Really Specific Stories: Shelly Brisbin Duration: 58:03 SPEAKERS Martin Feld, Shelly Brisbin Shelly Brisbin 00:21 Thank you so much for joining this recording of Really Specific Stories, Shelly; it's wonderful to have you on the podcast. Shelly Brisbin 00:27 It's great to be here, Martin, thanks. Martin Feld 00:29 Now, first question, as it is the case with every participant, how did you first get into podcasts? Shelly Brisbin 00:36 I, as somebody who was following the tech industry and you know, reading blo-..., I can't remember where I first read the term or saw the the term, but I heard about this thing that was audio that one created on one's own, backed up by RSS. And I was like, 'Oh, that sounds like fun', because I had been a tech journalist for a really long time, and had always had a fascination and a fondness for audio, but had never really done that in my career. And so it was just a level of curiosity. And I was like, 'I want to learn how that works'. And I almost had that thought before I even listened to podcasts, but I quickly found podcasts to listen to, and was like, 'Oh, OK, I can do this; maybe I can't do it at quite the technical level yet, but let's learn how to do that'. Shelly Brisbin 01:19 So it was really just massive curiosity (on my part) that got me interested in it. And I couldn't not do one of my own; the first podcast I ever did, which is incredibly terrible, but I'm proud of the date, was December 30th, 2004. And so I, it wasn't good, and I continued doing a lot of podcasts that were basically like, 'I'm learning how to do a podcast, here's what an RSS feed.... here's how to make a podcast'. I went to the Macworld Conference in 2005, which was in January, interviewed people, and so I just started like, making podcasts, having no expectation or anticipation of audience. I did put it out in public, but like I said, I was listening to podcasts all along, but I was making them long before I was really a devotee of the medium as a fan. Martin Feld 02:08 And how did it feel to be learning the art of podcasting in public? Or more specifically, how'd it feel to be practising in public? Shelly Brisbin 02:17 I guess I didn't have a concept of how many people might be listening, because very early on, there wasn't a lot of data about that, you know, you'd put up an RSS feed and you would tell people in whatever way you could, which was somewhat limited, we didn't really have social media. And so I had this reasonable belief that if there were people listening, it was a small number of them. And the remoteness of, you know, being behind a microphone in my house or walking around town, or wherever I was recording my podcast, the remoteness from people, and not having created feedback mechanisms, I was just sort of, like I was kind of taking a risk, I just kind of put myself out there. And so I didn't really think of, I had the awareness that people could listen to it, but it wasn't as if I was standing on a stage with an audience of people looking up at me expectantly. Martin Feld 03:05 Now as a tech journalist, because you explained that was your background, that is the kind of performance in public, you're sharing your views with a wider audience. If we take a step back, can you tell me the story of how you first got into technology and what led you to want to discuss it as a journalist? Shelly Brisbin 03:23 So when I discovered PageMaker and the Macintosh in 1986, desktop publishing, I said, 'OK, I'm gonna get that', because I was unemployed at the time; I was out of college, I got a loan from my mom and I bought a Mac, I taught myself how to use it. And I made my living for a while doing newsletters on the Mac, and printing them out on either a laser printer or a Linotype machine. And in the course of learning how to use that equipment, I was just, I mean, I'm always, I'm just really curious. If it's something that's interesting to me, I want to know as much as I possibly can about a thing. And that's the way I approached it. And after a couple of years, I felt like I had enough time technical skill that I could sort of hang my shingle out doing tech-support stuff. And then one thing led to another and I got a job at a place that did sort of niche computer magazines. And I was doing the same thing as before, I was creating using my journalism degree to (and knowledge to) create the publication because I understood a little bit about the tech industry. But I was also using the same desktop publishing skills that I've been teaching myself on PageMaker, so I sort of cobbled together this interest and career in technology, having like, used it in order to, you know, avoid the issues that disability was presenting me. Shelly Brisbin 03:23 Sure, I got my first computer, a Mac Plus, in 1986; I got that machine because I had a degree in journalism, which was young, but which hadn't given me much work so far. I'm visually impaired and it meant that a lot of the careers that were open to beginning journalists were actually closed to me, or that I didn't know how to get myself into. Either you had to go to a small town newspaper, and drive a car in order to go around and cover your beat, or I had a public relations concentration. So people were like, 'Well, you can work at non-profits and you can do press releases, and promote events and stuff like that'. But I found, and newsletters, and I found pretty quickly that one of the major tasks that, I had an internship, where one of the things we did was we put out a monthly newsletter. And that was done on a light table with layout galleys and Rubylith. And you just, you made publications on this light table, and I didn't have the visual acuity to do that without making bad mistakes and having things be crooked. Shelly Brisbin 05:08 And it just sort of went on from there. The first publication I edited was something called Supercomputing News, which was this little, 24- page monthly tabloid, all about supercomputing. And that was great, because so much of supercomputing is about other science. It's about how people use it in astronomy, or um, uh fluid dynamics or space exploration. And so I was not only learning, 'OK, what is a Hydra 5? Or what is a Cray-1 supercomputer? And how do those things work?', but how does the business work, how does the trade press work?' And so just, you know, one thing led to many other things, and I ended up spending a lot of years in, I guess, what you would call 'trade journalism'. I worked for MacUser magazine in the 1990s, and then freelanced for a bunch of other tech magazines, and I just found myself able to combine an interest in technology and how it worked with what my real skill was, which was writing and editing about it. Martin Feld 06:35 And as you formed this identity as a journalist, what did it feel like to have (maybe) these two halves to what you were doing, this fandom and enjoyment of computers and having it as a professional side of your life? Shelly Brisbin 06:49 I mean, it felt natural to me. I didn't, and I was always like, as a journalist, obviously, you want to maintain some level of, I wouldn't say objectivity because that word has a bad connotation in journalism these days, but some level of detachment from: 'OK, I'm not going to promote any particular product'. I was always very mindful of ethics and very mindful of yeah, I've chosen my lot. I've bought Apple computers. That's that's sort of when I, especially when I, by the time I went to MacUser, but even before then, when I was doing tech support for a while, uh, Apple was kind of the thing that I was interested in, and what I knew most about, and so I gravitated toward it, but I was never the sort of person who was like, 'Yay, Apple! Boo Windows!' I mean, sure, we wrote a few stories like that, but I kept my what you might call 'fandom' in check to the extent that I enjoyed what I