A Crusade for Change in the World of Accessibility with Thea Kurdi

Have you ever faced a moment that completely altered the course of your life? Thea Kurdi has, and she's here to share her journey through grief and her metamorphosis into a passionate critic of accessibility. We're honored to welcome back Thea to our show, as she candidly discusses the devastating loss of her husband to COVID-19 and how it has reshaped her perspective on the world of accessibility consulting. Our conversation traverses the raw edges of personal tragedy, the disillusionment with inclusion efforts that often miss the mark, and the systemic barriers that impede genuine progress. As an accessibility critic, Thea is on a mission to dissect the status quo and advocate for authentic change, a challenge she's more than ready to tackle.

Throughout the episode, Thea, alongside Antonio and myself, scrutinizes the pitfalls of organizations that merely check the accessibility box instead of weaving it into their core values. We dive into the complexities of advocacy, spotlighting the lack of substantive actions in policy and education that could truly bridge the gap for those with disabilities. We also uncover the invisible struggles faced by the majority of individuals with disabilities that often go unrecognized, and how ignorance and apathy contribute to systemic inaccessibility. Thea's insights serve as a wake-up call for the collective power of community advocacy, urging a shift from token gestures to a culture that champions diversity, equity, and inclusion in every facet of society. Join us for this profound exploration into the heart of what it takes to cultivate a world where accessibility is not an afterthought, but a fundamental right.

Transcript

0:01

AXSCHAT Thea Kurdi:

DEBRA: 0:03

Hi everyone, welcome to Axschat. Today we are joined by a returning champion, Thea Kurdi. And also, Neil is not here today. Neil is playing hooky and spending time with his beautiful wife, Martina and he wishes everyone a Happy Mother's Day, I know it's coming up in the States at least. So Antonio and I are going to talk to Thea. And you might remember Thea from being on the show, we have always been very impressed with Thea's leadership and her work. But she really focus on the built barriers part of the conversation. Now you can't focus on built barriers without also including digital accessibility but she is playing a different role in the space and she has been doing this a long time as well. So when we interviewed her before, we really talked the work she was doing and so she wanted to come back on and talk about how her work has shifted and changed and how life has changed as it has for so many of us, as we walk some pretty difficult times. But we continue to think that Thea has a powerful voice that needs to be listened to and we really think brands and governments should be working with Thea. The Thea's of the world. The world. Because the way we are doing things now are not working for the community of people with disabilities. And that is something that we are all very concerned about at Axschat. So just wanted to give you that little update first. But Thea, welcome back to the programme. You look wonderful. I know you have had a real tough journey walking this as have I and so, could you just tell the audience, where you are, I know you're joining us from Canada, but I can't say the name of your town, so I'm not going to try. But would you just catch up everybody up on what you have been doing, where you are and taking us up to you know, today?

THEA: 2:07

Yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me back and inviting me to have this conversation. You know, COVID was hard for everybody. But especially for people who had vulnerable people who had compromised immune systems. And that was you know, myself to some degree but certainly my husband and unfortunately my husband did get COVID and it compromised his heart and a year and a half ago he passed away very suddenly.

DEBRA: 2:36

I'm so sorry.

THEA: 2:37

And you know, I had seen a lot about you know being a widow and Debra you being a widow as well. I was not prepared for what I was going to be.

DEBRA: 2:50

No. And how society treats you differently. Wow, I was so shocked by that.

