How to create content voicing accessibility and inclusion.

In this episode, we chat with Lia Stoll of DisabilityWriter.com. Lia is a mom, wife, writer, co-founder of Lara Guide Dog in Greece and founder of Disability Writer, a boutique writing studio voicing accessibility and inclusion for disabled people.

Transcript

Marsh Naidoo (00:14):

Hello and welcome to the Raising Kellan Podcast. My name is Marsh Naidoo. I am a physical therapist and parent sharing my perspective of raising Kellan, my son, who has cerebral palsy. I blog at www.raisingkellan.org, where we curate resources for parents raising children with disabilities.

Marsh Naidoo (00:41):

As always, remember, the information provided on this podcast is purely educational, and if you are seeking advice for your specific situation, it's best to contact a trained professional. In today's episode 76, I am joined by Lia Stoll, a writer who focuses on disability. Lia has been helping with our new website design, including doing some copywriting. So grab that cup of coffee, put your feet up, and get ready for some awesome conversation.

Marsh Naidoo (01:27):

We will be starting this podcast off with an improved accessibility feature for our listeners who are visually impaired. And we will begin with Leah introducing herself followed by a description.

Lia Stoll (01:48):

My name is Lia Stoll. I am a white-blonde female. I have shoulder-length hair, and I'm currently wearing glasses of a dark brown color. Today I am wearing one of my favorite shirts. It's beige and white striped with the big letters in the front saying, love <laugh>.

Marsh Naidoo (02:25):

My name is Marsh Naidoo. I am a woman of Indian descent. I have black hair. I'm brown-skinned. I have shoulder-length dark hair. And today I am wearing my thick jacket because it's freezing cold. I am super excited to invite Leah to join us today on the Raising Kellan Podcast. Lia is a mom, wife, writer, and co-founder of Laura Guide Dog School in Greece. Now, my personal experience with Leah has been with her amazing writing skills. in the middle of the year, Raising Kellan received a grant from the Tennessee Disability Coalition to work on improving our website accessibility. I had been following Lia for a while on LinkedIn and absolutely loved her posts and the clarity, which she wrote to promote: disability awareness; the need for inclusion and accessibility for the disability community. So this is how we have come to meet each other. And Lia did some of the writing for our website, which we hope to reveal pretty soon. So Leah, thank you for working with us and welcome to the podcast.

Lia Stoll (04:10):

Hello Marsh! Thank you very much for having me. I'm super excited. <laugh>.

Marsh Naidoo (04:16):

So first up, Lia the writing you do is actually through your boutique writing studio called "Disability Writer". For the folks listening out there today, can you just tell us a little bit about the motivation behind starting Disability Writer and where you see yourself perhaps in the next few years?

Lia Stoll (04:47):

Well "Disability Writer" started actually from a couple of my clients and their guide dogs. We had been recording throughout the training bits and pieces of their daily lives and their daily routines. And we had also been recording the daily training of their guide dogs. And then of course, when the matching process takes place between the blind person and his guide dog, this is a very intense period where I'm usually with the client for two weeks time at their residence. And we get to spend a lot of time together, <laugh>, we get to know each other quite well. And yeah, there's a very deep bond, and we recorded all our stories, all the issues. We'd come across accessibility issues, traveling issues, and commuting issues to work. And then, um, we would compare notes at the end of the training. And it was these notes actually from all these clients that sort of moved me. And I thought, I, I need to write about this. I felt I need to tell people that, even though it's 2022. Okay, it was 2019, that's when "Disability Writer" started. So we still have a lot, a lot of work to do. There's so much,there's so many barriers out there still for people with disabilities, and I wanted to share what I knew, what I learned. That's how it started.

Marsh Naidoo (06:57):

Lia, you are based in Switzerland. Lara Guide Dogs School is actually an organization or a nonprofit that's in Greece. Yes, so how did that connection come about?

Lia Stoll (07:17):

I left Greece when I was 22, and I moved to Switzerland, actually. I wanted to move to the UK <laugh>. I wanted to complete the apprenticeship of being a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor so that I could return to Greece and train guide dogs for Grecians and start a guide dog school. So I contacted the International Guide Dog Federation at the time and asked for available guide dog school positions for me. And at that moment, they were full. But there was this small school in Switzerland that wrote back, uh, they were very sweet <laugh>, and they said, Hey, you can come over here, <laugh> come over and see if you like it, if you like the cold, because it is a four-year apprenticeship.