was doing and I was inspired by it, but I was not an advocate for it. And that for me, like, which is an interesting thing about, trade journalists get that accusation a lot that either they're in the pockets of the people that they cover, or that they're less journalists and more, you know, fan folks. And I really was kind of aware of that and wanted to not make that a big part of what I was doing. Martin Feld 08:01 Now you already alluded at the beginning of this episode to learning the art of podcasting, and I liked that you've brought up here this different kind of, I suppose, written or print world that you were participating in. What was it like to engage in that shift from print or on-screen media, writing things, to using your voice or engaging with that world of audio? Shelly Brisbin 08:27 So by the time I started podcasting, I had been writing tech books as a freelancer and doing other freelance writing projects for a number of years. And I could sort of see the writing on the wall in terms of how easy it was to produce a physical book and get it published. It was becoming harder, and I did a few more books after I podcasted, started podcasting, but there weren't a lot of them and they sold less well than books had previously. And so I kind of was looking out to the future. But I also liked the expressive, uh, difference in audio, I liked being able to, one of the things I feel like I'm decent at is speaking extemporaneously; I think I have a voice that works behind a microphone. And I've always kind of had that sense, but I had never incorporated it into any of the work I'd done. I'd done presentations at conferences and stuff on occasion, but not that many, and so that was sort of the appeal of audio. It wasn't even as a career thing, it was just a creative outlet for me initially, because I did, like, I did tech podcasts to start with but then I had a, sort of an eponymous podcast that I just did whatever I wanted to do, and I sort of veered away from tech and into sort of more personal kinds of life reflections and other sort of audio experiments. And so again, it was like, it was curiosity, and it was, uh, excitement about what can I do with this new medium? How can I apply this new piece of gear I've had (I bought) uh, to make a better podcast. And then eventually kind of like what happened to me with desktop publishing on the Mac, I learned an laugh about it, that I actually got to do podcast work for other people in the tech world, I edited a podcast magazine for a while. And it was like, 'Oh, well, the thing I'm curious about and interested about, enough other people are interested in too, that I can there's there's a niche for me, career-wise'. Shelly Brisbin 10:17 And so in terms of like, communicating as a, about technology in podcast versus writing, that probably didn't happen until I had been podcasting for a number of years, because I just, I wasn't concerned about: 'Oh, well, podcasting is now my medium for technology'. I did a few tech podcasts early on, like I say, I was part of a group called the Tech Podcast Network. But I honestly didn't like most tech podcasts that were out there: I found them long; I found them, uh, boring; I found them done by entirely too many white dudes. And so initially, it was just like all tech podcasting had a sort of a same, there were only a few I could listen to, to be honest. And so there, for a long time, it was like, 'OK, I don't want to do that because it's not interesting to me', because that's what the tech podcasting world is. And then eventually, I was like, 'Oh, I could do this, but I could do it in a different way', whether it's a different way, in terms of what I focus on, were a different way, in terms of the way I dress the audience. Instead of like just carping about the state of tech podcasts and pretending it doesn't exist, why not try and make something that I would be proud of, but that would express my voice? Which is why podcasting sort of became a creative outlet for me, because once it was more about expressing my creativity, and sometimes honestly, you know, working out my grudges, I felt more free to and more interested in it and engaged in it as a creative outlet. Martin Feld 11:46 'Creative outlet' is a great way to put it, and I like that you called out that it's a lot of white guys. And just to make it known, in case people weren't aware, I am a white guy and you're on my podcast, so thanks for being part of it. Shelly Brisbin 11:58 I've been on a lot of white guys' podcasts, and I'm a white woman, so you know! Martin Feld 12:03 That's great, I love it! Shelly Brisbin 12:05 Some of my best friends are white guys! Martin Feld 12:08 Nah, it's good, it has to be identified. It's a... Shelly Brisbin 12:10 Indeed! Martin Feld 12:11 ...it's a major facet of the medium and the genre and it's uh, it's something that should be critiqued. Now, with that in mind, using podcasting as a creative outlet, not being a white guy, how do you feel that you've developed in this medium? Or what are some of the things that you think you've brought across the shows that you've done (or might still be doing) that makes what you do different? Shelly Brisbin 12:33 Well, I guess there's a couple of ways to answer that, because as I say, I wasn't (when I started doing podcasts) probably for the first, golly, I don't know, five or six years that I did it, since I wasn't focusing on tech, I was in a different niche. I was, as I say, doing sort of personal reflections; it was almost, you, if you wanted to be dismissive about it, you could call it personal blogging, it wasn't like confessional journal writing, it was more about: 'This is what's going on in my life'. And I fell in with this group of people who was doing similar stuff, most of whom were couples. And I am married, and my husband is not and was not a podcaster, but I dragged him in as sort of colour commentator and you know, to keep me honest, basically, like, if I would say something ridiculous, he could respond to it. And so we, there was this sort of sub-genre of entertainment podcasts called couplecasts. And I felt really inspired by those individuals that I became friends with. In any case, that's kind of what I was doing in terms of developing myself as a, quote unquote, personality, because whether we like to admit it or not, podcasting is about performance and it's about personality. And the reason that people stick with podcasts-and I learned this in a couple-casting age, and it sort of came forward to the tech-podcasting world as well, has something to do with personality. And I don't hype that up, but I do understand that if people are going to listen to me, it's going to be because my voice sounds alright to them or they like the stories that we're telling. We did a lot of stories about things, sort of mundane-sounding things like pets and house remodelling and all kinds of stuff like that. Shelly Brisbin 14:03 And then when I went back to sort of tech podcasting, I had kind of, I'd been in that sort of a little more casual, conversational format for a while, I also was taking things less seriously. So one of the things about audio that I find freeing is that you can be a little funny, and you can be a little tongue-in-cheek, and people will get that because they're hearing your voice, whereas if you write something, uh, especially for a book or a technology magazine, it's not always clear, your jokes don't come out the same way. And I don't, I'm not even, I'm not comedian by any means, but I like the idea that when you're talking about something like technology, you can have a little fun with it. And I had been comfortable enough behind the mic for all those years that I was just like, 'Alright, well let's, let's do that!' As to what I might offer that's different, well, first of all, there was a point at which I started