Changing the Narrative

Kimberly talks to Luda Gogolushko, founder of Includas Publishing, about the importance of disability representation in media. They discuss the evolution of how disabled people are portrayed in media, as well as the possibilities and pitfalls of AI for the representation of people with disabilities in media.

Visit Includas Publishing’s offerings at Includas.com

Thanks to Chris Ankin for use of his song, “Change.”

The book "A Celebration of Family: Stories of Parents with Disabilities." is available from Amazon here.

Visit Moving Forward, the Advocado Press blog.

Send comments and questions to demandanddisrupt@gmail.com

Demand and Disrupt is sponsored by the Advocado Press and the Center For Accessible Living.

You can find the transcript in the show notes below when they become available.

Transcript

Welcome to demand and disrupt the disability podcast.

Here we will learn to advocate for ourselves and each other.

This podcast is supported with funds from the Advocato press based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Hello everyone.

And thank you for joining us on demand and disrupt.

I am your host, Kimberly Parsley and I'm Lisa McKinley.

And today my interview guest is Luda Gogoluszko and she is the founder of Include Us Publishing, which is a publisher whose goal is to increase media representation of people with disabilities.

And she is from the University of Oregon.

So I'm very excited about that.

I'm excited because it's October, which is the beginning of my favorite season, which is pretty much the whole last quarter of the year, because I love Halloween and then I love Thanksgiving and I even love the holidays.

So it's amazing.

It's like the best month of the entire year.

It is it.

I absolutely agree.

It's like, I think it's because finally we're getting some fall weather in Kentucky.

At least we can be convinced that there might be some fall weather coming.

Yeah, I love it.

Are you a pumpkin spice person?

Are you anti that?

I mean, it's it's it's OK, maybe a little and some coffee, but all the pumpkin spice cereal and pumpkin spice, baked beans, all like pumpkin spice, everything.

It's like some of it's a little weird.

I'll give you that.

I'll give you that.

But I've already gotten my pumpkin spice cream cheese to go on my bagel.

So that sounds like it would work.

I got a got my new decor.

I got a well, I think crystal skull.

I'm sure it's just like glass, but it's a clear skull and it apparently has glitter in it.

So if you turn it on, the glitter sparkles and then there's a candle sticking out of the top.

If you want to go for a little spookier sort of thing, Michael thinks it's the absolute tackiest thing that he's ever seen.

But we love it.

We love it.

It can't be as tacky as what we saw at Lowe's the other day.

It was a 10 foot animatronic skeleton for your yard that was $500.

It was that Lowe's or Home Depot because the 12 foot Home Depot skeleton is like a thing.

It's like iconic now.

Maybe it was Home Depot.

No, it's like a thing.

I mean like people, and then they're so expensive that I've seen people like keep them out all year and put like, you know, like a Santa Claus hat on them in December and then like bunny ears, you know, but yeah, but I'm not paying for that.

I'm judging you right now.

I'm sure you are.

It's fine.

Hey, my tacky knows no bounds, none at all.

We have a little like two foot one to keep in the house.

His name is Trevor because the kids, you know, to thrill, his name is Trevor, you know, that kind of thing.

So the new, the new, the new school is his name is Bob because Bob is the name of a skull that is in the Dresden files, which is a series about a wizard in Chicago.

And there's a talking school whose name is Bob.

So the new school is named Bob.

So what, what do you have?

Do you, do you, I bet you do classy holiday decorations, don't you?

I have a brown hand spun pottery bowl with little pumpkins and, and pine cones in it, but you know, fall wreath, but that's about the extent.

See, you're like pottery barn and I'm like, I don't know, spirit Halloween just threw up in my house or something.

So I wish I was more into decorations, but I can set you up with some tacky Halloween.

I really can.

We did have this witch that would like it screamed and cackled and would like it was attached to the bucket with the candy in it, you know, and it would grab the candy out and it was so spooky.

I threw it away.

I thought it was demonic.

Alex brought it home.

I'm like, this thing is scaring me.

So we have outside, we have like the led lights around the back porch and not, not, not like holiday or anything.

Just, uh, there's just the led strip of lights around the, our screened in porch.

And Michael was out there doing something with the dog.

And because it's, you know, Halloween is coming, I, I turned them because they're Alexa enabled.

I had to whisper her name or else, you know, uh, I'll summon her, but so I changed them.

I had Alexa change them to crimson, change the color of the lights to crimson while Michael was outside with the dog.

He was like, he just, I heard him holler that's creepy.

Stop it.

Oh, Halloween is fun.

I miss how I miss taking the kids trick or treating.

It was my, I think one of my most favorite things to do with the kids.

So, uh, I like the candy, but I like, I like, I like the adult parts of Halloween taking the kids trick or treating with that was probably my least favorite thing because really I loved it.

Did you?

Oh, that's awesome.

Did they get into like, uh, dressing up his stuff?

Did they do that?

Yeah, they dress up, but I mean, they weren't like super, you know, it was like, you know, I'm a procrastinator, so this is well established.

We would always get the, you know, whatever costume was left the day before Halloween, but just walking around and, you know, listening to their excitement about getting the candy and, and everything.

That was always fun for me.

Did you ever do like homemade costumes?

Yes.

One year.

And this was my favorite Halloween of all David.

It was his last Halloween dressing up.

Um, he dressed up as a high C fruit box.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

My brother-in-law found a box that had the exact same dimensions as a high C fruit box, except bigger.

Oh, okay.

Uh huh.

Got the whole, and my niece, she, she painted it orange and she put the nutrition label.

She copied it verbatim off the box.

Patrick put a little hole with a PVC pipe for the straw.

Oh, cool.

I mean, people were throwing him fistfuls of candy because this costume was so cool.

That's awesome.

That is awesome.

So we have white cane day, which comes up October 15th and the white cane is symbolic for people who are blind to use.

It's to identify us as someone who's blind, as in we didn't walk out in front of you in traffic on purpose, you know, and so please don't run over us.

Uh, I think most Kings have a, most of them all have a, like a red reflective strip at the bottom.

Don't they?

Yes.

So, and I was thinking about this yesterday.

You and I were at a meeting and someone was there and she asked that there's something you could put on the end of a white cane.

It's called a marshmallow tip.

And you use that if you're, you know, if most of your travel is inside it.

So you don't like bang, bang, bang against every surface that you touch in the wall.

It's just kind of a softer tip.

And she said, does anyone know how to get gum off a marshmallow tip?

And I told her, just throw it away and buy it.

So not that expensive.

And you don't want to be playing around with somebody else's gum, somebody else's gum.

Yep.

Exactly.

But I mean, you know, that is a problem.

I was, I could, I went through cane tips when I was a cane traveler.

I went through cane tips like crazy.

I mean, cause you're just filing them down every second you're using them outside, like on campus.

And I walked really fast and I still walked fast.

So I was constantly breaking my cane because I would, you know, it's there to protect you in case you run into something, but when you're running into something at high speeds, they kind of sometimes snap.

So I've snapped a lot of white canes.

The snapper, they punch you in the gut.

Oh yes.

You know, yes.

When you're going too fast and the cane stops, but you don't and it's a sucker punch for sure.

Yep.

Exactly.

So, so, you know, I, I was a very confident traveler when I was in college, not so much anymore.

Now that I have the balance problems.

I feel the same.

I feel the same.

Because, you know, you get out of the habit of it.

I mean, mine's not balance issues.

It's more so that I'm, I'm not in an environment where I'm traveling independently a lot anymore.

So I get out of the habit of using the cane.

I've used it, I use it a lot within the, you know, massag