Diana Pastora Carson:
Hi there. Thank you so much for joining me today. Before we get started with our amazing guest, I wanna tell you about a brand new disability awareness educators guide that I am so excited to announce. It's published through National Professional Resources Inc. And it's a trifold laminated Beyond Disability Awareness: An Educators Guide that really takes everything that you will find in my books and on the podcast, and just gives you...It's kind of like Cliff's Notes of disability awareness in a way that's respectful and founded in research and a social justice lens. So if you're interested in checking it out, you can go to DianaPastoraCarson.com/store, and you'll find a link there. Now, let's get started.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Welcome to the Beyond Awareness: Disability Awareness That Matters podcast. Here you will find a safe space to learn and grow with leaders in education, disability studies, disability advocacy, and diversity, equity and inclusion conversations. Specifically, we look at how disability fits into diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how to frame disability awareness in the context of educating K through 12 communities. This podcast serves educators, parents and community members who strive to learn and or teach about disability in a research-based and respectful way, moving beyond simple awareness and diving into inclusive and socially responsive conversations. Thank you for joining us today. Now let's go beyond awareness.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Beyond Awareness: Disability Awareness That Matters. Today we have somebody I've been trying to get on the podcast for a while now, and I'm so excited to have her here. Her name is Qudsiya Naqui. She is the creator and host of the podcast Down to the Struts. She's a lawyer and disability justice activist based in Washington DC. Qudsiya's work on disability has been featured in Vox, Oxford University Press, the Disability Visibility Project, and Forbes Magazine. Welcome to the podcast, Qudsiya. Thank you for being here.
Qudsiya Naqui:
Thank you for having me, Diana.
Diana Pastora Carson:
So tell us about yourself and tell us about your journey. How do you identify, what's your story, Qudsiya?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Sure.
Qudsiya Naqui:
So I was born with a congenital eye condition that results in vision loss over time. So I am, I'm certainly not alone. There's many, many people around the country who have similar types of conditions, either mine or many other types who start off with more usable vision and sort of have their vision change over time. And I grew up in New Jersey on the East Coast, and I went to a mainstream public school, and then I switched over to a private school kind of starting in middle school and for high school. And I did receive some blindness services through the state commission for the blind and visually impaired. But for example, you know, the, the services really focused on how to maximize the use of my usable vision versus training for you know, blindness skills. And so I, for example, I never learned braille. I never had a guide dog. I had some mobility training with the white cane. But, you know, my vision was pretty good during the day. And so I just sort of, I passed and in a lot of ways, and disability was not a part of my identity until much, much later on in life. And I'm sure I could share a whole lot more, but that's kind of just the basics of, you know, how I started off in my sort of disability consciousness.
Diana Pastora Carson:
So what I got from that is you didn't always identify as a person with a disability and your disability wasn't at the forefront of your identity. Did you have anybody in your path that supported you into embracing your blind identity or your disability identity? Did you have any mentors or who have your mentors been?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Absolutely. That's a, that's a great question. I mean, the one thing I will say is my parents, you know, were, they were, you know, immigrant parents. I'm a, I'm a first generation south Asian American, and they didn't know a whole lot about a lot of the systems, and they weren't super familiar with the ADA, they had some basic understanding that I was entitled to certain things, and they really were, they were very good advocates for me in my schooling in terms of making sure I had what I needed to be successful. And you know, they, it's interesting. They definitely tried. So, for example, once they, they took me to a camp in New Jersey for kids with disabilities. And because though, you know, I had no other, you know, people who identified as being disabled in my family, it was not even a word that we used to talk about.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And then all of a sudden I was at this camp and I actually didn't wanna go when I made them take me home. I refused to participate. And because that's it, it was so I didn't have a model around me. And that didn't really happen for me until much later on. So I, you know, I went to college in New York City. I went to law school in Philadelphia. I went back to New York, and then a job brought me down to Washington DC, which is where I live now. And I was at an event with some other, like an event for lawyers. And I had a mentor at the time and she didn't identify as disabled, but she knew this other blind lawyer. And she said to me, you know, I'd really like to introduce you to this person.