[NFBF-L] Statewide Chapter Presentation - Shawn Welker from VisualEyes Access - Transcript

[Florida Statewide Chapter Secretary]

Hello Everyone,

During the last Statewide Chapter meeting, we had a presentation from Shawn
Welker, owner and founder of VisualEyes Access, a service that assists with
visual interpreting and more. I know many of you were not able to attend
the meeting, but with Mr. Welker's permission, I will be publishing the
transcript. Below in this email, and attached as a MS word document, you
will find the transcript.

Best,
Jose

I want to begin by thanking your president for reaching out and make sure
that I had a spot to speak with you and also, especially Justin Reagan,
who's been a longtime client and friend for the invitation to speak today.

So I'm really excited to tell you about what we're doing here at Visualized
Access. We've only been up and running since last August. And I also wanted
to share with you, if it sounds like I'm reading this this from a script,
it's probably because I am, I just want to make sure that I'm able to pack
all this in and the amount of time that I have for you.

So my name is Shawn Welker and I've been a visual interpreter for over six
years. Um, I lived in Michigan. But last year at this time, I was
coordinating a specialized health program of Be My Eyes with the blindness
nonprofit that I was working for called the Massachusetts Association for
the Blind and Visually Impaired . Sometimes you'll hear them as MABVI. So
the other thing, too, though, is Justin mentioned is I actually got my
start in in visual interpreting back in 2018 with Ira, where I spent a
little over a year, and I eventually became a trainer. During the four
years that I spent at MABVI, I trained over 200 people to not just be
volunteer visual interpreters, but to be aware of and to incorporate
accessibility best practices. And I am personally dedicated to making
physical and digital spaces more inclusive for everyone.

Unfortunately, the organization that I was working for last year lost
funding for my program and position, which led me to launch VisualEyes
Access, where we provide quality, affordable visual interpreting for real
time , as well as a synchronous tasks. You don't always need to be
considered connected for us to work on a task for you. We can also provide
web and digital accessibility consulting, sensitivity training, or
workshops, volunteer guide training recruitment, and coordination for
events , voiceover, and descriptive audio, and much, much more.

So let's talk about the visual interpreter service. So the core service
that we offer is called the Visual Interpreter Pro or VIP. And we connect
using the WhatsApp platform, which is secure, relatively easy to use, and
especially great for folks who are now using the Ray-Band Meta Glasses. It
allows folks to connect and be hands free.

Now, I am the main visual interpreter, but we do now have a handful of
others who will assist from time to time. We're actually getting ready to
staff a pilot project for a city, a major U.S. City. And so we're ramping
up and are getting some folks some scenarios to work with. All of the
interpreters that I use are background checked. They receive initial
training and they have a regular ongoing coaching sessions with myself .
And one of the very first questions that I always ask on all of my
applications, all of my applicants, is, who makes decisions for blind
people? And we all know that there is only one correct answer there, and
that is blind people, make decisions for blind people.

This is something that is absolutely core to the philosophy of what I do,
how I conduct business. Yes, it's a business, but it's a business that has
a purpose, right? I know that I know that B my eyes is very similar in
that. And they say, hey, we use volunteers, but we're a for profit. We call
ourselves a for profit with a purpose. And I like to consider myself to be
very similar, yet provide a little bit more depth as far as making sure
that folks are background checked and trained, making sure that we are
incorporating accessibility and best profits.

So we, in our roles as visual interpreters, are merely a resource to
providing access to information in a way that's meaningful and significant
to our users, our users are being blind or so that they can better
understand their environment and this could be physical or digital so that
they can make good decisions for themselves. Now, that four-part little
phrase there is something that every single one of my visual interpreters,
I absolutely drill that into them. This is something that they need to keep
in mind for every task that they work on with folks.

We don't make decisions for blind people. Blind people make decisions.
We're a resource. We provide access to information. We must do it in a way
that's meaningful and significant for those folks. You can't just say, oh,
I see what you dropped this over there. That doesn't make sense. We need to
do it in a way so that folks can understand their environment. It could be
a website. It could be a restaurant. It could be an intersection crossing.
Because what do they need to do? They need to be able to make good
decisions for themselves. We're just there along for the ride.

