on August 1st, 2024, received the business license up here in the state of Michigan, and we had our first client, uh, September 4th. So we're coming up on our 2-year anniversary here.

Are there any challenges that you face doing this work, and how do you handle them?

Well, the biggest challenge right now is just kind of the inconsistency, right? You know, and that just comes from— there's a lot of folks that don't even know that we exist yet.

Mm-hmm.

We've been around for 2 years. We've been going to a lot of different events. I tell people this all the time when they ask me how things are going and why I'm traveling so much. I have to go to where the blind folks are. They're not going to come find us. We have to go to the different national events. We have to go to the state conventions. Last year, in our first year, we attended almost 20 different events, and I'm not the only person that goes and does exhibitions. I also have a few members of my team, and some of my clients actually have agreed to travel and represent us at different events. This year we're anticipating probably close to 25 events, so we're trying to get the word out. Also recently, Something that I started doing is reaching out to individual chapter presidents and offering them a small trial of freebies, a little freebie basket to let people see how we do with our navigation calls, also with our document remediation. And then even though it's a little bit more expensive, we are still offering them a discount on a short-form audio description for a personal video. So hopefully when these chapter presidents are able to kind of see what it is that we can do, hopefully they'll be able to share that out with their members. And, you know, we can hopefully bring in, bring in some more subscribers.

I think that one of the things that really caught my interest about your business is the idea that you will describe personal videos. There have been a couple times when I've really wished that I had that. And video description, what do they call the ACB video description program?

The Audio Description Project?

Yeah, the Audio Description Project. When my husband died, I reached out to him and asked him to describe the video that we made to show at his Service, and he did a great job, but there were some things that I wish I had known because he really didn't know who the people were or the significance of some of the things in the video, including my husband's log cabin that he built himself. I think that that's one thing that sets you apart. from some of the other visual interpreting platforms. What do you think sets you apart from those programs?

So you hit the nail on the head there as far as like personalization, right? We definitely understand that there's best practices when it comes to accessibility, when it comes to, you know, the technicalities of audio description. But we also know that these are someone's personal experiences. There's someone's personal memories. And so we want to honor and acknowledge that. And we do that through having a discovery session, making sure that we're talking with folks about, do they want to have people's names included? Are there things that they can recall that they want highlighted? We had a client who we had provided the script to them because before we actually do the voice work, we're going to make sure that they approve of that script. And he had said, I love it. It's very vivid. It's very descriptive. However, There's a lot of colors in here, and I've been blind since birth, and I don't know what orange means. It doesn't have any meaning to me. Can you remove the colors and add in other descriptive words?

Hmm.

And of course, of course, we're going to want to make sure that we're acknowledging and honoring that person's memory, that person's preferences. So that is definitely one of the things that I think is significantly different. And then when you're talking about audio description in general, We have the big boys that do the movies and the TV shows. Well, what do you do for personal videos? What do you do if you have something that is from a performance, like a theater performance or something like that? So being able to provide this to folks, I don't know too many other businesses that do this. It's again, making sure that we're keeping that level of quality up, although also allowing people different options. As far as, you know, if they want to make sure that they're able to do this in as affordable a manner as possible, we want to acknowledge that as well. Financial accessibility should not be a barrier to actual accessibility. And as far as how we apply that to our visual interpreting, so I tell my team this all the time. I tell them that we have a great responsibility to be good stewards of our clients' time and of their money. And that means that we are planned, prepared, and ready to proceed when it's time for that call. And we do that kind of accidentally. What happened was, is when we first started, we realized, hey, we just don't have the bandwidth to be able to be available on demand.

Right.

