disability

A woman wearing a hooded jacket and shoulder bag, holding orange headphones.

So I did an audiobook thingy…

Back when we published Black and Blue, it occurred to me that we should probably have an audiobook version of it – particularly for accessibility reasons, given that most of my clients have low or no vision.

We looked at a few voice actors, but had trouble finding someone:

  • with the right ethnic and cultural background (if you’ve read the book, you’ll hopefully understand why a white person probably shouldn’t be reading for Jade’s mum in the 21st century),
  • who could stay in a convincing Australian accent 99% of the time,
  • with a good home recording studio setup,
  • that we could actually afford.
Mockup of a reader holding a mobile phone displaying Black and Blue by Lee-Ann Khoh, with earbuds plugged into a headphone jack.
Image credit: AllAuthor

Long story short, a few people suggested I should just read it myself. So I did, but it ended up taking a few years to complete, lol. That’s what happens when you don’t pay people what they’re worth. 😜

In all sincerity, thank you to my colleagues at VisAbility for volunteering their time to bring an audiobook of Black and Blue into the world.

That meant, among other things, painstakingly listening to my voice. For hours. Hours. You think I’m sitting around listening to hours of myself talk? Hell no! But these amazing humans subjected themselves to it willingly.

Right now, the audio is just available at VisAbility Library – so you’ll need to have a print disability to download it. But I may make it commercially available in due course if that’s what people want. 😉

Download Black and Blue from VisAbility Library.

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not reflect the views of my employer or any other staff members.

Text reads: New year, same old. Background contains a wheelchair moving through an open plan building.

New year, same old

Well, it’s a brand new year and we’re now a good two years into the pandemic with no clear end in sight. During most of this time, I’ve been safely tucked up in my Western Australian bubble, but we’re set to open up to the world in less than a month and things are bound to change.

There’s a big part of me that’s super keen to open up. I want to hug people I haven’t seen in two or more years and see my favourite bands on tour. And I dunno, maybe roam about Salzburg wearing clothes made out of drapes. (Hey, I reference Star Trek and Star Wars a lot around here, so why not throw The Sound of Music into the mix?)

But I’m also aware that no jurisdiction has achieved the holy grail of no internal restrictions, no travel restrictions, a health system that is not overwhelmed and a strong economy. So it then becomes a question of which of those things you consider to be acceptable sacrifices. Different people have different values and priorities, which seems to be the source of most interpersonal conflicts.

I have mates working in the arts and entertainment who lose their income every time there’s a lockdown, capacity limits on venues or restrictions on events.

And I know people who didn’t choose their lot in life but are likely to die if they got COVID… and even if they were complete strangers to me, they’re still people, not just statistics with “underlying conditions”.

So I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what the right balance might be.

But I do know this: Telling disabled, chronically ill and immunocompromised people that you’re sick of being inconvenienced and that they should just “not go out in public if they’re so scared” – as if they haven’t already been carrying the burden of society’s selfishness this entire time – is not an acceptable sacrifice to me.

If more people came to the same conclusion, maybe we’d get further in building an inclusive and accessible world that benefits everyone. I tend to be quite cynical and sarcastic, but I also want to believe that we can do better and be better than we are.

I’ve titled this post “New year, same old” but I would dearly love to be wrong in a good way.