Every Damn Day With Chris Knapp

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with my good Friend Jerry Norris over at The Fledge. Every Damn Day, Jerry does a live Streamyard broadcast where he interviews someone from the community and I was extremely honored, and more than a little bit humbled, that he asked me to come on his show and talk about my experiences living with a disability and about how I am working to leave my print on a more accessible world through my Accessiversity accessibility and usability testing service and our “Tales of the Reluctant Blind” blog.

Screenshot of Jerry and Chris’ interview for Every Damn Day on YouTube.

You can watch the full video of our interview by clicking on this link (https://youtu.be/9HbQWH_cmYA). 

Below, I have included a full written transcript of our conversation.

Be sure to visit TheFledge.com/events to check out their schedule of upcoming shows, and tune in Every Damn Day at 2 p.m. EST to watch live on YouTube.

Jerry Norris: Hello everyone (signs ‘hello’) its Jerry at the Fledge. Welcome to another episode of Every Damn Day. And today on the show we’ve got our great friend Chris Knapp. How are you doing today Chris?

Chris Knapp: I’m doing awesome, how about you, Jerry?

JN: I’m doing awesome too. So, I just signed ‘hello’ when I started the show, and at the end of the show I’m going to sign ‘see you later’ and I’ve started doing that because somebody came on the show and they signed their entire part of their, whatever they said, they signed it. And I thought that was interesting and I thought I should be signing at least a little bit to help with inclusion, and you know, not that, ah, that really helps a lot, but at least I’m saying, ‘okay, this is something that I can start to learn’ and all of that. And today, so, do you mind? So, you are visually impaired, right?

CK: Correct.

JN: So, I want to put that out there to just give a little bit of context of what we are about to talk about. And when you and I talked about doing the show I told you that story and I was like, ‘what could I do to help with people who are visually impaired or can’t see the show too much?’ and you came up with a great idea, would you tell us about that?

CK: Sure, yeah, one of the projects that I am involved with, um, there is an individual who works with the University of Virginia and she had attended a conference called “Accessing Higher Ground”. There was a discussion about the use of web conferencing tools, kind of like what we are using today with Streamyard, and they proposed doing an ice-breaker exercise where everyone on the web conference would go around and just do a real quick description of themselves and their environment so that someone with a visual impairment, who might be on the web conference or viewing the video later, they would have that experience of kind of, you know, visualizing, at least, the other people on the call. So, I had suggested that’s maybe something we can do to start off this call? So, I’ll go ahead and go first Jerry?

JN: Yeah, I like it. Yes, please.

CK: Okay, so let’s try this out. So, I am a white male with short brown hair, brown eyes, actually, one of my eyes, my left eye, is actually a prosthetic eye, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at it because the ocularist did a really good job. I have a kind of aquiline, I guess is how  you’d describe it, nose. I’m wearing a headset with a microphone. I’m wearing a blue sweater. And I’m talking to you today from my home office, which is pretty boring, it just has a taupe-colored wall in the background, except that I have a new sign up in the background with our Accessiversity logo that my friend Kirk MacKellar with MacKellar Screenworks made for me, to dress up my ugly brown wall in the background, so thanks Kirk. And ah, yeah, do you want to go next Jerry?

JN: Yeah, I do, but that really surprised me, I don’t know how to, like, describe my nose and stuff like that.

CK: (chuckles) I didn’t want to go with the obvious and say ‘big’ so I went with the more, you know, ‘aqualine’ cause it’s the, you know, shape, but… (chuckles again)

JN: Alright, but I know I have brown hair, I know I have brown eyes, I know I’m wearing a shirt that says, ‘no rules’ on it, and I really think I’m going to make that a definite part of what I talk about because I always try to wear a shirt that promotes one of the entrepreneurs in the area, so I think that’s a really, you know, not everyone even sees my shirt some times. And then, I’m wearing headphones as well, but I don’t, I have a mic in front of me, I have a blue to my side here. And I am sitting on the stage at the Fledge with Jim Bignall’s painting of the Leelanau Peninsula that’s eight feet by thirteen feet, so it’s a huge painting. And then we’ve got the letters F-L-E-D-G-E on the top of the stage. So, I’m up on the stage with the huge painting behind me…

CK: Awesome.

JN: How’d I do?

CK: I think you did awesome, I can picture it. So…

JN: Did I use…I probably…I sort of feel like I didn’t use enough adjectives or something.