So we request that people give us 24-hour notice. They submit their requests through our Calendly link, which can be found on our website. Also, it's always in my email signature. And that gives us advance notice so that we can take a look at that weekly availability that all of my team members send me. I can kind of quarterback and make sure that we get the right person assigned to that call. And if any preparation needs to take place ahead of time, then we're gonna make sure that that happens. If we're going into an environment like a navigation call, we had better have seen what it looks like on that navigation before we engage in that live video feed. When you start looking in downtown environments, a lot of city streets look the same. A lot of buildings look the same. It is hard to find those key landmarks, those key indicators of allowing yourself to kind of understand your orientation in space. I just had a call yesterday evening where somebody was going using public transit and then catching a shuttle bus out to a park. And the park itself was very open. It was just lots of grass, lots of trees, and a couple of different walkways. And because we didn't have the same view of the Street View from Google Maps, it made it that much more challenging. But we got it done. We worked together. We did as much preparation as we could. And then still, when the call comes live, it still requires that, aha, I've done this before. I'm following the flow of traffic. I'm looking for— What looks to be a building ahead of us. I'm looking for what looks to be the tent that I recognize that is where the stage is located. So all of these different experiences that I've had as a visual interpreter over the past 8 years, those are all things that I share with my team. I do have some folks who have been former Aira agents. I actually used to train while I was there. And I look for folks who are in this space. I know that, you know, you've got folks on Be My Eyes that, you know, in some cases they can do some really good work. You know, they can help you with those simple, simple tasks. But when you've got something that has some personally identifiable information, or you're doing a navigation, or something that's just a little bit more complex, or even a remote desktop session, you really want to make sure you've got somebody that is vetted, somebody who is, you know, covered by insurance, which we are. We have that full insurance through the Hartford that we have absolutely made sure that we've got the best that we could get as far as our coverage for that. But you got to also make sure that you've got folks that are ready to go. It's just not— some things you just can't do just because you've got a set of working eyeballs. So I like to find folks from within this space because they're a good foundation. So I think having that really intentional preparation, that really intentional, like, how we go about finding the folks that are answering the calls, and then even down to how we prepare for those individual calls. We do a lot of navigation. Over half of our calls are navigation. Over half of those navigations are airports.

Oh, wow.

I've actually had people who have told me, they've said, hey, look, I know that there's places I can go that are free access locations, but because you guys prepare ahead of time, because you've already looked at the walkthrough videos that those travel bloggers are posting, because we've gotten screenshots of those nice clear images of the signage as we're walking through the different concourses. Once we connect live on that call and we know it's going to look like an old-time '80s video game and it's going to be pixelated and it's going to be grainy and it's going to freeze every now and then. We're already planning for that and we're already ready for it. And they said, you know what, it just, it shows, it shows how much you put into these polls and being ready to go. And I, I am still going to use you guys as a paid service, even though I know I could get the other guys for free. And that's just absolutely phenomenal that folks are putting their trust in us for that. I love the space that we're in. I love the ability, you know, you kind of mentioned as a small business owner, We have the ability to make those calls, um, to, to basically say, hey, we're not going to settle for less than, um, and we're also going to try and keep that cost down for folks. So those 2 things, good quality experiences for folks and trying to keep that cost as affordable as possible. We want to make sure that everybody here is being taken care of in the manner that they want to be taken care of. That goes back to that whole personalization. I have a call tonight where somebody has a jury duty, um, Oh, wow. That they were notified by their UPS that they're receiving this notification in the mail. And they said, hey, look, I could use Be My Eyes, and I've got somebody who comes in once a month to help me sort my mail, but this is a little bit more important for me, and I just don't feel comfortable having a volunteer read this to me. I would prefer to use your guys' service. Again, this is great. This is, you know, our clients showing that they have our, you know, full trust, and that's a big deal. And, you know, as a small business, you don't have the ability to kind of mess around with that. Once you lose the confidence of the general public— and I've learned in this space, the blindness community, they talk, and if they like you, they like you. If they don't like you, they absolutely hate you. And I don't want to fall into that latter category. I definitely want to make sure that folks are appreciative of what we're doing here. They're understanding. They know though that we're a small business and small businesses just operate slightly differently. But that doesn't mean that we're still not going to do what we can to make sure that we're giving the absolute best quality service that we can at what we hope is the most affordable rate.

Can you tell us about a success story with the business?