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And at first I was a bit skeptical. Oh, gosh, she is blind. I'm blind. You assume we're gonna be friends. But in reality, this, this mentor of mine really understood that I would connect with this other blind lawyer, and that it would be sort of useful for me to have someone like that in my life. And so it was, it was a very smart decision on her part to introduce me. So I was introduced to this blind lawyer, and we completely hit it off. We really bonded over adaptive sports. So we're both athletes. And she had recently started a group called the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes. And she really encouraged me. It took a while to convince me, but she really, you know, I would hang out with her from time to time, and she said, you should come ride tandem with us, or you should do this with us, or come kayaking or come hiking.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And finally I did go and I tried out tandem biking, which I had never done, and I had a blast. And then in the course of that, I met all these other amazing blind folks who were really fun and had shared interests. And that was really the first time I ever had through disability community, and I was able to learn from people. And one important lesson I learned is there was 1,000,001 ways to do things when you're blind. And, you know, I started to get ideas around technology, mobility, strategies for dealing with the workplace, things that other people in my life though, they really like, my parents and others, though, they really tried to walk in my shoes. They just couldn't give me because they didn't have the lived experience that these other folks did. And so that, that really was transformative for me.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Wow. Qudsiya, how old were you when you met your mentor, your blind mentor?
Qudsiya Naqui:
So very late in life. I was in my, oh gosh early thirties. Early thirties.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Wow. Well, how, so how was that for you growing up then in a school system that really didn't, you know, was more about remediation and not about access and coming from a family who certainly embraced you and loved you and supported you, and yet didn't know all that there was available to you, not just the right to go to school, but I don't know, how was that, how was that for you as a student and a family member all those years? Not having a disability community?
Qudsiya Naqui:
It was really difficult. I mean, it was very isolating. I felt like I couldn't, you know, fully identify with my family, with my peers. , I always felt sort of excluded and I didn't. So for instance, when I was in school, I ran track and I had no idea about this option of like having a running guide or you know, that sort of a thing. Interestingly though, I was running around, I could still kind of run by myself at the time, and I was running around the campus, and then the parents were getting all upset because they were driving their cars, and I would like run in the street, and they were scared they would hit me. And so the teachers banned me from doing that. They said, you can't, you can't run on the road by yourself anymore. And I was really upset.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And this one, it's interesting now that I think back this, she was my track coach, she came to me afterwards. We had this whole, they had this whole intervention with me of like, you can't do this anymore. And she was like, look, I will run with you. And so every day, or like a couple days a week after school, she would come and we didn't use a tether or anything, but she would just run beside me and we would run together. And now that I look back on that, that was an example of someone in my life early on who even when I felt like I didn't, you know, that someone who was thinking creatively and was like, oh, yes, let's give her access. And so, yes. So, but the vast majority of the time, that wasn't the case. It was always the can't, right?
Qudsiya Naqui:
That you can't do this so we'll find something else for you to do as opposed to like, how can we help you figure out how to participate with everyone else? Another example that really sticks out to me is I was in seventh grade in science class, and they were making, we were making, learning how to make a topographical map, so like a 3D map, right? And it involved using, you know, paper, paper cutters and like like box cutting, kind of like sharp sharp tools. And they, they just said, no. We don't think this is safe for you. And then instead they were like, why don't you go to the library? And while everyone else is working on their map, you can write a report about topography instead. And so, and they didn't really talk to me about what I wanted to do or what I would've preferred. They just were like, this isn't safe. You're gonna do something else. And then as a consequence, like my, I would leave the classroom, everyone else was working on these maps, and I would sit alone in the library, and like, that was a lot of my life. You know, it was always sort of can't and exclude versus you can, and we'll, we're going to include you.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. And from an educator perspective, it's all based on what we don't know and what we are afraid of, and not having a commitment to all of our students having equitable access to whatever it is we're offering at school. You know, and I think so often we as educators and even as family members, sometimes we base all of our, all of our decisions and our attitudes are grounded in that fear. You know, whether it's fear that you, you're gonna get hurt or that something's gonna go wrongbut that fear overshadows our commitment to all of our students having access.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Thank you for sharing those stories. So now let's switch over to your podcast, Down to the Struts. You're now in season six of Down to the Struts, which by the way, I love listening to your podcast. Your diversity of guests, and you are just...I aspire to be like you in terms of the questions and the flow of your podcast. I just really love it and I hope that my listeners will start listening to it as well. You're in season six. What prompted you to create a podcast and what drives you to keep it going?