So whether you're reading mail, navigating a physical or a digital space,
dealing with an inaccessible document or website or app , or just needs
something described to you, the VIP service we offer, it's flexible, it's
personalized, and it costs just $1 per minute or less. There are definitely
ways, and Justin can share his personal experience if he chooses, about
ways that will work with individuals to make sure that it's an affordable
service for y'all. We do offer two payment methods. You can either pay as
you go, which just means that you're invoiced immediately after we complete
a task. I use Stripe, which is the payment processor, very accessible, in
the hundred or so invoices I've sent out, I've only had one complaint and
that person later apologized and said, it wasn't Stripe, it was me. The
other option that we have are the standard subscription plans that are
billed monthly, quarterly, or annually, and the highlights of our
subscription plans is that unused minutes do roll over .

This is something that never made sense to me when I was with Ira. I've
continued to hear people complain about it as far as it just feeling as
though it's unnecessary. It shouldn't be a gamble for how many minutes you
purchase for a particular time or a mad dash to burn through them just to
feel as though you got your money's worth .

So with our subscriptions, if you find at some point that you've got more
minutes than you need, quarterly subscribers are allowed to skip one
billing cycle per year. So out of those four billing cycles, if you get to
a point, you're like, hey, I've stacked all these minutes. I just haven't
used them. You can go ahead and skip a billing cycle . Monthly subscribers
are allowed to skip two cycles every year. This is something that's
actually relatively new. You're actually the first group that I've shared
this with. It can be a little bit confusing, so I'm absolutely open to
folks. Just give me a call, talking it through, making sure you understand.
I don't want anybody in any way, it, shape, or form , to feel as though
they just don't understand how the billing works. I'm not here to trick
people.

We do also offer a 30 minute trial for $20 so that you can kick the tires
and check us out. But because we're so close to the convention , just say
that you met us at the convention and we'll knock 50% off so that will make
it a 30 minute trial for just $10. And again, those minutes are not going
to expire. So let's talk a little bit about the other things that we do.

That is the big, big, major thing, the visual interpreting service, but we
also do web and digital accessibility consulting, especially for small
businesses, not profits, who want to do the right thing, but just aren't
even aware that they're doing things incorrectly. I'm not talking about
going after Amazon and Google and, you know, all these, you know, big
businesses . They have their own accessibility teams. And in most cases,
they're already working on it, or they know well enough of what they should
be doing. I'm talking about the nonprofits who oftentimes, you know, you've
got a director who has never heard of accessibility. I'm talking about the
mom and pops who they didn't build their own site. You know, they hired
somebody else to build their site. They don't know anything about a screen
reader. And the way we do this as a kinder and gentler and more affordable
approach.

And this comes from a project that I worked on while I was at MABVI called
Access desk. Because we found that if you approach businesses and
organizations with a really heavy hand and you talk about compliance and
you talk about AD8 and you throw around Section 508. A lot of times all
that does is it gets their guard up, and they start to complain about, oh,
there's those mean, disabled people who are coming here to sue us. And
don't get me wrong. I've been in in accessibility long enough to know there
is a time for pitchforks and torches and torn feather , but I think with a
lot of these smaller organizations, just having an open arm, walking them
through the process, letting them understand how many potential customers
they're missing, how many potential thunders they're missing, how many
folks that might be missing the ability to utilize their services and
programs simply because they've inadvertently placed these accessibility
barriers in front of them through their web and digital content. I find
that mor often than not, if you have a softer gentler approach, a more
affordable approach, they're absolutely willing to look at it because they
know that this is something that they want to do. They just don't know how
to do it. And if you become heavy-handed, oftentimes, it's just you get a
real negative reaction and they're just not going to be open to it no
matter what you do later on.