talking about accessibility issues, which nobody else was and mostly still are not. The other thing was: I was focused on diversity in terms of both the shows I listened to and in terms of the people I tried to connect with. Yes, there were an awful lot of white guys and gals in the couplecasting world, and uh, I had been concerned about that part for a long time, but I also met a lot of people who, who were podcasters, who had disabilities and became friends with them. So it was another community. Shelly Brisbin 15:23 I've always found podcasting to be a series of communities. Some of them have been more welcoming and more creative than others, but it's always for me been about the community of other people who make this stuff, and then hopefully a community of people who, who listen to it. And that's not unique to somebody who isn't a white guy, there are plenty of white guys who have communities. One of the things that I noticed about the way a lot of tech podcasters experienced community was that they were always sort of name-dropping and being self-referential and assuming that if you listen to 'Guy A Podcast', you were probably listening to 'Guy B Podcast', because they had guested on each other shows. And there are all these sort of inside jokes that I found incredibly off-putting (and still do); I don't like that mode of podcasting. And sure, you have community and you have friends and you can refer to that sort of thing, and I guest on a lot of people's shows, and a lot of people guest on my shows, but I think there's a respect for the audience that you have to have that doesn't assume that everybody who listens to your podcast listens to your buddy's podcast. And so, I felt like that was a perspective that I offered. I felt like because I was talking about accessibility, I had different guests, I had different people invite me on their shows. And so it was just a matter of not feeling like, in tech podcasting, I had to bow down to the people who were sort of the big deals of the medium. And they weren't my heroes, they were, I could learn from them, because some of them are very talented, but I tried to always go my own way and tried to always make the shows something that I would want to listen to and that didn't sound like just another white guy with a slightly different voice. Martin Feld 17:03 As usual in this show, responses make me want to ask several questions at once, but the one I'm going to pick on there is that very important word (that I'm glad that you've brought up): 'accessibility', because it's a word that I think maybe gets thrown around a lot these days. It's hopefully more and more in the mind of people, but people might not necessarily be very clear about what it means or why it's significant. Can you please define what you believe accessibility means or how it is so important to so many people? Shelly Brisbin 17:35 So when I talk about accessibility, I'm specifically talking about accessibility of technology for people with a variety of disabilities. And I know accessibility can have a broader meaning, it just means: can you access a thing, whether it be a podcast, or a book, or a whatever it might be? But I specifically talk about access to technology. So to me, the importance of it is that people with disabilities have certain limitation when it comes to accessing a technology as it's presented to them. If you're blind, you can't see the screen. If you're deaf, you can't hear alerts on your computer. If you, uh, have a physical disability, you might not be able to use a mouse, or there are gradations of that. So I'm not totally blind, I have a visually impaired, visual impairment, I can see the screen, but I might need magnification or I might need high contrast, or in some cases, I might need a screen reader. So, accessibility is about either encouraging: the computer technologists, the operating system developers and hardware developers to make tech, make their technology so that it can be adapted to the needs of somebody with a disability; or it is, uh, at the app level, or the website level, where you're asking content creators and developers to ensure that they are following the guidelines that are set by the people who make the computers and the operating systems and the phones and the tablets, so that everybody can access it, whether it's a matter of flipping a switch to turn on an assistive technology tool, or whether it's not creating barriers by creating interfaces and other elements that can't be used by somebody because of a disability. Martin Feld 19:12 That's great and I'm very pleased to hear it from you because you have this direct experience with these assistive technologies and you've (I understand) been recording and writing about it for some time. Over the time that you've been producing creative content that focuses on accessibility, have you seen improvements in the discussion of this topic or how do you think it's developed? Shelly Brisbin 19:43 It's really interesting, because, and I'm speaking more broadly than than podcasting, there's certainly been more opportunity to talk and write about it. I think a lot of times, people in the sort of mainstream technology press or the podcasting world have sort of an understanding that, 'Oh, yeah, accessibility is something that we need to address or have somebody on to talk about', right? So accessibility is almost all, and it's still kind of this way, it's getting better, accessibility is almost always sort of somewhere out there, 'OK, now we're going to talk about accessibility; we're going to turn to accessibility, we're going to have Shelly on the show, we're going to have somebody else write about accessibility', but it isn't integrated largely into mainstream conversations. Sometimes what happens, especially with a company like Apple, that has kind of made a name for itself, in terms of the way it deals with accessibility and its own products, is that people who are covering Apple or covering a Google or a Microsoft, they look to the successes that those companies have had in accessibility and they want to say, 'Wow, isn't it great that those companies are doing that? Awesome! We've covered it! Now let's talk about games!' And that's still incredibly prevalent. Shelly Brisbin 20:49 And I've had many opportunities to write about and talk about accessibility, both in my own projects and on other people's podcasts, and I've been hired to write other things. So I have personally had opportunities (not as many as I would like to have) and I think there are a lot of mainstream people out there who, uh, want accessibility addressed, but they don't necessarily know how to do it, and so they either ignore it, or they find the one person that's their go-to, and they say, 'OK, Shelly', or so and so, and sometimes it's not me, sometimes it's somebody else, 'You tell me everything I need to know about accessibility'. And they think they know once that person has finished talking, but they don't. And when they go back and they write or they say, 'We're gonna do a comprehensive review of such and such a technology thing', they don't include accessibility at all. And that still happens. What's different now is that there's more focus on accessibility at the development level, at the operating system level at the app level, and more of us are out here holding developers accountable for that. And so sometimes you'll get a mainstream perspective where it's like, 'OK, uh, what do we need to say about accessibility?' And again, it's usually inviting, you know, an expert on, which I'm not opposed to, because I get to be that expert sometimes, but it can be myopic, because sometimes what happens is like, let's say you have a really excellent new app or a really excellent new operating system release and the reviews are great, it's, it's four and a half stars, it's however