Qudsiya Naqui:
That's such a good question. And I, I have to say right back at you, I really, I really love what you're doing here, and it's such an important audience that you're speaking to. And you know, I've been following your work and your advocacy and definitely admiring from afar, but not afar anymore, because now we've had a chance to meet. (Diana: "Yay! Thank you.") Thank you, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It means so much to methat you found it useful and meaningful, and that it just, you know, it just is so affirming to hear that. So I'm so grateful to you for that. And so the podcast is, it has an interesting story. I, I mean, interesting or not interesting, I don't know. So it was, you know, 2020, and we were all locked up in our houses.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And you know, I had been thinking a lot about my own disability identity over the, the past few years and just you know, as I came into disability community, I felt like, you know, here I have all this time on my hands because I would, no one's going anywhere. And I'm blessed because I am, I'm safe and I'm secure in my home. I have a place to live. I have employment. So many people during the pandemic really, really struggled with all of those things and lived in, in some real precarity. And I, I was like, I'm so, I'm so just privileged. What can I do that can contribute in some way? And you know, I love the medium of podcasting. I love audio. And I thought, you know, this is a thing I can do, you know, safely from my home.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And I, I have to give a shout out here to Alice Wong who I reached out to. I did not know her at all. And I had come across the Disability Visibility Project and podcast, and I just, I cold emailed her and I said, you know, I'm thinking about starting a podcast. Do you have any advice? And she was so generous. She responded within 24 hours, and she was like, wow, I'm really busy promoting my book, but here's two people I want you to talk to. And those two people were Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid. Thomas Reed hosts the podcast to read My Mind radio. And they were both just both just lovely humans, in general, and also just so helpful. You know, Cheryl, who's just an audio wizard, listened to some of my early recordings and was like, you know, you can breathe while you're talking! (Diana Laughs).
Qudsiya Naqui:
And kind of showed me the ropes and taught me about, and most importantly, they were like, if you're gonna do a podcast, you need to make it accessible to everybody. And we talked about how to do a transcript, how to write a transcript, and that was something I was really having a fully accessible podcast website with image descriptions. And so they were really helpful in guiding me about how the mechanics of, of how to do that. And then the, the final component of this, where I feel so fortunate and that really birthed the podcast is I had two friends of mine who I kind of had shared this idea with, and they were just, they jumped right on board. One of them is really great with social media, she's worked as a journalist, and she said, I will help you create your website, help you create your socials.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And then my other friend happened to be an audio producer and was really interested in getting more into that world. And she was like, I will edit for you. And, and that was just a gift. And so we had a little team and we you know, I mean, without them, without Alice and Cheryl and Thomas, this would not have been possible. And also I would say my partner who, you know, really was just kind of like, you should go for it. You should, you should do it. And, and did a lot of that. You can, you can, which I really needed. It's, it's really from a psychological standpoint, when you've had those can't messages your whole life, it's really hard to unlearn that and having people around you that say, yes, you can is really, really important. And I can't you know, I can't overemphasize how important that is, especially for young people.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And so, yeah, and I mean, that's kind of how it happened. And I, I did a lot of cold emailing to people who I wanted to interview. I had no idea whether they would come back to me. And, and people did. People were like, yes, well, we will be on your show. And they kind of were patient with me as I was, I'm sure, you know, as you started your own podcast, the learning curve is steep. And Yes. You know, it was really you know, the generosity of people to share their stories is just tremendous. And I feel like the community that I've built of the alumni of the podcast is also just an incredible gift. And, and yeah. So I mean, that's, that's kind of, kind of, kind of how it all came to be. And I really wanted to increasingly focus on interviewing disabled folks, disabled folks of color, young people, people doing work across topic areas. And I wanted to talk about the arts and technology and law and policy because I am a lawyer. And so yeah, I mean, that's kind of, that's kind of how it all came together.