Our visual interpreting service, which we call Visual Interpreter Pro or VIP, that is really the flagship service that we offer. So we're focusing more on individuals, but we did have a project that we just recently completed back in early July. There had been a university in Florida that had seen our audio description sample at an exhibition. And oddly enough, it wasn't even one that I attended. But about a month later, they had reached out to me directly and said, hey, I know that that was a dance performance. And because of that, it just never kind of struck me that maybe we could have used this for academic purposes. What do you think? I said, well, what are you talking about? And is it online video content? Is it presentations? Is it slideshows? PowerPoints? And they kind of said, well, yeah, a little bit of all the above, but it's an online program and it's mostly video content. And there's a lot of PowerPoint slides that are part of that with some short clip videos as well. And they said very specifically, they go, do you know anything about cloud computing? I said, no, but I don't need to know about cloud computing. I need to know how to describe the visual information. That's part of the cloud computing presentation. And they said, oh, we didn't really think of it that way. And I said, well, here's the thing. If there are things that I'm unsure of, uncertain of, of course we're gonna consult you because it's your content. So even though we're talking about a larger organization here, it's not an individual, we're still personalizing, right? And we actually got to a point where we had submitted a few of the modules. And what we did is we did not add audio description into the videos themselves because we felt that that would be too destructive. It would basically turn into a distraction for folks who did not want to have access to it. And we just simply added it into the video transcripts. So you had the spoken dialogue from the presenter, but then now you also had the visual descriptions for all the graphs and images, a lot of diagrams, some short clip videos that were part of it to kind of enhance that user experience of understanding what was being taught for that particular module. At one point, they said, hey, look, we love the descriptions, but we would like even more description. And so we were using kind of the best practices from an academic standpoint of you are very objective, right? You just kind of state what's there and how it relates to the overall course content. And they had said, hey, look, I know that colors sometimes don't matter, but in this case they do. Shapes matter, especially on those diagrams. And so we did. We kind of slowed it down and we started looking at making sure that those descriptions were a lot more vivid and detailed than what you normally would do for academic content. And it did take us quite a bit. It took us about 6 months total. Now they have a fully accessible full semester certification course for anyone who's going through cloud computing training.

Wow, that's awesome. You've kind of alluded to some success stories with your customers who have visual impairments. Do you have one that you can share specifically?

It's literally the thing that is driving us. Another one of our regular, very regular users is so proud of the fact that he has now used us in 5 different states in different airports. And he actually, they traveled overseas to the Scandinavian countries and we had provided some description for walking through the airports there as well. This was the first time that I had the opportunity to help somebody go through customs was on the return trip. We also, because we're just using WhatsApp, we don't have our own standalone app. It's about a 6-figure build and we don't happen to have an extra $100,000 laying around.

Right.

So we're trying to keep it simple. And so we're using WhatsApp. It's end-to-end encrypted. The vast majority of blind folks that I know are already familiar with it. If not, it's not difficult to train somebody how to use it properly. The other thing is, is obviously Being able to connect hands-free with those Meta glasses, which we recently signed an agreement to be able to start selling those in our online web store, which is called the Provisions Shop. Very cool. We've got 6 different frame and lens combinations in there for people to choose from. And the cool thing about making purchases in our Provisions Shop, we know that you've got other places that you can go that might be cheaper, that you might have some brand loyalty. But for purchasing, you know, through our store, it helps our business financially. So we're offering every purchase 10% back in the form of visual interpreter minutes. So if you go buy a pair of $400 Ray-Ban glasses, you're going to get 40 minutes of visual interpreting time added to your account to use at your discretion. You can apply that to anything from, you know, You know, sorting mail, doing a navigation, even applying it to something like getting a document remediated. It's a fun adventure. And, you know, as long as we can do this and continue to do those 2 things, as far as not seeing the quality of our service decline and not having to make any significant price increases to do so, we're going to keep doing it as long as we can.

So you actually have paid people on your team. You're not a one-man band and you're not— I don't know, do you use volunteers also or are your people all paid?