Lia Stoll (08:16):

So, I went over there, I remember in, it was June, I thought it was summer. I took my t-shirt and my shorts and my flip-flops. I don't even think I took a pair of, you know, proper Winterish sneakers, because I remember that whole week that I was there, it just rained. It rained and it was chilly. And I was thinking to myself, what am I getting myself into <laugh>? And they were laughing at me in, you know, in a nice way <laugh>, because I was walking around with my t-shirt and my shirts and my flip flops <laugh>. Um, yeah. But I fell in love with the team. It was, yeah, they're amazing people and their motivation just, you know, it just engulfed me. I thought to myself, it's okay, I'm going to move to the cold <laugh>, I'm gonna endure the four years, and I'm going to start the Guide Dog School. So, so that's how.

Marsh Naidoo (09:20):

That's how we got started. And then, so the Guide Dog School, you opened once the apprenticeship was over. I believe you have a co-founder, how did the Guide Dog School form?

Lia Stoll (09:38):

Yeah, so, um, during my apprenticeship, we had already started taking the steps to form a Guide Dog school in Greece. It was part of my apprenticeship. It was an extended apprenticeship for me to learn how to start up a nonprofit organization and be able to support it, that it's sustainable and that it's viable. So it lasts. I remember on one of my holidays I met this young woman our co-founder, Anna Maria in Greece. This is actually the amazing part of the story. She is blind, and she had at that time her first Guide Dog, which was, uh, a dog owned privately by her, but it was trained at the Guide Dog School in Italy. In Florence. And she had returned to Greece, and she had been asking around, within the Federation, she was asking if the Federation knows of anyone in Greece, you know, who has any experience with guide dogs or who has ever thought about starting a Guide Dog School.

Lia Stoll (10:59):

And they gave her the contact details of a blind organization in Greece, which had the name of my father, because before me, my father had tried to start a Guide dog school in Greece. That was in 1983 the first time. So she was looking for my father <laugh>, and through my father, then I met her. Yeah, it was sort of like, it was one of these, you know, eureka moments, these kind of like aha moments. This, you know, this moment I do remember on the telephone when we first spoke, we had her on loudspeaker, and when she told us how she came about to find us, it was, there was just a moment of silence. The three of us were sort of like trying to process what just happened now. But yeah, so I, met her then in Greece and I returned to Greece after my apprenticeship, and we started the Guide Dog School.

Lia Stoll (12:06):

And the idea was that I fund it by working privately on the side as a dog trainer. And that didn't work out so well, <laugh>, the funding was not enough. And so I ended up returning to Switzerland. We changed the concept. I returned to Switzerland, so I was able to work at the Guide Dog School where I completed my apprenticeship. And we had this agreement that during the time within my contract, I had the opportunity to train two guide dogs a year for the Guide Dog School in Greece. Um, and that's sort of how we were able to get going to start.

Marsh Naidoo (12:58):

So how long has the Guide Dog School been in operation for Lia?

Lia Stoll (13:04):

Oh, wow. It's almost 15 years now. So officially, it was established in August, 2008.

Marsh Naidoo (13:14):

So does this mean you go back during your summers to do the training?

Lia Stoll (13:26):

No the past five years now, I've stepped down as being responsible for the Guide Dog Training program. Well, yes, technically I've appointed someone else. We have somebody else doing that who we've trained. I'm more of an educational consultant now, so I supervise what is going on, and I go to Greece twice a year and, you know, check up on things <laugh>. But the training of the guide dogs and the puppy raising, it's done by people who we've trained now there.

Marsh Naidoo (14:11):

So I guess this would be a more technical point now, in Europe, when you train a guide dog, who are the beneficiaries usually of the guide dog? Is it a, disabled person with a specific profile? How does that work? In the States, you can have an emotional support dog, there's also a therapy dog, and then there are Service Dogs. So it's almost a tiering system based on the amount of support the individual needs. How does it work in Europe?