Diana Pastora Carson:
. Yes. Wow. Thank you. That's wonderful. And what a treat that you had Alice Wong and Cheryl and Thomas and just such great allies in your corner for that. Yes, thank you for sharing that, and thank you for the work that you continue to do with Down to the Struts.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Bell rings to signal ad: Hey there, my friend. Just a quick word with you about some resources that are available. First of all, if you're an educator or a parent looking at disability awareness or diversity, equity, and inclusion work in your school or community, please, please, please make sure to get my free resource: The 5 Keys to Going Beyond Awareness. You wanna ensure that you focus on the right topics and do it in the most respectful and research-based way. So go to GoBeyondAwareness.com/keys to get this resource today. And even if you are not doing any disability awareness or DEI work in your school or community, but you like the topics shared on the podcast, I encourage you to head to GoBeyondAwareness.com/keys so that you can sign up for my emails, which often contain free links and resources related to the topics covered here on the podcast.
Diana Pastora Carson:
And I wanna share that I have several free beyond awareness resources also at my Teachers Pay Teachers store, which is called Disability as Diversity. Also in the show notes, you'll find links to other resources I've created for you to take the message of disability way beyond awareness, including a thematic unit for educators for my book Ed Roberts: Champion of Disability Rights; a very stylish Beyond Awareness tote bag, if I do say so myself; a beautiful journal or notebook whose cover is graced with the amazing Beyond Awareness cover artwork of autistic artist Jack Medved; and some very cool fashionable tops, including a Beyond Awareness hooded sweatshirt, which I'm wearing right now, and a raglan t-shirt.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Finally, just a reminder that with each episode in the show notes, not only will you find the show's transcript or accessibility or just for preference, but I also list books written by disabled authors and other resources relevant to the topics discussed. So check out the show notes for each episode as we learn and grow together in going beyond awareness. (Bell Rings signaling end of advertisement)
Diana Pastora Carson:
So as you were talking, you know, you mentioned that Cheryl Green had said, you know, you wanna make sure that your, your podcast is accessible, that you have a transcript and all that stuff, stuff that I try to do and I'm still learning. And so I know that a lot of our listeners also have a lot to learn in terms of how to create accessible spaces and especially accessible digital spaces, you know, like on social media or and platforms that we usepodcast descriptions or whatever it is that we're doing. What I wanna ask you, what do we not know? What do most people not know? What are some misconceptions about blindness that we have and about blind access? What is it that you run across that are barriers for you and others who are blind,that we should know about?
Qudsiya Naqui:
I think in terms of visual content, so one important thing to know is starting with social media and a lot of websites, alt text isn't automatically generated or embedded into images. It has to be manually input. I mean, I think there's some rudimentary alt text that is auto-generated in Facebook and maybe also Instagram, but it's really very poor. It doesn't tell you what an image actually is. It gives you some basic information. And so you know, learning how to add alt text, it's pretty, it's pretty easy, and it just takes a couple of minutes and it's actually really fun. And I view it as part of a work of art or a photo. It's really, it's a really fun way to flex your kind of writing skills and to think about, okay, if I was describing this image over the phone to someone who couldn't, didn't have access to it or couldn't see it, how would I explain this image?