We do not use volunteers. I have— not that I don't find volunteers valuable, I just— we're not a nonprofit, we are a for-profit. And so because of that, I want to make sure that the folks that are here understand that I expect them to show up on a regular basis.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, they're independent contractors, but they have the ability to, you know, have access to the different jobs that are posted. They have the ability to kind of pick and choose the ones that they would prefer to do. And they also are always going to have access to myself and the experience and knowledge that I have in this space, not just with visual interpreting, but, you know, accessibility in general. And all of that time, that preparation time, the coaching time, When I go on work trips, I'm absolutely using those as opportunities to show people, you know, what it looks like while you're on the other end of an airport call, what it looks like when you're trying to find that shuttle that gets you from the remote terminal to the main terminal, what it looks like to get down to the local light rail station. We have found by doing that ways to improve our service. We've come to the realization that Dallas-Fort Worth is a horrendous airport when it comes to their connectivity. And there's other airports that we've been through that were like, hey, there's some little tips and tricks about, hey, when you get to this particular section of the airport, this is what you want to do. Um, I recently went through an airport where, um, they had a, um, significant, uh, tram system that, that brought you between the different concourses because they were all separate. And going down multiple flights of stairs to get there, I had been under the assumption that it was just not going to be a good connection, that I was going to lose the signal. But because I was there with my glasses and I had my agent that I was training or coaching for the day on the other end of the call, they were able to confirm, no, it's a clear signal. It's actually really strong. So we now know going through that airport that it's going to be okay. We're going to stay with that caller. And make sure that we're getting them from concourse to concourse and not having to disconnect in between. That's just good valuable information to know. And we do a lot of that. Like I said, there's times where I will schedule myself an additional 2 or 3 hours on a layover just because I want that opportunity to wander around the airport and let that person have a chance to get on a call with myself to get that coaching. Before we cut them loose and have them work with a client. Now, the nice thing about that is, is when I do have them handle client calls, I oftentimes will follow up personally. And more often than not, I hear people tell me, I would not have been able to have told that they were somebody who is new. They handled this call and it was just smooth. Yes, we had the normal hiccups as far as, you know, that the connectivity at times, or, you know, the sound cutting in and out. But, you know, ultimately they're doing as good of a job after we're, you know, cutting them loose from their training period as anyone out there. And I, you know, I take some great pride in that. Like, that's part of the foundation of what it is that we're trying to do here is making sure that folks have access to something that is good quality service at a rate that's, you know, hopefully a little bit more affordable for folks.

Okay, so I went to your website and I read some of the testimonials, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about fee structure or how you negotiate a fee with a customer, a visually impaired customer, And then maybe your information is all going to be in the show notes for this episode, but maybe you could say out loud how they can access you.

Sure.

So let me start with that first, because otherwise what's going to happen is I'm going to get to the end of this and I'm going to forget. So to get a hold of me, there is a contact form on the website that you can use, otherwise direct contact would be my email, which is [email protected]. Also, folks are welcome to text, call, WhatsApp me, 517-630-1420. And the reason why I don't post the rates Online is because I think it's really important to have conversation with someone who's interested in our service, to tell them about the differences before making any sort of commitment. Yes, price is something that is a part of that decision-making process, but I really want people to understand how our service differs. I want them to understand that we do require that 24-hour advance notice. I want to let them know what we do to make sure that we're providing a good quality experience for folks once we do get on those calls. And I also encourage everybody to take advantage of that 30-minute trial that we do. Our 30-minute trial is usually $20, but when we do events like exhibitions or this podcast, we'll do a 50% discount. So if anybody is interested in taking advantage of that 30-minute trial to kick the tires, get a couple calls under your belt, see how you like using my team, see how you like the scheduling process, Just mention that you heard us on the podcast. You'll get that 50% discount and it'll just be $10. The fee structure, there's 2 different things that you can do. You can do just pay as you go. And we do have some folks who say, hey, look, I'm not going to use you all the time, but when I do use you, I want to make sure that I get a chance to use you. So, okay. That is literally just a, you schedule the call, we get done with Hey, today's call took 20 minutes. We're going to debit your card on file $20. Is that okay? If it's okay, we do it and they immediately then get a receipt sent through Stripe, which is our payment processor. If they would prefer, we can also still send them an invoice. I don't get too particular about that. I just ask that, you know, please pay those in a timely manner.

Mm-hmm.

If we go past about a month or so, I start getting a little nervous that you forgot. So I might start blowing you up and, you know, reminding you that, that we're waiting on that. And then as far as the subscriptions, it's a 1-year agreement and you can either pay monthly, quarterly, or a one-time annual charge. Obviously for quarterly and annual, those are much bigger payments, so we offer some discounts for that. The normal rate, the standard rate that we have is that dollar per minute. The nice thing though about the quarterly or the, yeah, the quarterly and the monthly billing is that once you get to the end of your billing cycle, if you have unused minutes, we're not going to take all of those and set your account back to zero. We're gonna let 80% of those minutes roll over. So you get to keep more of the minutes that you've paid for. And in my opinion, this is one of those things that just adds to the value of what it is that you're getting with us. The other thing too about that is having the ability to make those decisions, listening to people's feedback. I've had people ask about certain things and if it makes sense and if it's feasible and affordable, yeah, we'll incorporate those things.