Lia Stoll (15:07):

Well, Guide Dogs are something different. It's something different because it's actually a very specialized training, and it's not a dog doing multiple jobs. It's a dog that's been trained specifically to guide a blind person safely. And so the people who apply are people who are blind or visually impaired. They are people who in most developed countries already know how to use their white cane to navigate their environment. So they have orientation and mobility skills, and in most Guide Dog schools, the blinding person will apply at the Guide Dog School for a Guide dog. And a matching process will start, an interview process will start to assess the client to see where he would need help if any, in order to be able to work properly with a guide dog and be able to function in his daily life. Because there are a lot of parameters. So it could be anything from: Are you allowed to have a dog in your home? Or even though by law you're entitled to that, it's a right that you have. Still, even in developed countries, there's a lot of times it's not very clear, and then you have to go and start with all the bureaucracy and coming in touch with people and just making sure that all the pieces fit together.

Marsh Naidoo (17:05):

True. Tell me about "Disability Writer?"

Lia Stoll (17:11):

<laugh>, the disability writer was, um, yeah, it was sort of, it was sort of one of these, these i, these thoughts that, you know, I woke up in one, I've been thinking a about it for a while, and then I woke up and I said, you know, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this now. And, uh, like you said, I started, the first website was just something I put together, um, on my own. And, um, it still is my website that I've put on my own, but I've learned quite a lot the last two years of creating a website <laugh> so that it's accessible. Um, yeah, I wrote up a few blogs mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I put them out there, and there was, I had started with the blog from our Guide Dog School in Greece.

Lia Stoll (18:07):

We were translating them into Greek, of course. And then I got a couple of calls from other Guide dog schools asking me if I would be willing to write a blog post, a guest post here and there. And that's sort of what gave me the self-confidence to say, I will, you know, step out of my comfort zone and actually do it on a more professional level. And so I went back and took a couple of writing courses because I knew the type of, uh, blogging I wanted to do. I love blogging and I feel businesses especially can gain a lot from having a business blog. I found my style, I found the way I like to express myself, my tone of voice. And I met a couple of brilliant content writers, and copywriters. The line for me was very blurred in the beginning, what is a content writer? What is a copywriter? Um, and these people helped me. They helped me a lot, and I'm, uh, super grateful for them.

Marsh Naidoo (19:33):

The tone in which you write about disability was what kind of attracted me to your post because it was done in a nonjudgmental way. You were educating, in a fun way, <laugh>. I was like, my goodness, your spacing. I love how you write with your spacing, because that just made it clear to follow. I also appreciate your vision working towards that digital accessibility, because we wanna keep that idea in mind as technologists build up the architecture. We wanna make sure that digital accessibility is something that's kept in mind.

Lia Stoll (20:24):

Exactly.

Marsh Naidoo (20:25):

Yeah

Lia Stoll (20:26):

Yeah. That, that's very important. Otherwise, we're shutting people out and I don't, I really don't think nobody means it in a bad way. Nobody's doing it on purpose per se. It's just really a lack of education that still exists out there. And for me, that's the core and that's what we need to focus on is, is really getting out there and telling people our stories, and spreading the word and being very consistent about it.

Marsh Naidoo (21:09):

Lia can you tell us some of your favorite blog posts that you've done?

Lia Stoll (21:17):

So I have two top favorites, and that would be "How to Say Goodbye to Your Extraordinary Guide Dog, the Essential Guide plus three Self-Care Tips", that is a blog post written after the death of our school's First Official Guide Dog. So also the first guide dog that our co-founder Anna Maria that was trained by me in Switzerland. The second one is definitely the one that I recently put out "Is your fancy accessible website, usable for people with disabilities and how to self-check".

Marsh Naidoo (22:16):

Awesome. Lia, how can listeners find out more about you and the work that you do? How can we direct them to the resources you provide?

Lia Stoll (22:29):

I think one of the easiest ways is my website which my blog is also on, so that's, www.disabilitywriter.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn as well, if you type in Lia Stoll Disability Writer.

Marsh Naidoo (23:00):

Listen, my dear, you have an amazing day and I just want to thank you

Lia Stoll (23:05):

Thank You Marsh.

Marsh Naidoo (23:06):

Thank you for your time. And obviously wanna keep in contact with

Lia Stoll (23:11):

For sure

Marsh Naidoo (23:12):

I really wanna hold onto this podcast until the actual website is, you know, done.

Lia Stoll (23:18):

No, that's okay. That's perfect. It makes sense too. It, yeah. Have a great day. Bye Marsh.

Marsh Naidoo (23:26):

Bye-bye now. Bye.

Marsh Naidoo (23:28):

Thank you so much for listening along with us today. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us with a rating and review on your podcast platform. As always, remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.

Disclaimer: This is an edited transcript.