you evaluate it, and then what they what they don't know, or what they ignore, is that there's some sort of major show-stopping accessibility bug. It would never occur to somebody in mainstream tech to say, to to write about that in detail or to say in detail, 'Wow, this app that everybody loves, is completely inaccessible, or it has a show-stopping accessibility bug'. Martin Feld 20:49 Mmm... Shelly Brisbin 20:59 I might get to say that, because after many, and it's taken me a really long time, because, you know, what I've said about communities is kind of true in the sense that that's the good part about communities is that there are people who are, you know, uh, doing the same thing and communicating with each other and creating the sort of community. The bad thing is sometimes those communities are closed-off spaces and if I'm trying to advocate for accessibility, or if I'm trying to write about it as a journalist or talk about as a podcaster, unless I have the ear of the people in those communities I don't necessarily get to do that. And it took me a long time, I'm pretty well situated at this point. Could be better, probably, but I'm pretty well situated and I wasn't a number of years ago. And so, I spent a long time talking about this mostly to other people with disabilities, either in writing or in podcasts that I was making or guesting on. And then a series of events happened where I got, I, I... people I, anyway, it's a whole long story, but but I got better connected. Shelly Brisbin 23:33 And I, one of my big objections was the insularity of podcasting communities. And then I came inside those podcasting communities, and I was like, 'Alright, I want to be really conscious of not getting trapped inside of the insularity, uh, and just sort of talking about what everybody else was talking about, and accepting that the people who were sort of the leading lights of those communities, uh, were doing or saying all the things that they shouldn't be saying, and I, so I tried to use my position to say, 'Hey, we need to talk more about accessibility'. And I got to do it, like I say, uh, but it was it's still sort of like, 'Now we're going to stop and we're going to talk about accessibility', as opposed to, 'We're going to integrate it in whatever we do'. So that's a really long way of saying it's gotten better for me personally, it's gotten better for the notion of accessibility, because the technology has continued to evolve and has continued to add more accessibility. And to some extent, it's gotten better in the mainstream, because every once in a while somebody will do a really great piece of work about accessibility or will incorporate it in a really interesting way, in a mainstream context. Uh, but what we're missing is sort of the, uh, sort of default level of integration that I'd like to see. Martin Feld 24:43 Well, I'm very pleased to hear that you think it's improving and I'm not terribly surprised that it still has a way to go. I'd like to know, if we can maybe turn that accessibility lens onto the medium of podcasting itself: you've described how certain mainstream players or heads of communities weren't necessarily discussing or critiquing accessibility features enough, but when you think about podcasting as an audio medium, whether you compare it to other audio media like radio and audiobooks or to visual media, such as television, film, print, whatever, how accessible do you think the medium (and the technologies that surround podcasting, all of that) is, and what's your experience been with it? Shelly Brisbin 25:30 That's a really good question. I will say, a couple of things. First of all, in the very early days, people who were disabled who were podcasting, and I speak specifically of people with blindness and visual impairments, there were a lot of radio people who got into podcasting, or who were audio producers pr somehow involved in music in some way. And so they knew a lot about the equipment, uh, they were using things like Pro Tools, which was accessible, because I know a guy who's a music producer who's totally blind and he uses Pro Tools, which back in the day was kind of a big deal. And then there were, uh, the equipment itself, especially in the sort of more analogue hardware context where you're physically pressing buttons, as opposed to using touchscreens and the like, that stuff was very accessible. There was lots of help for somebody who wanted to be podcasting accessibly, there were people out there who would say, 'This is, this is good equipment, this is less good equipment, because it has a touchscreen or because the screen is very small if you're low-vision'. Shelly Brisbin 26:24 Uh, there were people with disabilities helping each other. There was a little device that a lot of people had in like 2005/2006, called the iRiver, which was an MP3 recorder and player. And that was not accessible by default but somebody mapped out the menuing system and made it available online so that blind people could learn it and could have it as a cheat sheet. And so a lot of people use those little iRivers who were blind because the community had said, 'Hey, let's, this is a thing that...', it was cheap, it was effective, it had good audio for the time. And so a lot of people, you know, learned how to use it. And then, uh, in the, the late 2000s, was when Apple was adding more accessibility into its computers. And as it, and as iPhones, when the iPhone got released by 2009, they made it accessible. And so you had a lot of devices that were being used to edit podcasts or to, uh, manage podcasts as consumers, becoming more accessible than they had been. So it's been an evolution. Shelly Brisbin 27:27 Products continue to be accessible in those same terms I've discussed. I think some of the challenges have to do with things like touchscreens. They have to do with, 'Oh, OK, well, here's a recorder that has some physical knobs, but you're not going to be able to set it up unless you have access to the touchscreen'. So there have been some efforts to make that stuff available in the community. Uh, there are more software tools and human-assistance kind of tools that people can use to make inaccessible devices accessible. There's a lot of conversation online about: 'Do I want to stay away from this device or do I want to approach it because of its accessibility?' I should stop to say that in terms of consumption, uh so, so for blind people, visually-impaired people, I think both the production and consumption of podcasts has been very accessible, and there's been a lot of information about which products and devices to avoid and which to look toward. I think on the consumer side too, that's true for people with blindness and visual impairments. I think people who are deaf or hard of hearing have had a harder time getting into podcasts for what seem like obvious reasons; the move to make more podcast transcripts available, has only escalated in the past few years, both because of AI technology that makes it easier to turn, uh, speech to text, and also just because accessibility generally has become enough of an issue that people who are deaf and hard of hearing have said, 'Hey, I'd like to have a transc-...', or people who have reading disabilities or for whatever reason would maybe like to follow along a podcast audio, with text. Shelly Brisbin 28:57 There's been more advocacy on that side and more people, uh, including me have been convinced that transcripts are a thing they ought to do. I didn't do transcripts for Parallel for a long time, and I had a guest, who's a web developer, say to me when I invited him on the show, 'I only go on podcasts where transcripts are provided'. And I know a number of people in the disability community who have taken that position and I respect it, and so I started doing transcripts. I have access to