THEA: 2:59

And yes, I didn't know how to process anything you know, you hear a lot about, you don't remember anything from the first year and I really remember very little and I had a couple of other pretty serious setbacks throughout that year which I won't talk about. As I came up on the anniversary of my husband's passing and people were starting to approach me about wanting to hire me to work with them. Doing what I had been doing, before I had this very physical response of no, I'm not doing it. And as I started to try to unpack that. Why was I so resistant because people were saying you're so important, you have so much experience. It's really too bad you're not here. We are really missing your voice in the conversation. And what I realised in unpacking that is that I stopped believing in the efficacy or the effectiveness of being an architectural accessibility consultant. And actually this is something you know in my 22-year career, doing that work, started to become more and more apparent to me, about 14 or 15 years into it. That, we were being hired to look like people were doing something, but it was a gesture not a sincere attitude of improving access and providing equity of inclusion. So we were working with the same clients, over and over again. And these are smart people, architects, interior designers, landscape architects. These are incredibly creative, smart people. And yet, no matter what the client had said they wanted, even sometimes the client was back pedalling on the information that I was providing to them. You know, they were like, do we have to do this? Is it in the building code? Well, you said you wound to do more than code. So I stopped believing in the process. I think we are stuck in the mud and when I realised, during my career I was also a professor at university and I know from teaching, the way to get excellence from people, the way to get innovation from people, is not to lower the bar. And universally that is what I have been seeing. I see buildings that are not accessible winning gold stars in award programmes and getting certifications, this building is certified as accessible. And that's now how you do it. You get students and you get better outcomes from everybody by raising the bar, by being critical. You don't get participation awards, which is essentially what is happening is that achievements and as we want to try to encourage people, is all about this lowering the bar. Handing out participation awards. We want people to feel like they are being encouraged but what is actually happening is people are learning less is required. I can do less and still get certified. I don't have to do as much as I thought I needed to do and then, now that I have this you know, now that I've this gold star, now that I've diversity, equity and inclusion group, you know, whatever it is that they are doing, I can actually sit back because it looks like I'm doing something but I'm not doing something. And so the role of accessibility critique came to me as an important part of, if you're going to get better, you have to evaluate how are we doing? And I as an insider, sitting in on meetings, listening to what people were talking about knew what we were doing was broken.

DEBRA: 6:42

Yes.

THEA: 6:43

Our legislation is broken; our education is broken. The attitudes are broken that ableism is so systemic that we are not going to get better and I want us to get better but we are not going to get better if we don't understand the nature of the barriers that are really the biggest barriers we face.

ANTONIO: 7:07

Let me share a short story, I think it also helps to illustrate. When they did the last refurbishment of the Portuguese Parliament, they spent a huge amount of money retro fitting, making changes. That is the place where they have approved legislation, laws, reinforce everyone. So what happened is, when they finished the work is, you know, they finished the work, everything seems to be going well. But then in the timer that was coming, that came next, there was an MP in a wheelchair that was elected to the Parliament. Surprise after all that refurbishment that person could not take the seat to which they were elected to because they didn't design it in an accessible way for a person in a wheelchair from go to the interest to have a seat at the Parliament. I see this as a kind of an extreme example where the place who has the responsibility is the first to fail.

THEA: 8:30

Yes, the built environment is a very much a reflection of values. So you can see one of the problems that we having is we are talking a lot but what we actually find, and it's not just that legislature, I'm sad to say, the Houses of people that are supposed to represent the people, including the largest minority group, in which people with disabilities are and all those nondisabled people or able bodied people are only temporally able bodied, nondisabled, this reflection of you know, the built environment is still not allowing people access to the House of Representatives, to volunteer students in those workplaces or even to be MP's themselves or leadership. It's indicative of the systemic nature of the problem. And unless we acknowledge it, I don't think we are going to make progress. But that's not the only story we have.

DEBRA: 9:30

I agree. Well and that's one of the reasons why I started creating Billion Strong because I was just really worried about -- and I did the same thing because I thought okay, I know because I have been taught as a little kid you get more flies with honey. So you be sweet and try to talk to people. So I did. I wrote inclusion branding, I did everything, I've given everything and I thought if I could convince the corporations to meaningfully include us, that's what we do. We were leaving them out of the conversation. Let's include them. But that's not what happened. What happened which discourages me and I've talked about it On Air. But it's like somehow we became part of the problem. We, the community, you know, the experts, the advocates, the consultants. We became part of the problem, because a lot of these brands, they just want to check the box and then say okay done. What else do I need to do and they have a lot of stuff they have to do. They do. It's a really it's a ridiculous amount of work that they all have to do and just on everything. I mean, everything they have got to do all day long but at the same time, this is not a game for the community of people with disabilities and people that are aging into disabilities. This is not a game. The other day, I posted about a brand that has been a star in accessibility, digital accessibility for years in the UK and they put out a brand-new big release. They didn't make it accessible at all and then I see, Jonathan Moze and one of our leaders that's blind saying to blind people, right okay let's do this and let's ask them to let us back in and talk to them this way and be nice when you're asking for your access back. Could you imagine doing that to other communities? So we are going to be having to be really nice to beg you, to please include us again, even though I don't know why you excluded us. So I took to the air waves with that. And I usually don't do that but you know what I think more of us leaders are going to have to be brave, Thea, more of us leaders are going to have to be brave. And we are going to have to say, now that we suspected some of this, but since COVID we have seen it so clearly and chillingly and even, what you know what some of these groups are saying about DEI and we are tired of this woke crap. You know, all we were saying as a community, we don't give a crap if you're all woke or what, we just want to live our lives and have access, to be able to bank by ourselves, to be able to go into buildings by ourselves, to be able to live. We just want access. We don't really care which brand wins. We don't care. But if you're a brand that's meaningfully including the people with disabilities and people aging into it. What we have to do now is we have to convene and we have to thank those companies. We have to thank them by rewarding by talking about it, by buying from them by being their consumers. But at the same time, Thea, this is what you and I are seeing and others are seeing this and some people were ahead of us in seeing this and starting to fight back. But it feels like we now are in a fight because we are going to be excluded. We are being excluded from what we were being included in like a month ago, we just got cut out of. And so, you think, community, you all think this is going to stop? If we don't really, really figure this out and then we have business to business groups that are trying to support businesses, making sure we are included but we see some of them creating programmes indexes and stuff like that that actually allow a brand to get out of including us, that allow a brand to get an advantage in the court systems in the United States. And I didn't speak for the United States in that the United States has cut budget for accessibility and disability inclusion. They are cutting people's jobs. We are in a major crisis in the US of our rights being taken away from us even more. Sorry Antonio, you wanted to say something?