CK: No, you did fine, mission accomplished.

JN: Alright, well thank you for that. So, I think, you know, I am going to do something like that every show to describe if my environment changes, or the shirt I have on, my eyes will probably still be brown tomorrow…

CK: Yeah.

JN: Um…sometimes they turn yellow though, that’s a weird thing about my eyes. So, why don’t you tell us about you, and your projects that you have, cause I think, you’ve done a lot, you’ve been around in different spaces for a while. I think I’ve known you maybe ten years or so, probably more? I don’t know, I don’t want to admit how old we are.

CK: Yeah, well, so some of the basics. I was born in Lansing, Michigan. I grew up in Holt, graduated from Holt High School back in 1991. I didn't go to college right away, I had jobs, you know,  I was working, and feeling my way through, and I ended up getting involved with the Blue-Ribbon Committee for Minor League Baseball which was a grassroots effort to bring minor league baseball to Lansing, and one of my kind of claims to fame was that  I actually got to serve on the Design subcommittee and I drew some of the conceptual site plans for some of the municipal sites that we were evaluating at the time. And right around the time that all of that was happening, I was taking drafting classes at LCC, had aspirations of going into studying architecture, specifically, this interest in sports architecture, and I started having some health issues. 

Most of my health issues ended up, kind of manifesting in the form of really severe vasculitis that I would get in my eyes. And initially, it was mostly just in my left eye. So, I went through a whole series of vasculitis, multiple different retinal detachments, surgeries, procedures, and so forth, and was never able to save any of the eyesight in the left eye. So, that's when they chose to enucleate the eye, and that’s when I got my  prosthetic left eye. And at that point I still hadn't had any issues with my right eye, but about two or three months passed and no one could really tell me what had caused all of this in the first place. And so, I was seeing an ophthalmologist on a regular basis, just to kind of watch things, and before too long, I woke up in the middle of the night and was actually in the middle of having an exudative detachment, where fluid builds up behind the retina, and I was actually watching my eyesight just kind of slowly just turned to black, like a  curtain drop, As the retina in the back of my eye was bubbling off the back of the eye. And at that point, I was completely blind for a period, I didn't know if I would get any usable sight back. Obviously, it was very traumatic, and really just put me into a deep state of depression.

But as things got better, and as they started to treat it with intravenous steroids and  at the time, they thought it was a viral issue, so they were treating me with antiviral medications, I started to get a little bit of usable sight back, and I’ve been able to actually maintain that, the little bit of sight that I have. Technically I have what would be referred to as kind of 8/200 vision in the lower periphery of my eye, which I, you know,  tried to describe it to you the other day, if you can kind of imagine trying to look out of your peripheral vision, and trying to read something, but through a couple of sheets of like, cheesecloth. That's about, kind of, the extent of my usable vision I have left in my eye. So, at that point, obviously, I’d had, you know,  this interest in studying architecture, but now, you know, I had all this stuff happening that it just wasn't going to be possible so I had to come up with a plan B. I went back to school, starting at LCC, and transferred over to MSU. While I was at MSU, I met my future wife, Teresa, and we both graduated from MSU in about, in December of 2000. Right out of college I didn't exactly know what sorts of jobs someone like me would be able to do with the limited amount of vision that I had. But I ended up catching a break, I got a job with a non-profit in Okemos that dealt with statewide healthcare workforce issues, and I actually worked for a service that did physician recruitment. 

So, we worked as an extension of the in-house recruiters at different hospitals around the state, and with some basic accommodations, which involved using a screen reader on my computer and using like, an earbud plugged into the computer, I was able to, you know, call physicians and present opportunities to them. And I did that for about five and a half years. And then at that point is  when Capital Area Michigan Works! posted a position for Executive Director of the Capital Area IT Council, which is how you and I first met. I was able to kind of segue the experience of working in healthcare, on  workforce and talent development type issues, into the position with the IT Council, and I started with them in  2007, as its inaugural Executive Director and ran the IT Council up until about 2012, which is when the state started to reorganize their industry clusters around these priority industries, and so I was recruited over to the state to head up  their IT & Media talent cluster. And I did that up until about 2017, I got caught up in kind of a messy reorg at the state, and long story short, is that I found myself kind of, looking for, you know, trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my next career move. 