transcript-creation software; some of that stuff is better than others. And I do rough transcripts, they're not as good as they could be. And I also hasten to point out that another podcast that I do (that is not tech-related), does not have a transcript. I think the minute somebody says that to me, as a listener to the podcast, 'Hey, I'd love to have a transcript', I'm gonna have to change my tune. But for a tech podcast, it felt particularly it was talking about accessibility, it felt particularly important. Shelly Brisbin 29:45 So yeah, I'd say generally speaking, the accessibility of the podcast-creation experiences is very good. Uh, on the user side, transcripts are sort of the latest thing. And then I guess the last thing I would say is: accessibility of web presences is an issue because people use different CMSes. There are certain CMSes that are very popular in podcasting that have varying levels of accessibility. People, uh, will do things like, uh, forms or video players or other things on, or or drop-down menus or things on websites that have potential accessibility pitfalls. And I think in most cases, those podcasts sites are pretty good but every once in a while, you run across one, where somebody has tried to do something really fancy with some really, uh, cutting-edge, you know, visual technology, that's sort of overkill, or maybe it's just bad contrast. So, sort of the way people who make podcasts can continue to make them more accessible to consumers, is, uh, probably accessible websites and transcripts. Martin Feld 30:44 Now, something you mentioned in one of your earlier responses, and something that I'm very clearly getting from you now, is that you've come to be seen as an expert on this topic, perhaps, whether you like it or not. Can you explain the experience or how you feel to be seen as an expert? Is that something that you enjoy or that you've had to come to terms with? Shelly Brisbin 31:07 I enjoy it, but I don't enjoy it when somebody asks me to be an expert about something I'm not an expert on, like, I'm not a developer. And so, I can talk about what one needs to do to approach development accessibly, but I'm not a developer, so there's a point at which I'm not going to have anything to say to you. I will say that the reason I became a quote, expert, because, was because when I sort of pivoted my career to focus more on accessibility, I wrote a book called iOS Access for All: Your Comprehensive Guide to Accessibility for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. And so the idea was: here's everything you need to know about accessibility. I had never written about accessibility before, with the exception of one article a long time ago. I was a tech journalist, I was a tech book author, I had written like 15 or 16 books by that point, and I had decided I was gonna do this book on accessibility, because number one: as I said, before the book market was kind of crashing, and so I decided to do a self published ebook, which meant that it was going to be completely accessible, and I said, 'Well alright, well, let's cover accessibility'. And there were a lot of empty spots in the market for that sort of thing. So I did it, I self-published it. Shelly Brisbin 32:09 And as a consequence of doing that, I had to find the accessibility community. I didn't know any of those folks. And so I went to conferences, I got active online, I basically plugged myself into that community because I didn't want to just throw this book out there: and number one, do the wrong book, you know, have, write about things that nobody cared about; and number two, I needed to promote it, and I needed people to sort of look at it and go, 'Hey, you did a good job', or, 'You didn't do a good job'. And so, as a consequence, I got connected to that accessibility community. And then, in the course of that, because I was continuing to podcast and in the course of promoting the book, like the big-..., one of the biggest things I did was: I would go on podcasts and talk about it. Most of those were podcasts about accessibility in some way or run by people with disabilities, but I knew from my MacUser days, people like Jason Snell, who were podcasting and others who had evolved their careers into podcasting. And I connected with them again, after a long time, and I found myself working on podcast projects with them or being invited to be guests on their show. And accessibility was kind of, it was my expertise, and honestly, it was kind of my way in, because I wasn't doing mainstream tech journalism anymore, really, I was mostly doing podcasting, I was doing the accessibility stuff. And I was, you know, there was a time when I was kind of underemployed to be quite honest. Shelly Brisbin 33:28 So being an accessibility expert was kind of my niche; it was kind of my way back into that community. And so, it's gotten me invited on a lot of shows, where I probably wouldn't otherwise be invited, or would have not been. And so then I sort of integrated more of the mainstream tech I had worked on before back into what I was doing, so that I could be, uh, could retain credibility in the sort of mainstream world too, because I don't think you can understand accessibility in a vacuum, I think you do have to relate it back to the mainstream world, both for the benefit of mainstream audiences that you're talking to, as well as in terms of understanding like what is, is acceptable and possible to expect from developers and operating-system creators and stuff like that. So I'm happy to be thought of as an expert; I have had to come to terms with saying to people, 'Yeah, I'm an expert in this thing over here, but not this thing over here; uh, but I can tell you, who is an expert on this thing over here, and maybe I should learn more about this thing'. Uh, so I've kind of enjoyed it but I, it's so important to not pretend you know things you don't know. Martin Feld 34:30 And if I may say ,what you're doing, right there, referring to people who are, in fact, an expert on assistive technology or accessibility topic x, that is the community in action, right? Shelly Brisbin 34:41 Right, well, it's also made it possible for me to find guests for my show, like, once I started Parallel. So it's a virtuous circle in the sense that I've met people who I've been able to tap as guests and experts and people that have advised me on things and I've also been able to refer others to those people, and so, I'm not at the centre of a community but I'm, I have enough of a position within a community that people often, often, not always, people often know who I am and people come to me and say, 'Hey, are you the person?' And I'll happily say 'No', or, 'Yes, maybe I am the person'. Uh, but it's kind of, it's, and I'm always meeting more people, like there, there are whole swathes of the community that I haven't met, like, I don't know, very many... I've met some web developers that are, you know, pretty, uh, important in the community, I've been to conferences and things like that. I don't know a lot about, uh, tools for people with physical disabilities and Switch Control, which is the Apple, uh, assistive technology and how that works with all of... I don't know, the hardware vendors in that community, I don't know the sort of experts. And so, like I say, I know what I don't know, and if those people are out there and want to hang out, let's do it! Martin Feld 35:51 And you've used the word 'community' very appropriately, I think, talking about all these different social and creative connections that have built around these topics. Delving a bit more deeply, though, you mentioned that you do a show called Parallel; you mentioned people like Jason Snell, who runs The Incomparable and has various other podcasting projects. Can you tell me what it was like to dig more deeply into this community and