Qudsiya Naqui:
What's most important to me, me personally, about this image? So I think that's one, one thing that's really important that people may not realize is when they're sharing images online or via a website, adding those image descriptions can just totally transform, especially a blind person's experience of you know of those images. And I actually did an interview on my podcast with Sean Collins, who's an [email protected], who kind of walks people through how to write a good image description and, and explains, for instance, in the context of news articles, why doing that can really help someone understand a little bit more about what's being conveyed in that article. So that's a really important piece. And I think, you know, with video audio description and, and, you know, Thomas and Cheryl also do a lot of that work is so critical to, and it's becoming a lot more ubiquitous, which is really heartening to see.
Qudsiya Naqui:
But you know, having audio description is really, is really important when you're doing video. And then of course, for our deaf and hard of hearing colleagues you know, captioning and transcripts. I have, you know, I have deaf and hard of hearing folks in my life and, and also just some people who don't do well with auditory processing. And so having the option of saying to someoneoh, I have trouble listening to podcasts, or I can't follow it, or I can't hear very well, just being like, oh, well, no problem. You can, you can just read the transcript and that will be a lot better experience for you. So I am a firm believer just in general, even leaving blindness aside, but in general with folks with disabilities and just accesses to, to provide, providing information in as many modalities as you're able to, because people experience things in different ways is always a benefit to everybody, regardless of even whether you have a disability.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Absolutely. A hundred percent agree. And I aim to keep learning about this and do better and better each day. Thank you for sharing that. I do have a follow up question. You mentioned video descriptions, and I did listen to that episode with Cheryl Green and Thomas Reed, where they were going over some of the films that have audio description. And I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for some that might be of interest to my listeners that they could, because I don't think many people have experienced an audio described film.
Qudsiya Naqui:
Yeah, so what's really cool is a lot of the streaming platforms, apple, Netflix, Hulu now have AD. So it's actually a feature you can just turn on. It's not available for all films, especially like, I think sometimes with older ones it might be harder, but especially with new content coming out on those platforms. Usually nowadays films have and TV shows that are streaming have audio description options, and they're really very good. And then in the, in movies, so this this completely changed my life. I basically would go to the movies and like, I couldn't see half the movie, and I, if there was no dialogue, I usually had no idea what was going on. And then again, the benefit of having a community of people that share your disability. So my friends were like, what are you doing? My blind friends,
Qudsiya Naqui:
They were just like, how do you live? You can get audio description headphones. So when you go to a movie theater, like AMC or Landmark or any of these, like big theaters, Regal, you can go to the customer service desk and get audio description headphones. And so you just put them on. And then when the movie starts, the AD streams, the AD track will stream along with the movie. And that just changed my life, . That was just amazing. So it's a really, and again, like my family, I mean, that technology wasn't available when I was growing up and nobody thought about, like, people would, you know, the most I would get in a movie theater is a friend or a family member asking like, oh, can you see? What can you see? As opposed to like, oh, let me describe this to you because I know you can't see it. So it really was a, it's a game changer. And, and it's, it's becoming, again, because of the advocacy of people like Cheryl and Thomas becoming a lot more ubiquitous and like universally available.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Mm. Wow. And so that's for any film that you go to a theater?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Most of the time. So what you can do is when you look, when you're looking at movie timesnowadays what they have is they'll have notes next to the movie of like, is there, is there live closed or open captioning, is there AD? And so you can check that ahead of time. So I only, for example, when my partner and I go to the movies, we only go to to movies where there's AD available.
Diana Pastora Carson:
I just learned something new. That's awesome. Like, I can't wait to try it myself. Thank you.
Qudsiya Naqui:
Yeah, no problem.
Diana Pastora Carson:
So in your podcast Down to the Struts you know, speaking of things that we learned from our guests, you navigate disability culture through the stories and perspectives of your very diverse guests. I wanna know what you've learned through your inquiries. What stands out for you that you would like to share with our audience of mostly educators and families that you've learned through your guests?