I started working with a friend of ours, Justin Caine, who you know. Justin and his partner Kraig Westfall own Good Fruit Video, but then Justin himself, he's an individual with a disability, and he has started an organization called Beyond Our Barriers, which helps to connect individuals with disabilities with prospective employers and employment opportunities. So, he reached out and asked if  I could work with him to help him kind of grow Beyond Our Barriers. And I thought, well, maybe I’ll just start a consulting business, I can work with Justin on his Beyond Our Barriers stuff, and then, you know,  pick up other clients and projects as needed. And so, we started working together, and  about a year into that, through a series of interesting developments,  I decided to launch an accessibility and usability testing service called Accessiversity, which I can talk a little bit more about later on. But that's been kind of my focus in the last year and a half or so, is to really help organizations get better in terms of making their web sites or software or IT systems more accessible for individuals with disabilities, who often have to rely on assistive technology to navigate those digital environments. 

JN: So, I'm going to pause you for a second if you don't mind. A couple of things. One is, we must have a shared friend, Karla Janing is saying hi to Chris, and please tell Chris I love him and the family. 

CK: So, Karla was my swim instructor back in the day. She was a good friend with my mother, my mom passed away a couple  of years ago unfortunately, but it’s nice to hear from you Karla. And hopefully she forgives me for eating strawberries and getting the hives so I could get out of swim classes back when I was in grade school, because I knew I had an allergic reaction to strawberries, so I ate strawberries on purpose to get the hives so that I could get out of the rest of the week of swim classes. 

JN: That's, that's pretty funny. She just left the Fledge at about one o'clock and she brought that story up so I'm not sure she forgave you.

CK: (laughs)

JN: I'm just kidding. She didn't really bring that story up. I don't think she knew you were on the show yet today, So…the other thing is if you say somebody's name three times on the show, then they have to come on the show, so I'm gonna have to get Justin to come on the show, because you definitely said his name three times.

CK: Yeah.

JN: So, you know we were talking a lot before COVID about, you know, a couple of other projects that, you know, we might do together, but then COVID hits, how did that change what you're doing with Accessiversity?

CK: Initially, you know, it did kind of throw things on the backburner. A lot of the organizations that I had been meeting with, to start different projects with, you know everything just kind of stopped for a little while, and everybody was kind of in that wait and see kind of moment, they didn't know how long it was all going to last, or you know exactly how they were going to pivot. So, Any just, you know, non-critical type projects, you know investments, any of that, kind of just got put on hold. But honestly, you know, in terms of the outreach I was doing and how I actually go about doing my assessments and meeting with clients hasn't really changed that much. I mean I obviously did away with, you know, face-to-face meetings. 

This auto-immune disorder that kind of created all of the issues with my eyesight, that's always in the back of my mind with COVID, does that make me more susceptible to, you know, the effects of COVID and so I'm keeping a pretty low profile and not venturing out too much. But I was able to pick up and use Zoom, and Google Meet, and those sorts of platforms to be able to, you know,  set-up client meetings. And then the assessments we do, for the most part, I can do from anywhere I have an internet connection. Because most of the ones that we're doing are assessments of websites, and you know, basically as long as they can provide me with a URL to their development site, or what have you, I can do what I need to do, day or night, pretty much anywhere I have an internet connection, so…

JN: So, like Streamyard, we're using that to broadcast right now, is it pretty good as far as accessibility? Has it worked for you?

CK: It is. And just so people get an idea, a couple of weeks ago, you know,  when we first got this scheduled and started talking about it, I said that I’d like to try out Streamyard cause it was a new technology to me,  and just want to make sure things were going to work when we got to doing the live broadcast. And that's typical for when I come across a new technology, is that I don't want to just wait till the last minute, or  you know, put my faith in that it'll work, or that I'll be able to figure it out. So, there's a lot of, just prep, things that you do to take the guesswork out of it. But, for the most part it does work well. 

I did play around with recording my own session, just as something that I could use to create like a tutorial video or something, and I could get it to hear my screen reader, so I could get it to share my computer audio, so it could pick up the screen reader. But I couldn't figure out the right setting to pick up both my screen reader and my microphone on my headset, cause I like to try to narrate, kind of what I'm doing, when I'm trying to show someone how the screen readers  interacting with a web site, so I like them to be able to see my screen, and then see, kind of where the cursor is moving,  hear the screen reader, but also hear my, you know, narrating what I’m doing in terms of keystrokes. But I’d like to go back and play with it, I'm sure there's a way to do it, I just wasn’t able to figure it out. And the other thing, you know, in full disclosure, Zoom is probably one of the better ones at this, is that they have a lot of just keystrokes, you know, ALT+R to start the screen recording, or you know, ALT+S to start the screen share, that type of thing in terms of making it really easy for someone that's, you know, using the keyboard versus clicking on it with the mouse.