become a participating member of more formal networks like Relay FM? What has that been like? Shelly Brisbin 36:21 Well, can I tell you the story of why Parallel exists first, because I think it might illuminate a little bit of it? Martin Feld 36:26 Sure! Shelly Brisbin 36:26 So I created Parallel in 2015, I think was 2015. The premise of it was that people in the mainstream tech world and the accessibility tech world never talked to each other. So like I say, I would go on a podcast about accessibility, I was a panellist on, a regular regular panelist on one, I would go on, I'd get invited on others. And then I'd get invited on mainstream shows through, through Jason and through some of the people at Relay and other, other networks. And I was like, 'You guys, we never talk to each other; when we talk about iOS or macOS or anything going on the tech world, we don't talk about accessibility, or if we do, I'm doing all the talking'. But I know these people in the accessible podcasting space and the accessible journalism space; they've never met Jason, or Stephen or Myke (Stephen Hackett or Myke Hurley) or any of those people. They've, they've never had, there's never been any contact. In fact, those people, the people in the accessibility world are often fans of these mainstream podcasters, who I was sort of getting to know, and journalists and these other people in the community, but there's never any cross-pollination. So Parallel existed to bring them together. So I was like, 'OK, we're going to talk about publishing'. Well, let's find somebody who's doing has some role in the publishing world in the mainstream community and also somebody who's doing that in the accessibility community, or we're talking about gaming, or we're going to talk about the new release of iOS, or the new release of Android. And so the original conception of Parallel, which I did on my own, was this sort of two guests that had lived parallel lives, but in a very, but in a similar space. Let's bring them together, I'm the person who knows both sides of that divide a little bit, so I can ask each of them questions, they can hopefully have a meaningful conversation. Shelly Brisbin 38:07 And so I did that for a while on my own. And it wasn't a money-making project, it was sort of a visibility project and just an opportunity to like, raise awareness and sell my books a little bit and meet people. And then I was invited onto a podcast that Jason was hosting. And it happened to be done here in Austin, Texas, where I live, and Jason was in town with some other people. Uh, and he said, 'Come on over to this hotel, we're going to do this podcast, and you can be...', I'd been on this podcast before, and he said, '...You know, come on over, we'll do it in person, that'll be fun'. And I met Stephen Hackett, because he was running the p-..., he was producing that podcast. And I had known about Relay, and actually, when I became aware of this meeting was coming up, I said to Jason, 'Hey, do you think they'd be interested in taking on another podcast, especially one about accessibility?' And I was fairly canny in the sense that I was like, look, you know, the complaints that I had about podcasting in the tech-podcasting community, absolutely resonated for me with what Relay was, because it was a bunch of guys who were fairly similar in terms of their interest and to some extent to their outlook on life, I felt, and to their approach to the way podcasting is done. And I was like, 'Well, let's find out if they might be interested in taking on a show that had a different perspective, and oh, by the way, we get some people who talk about accessibility onto a network of mainstream podcasts'. Shelly Brisbin 39:30 And so I basically made that pitch to Stephen, and he and Myke were open to it, Myke Hurley, the other co-founder of relay. And see again, that, and the reason I feel like it's important to drop back and say that is, there's a way in this tech podcasting world where you just start throwing out first names and you assume everybody knows, knows who you're talking about, and I hate that so much. So, in any case, so Stephen and Myke took the show in. I had done, I don't know, I don't know how many episodes I'd done it at that point, but I, I started, start renumbered 'em, and started again and um, you know, brought Parallel to Relay. And the show has changed over time, because it's harder for me to always find two guests that function effectively as parallel guests, right, the mainstream versus a tech (or not versus), but a mainstream and a tech, and an accessibility-focused person. So sometimes I'll do a show that is that way, and sometimes I'll do a show that is, uh, more focused on accessibility with a guest that has a particular accessibility focus. And sometimes I'll talk to somebody who is in the mainstream more so, but we have some accessibility things we can talk about together. Shelly Brisbin 40:38 And so that has been, what I've tried to do at Relay is just like, make this show that is, and I do something that a lot of the Relay shows don't do: I have guests, like, that's, that's just what I want to do. I don't have a co-host, uh, I've considered that. So again, like another sort of differentiator for me is that I like asking questions, I like talking to people, uh, who aren't necessarily my friends, or who are not as likely to sort of get in that rut of, you know, let's have conversations about references that we get. There's, that's a, that's a different way of doing community; that's more sort of a fan and a cultural community. What I'm trying to do is, it's not necessarily that it's closer to journalism, but it is more like an interview show or a conversation. I feel like people who do a certain kind of podcasting feel that that format that they do is the only one that exists. And I know that there are tech podcasts with guests, that are with guests and hosts where it's interview-based; there are other tech podcasts where it's a bunch of co-hosts that have gotten together and agreed on a show; there are narrative podcasts; there are storytelling podcast, and just the variety of formats that you can apply to podcasting is far greater than I think a lot of people realise. And it kind of takes a little bit of thinking outside the box to go, 'Well, do I want to do an interview this week? Is it OK if I bust format?', which I have done. I've done podcasts where it's just me talking, which sound, when I listen back to them and I edit them, tremendously boring. But I realise I'm probably the person that knows this topic I'm talking about better than anybody, so I'm just going to talk for 20 minutes and you know, hopefully, not bore people. But yeah, so again, I think I lost the question thread a little bit. But I think, yeah, I'll just stop talking now. Martin Feld 42:20 No, you didn't lose the question thread and you're doing exactly what I, or I think, any listeners who would hope, which is just exploring that narrative, so thank you. And when you joined the network, after pitching it to Myke Hurley and Stephen Hackett at that podcast recording (or meeting) that you mentioned, how did you kind of gauge the reaction to the show? Did you perceive anything differently when it joined the network? Different feedback coming in? How did it feel to have it participating or going out in that community in that formal sense? Shelly Brisbin 42:53 I can't say that I got a lot of feedback. And that, unfortunately, has been my experience with the tech podcasting I've done generally. And I kind of got spoiled because back in those couplecast days in the late aughts, we got a lot of feedback. We, it was one of... podcasting has always had things that define it, like the word, the term 'show notes', where, the the things that you you know, the the website content and links that you put out there, uh, we