Qudsiya Naqui:
I've learned so many things through my guests. I could probably talk about that for an hour, but I'll hit some of the highlights for you. So I think I feel like the sequencing of my guests has, was sort of done whether somewhat consciously, but mostly subconsciously as like my own disability learning curriculum. So if you go very back to the first episode as my interview with Arielle Silverman, who I actually ended up having back on the show to talk about her memoir. But we talked about this concept of disability wisdom and what it means to be wise about disability and what it means to be an ally, what it means to be someone who who centers inclusion and access. And then I moved on to talk to Sara Acevedo about like disability terminology. So something you were mentioning earlier, like person first language versus identity first language, and you know, crip, the word "crip" and its origins.
Qudsiya Naqui:
And so, you know, those are really building blocks for me in terms of understanding disability culture. And then, you know, we kind of moved on into, into lots of different topics, but you know, really thinking about the intersection of race and disability, immigration and disability, immigration status and disability. So I think like one of the things that I really have taken away from all of my guests is just learning about how rich and diverse disability culture itself is. It's certainly not a monolith. Even two people who share the same disability might have really different perspectives or points of view about their disability, about access, about inclusion, what that means. And I think that's been the greatest gift of the podcast. And the thing I've learned the most is that this is a really diverse and rich community. And people come at it in from lots of different sort of perspectives into learning about what's the difference between disability rights and disability justice. You know, people have different opinions about person first versus identity first language, and there's a genuine debate about that. There's, you know, there's sort of these interesting tensions in the community and they're not, I don't say tensions in sort of a negative way, but I think the dimensions of what I understand disability to be as an experience have really sort of evolved and taken new shape as I have interacted with all these different guests who come from so many different walks of life.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Hmm. Yes. I concur, . Yeah. Thank you. All right. So I wanna ask you, what are some of your favorite books?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Oh my goodness, . So I have to, again, another topic I could talk about for like an hour, but I would definitely like to give a little plug for Alice Wong's memoir Year of the Tiger. What a sort of wonderful romp through disability culture. It's just such a fun read. The audio version is fabulous. She has an Asian American person doing the audio description, and it just feels very much like Alice and it's really great. I also recently finished reading The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha, which I really, really enjoyed. And again is just a really fantastic book. And so Diana, I think this, this might be a little bit close to your heart. I had on my show Jennifer Natalia Fink, who wrote the book All Our Families, which is just a wonderful meditation about disability and the family. And I just, I learned so much from my conversation with her and the book itself. So those are just a couple of, a couple of books that I've really enjoyed recently. Yeah.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Thank you so much. I've written, I've written down all our families and I'm gonna get that. I have readYear of The Tiger, and of courseDisability Visibility by Alice Long, and I look forward to reading Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha's new book, The Future Is Disabled. I read another one, Care Work by her, which is really good. But I wanna mention to our audience that those two books, especially, I'm not sure about All Our Families, but those two books are definitely adult content. You know, it's not a book that you wanna read to your children, they're adult content and words in there. So make sure that you're careful, you know, to use discretion, but they're amazing books. If you wanna immerse yourself in disability culture and all the different perspectives that we are talking about here today, then definitely. Those are great, great books. Thank you for those recommendations.
Qudsiya Naqui:
Of course. And for a children's book, I would, I love the book We Move Together.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yes,
Qudsiya Naqui:
Fantastic.
Diana Pastora Carson:
. Yes, yes, definitely. I love that one too. And I will put those, I will put all of those in the show notes for everybody. And how about podcasts? What are your favorite podcasts that you listen to? I know you love podcasts.