JN: Yeah. All right, that's, I think that's a good little summary of kind of what you're trying to do for people too, right? I mean if I've got, if I've got a website or a software application. You'll assess it for me and tell me what I could improve on, is that…

CK: That, that's basically it. What makes us different is that we use actual individuals with disabilities to perform these assessments to provide for an authentic user experience. I mean, developers can use screen readers to test sites and software, and you know they can switch those on and see how they interact with a different platform, but you know, until you are just completely 100% reliant on assistive technology to do everything you need to do, it’s just really hard to replicate  that. And so, that's, that's the gist of what we offer through Accessiversity. And you know, what we do is we help to address a lot of those technical issues that are problematic from an accessibility standpoint. If you've heard things like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or ADA, or Federal Section 508 Standards, we're able to help a client understand where a website or a piece of software is falling short in terms of those technical standards, but we go beyond that and really just try to focus on that user experience, and what we end up doing is kind of going beyond accessibility into usability, and they end up getting a better product because their product is more accessible, but it’s also more usable for all of their customers, by them focusing on accessibility.

JN: Yeah. So, I think that's so important that we can't just proxy away, and have these 15 rules and expect we're going to know how to make something more accessible. I don't know if I've ever told you the story of… I had an opportunity to give a blind Lady, a visually impaired lady, a tour of the Fledge with the idea of her telling me, what was good, what was bad, what it made her feel like. Like, I wanted to know if she got the same vibe as other people. And I failed miserably. It was cold, it was smelly, there were chirpy noises there…

CK: (chuckles)

JN:…I mean, all these things that really were enlightening, even just the physical space, we weren't talking software or anything like that. We were just talking about what, What's the feeling that the Fledge gives you, if you can't see all of the visuals, and it was so enlightening. And now, talking with you, I’m realizing that I'm getting real conscious of things that I'm wondering how to do them better. Like for example, Shawn, she waves at the beginning of almost every show, and I took it for granted that you would know that she was saying hi to us, but I don't know that you see the comments, or that, you know, that I should have maybe acknowledged Shawn. So sorry about that Shawn. Sorry about that Chris. Something I kind of, I guess, I don't know, maybe took for granted, so I won't do that again. And then the other thing is I find myself when I'm smiling and I'm nodding, I mean I think you can kind of see my motion a little bit, but should I be doing something better to acknowledge, but how do I do that without interrupting you?

CK: Yeah, no, I mean there's always going to be a certain  amount of that, and most of the time, if I’m uncertain, or knowing that I'm maybe not picking up on visual cues, you know, I’m not bashful, I’ll stop, I'll ask. I used to do something when I worked at the state, you know, often times you would go into meetings in these big conference rooms, a dozen people sitting around a table, and it got to the point where I would just stop  and I’d say ‘Can we quick go around the room and just have everybody, you know, introduce themselves?’ Just because I wanted to know who was there, where they were sitting in relation to everyone else, because I always felt like, you know, that was putting me at a disadvantage just not knowing who I was speaking with, or hearing from, or what have you. But, you can’t always just, you know, expect people to do those things, provide  that type of information, unsolicited, So, I just, if I'm not picking up on visual cues, you know, following along, I usually just will be the one to interject and ask for that. But, I wouldn’t beat yourself up too much about it, I think you're, you're doing good. And for what it's worth, when I came to the Fledge, you did a really good job of taking me around and explaining to me all the things that you guys have incorporated in terms of different technology, and all of the different spaces. So, I appreciate all that you do to try and make me feel welcome and at home when I come into an unfamiliar space.

JN: I got a big smile on my face (chuckles) And part of what I think you and I could do right now is just let people know it's okay to have these conversations, I don't think I'm offending you by this, right? I mean…

CK: No, not at all. And when I started Accessiversity, I knew that to be successful, I was  going to have to really do a lot of marketing of the service and, you know, part of that involved being  on social media, which for the longest time, I resisted  creating a Facebook page. I had a LinkedIn profile, but I didn't really use it much. I don't really see a lot of value in Instagram, just because it is such  a visual platform. Twitter was something that I was never really interested in, just based on how a lot of the news articles present the Twitter feed, I was like, this is going to drive me crazy if I have to do this all of the time. 