used to have our K7 lines, which were phone feedback lines that people could call and express their opinions about shows. By the time tech podcasting became a thing for me, social media, especially Twitter, uh, was a deal. And so I got a Twitter presence. I think I had that. I can't actually I can't remember whether I had the Twitter presence for Relay, uh, Parallel, before I got onto Relay. I remember putting the new logo on Twitter and being excited about that. Uh, but I never got a tonne of feedback. I think for me, the the feedback and the sort of community connection I got was from inside Relay. So I would invite Relay hosts (once I got to know them) on as guests. And so I would get to talk to them not only about the topics of the show, but just in general we had there's a Relay Slack channel that people would talk in. Uh, so I got, the feedback I got was sort of more about, and it wasn't even it wasn't critique, because nobody was critiquing my shows. And I think that's one hallmark of Relay that I kind of appreciate, that there's not, it's not at all top-down. It's very much, 'You're a producer, you're gonna make your show, you're part of our network, we support you, but we're not going to critique your show, we're not going to evaluate it'. I wasn't looking for that I had no, I'd been podcasting for a really long time, and I was fine with it. But I was happy to have hosts come on and say, 'Hey, I like what you're doing', or, 'That, that show you did about the new release of Android taught me a lot of stuff about accessibility I didn't know', so I get that kind of feedback. But it was mostly kind of inside. Shelly Brisbin 44:44 I have occasionally gotten feedback subsequently from folks on Twitter. That's happened more in the past couple of years, or the past year specifically, than it ever did before, which I think is interesting. And then I'll also get, like, because I have a tendency, once I've had a guest on the show, either to follow them on social media or to have the show account follow them. And so I am sort of in contact with what they're doing and I keep up with them. So it's almost a reverse-feedback situation where I'm like, watching these people that I had on as a guest that I may not have known before, and now I'm like, kind of part of their community because, 'Oh, look! She did such and such!', or, 'He did a presentation at such and such!' So yeah, I'd like more sort of listener feedback and engagement. Uh, and I, I've not been a particularly active part of the Relay Discord, which is where people who are members of the Relay network can go and talk to one another, frankly, because I don't think a lot of the accessibility community that focuses on my show is there. I've, most of the feedback I've gotten from people (who aren't sort of podcasters themselves) has come from the accessibility community of listeners where I've promoted the show, and I've said, you know, 'Hey, here's, here's this thing I'm doing about accessibility'. And uh so, yeah, always, always could use more. Martin Feld 45:58 That's really interesting, and thank you for sharing that. When you were describing that lack of feedback, or perhaps the unexpected methods or ways that you gain feedback, you made me think about perhaps another meaning or angle on the word accessibility, and that is whether a person is accessible or contactable. When you think about podcasting, do you think people are perhaps less accessible because it's an on-demand medium that's published after the fact? Does liveness of radio and other media help someone be accessible? How do you think about the relationship between producer and listener? Shelly Brisbin 46:37 I don't think podcasting is more or less accessible than other mediums because I think it all comes down to social media. I mean, some people put out put themselves out there on social media more than others. Some people give an email address or they have some other means of feedback. In the case of Relay, there's this Discord, which gives you an opportunity as a listener to theoretically communicate with the host; you can literally do show follow-up or you can be in a Discord thread, where the host might be there, and you might end up talking about cooking, or pets, or tech or something like that. So, yeah, those direct relationships can certainly exist in podcasting, and probably exist more in podcasting than they do in other media, like, how often do you get to talk to somebody that wrote an article that you liked? I mean, sure, I guess you can post a comment on the Web, but that's no better or worse than a Twitter reaction. And uh, radio, as I can tell you, because radio is my day job, most of it isn't live. So, uh, it's the same kind of thing. Like if people are going to react, they're going to react in Twitter or in email. And you, as the producer, have the choice of how much to not only put yourself out there, but how many ways you get people to contact you, and how responsive you're going to be to feedback, because I say I want feedback, but I'm not temperamentally suited to going back and forth and, like, having necessarily conversations with the entirety of my audience. I would, if I had to do that, I would feel trepidation about it both from my temperamental perspective and also because as a woman, I am a little cautious about how deeply to engage with folks. Shelly Brisbin 46:37 Uh and so I want to be available, and the way I think about it is I want to be on the places where I feel like I should be so. So we talked about Twitter, which exists, but which is problematic these days, and so I still exist on Twitter. Most of the interesting conversations I have are on Mastodon these days. And I know that that is specific to a certain subset of people who used to use Twitter or who still do on some level, tech folks have really taken to Mastodon. And so as a result, you have this sort of more concentrated community over there. And you might be talking to more people simply because the signal-to-noise ratio is better. And then of course, places like Relay that have membership and The Incomparable network has membership too, where they talk on a in a in a members' Slack community. Shelly Brisbin 48:15 When, when networks create those real live interactions for people, the hosts usually have the choice of, like, how deeply to engage, and I must, I must say that I'm sort of inconsistent about it. Like, sometimes I'm really in it and sometimes I'm really not. It's possible to drag me into things, like if somebody flags me or @-mentions me or whatever, I'm usually responsive to that. But rarely is my default method of communication: 'Hi, I'm here! I'm Shelly, let's talk!' It's just, that's just not me. And it was funny because I think one of the reasons I gravitated toward podcasting was: I'm not shy about speaking, but I'm shy about personal human interactions. I'm terrible at a party, I'm a wallflower; I'm just gonna stand there over on the side, there are a number of reasons for that. But at the same time, like, I promote my stuff, and I want you to know what I'm doing and the like, so I won't wave my arms around in the Discord, but if you call me I'll probably come and talk to you! Martin Feld 49:55 And, as a, let's say, creative practitioner in podcasting, you just mentioned that you also work in radio, it's your day job, as you said. How do you feel radio and podcasting are perhaps different, since you're engaging in both so regularly? Shelly Brisbin 50:13 So I work for a statewide public radio news show. Uh, we're an hour-long show every day and we do primarily pre-recorded segments, either pieces that are reported in the field, or Q&As with guests, between our guests and our hosts, and so I'm responsible for putting those together. I'm also our back-up social media host, so that's a live segment that we do twice during the