ANTONIO: 13:46

No. I just -- we have the, you know the ability to listen to others, to listen to the communities and many people are actually doing it and to be fair, you know, we have seen some very interesting progress in many different areas over the years and I feel that today when we talk about these topics, there is a need for us to explain ourselves as much as we had to do in the past. So I think that is possible. But why do you think that organisations who have the ability to listen and who, in some cases, actually they have listened. They have done interesting job in listening to others, listening to the community. Then, when they go to the part of executing, they don't use that information and that knowledge that they gather from listening in order to make things happen; why is that?

THEA: 14:49

Well I don't entirely know; I am sure everybody has their own thing. But I did notice and I'm sure you noticed in a lot of different ways, COVID impacted almost every industry in that a lot of people, in senior positions retired. And what I noticed -- like even our local coffee shop, that the level of service suddenly dipped. Like initially there was a dip because of this supply chain problem. But there was a noticeable skill drop. Like the travel agency that I travelled with this past winter, things were missing. Things went wrong. They forgot to pick up a bunch of us from the airport and there was no order to pick us up from the airport and when we tried to get in touch with them, there was nobody to get in touch with. So I see a lot of institutional memory loss and unfortunately, this is where things like policies are supposed to kick in. But even with diversity, equity and inclusion, before COVID. We saw, people had to start saying diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility, because it was DEIA and we were getting pushed back from diversity, equity and inclusion saying, you know we have other things to deal with, can we wait in on accessibility, forgetting about the intersectionality on that. And forgetting in whole, everybody is excited about sustainability. In whole forgetting, look at the demographics, what are these buildings and services you're providing or products that you're making and being used in buildings and focusing on buildings but, you know, transportation, health care, education, all of these things. Look at the demographics. The numbers in Canada, the most recent statistical data collected by Stats Canada, 27% of the Canadian population are now self-identifying, which is a flawed number process, but self-identifying as having some type of disability and it's not just wheelchair users, which is the other problem. So again, I'm seeing people go through an education system -- and if we thought about manufacturing something, if you were manufacturing a product and every time this product came off the shelf and people tried to use it. Something was broken with it. If you were a smart producer, you would go back to the factory, fix it in the factory so that no units came out with that defect. And we are not seeing that feedback in the American Institution of Architects. In the Royal Institute of Architecture Canada. We don't have the self-reflection. We don't have the mandatory improvements. All of the -- I am speaking from architecture, by all of the architecture, interior design, landscape artists, none of them are taking that back into the institutions where they are teaching the next generation of people when, they are teaching the sustainability to look at the demographics, to look at how much more expensive it is to fix an accessibility spaces, to make them accessible after the fact. Doing major renovations to add elevators that weren't there, versus the cost and benefit of including it from the start. And then the other problem I see, Antonio, in terms of listening, is I see people who don't really want to be accessible, who are playing the game of look we are doing the right thing, shopping for accessibility answers. So they'll find the people who are and promote those people who are saying, we are doing such, these people are doing such a great job and again, that critical analysis of are we actually doing a good job? Are our policies actually aligned? Is our education system actually working? Has been I think a critical, critical missing piece in making real change and progress.