So, I had the social media stuff I had to do, but then the other thing I wanted to do is launch my blog. So, I have a blog  called ‘Tales of the Reluctant Blind’ and I’d been wanting to do something like this for a long time, I wanted to be able to tell my story, I just didn't know the appropriate kind of platform for doing that. And it just seemed like it'd be the perfect way to tie all that together and be able to tell my story and talk about things, all things disability, in the context of, you know, some of the things we’re trying to do with Accessiversity, but also, you know, what other organizations and other people are doing, you know, because there are so many great stories of People who have gone through, you know, pain, and then perseverance. 

So, I wanted it to be that kind of clearing house for those types of stories. So, the title itself, ‘Tales of the Reluctant Blind’ it's kind of tongue and cheek, it's, you know, no one wants to be blind. I never wanted to be, and even after everything happened, it still doesn’t make it any easier to just, you know, accept the fact that you're blind. So, I say, you know, reluctant blind, because, you know, I am always trying to just push myself to  maintain as much of a normal life as possible, despite the fact that I have this visual impairment. And so, I say right at the outset, in my first blog post that, you know I'm going to be as genuine as I possibly can be. I'm going to be unapologetic. And, you know, I'm going to speak about my experiences, and living with a disability, the way that I talk to my family and friends about it.  You know, I'm a little brash, you know, compared to others within the disability community, but that's my prerogative, and I respect the fact that, you know, they maybe want to talk about their experiences in other ways. But, as far as my experience, I want to be honest and I want to inject humor into some of this, because there are humorous moments, there's things that happen that are funny, and you know, it doesn’t mean that having a disability is any less life altering. It's life, and so, having those kinds of honest conversations, I’m always down for having those, because that’s just part of the experience.

JN: Yeah, okay. I keep thinking about your progression, you know, you weren't blind then you were, or, you got me saying your words, and I’m getting caught up in that, I'm going to forget about that. I'm thinking about you talking about in the conference room, and wanting to know who was there, that first time that you had to go into a conference room or something like that, I'm thinking about me, I would have been scared out of my mind, it would have been so, like, it would have been fear, and then I just think about the first time you had to step out of your house, I mean, there's a lot to overcome here that just seems daunting. How, how’d that happened, how did you get through that? 

CK: Smoke and mirrors, I guess. You know, I don't know if I've ever fully just come to grips with everything that's happened, or just really processed that all, you know, adequately. Because you know, everything happened to me in my early twenties, and there was a period of three to four to five years where like basically, my life was on hold while I got the medical stuff under control, while I went back to school. And so, to me there  was just a sense of urgency that I needed to get back on with my life, that I lost, you know, five years that I had to try to make up. And so that kind of created a sense of urgency, in terms of just not sweating the small stuff, just, which kind of materialized as kind of putting on a good front, or not showing that you're intimidated by an awkward situation like going into a conference room like that. So, mostly it was me, going through the motions but being scared shitless, but just  not wanting to let people know that, because I felt like, you know, this is what I have to do now. I have to, I have to get over this, I have to figure a way out to do what I have to do. So, yeah, I mean, my 15 plus year career, you know, there was always doubt, and a lot of questioning, that I was kind of having to internalize, but I never let that outwardly show itself, or I try to minimize opportunities for that type of stuff to come out. And it's not perfect, I don't know if I'd advise someone to do the exact same thing, it worked for me but, you know, there were a lot of stressful times throughout that process too, still are, you know, I’m still figuring things out.

JN: Yeah, the world changes a lot, with or without you.

CK: For sure.

JN: So, go ahead, please.

CK: I was just going to say, you know, a lot of it is perspective too. Like, if I think about what happened to me, you know, since everything happened with my eyesight, you know, I graduated from college. I got married, I bought my first home. had my two kids, had my career, it's like all the great things that happened in my life have all happened since I, you know, became blind. So, it's a little hard to feel sorry for yourself, you know, when you realize, like you said, life goes on, and there is  good things that happen, you know,  even if you can't fully appreciate it because you don't have, you know, 20/20 eyesight, and can’t experience all the same things in all the same ways that everybody else can.

JN: How would you, kind of summarize what your mission is, and that could be, you know, for your company or yourself, or some. Maybe they're all the same. Maybe it's one big mission?