And ultimately, our goal here is not just about compliance. Compliance, in
my opinion, is one of the last things that we should really be talking
about. What we should be talking about is we should be talking about
inclusion. We should talk about the folks that are potentially being left
on the sidelines, not intentionally, but because of the way their web and
digital content is being presented. So ultimately, what we want to do is
not just make those fixes, but ultimately bake accessibility into
everything that they do from the very beginning, not just the website, not
just digital content. Also, you know, just how they treat folks in general .

So our accessibility reviews that we do, we don't do full audits. We just
do reviews because they're a lot less expensive and a little bit easier to
handle, right? It includes real user testing. I personally test using JAWS,
NVDA. We'll use Voice Over on iOS. So we'll test over different devices,
different platforms, we'll make clear affordable recommendations for making
their websites and digital content more inclusive and in a more encouraging
and affordable way. And also, you know, be there along the way for them to
kind of provide that coaching for them.

So let's jump back, though, to the visual interpreter service, because one
of the ways that I wanted, one of the things I wanted to be very
intentional about when I created the service is I wanted it to be two
things. I wanted to be very good quality, but I also wanted it to be
affordable. And so one of the things that we're doing to try and make it
affordable for folks , we have this thing called the Provisions Shop and
there we sell supplies for guide dogs. Well, this is what we say. We say
supplies, toys, treats, and supplies for guide dogs and good dogs of all
kinds. So it doesn't have to be a guide dog, but if you've got a bad dog,
you're going to have to go shop elsewhere. It's only for guide dogs and
good dogs . So every purchase that's made in our provision shop, you'll
receive 10% back in the form of the visual interpreter minute. So if you go
in and you buy a bag of treat and a chew toy and maybe, you know, some dog
boots, and all of a sudden, you've spent $100 on your dog because your dog
needs it. That's the necessity . You're going to get 10 minutes back for
yourself in visual interpreter minutes. And this might not seem like much,
but if you think about it, if you have friends and family, folks that you
know and that have dogs that would like to purchase supplies from our
provision shop , they can allocate their minutes to you, and you could
ultimately end up with a potentially unlimited supply of free visual
interpreter minutes.

So you're getting the supplies for your dogs. You're getting some free
minutes and supporting what I think is a pretty cool business. So speaking
of supporting a pretty cool business, we are going this year, even though
we're not quite a year old. We got our business license last August 1st. We
are, though, going to exhibit at both the ACB and NFB conventions . So if
anybody is going to be in New Orleans, hopefully I'll see you down there.
But both of those are incredibly expensive, especially for a brand new
startup business that's not even breaking even just yet. So we are actually
running a fundraiser through City Pop. That's going to be going through the
end of the month to help us defray those costs. I know of at least one
person in this Zoom room here that's already participated. I'm not going to
tell you who, but you might be able to figure it out. So I will send your
president the link to our fundraiser page. And if any of you want it, you
could either request it from her or if you'd like, you can reach out to me
and I can send you the link . And hopefully, you know, you can help us out
by purchasing some tasty snacks.

And the last thing here is I just wanted to share out my contact
information and make sure you all know how to get in touch with me. We do
have a website that's available online. Visual eyes, that's e-y-e-s,
visualeyesaccess.com. There's a contact form there, or if you want, you can
email me directly. Just put my name at the beginning of that. That's Shawn
S-H-A-W-N at visualeyesaccess.com. And if you prefer to call text or
WhatsApp, you can just use that personal number because it didn't make any
sense for me to have a separate business line. I may regret that at some
point, though. So the number there is going to be 517-630-1420.

So we're excited about what we're doing here. We're excited to be in
involved in the blindness community and in the space. I've been here for a
long time. Great! Some of you are some familiar names . And so I hope you
check us out. And if you are in New Orleans, please swing by the booth and
say hello. If there's any time available, I'm happy to answer any questions
y'all might have.

-- 
Jose Bohorquez, Secretary
Florida Statewide Chapter - National Federation of the Blind of Florida
"We know that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or our
future. Every day we raise the expectations of blind people, because low
expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. Our
collective power, determination, and diversity achieve the aspirations of
all blind people."
-- NFB Belief Statement
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