DEBRA: 18:47

I agree, I agree. I think that you know, a lot of us are -- we were hoping that we could convince people to do this and really teach them how to do it, it's not that hard. I mean there are a lot of moving parts and that gets complicated. But I felt the same way. I would go in and I would consult with these companies, give them all this data that we worked really hard to acquire this data and it just started feeling like, just check the box. Well, what I would rather do instead of hire, would you just come on and talk on this panel for me because it's going to look, just because I'm hosting this accessibility panel, like we might be doing the right thing. And so you all get off our back and you all leave us alone. And it's just become really bad. And I think our community is making a mistake, playing this game too because I see people with disabilities that want to speak for these companies because they can get so much money and I get it. And our community often, our consulting community, we really struggle with cashflow across the board with this stuff because it's not taken seriously by society. It's not. And they are thinking they can just check the box. But I think there is enough of us starting to really that actually like you said, I've been in these conversations I know what happens. I know what is happening. I know sometimes it looks to me like there is a group of leaders and all they do is just go to conferences. And they are, I'm sure they are working hard and they are playing hard. But I'm not sure those efforts that they are making, with all these big brands that are also out there doing this, doesn't translate back to access for us. And that hurts me. That hurts all of us. So that's why. I haven't been attending conferences in the same way and I haven't been, I just don't want to be the show pony anymore. It feels like a lot of these corporate brands are just wanting us to pretend like they are doing the right thing. And also, one more thing which we talked about Off Air and I'm saying this to you because I know you want to say this too, I am also getting tired of to the groups that are giving awards to these brands as a money maker. I was asked to do this, somebody came in and these are lovely people and they said, Debra we are going to do this and make it the Debra Ruh Award and then every time they apply, they've got to pay whether they win it or not. I understand how that could be valuable for me in that I could make money for doing nothing but that seems like the wrong thing to do to the community. So just because you have seen a brand win an award for accessibility or they've won a gold standard for their designs, you know digital and barrier, take the time to find out where that award is coming from? Is it a legitimate award that we care about as the community of people with disabilities. For example, the Zero Project Awards, I'm in a baster for them, but these are legitimate awards where they do peer to peer and they dig in and they don't give them too just everybody. But some of them, you can buy the awards. Quite a few you can buy that award.

ANTONIO: 22:08

Debra, so how do can we convince and convert people to realise that their actions can have a real impact on people's lives in a reductive way if they don't do the right thing. How can we make them realise okay, you're really having an impact on people's lives if you don't take this seriously.

DEBRA: 22:38

Yes, this isn't a nice to have. This is an impact. But let's give the floor to Thea and you talk about that.

THEA: 22:47

Well, I think part of the problem is -- and we are seeing this change, right, you know, the frustration you know, you have expressed Debra that I've been expressing, Antonio we have been seeing in your work, in the disabled community is much more visible now than it was. The offline conversations I'm having with almost everybody I talk to, is rage and frustration.

DEBRA: 23:12

Yes.

THEA: 23:14

And I think again, this is why, the critical aspect of you say you're doing a good job, is it actually a good job? This idea of as you said, Debra, buy or beware, look into, if somebody is saying, we can do this thing for you. If your building gets certified as accessible, does that mean that it won't, it's free of a human rights violation? I think the -- in many cases, they are not. Some of these buildings have won awards and then taken to human rights tribunals and found to be lacking and been fined and had forced to change. And the owners, you know are like, but I was certified.

DEBRA: 23:57

Right, I won an award.

THEA: 23:59

I won an award; I trusted this organisation. So I think there is -- and you know, there is now I'm starting to see a change and if we are going to train people, we have to, I'm seeing the role back into, we are going to have to train about ableism because people are not ashamed to be ableist, I think that's a thing, if you said to someone, this is very racist, they would be, oh my gosh no. But ableism, there is a degree of acceptance about ableist thinking and the bias about disabled people. They don't see disabled people as people. They don't see them as equals. Even if like there is legislation here in Canada recognises and has for 40 years that disabled people are equal citizens under the law and yet the Canadian government didn't update the national building code to reflect that and then education wasn't updated to reflect that. So for 40 years, you say this is illegal or this is, you know, how you're supposed to see people. It's like being a parent, right. If you say to your kids you know I'm going to count to 3 and every time you count to 3 nothing happens, you know, people don't take it seriously. Like, if we had, I think one of the critical missing pieces is we don't have it like a police force for accessibility. We have police forces to enforce the law and there are penalties. So if you have a seat belt law, do you remember when we were younger seat belt laws were not taken seriously because they didn't enforce them.