CK: Well, so, in the background, I’m not sure  how much of that you can make out but our Accessiversity logo, was actually something that a guy named Juan Loaiza over at A.J. Boggs & Company, you know Clarke Anderson…

JN: (Chuckles)

CK:…I won't say his name three times, but…

JN: I’ll say Clarke Anderson another time.

CK: (Chuckles) Clarke's awesome,  so he'd be great to have on as well. But Juan, you know,  when we were first conceptualizing this idea of Accessiversity Labs, he had mocked up the logo, and the logo, which I didn't describe this in the earlier segment and I probably should have, is this thumbprint graphic, that's made up of different kinds of pastel colors, and then it’s the word Accessiversity. And for the longest time, like I didn't know why he picked the thumbprint, I didn't know if there was some deeper meaning to it or anything. I just thought it was kind of cool. I just kind of went with that, and several months into doing Accessiversity, I was thinking about it, you know, trying to think of a way to market the business, and all of a sudden it hit me. And I came up with the tagline, leave your print on a more accessible world, because that to me is kind of, it just kind of sums up what I'm trying to do. I'm not going to, you know, address all the different issues out there with accessibility, there is just so much out there. But I'll do my small part, and in terms of the parts of the world I'm able to touch, the clients I’m able to work with, the projects I’m able to complete, you know, I'm going to have left my print on those projects, you know, I’m going to have you know, have helped with creating kind of a neck gain in more accessible whatever out there. And so, to me that's kind of the mission that I carry forward in terms of the business and Accessiversity. And part of it carries over into life. Because, I mean, part of my reason to go this route and to get into accessibility testing, it is a little self-serving, because I wanted to enrich myself, I wanted to become better at using assistive technology, better at enjoying, you know,  all of these neat, cool gadgets, and take advantage of my smartphone and all of these different apps that are out there. So, there is a little bit of a crossover there, but that’s kind of what I would say is, leave your print on a more accessible world.

JN: I like it. What's something you do Every Damn Day to push that mission forward or those missions forward?

CK: Well, I would say learn, I try to learn something new every day, but I would, I would probably expand that to be, kind of, more focused on just betterment, or enrichment. And that could be, you know, actually learning just about something that I don't really know anything about, or it could just be messing around with my phone and trying to figure out a new feature of an app that I hadn't used before, and just spend the time to play around with it, and figure out how it works, and then kind of add that to my toolkit, in terms of, you know, how to, you know, be better the next day. And then, I mean, yeah, just, you know, whether it's exercise, or exercising my mind or my body, or just learning, I just think it's about constantly wanting to, you know, enrich one’s self,  or be focused on bettering one's self and situation.

JN: Thank you. I think all of that's good advice and I like how you made it betterment, instead of just learning, because I always say learning is one of my things, but it's really trying to figure out, or trying to get a skill, or some knowledge, or some strength, conditioning, whatever. I like that betterment. That's something we should all probably strive for. Before, well I’m going to save that til the end, I'll come back to that. Just yesterday on the show, we had Brett Forsberg. And he, or, I'm sorry, Brent Forsberg, and he’s passing a question to you, and the question is, what are you most grateful for, something that happened in 2020? So, what happened in 2020 that you're most grateful for?

CK: I think, in a weird way, COVID really forcing me to double down on what I was doing with Accessiversity. It really helped to set me up, for what I’m planning to be a really productive 2021. And I know it sounds a little cheesy,  and I don’t want it to seem insincere, because there were some really tough months in 2020, where, you know, I didn't have any projects or any revenue coming in, that I was, you know, very close to thinking I was going to have to fold, fold the whole thing in, and just figure out something else to do. But I stuck it out, and it really forced me to be more resilient, it gave me clarity, in terms of what it is that I needed to do to move things forward. I got a break, in really landing a long-term, retainer contract with a guy that just really believed in our mission, and was willing to just, you know, put his money,  resources, and support  behind what we were trying to do and just opened a ton of doors for us and really helped to bring that all kind of full circle. And so, I would say that, then just kind of a tangential kind of one is that we had a lot of time to spend together as a family. We have a place up  at Houghton Lake, my wife is a per diem nurse, and so, we got a lot of family time up at the cabin this summer, I was still able to do work and things from up there but those are things that, you know, you look back, I just, I'll be grateful that my kids, me and my family have those memories to keep forever.