Qudsiya Naqui:
I do. And so most of the podcasts I listen to, just as a preface as well, are a little bit more adult, I think Reid My Mind Radio is pretty kid-friendly, friendly, what a wonderful, it's just beautifully produced, really great stories of Blindness and Disability by Thomas Reid. So that's one I really enjoy. Another one that I recently started listening to, which is again, a little bit more adult, but really wonderful is Intersectional Insights which is a booksorry, a podcast, that features two lack, blind women who kind of talk about their experiences at those intersections and they have a wonderful sort of rapport and dialogue. So that's, that's another one that I've really een enjoying. I also really enjoy Judy Heumann's podcast as well, which is is really fun to listen to. So those are just a few of the sort of disability-focused podcasts that I really enjoy.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Great. I can't wait to listen. I have not listened to Reid My Mind Radio or Intersectional Insights, so I'm gonna check those out for sure. And definitely I love The Heumann Perspective with Judy Heumann. All right. Let's see what else? Favorite person you've interviewed and why?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Oh, no, I can't choose. That's, that's so hard. That's so, so hard. There's so many people that have been just delightful to interview. I guess I, since my mind is sort of in season six, I really, really enjoyed interviewing Bhavna Mehta, who was n episode two. So the one that just released arlier this week. She is a visual artist who is based in San Diego and does a lot of sort of work and meditation around disability and the body and migration. And we just had this incredibly beautiful conversation and she's just an absolute delight. And Alice Wong obviously was a really fun one. I really enjoyed interviewing her, but,I also, one of my personal all-time favorites was when I interviewed onchita Hernandez Legorreta, Melissa Lomax and Justice Shorter to talk about their sort of their online group for blind women of color called Walk World. So that was, that was a really fun,conversation. It was the most people I'd had on the podcast at once. So it was really a test of my interviewing skills to interview three people at once. . ut yeah.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That's wonderful. Thank you. What's next for you?
Qudsiya Naqui:
What's next for me? Well, I'm starting to think about season seven of the podcast. So the podcast isn't going anywhere. AndI will say as a result of the podcast, I've also just had been so privileged to have lots of opportunities to write about disability, to think about disability, to present about disability topics. And so, you know, that's, that's been really, really special. And you know, I really hope to continue connecting with other disabledBIPOC, disabled podcastersso that we can sort of share resources and promote each other's work. I've done some of that on this episode today. And so yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing this community grow.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yes, yes. Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing all that you put forth next as well, and that our, our friends in the disability community put forth as well, and support one another. How can people find you Qudsiya? How can they connect with you? Follow you other than on the Down to the Struts podcast, which will be in the link?
Qudsiya Naqui:
Yes, thank you so much. Yes, you can subscribe, rate and review the podcast on whatever podcast platform you like. We are on Twitter and Instagram at Down to the Struts. We have a Facebook group called Down to the Struts podcast, and I also, about a year ago, launched a newsletter called Getting Down to It, which is available on Substack and is also linked through my website DownToTheStruts.com. And you can also email us if you have questions or thoughts or ideas at [email protected].
Diana Pastora Carson:
Qudsiya, it's been so generous of you to spend your time with us today, and it's been a delight for me. Thank you so much.
Qudsiya Naqui:
Thank you for having me, Diana.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Beyond Awareness: Disability Awareness That Matters. If this was helpful to you, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also follow me, Diana, on Instagram @DianaPastoraCarson and on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/GoBeyondAwareness. Or you can go to my website for more information at www.DianaPastoraCarson.com. My books include Beyond Awareness: Bringing Disability into Diversity Work in K-12 Schools and Communities, as well as my children's book, Ed Roberts: Champion of Disability Rights. They can both be found on Amazon. For your free Beyond Awareness resource called the "5 Keys to Going Beyond Awareness," simply go to www.GoBeyondAwareness.com/keys. This podcast transcription and podcast guest information can be found in the show notes. Intro and outro music has been provided courtesy of Emmanuel Castro. Thank you again. Be well, be a lifelong learner, and let's be inclusive. See you next time.