DEBRA: 25:37

Right.

THEA: 25:39

When first passed drunk driving legislation, it wasn't taken seriously until roadblocks up and breathalyser, until you couldn't get home without hitting one of these roadblocks and you were not just going to be fined, you were going to have to pay more for insurance. So this is like people don't take it seriously because it's the right thing to do, they don't take it seriously and this is sadly, they should because it's in their best interests because it will help them and their family and neighbourhoods. but that's not the reason people do things. There might be some motivation there, but to put it over the finish line, you have to mean it, you have to enforce this and so, here we have a Canadian Act. We have Canadian Accessibility Commissioner; this person so far has not been allowed to enforce the legislation that we passed. We gave a 20-year deadline to improve accessibility, not start in 20 years, but fix things before 20 years are up. And the Accessibility Commissioner, was supposed to have the role of the legislation was written, to enforce fines, to you know and you don't necessarily want to step out immediately and say, smack people on the hand and hand out a fine. But I'm telling you people are often scared when they read legislation. But if you don’t enforce it --

DEBRA: 26:59

And if you start enforcing it, it is noticed very quickly.

ANTONIO: 27:04

In the last Portuguese government, we have a Secretary of State that was someone with a disability. But that isn't reflected in any progress.

THEA: 27:15

Right.

ANTONIO: 27:16

While the government was in office, there was actually no progress. You know, the person might be a really nice person. She might have the best intentions but then the ministers and everyone around they just see her, okay. They don't see her as -- yes.

DEBRA: 27:36

It's ableism. It's tokenism. I know that we only have a few minutes left.

ANTONIO: 27:41

Yes.

DEBRA: 27:43

And what we want to do, besides always thanking Amazon and My Cleartext for helping Axschat stay on the Air, but what you know we can talk about how frustrated we are, and we know how things are so broken and we know things aren't working but how can we take this knowledge that we know and start having changing things so that we are included. As Antonio said that, don't they understand that when for example, your takeaway all of our access that you're impacting people's lives in really powerful negative ways. Why don't you all understand this? This is not a game to us. So what do you have any, you know, what is the hope for the future, Thea? What could we do to actually start feeling like we are having meaningful progress?

THEA: 28:42

Well, there is a lot of things we can do. One of the best things I've started seeing is ableist training. Like, if you're serious about this, as an organisation, you know, you did sexual harassment training; didn't you? Maybe it's time to start instituting ableist training. So that people really understand the impact and maybe the accidental things that they are doing. I believe most people are not bad people. But Debra to your point, they don't care that they're making it harder for people because they think it's a small group. They don't understand the impact. 70% of people with disabilities have invisible disabilities according to much of the research. So when I say to people that 27% of the population have disabilities, they are like, well, where are they? Where are all these wheelchair users?

DEBRA: 29:28

Right here. Well, they are not all wheelchair users.

THEA: 29:31

They are not all wheelchair users and the international symbol of access being a wheelchair, is a great symbol but it also sells that idea that we are only talking about wheelchair and usually manual wheelchairs which are smaller and maybe a little bit more mobile. But people don't care. You know, they are greedy people out there. They are trying to make profit they are trying to be a good organisation for a lot of things. I worked the game in trying to jump onto the sustainability to point out if you're making good sustainable choices, you're also making your building more accessibility. So trying to land in on that.

DEBRA: 30:10

They don't care about that either though. They don't care about the sustainability. They don't care about our planet either.

THEA: 30:15

No, exactly.

DEBRA: 30:16

Even though we live on it. Sorry.

THEA: 30:19

It's got to be, you know, the whole role of government is the carrot and stick; right. So what do we say, the reason we have government is to try to do what is best for the people.

DEBRA: 30:30

Right.

THEA: 30:31

And the corporations are supposed to do what is best for corporations. But if the government doesn't mandate fixing training and doesn't require licensing to be changed to include accessibility. If the courses and these are things, I want to work with people. I can come in as I've done with other things and look at the courses you're providing. And I can do a detailed analysis to tell you, are your assignments, is your curriculum, you know, don't have one course on accessibility. You know, accessibility has to be integral to the successful of design. You have to train people from day one that 100% of people will get disabilities. They are born with them or they get them. So this is good design. This is sustainable design. Young people really clued into helping people, so get to the young people. But from a corporation standpoint, if you're frustrated because I hear a lot of people in corporations are frustrated themselves. I hired an accessibility consultant and the building still has problems. What is going on?