JN: All right. And tomorrow on the show. I have Brent Case with the Right Place. And what question would you like me to pass to him?

CK: I’d be curious to have him, kind of, project where he sees the Greater Lansing region in ten or fifteen years from now, just with his background in economic development And just, you know, the lens that they look at things, I'd be really curious to kind of have his opinion and kind of forecast, where he sees the Greater Lansing region going over the next 10 to 15 years because I think there's a lot of things that are in play right now that, you know, our trajectory is just kind of up in the air. We can go any number of different directions. I think it'd be curious to kind of see what sort of perspective he has.

JN: Okay, and I'm definitely going to ask him that, and I think that that's a great question, and you rattled off some really good things, you know, the changes that are coming, the commitments that GM is making and BWL’s making for environmental, or climate change. You know, what kind of scars is Covid going to leave on us, all of those things. What, you know, you're not necessarily in the same field as him but what do you, what's your vision, what do you see, as what Lansing. The landscape will be like, or not see, I mean, those words again.

CK: I think, I mean I think we're in the middle of a transformation, we were already in the middle of a transformation before COVID, and I don't know, I add it all up and I, you know, we're going to come out the other end better for it. You know, we mentioned GM’s commitment to zero emissions by, what is it, 2035 or something. You mentioned BWL. And we still haven't fully seen the impact of the F-RIB in our community, and what that's going to do to bring, you know, scientists and researchers from all over the world to our community. And then like COVID, yeah that's changing everything in terms of how business conducts itself, and you know, redefining a workforce that, you know, could potentially just be all virtual. And I think about all the insurance companies that are headquartered in Lansing, and maybe that becomes a strategic advantage for them, to be able to recruit talent from elsewhere, or somehow tap into that talent. I don’t know, so I mentioned having a place up at Houghton lake. 

I think back to when I was in high school. And, you know, my wife and I, we both grew up in GM families. You know, back then, you could have a job on the line at GM earning a decent wage, and you could afford your house with a white picket fence, and a Chevy in the driveway, and then a lot of those guys, you know, and gals, still had, you know, enough resources to have, like a place up at like a Houghton Lake or you know what I mean, like a place you go away to on the weekend. And, you know, I kind of see, you know, this transformation, this transition to the knowledge economy, you know, maybe that's this kind of next wave, is that we see a bunch of influx of, of these knowledge workers coming into our region. And all of a sudden, you know they're realizing that this low cost of living, and you know, these opportunities with are employers here in the Greater Lansing area, you know, and they can do the same thing, and then all of a sudden you start seeing a boom in all of these northern communities, that once used to be kind of that staple for the GM line workers, and all of a sudden, you're seeing all these knowledge workers starting to buy up property. 

So, I don't know, I guess I just see that as, you know, a possibility. I definitely think we're moving in the right direction, and if we can keep it up, we're going to look completely different than we did even 10, 15 years ago.

JN: All right, well thank you for that input. I like what you’re saying, I like how you're thinking. I want to throw up one more thing before we get out, it's again from Karla, and she says, ‘congratulations to all your accomplishments Chris, you have always been a smart, ambitious guy, thanks for your contribution.’

CK: That’s awesome. Thank you Karla. 

JN: And I will. I also congratulate you, I think you've done great things, I've always liked to work with you and I can't wait till we get it back going again. So, anything that we forgot to talk about like any events or websites, or I think your web site’s already in the description and all that. Anything you want to shout out?

CK: I would say that, I would encourage people to check out the blog. Like I say, I try to keep things light hearted. There's a lot of humor. But there's a lot of really good information that gives you, kind of, some insight into what it's like to be an individual with a disability that has to rely on assistive technology to navigate different digital environments. We have a Facebook page that I would encourage people to check out, it's @accessiversitylabs. You can go there and follow and like our page. We will promote a lot of the new content that we're putting on the blog there, and we share our newsletter that we put out every month. 

And then, yeah, I guess what I would say is, accessibility doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be complex or expensive. It's, it's something that you can just start to do and you can build on. And the most important thing is to just, you know, start doing something. So, I guess I would challenge everybody, figure out what that means, to leave your print on a more accessible world, and do whatever you can to make that happen.

JN: All right. Well, thank you very much Chris for being on the show, and tomorrow we'll have Brent Case on the show, and we do this Every Damn Day at 2 p.m. So, look at the schedule, look at our TheFledge.com/events to see who's coming up, and we will see you later.(signs ‘see you later’)