Mm-hmm.

I actually, you know, very early on, what happens is, is when we get that request, once we've assigned it to an agent, We replaced that request with a Google Calendar invitation. So now it's going to show up on your calendar and it will have both the client, their contact information, and the agent, their contact information. And the person that had made the request and said, hey, can you actually take their phone number and drop it right into the location so that it's really easy for us to grab to make that initial call. That way we don't have to open it up, we don't have to search for it, we don't have to look for an email. It's just right there on our calendar. We're notified, hey, it's time to call in for your request right there in the location. Um, you can grab their, um, their phone number. I'm like, yeah, absolutely. What else can we be doing that, you know, is making this a better experience for you? And that one was a no-brainer because it, you know, clearly wasn't going to cost anything. It was just going to be a process change. It just makes sense. If we've got folks out there that are confident enough in our services that are helping us to keep this business running, help put food on people's tables, then of course we're going to be listening and proactively asking, okay, what can we do to make this service better? In the hopefully not too distant future, we do have plans on starting to build out an app. People have said, hey, You know, let's find a way so that we can have access to our account without having to make that request. Okay. After every single call, I do send out, you know, a chat notification through WhatsApp to update on how many minutes are remaining on that account balance. But, you know, sometimes it's nice to receive that information on your own time.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?

It's about making experiences inclusive for folks, right?

Mm-hmm.

And here's the thing, like, my understanding of what my role is and what my team, what their role is in these transactions is significantly different than when I started, you know, back in 2018, 2019. You know, having that experience of working in accessibility, having the experience of now becoming friends with a lot of the people who I used to provide services to, I get to do it in a much different way. It just feels different. It feels as though I have much more of a responsibility. It's like with a customer, sometimes they can just be a number, they can just be a name, they can just be whatever, a record.

Mm-hmm.

But here, it's much different because I see these folks on a regular basis. I look forward to some folks, maybe seeing them once a year at the Nationals or out at CSUN or that state convention. And I don't want, in the time that passes, I don't want us to have provided poor experiences to them. There's just a responsibility that I feel. And it's not just with people who I consider my friends. It's also for that new person who is just coming in and finding us.

Mm-hmm.

You know, helping them to understand how we do things differently, making sure that they get a chance to kick the tires and ask the questions. Those are all things that I really appreciate doing. And again, it's going back to that whole concept of being personalized. We kind of say that we're a mom-and-pop accessibility shop. We're not the big boys and we don't want to be the big boys. We like running things the way that we do. And hopefully, we'll get to be a little bit bigger of a mom-and-pop. But I think we ultimately want to maintain this feeling of that store down on the corner that's very comfortable and you're familiar. You know it's really good what they offer. And it's You feel that, that sense of loyalty to one another, right?

So this episode, or the show, is all about people having opportunities and encouragement to pursue their dreams, to get what we need and feel good about it. Meaning we can ask for what we need and we won't be shamed or judged for wanting to do things our way or needing to do things a certain way. And it seems to me like your business has the flexibility to really personalize, and I think that's really cool. As we close, do— did you come up with a quote about what resonates with you?

Um, what I'm going to do is I'm going to share kind of like what we consider like our mantra. This is What guides all of our interactions that we have. And I tell my team this on a very regular basis. Basically, every time we train, I ask folks about, you know, what do we do as visual interpreters? And this is what we do. We provide access to information in a way that's meaningful and significant to that person so they can better understand their environment to make informed decisions for themselves. Everything else is additional. Everything else is secondary. Our primary focus is to provide access to information in a way that's meaningful and significant so that person can better understand their environment to make informed decisions for themselves.

Wow, that's just great. That's so awesome. I hope that you as listeners will have an opportunity to Check out Sean's services. Well, Sean, thank you for joining me today. It's been fun reconnecting with you, and I hope to stay in touch.

I appreciate the invitation. It was wonderful spending time with you down in, uh, St. Louis.

Thank you for joining me, everyone, for Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. Take care.

Thank you for joining me today on Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. Remember, when you speak up for yourself assertively, you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about it like Stephanie LaHart says it: Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean.

Yes! The only way to do this is with hope, not hate.