DEBRA: 31:31

Oh my God. I hear that. I hear that too. Debra, we hired that big accessibility firm to make it successful and then we just got this big lawsuit filed against us and I say, well did you go back to the accessibility consultant you went to. Yes, what are they doing? Well, they don't know what to do. Yes, all right.

THEA: 31:50

Well, as an accessibility consultant, I've been working with an architecture team. So a building we worked on, they didn't listen to us, we issued five reports that something was a dangerous hazard that people were going to walk in and hit their heads on and because it wasn't in the legislation and because the organisation had not asked to see the accessibility reports, they didn't know that the architect was deciding for them, we don't have to listen to that. Right, so there is the accountability part of, are you being listened to and that's why I decided I can't to do this anymore because I wasn't being listened to. I was getting paid money to write reports that nobody read and nobody did anything about. But organisation who are frustrated and this is again, a role that I hope to be playing with and I am talking to people about is do an alignment of your policies. Your policies are written to say, this is what we believe. This is what we are reporting to the government. This is what our workplace -- all of these things, if your diversity, equity, inclusion, your workplace, your sustainability plans, your accessibility commitments to the government under legislation are not aligned then you get the left hand, right hand doing withing the organisation and this is why you're frustrated and this is where you get the breakdown. Because someone can point to, well this is where we can get away with not doing that or this document we are focusing on this document right now. So they silo information. It's not co-ordinated. So I think you know, other than being honest, is this working or not? And if you are continuously having problems, it's not working. Other than getting ableist training to really define where we are going wrong with this thinking here because that's the basis of their decisions and then aligning your policies and changing the education requirements, I think those are the key things that we can really make a difference. Otherwise it will continue to be a shell game of look, we are trying, we are trying and nothing is happening.

DEBRA: 33:52

Right. But, I also think that another place we can make progress is by our community talking about it and calling a little bit of BS on what we are seeing. And so, those leaders, like you and I, that know what is happening. We can't keep pretending that it's not happening. And so, we actually have to take action as a community, we must convene. I posted something yesterday about a brand that has once again always been very accessible for like ten years and they just put out a major release, it's totally inaccessible to people that are blind. And so, you know, what I think, when I posted this I tagged the National Federation of the Blind, the American Federation of the Blind, the RNIB. We are so strong together. We really could be so strong together and we would be heard in a different way if we all came together. And so I think there is the obligation of the processes and everything that needs to be done to get it right but also the community must come together not just to complain and complain but this serious to us. This is access. We can't live independently if you're taking our accessibility away from us. So, whether it's the built environment, digital, all of it together and also we should not be talking about the built environment and then the digital in separate corners, these are the same things. We've got to come together in all of it. But I'm also hopeful that you know, we'll figure it out. But Thea, if somebody wants to come and you know, work with you and get you to help them. How would they find out about your work?

THEA: 35:34

Well, right now I'm just getting this whole thing started. So I've been doing everything on LinkedIn.

DEBRA: 35:39

Love LinkedIn.

THEA: 35:40

And I was doing a Podcast for many years called the Accessibility Advantage and I changed that to make it something that was a little bit more honest; right, a little bit more edgy. So the Accessibility Edge was the name that I landed on because it is an edge. It is an advantage to be able to service more customers and keep more employees and hire more you know, great talent from a larger pool of people. So there is an edge to it. So the organisation right now is called the accessibility edge, building off of that brand and you can find it through LinkedIn right now. But having the courage to bear witness. As David Topolski did with his hashtag AODA Fail. AODO is a legislation. Just bear witness. There is -- you don't have to be critical, just post a picture and if we can come up with a Billion Strong fail, you know, thing to highlight. So that people can search for it and then they can just see picture after picture. Evidence.

DEBRA: 36:52

Right. Right. Evidence, I agree.

THEA: 36:54

People are telling themselves they are doing a good job. Where is the evidence they are not doing a good job. Show them where the barriers are.

DEBRA: 37:02

They are telling themselves that they are doing a good job. And we have also people telling them just to make money, with their little awards and stuff like that. So that is hurting us and then we have investors making really bad, bad decisions. So there are groups hurting our community by saying they are helping. So anyway, Thea, thank you so very much for being on the show today. Once again, shout out to My Clear Text for keeping us fully accessible and Amazon for supporting the show. And we really appreciate the audience too. Thank you everyone. Thank you Antonio. Sorry we missed you Neil. We'll talk to everyone next time.