show, which is basically: what are people on social media talking about that's related to the show? And so that's different, that's the most different from podcasting, because that's live; that's a segment that you develop that morning, based on what's happening in the news world and what people are talking about. Sometimes you prime the pump a little bit, and you say, 'Hey, what did you think about what the legislature did yesterday?' And you get responses, and you read those on the air. So whenever I do that, which I'm happy to do, and I think I'm decent at it, but it makes me really nervous, because you're like, 'OK there's a..., this thing is going to happen at a certain time, you're going to talk for a minute, and then you're going to be off; there's no editing, there's no backsies!' You're just, you know, so that sort of physically and emotionally is really different than than podcasting. Shelly Brisbin 51:22 And then also just the breadth of the audience is less self-selecting than podcasting is. We have a podcast of the show and a lot of people listen to it that way, and it comes out, say, 45 minutes after each day's show. But the people who listen in their cars or on their smart assistants, or however they consume it, as a radio show, we don't know who they are, they could be anybody who has access to a radio or a smart assistant. And as a result, both our coverage is broader and our way of addressing them is broader. Again, you know, you, you, with podcasting, you do kind of have that luxury of a community and who you sort of think is listening to you, and maybe you tailor your show to that. But our remit in the radio work that I do is much broader in terms of the geography of the state, in terms of the mandate for diversity, equity and inclusion, in terms of the way we address our audience and just in terms of, like, how we address a topic. I, I produce a tech segment every week and I do other tech stories, but I know that I have to produce that at a level that's more accessible, there's that word again... Shelly Brisbin 52:26 ...to a broader audience. And so, I think my brain kind of works differently on ra-..., for radio than it does in podcasting. When I first got to the radio station a number of years ago, I would pitch stories; they weren't super-technologically-heavy stories, but I would pitch them and the pitch would get rejected. And what I realised was that I was pitching them wrong. I was not pitching the story to the broad interests of the community. I'd say, 'Well, here's a cybersecurity bug that is affecting X per cent of the Fortune 500', or whatever. And they'd be like, 'Well, no, we want to know whether it's going to hurt us as individuals right? We want to know whether it matters, how and when and how and why it matters to the large group of people out there in the world as humans, and then also, like, is it going to have continuing implications?' So I learned better how to pitch tech stories to an audience that doesn't necessarily love technology. Martin Feld 52:26 Mm-hmmm... Shelly Brisbin 53:19 And we even have, you know, a lot of people that listen to our show love politics, they're political junkies, but not all of them! One of my pet peeves in news is that a lot of people pitch stories to the political junkies out there: the people that care about the horse-race aspects of politics. And I think there's a need to have broader conversations. And I think that's something that my colleagues on the show share, so it's always more about inclusivity on the radio than it is necessarily in podcasting, where niches are exactly the point where you want to live. Martin Feld 53:48 Thank you for going into the detail there about the differences that you feel between those two media and giving us an insight into your day job, because this very podcast fits within, I suppose you could say, the academic realm or research of podcast studies. I'm not sure if you heard of that discipline before, it's a, it's a newer one, but there is that discussion of accessibility of the media, differences, pros, cons, how they engage audiences differently. Now, I'm looking at the time, and the calendar invitation that I promised you and the day job that you just mentioned that I'm assuming you have to get to soon, so with the time in mind, is there something that I haven't asked you in this conversation, some area of your experience or some view that you have that you would like to share with us? Shelly Brisbin 54:36 I guess the only thing I would go back to a little bit is sort of the difference in format and media within podcasting because I think we think of tech podcasting, and most of it te-…, most of it is this way, as conversations, whether they be interviews like I do or whether they be conversations amongst a group of hosts, because that's the default format that I think a lot of people who both make and consume tech podcasts are the most comfortable with. I want to say that there's a huge, huge element of narrative podcasting out there, which we in public radio, storytelling, you know, it's a non-fiction story, but it is definitely a story and it is approached that way. And I think, uh, that stuff exists in the technology realm, but not as much as I think podcasters realise. Uh, I've done it a little bit, not in a podcast, I made a documentary called 36 Seconds that Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk, about how the iPhone became accessible. And so I took those two things: the notion of storytelling, the way we do it in radio in a narrative context; and the notion of talking to people, I interviewed people for this thing, and I made a narrative out of it, and I released it as a one off-podcast. Shelly Brisbin 55:46 And so I think the value of narrative st-..., storytelling is that you're listening to other people. The thing about tech podcasting, especially when it's a bunch of co-hosts sitting there talking, is that you're listening to each other. And it doesn't really go back to feedback so much as it goes back to curiosity about what somebody else thinks. And I'm not criticising any of the formats out there that exist, but I do think not including or not making room for the idea that narrative storytelling is a method by which you can report out a technology-related story, I think that misses the boat and I think there's so much creativity that exists in that narrative medium, uh, that would be interesting to see how it, sometimes it is interesting to see how it applies to technology. Martin Feld 56:34 This has been really fantastic and I want to thank you genuinely for sharing your narrative, your experiences and also to use that word 'expertise' on accessibility. It's been wonderful to have you on Really Specific Stories. Shelly Brisbin 56:34 It also makes the technology story more human because you're asking people about their own experience; that certainly is a thing we do in accessibility a lot because you can talk about how accessible a product is on paper, but how does it work in practice? How does it affect people's lives? You can do that in a way that both honours the way it affects people's lives and also respects them, uh, by not going the ins-... inspiration-porn route, which is a means of talking about accessibility that basically infantilises and, and turns your inspiration as the consumer or creator into the most important thing as opposed to how the person with disabilities is using the, the tools. So anyway, I just think thinking broadly and creatively about all the formats available out there to you as an audio producer, is good for any kind of podcasting, but specifically tech podcasting, which I think gets really hidebound both in terms of, as I said before, the kind of people who make them and, uh, the kinds of formats that we use to make them. Shelly Brisbin 57:46 Thanks! Thanks for the great questions.