 And I wanted people like Sophie to be able to access my reporting, but I knew the typical way we report and publish stories wouldn't be enough to make that happen. Tonight, we're going to share those stories with you. We tried a few things to make the stories accessible, including plain language translations. I'm going to pass it back to Maya now who's going to show you an example of what that looks like. Kyra Wade's favorite color is pink. The 11-year-old likes road trips and the movie Monster's Ink. She loves to watch people laugh. Her culinary preferences run to noodles and rice. Beyond that, her parents don't know much about her needs and wants. Kyra is autistic and profoundly deaf. Kyra Wade is 11 years old. She likes the color pink, the movie Monster's Ink. Watching people laugh, noodles and rice. Kyra's parents don't know what else Kyra likes or wants. Kyra is autistic and deaf. Amy, you're on mute, I think. It's not a Zoom event without that, right? Becca Montalion, who will be joining us later in the hour, translated these stories into plain language. Later in the event, we'll also have Shoshana Gordon, a production fellow at ProPublica, the artist that makes Studio who created illustrations for the event, and Mumta Popat, a photographer for the Arizona Daily Star. Vina and Maya, you just saw them, are engagement reporters with ProPublica and will be helping run the Zoom so you might see them pop into the screen or answer your questions. Over the next hour, we also want to hear what you think of our reporting and whether you have any more stories for us. We're holding this event to not only present our stories back to you, but also to understand what feedback and questions you might have. At any time, if you want to share something with us tonight, you can send it to us in the Zoom chat. If you want to tell us something privately, you can also call our reporters and leave us a voice message at any time. The number is 520-329-7530. And that number is 520-329-7530. Also note that this event is on the record, meaning we are recording this event and will post it online publicly. And anything said during the event may be quoted and published in stories. So that means if you'd like a copy or want to screen this to a community, like a day program or a group home, we're happy to do that. Just send a note in the chat. I also want to give a shout out to Dawn, who's doing our ASL interpretation tonight. So Cara was one person we featured. Now we want you to meet Emery. We want to first show you how we told her story. So we're going to play a few parts of our plain language story. Great. And I'm about to share my screen with everyone again so that we can go to see Emery in a deeper story. Emery Webster is 11 years old. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. Emery wants to be a DJ. She pretends to beatbox and scratch records. Emery's mom said, Miss Emery is a little firecracker. She is sassy as the day is long, but she's also one of the sweetest kids ever and funny. Oh God, she has such a sense of humor. It's ridiculous. Emery has cerebral palsy. It is hard for her to talk to other people. Emery uses a device that helps her talk to other people. Her device is from the Division of Developmental Disabilities. Emery's mom says Emery's device is old and broken. Emery had to wait one and a half years to get a new device. DDD told her she could get a new device this summer. Maya, you're on mute. I'm sorry. I'm on muting myself. Thank you. After the story was published, Emery and Adiba heard from DDD and got a new device after a year and a half. Last week, Bina and Amy interviewed Emery and Adiba who couldn't join us tonight. So we're going to be playing a clip from that interview. So please stay tuned and then afterward we'll come back and Amy will lead us in an interview with another couple of folks. And at any time if you all have any thoughts, want to share your feedback or want to also have the opportunity to bring some of these stories back to your community and maybe ambassadors of this journalism, feel free to text the number that you'll see in the chat that Bina will put in. So stepping out of the pages of the Arizona Daily Star are Emery Webster and her mom, Adiba Nelson, who live in Tucson. Sorry, I'm hearing there's no sound. Yeah, Maya. I think you might need to reshare. Hello? Yes. One second. Thank you all for your patience. Yeah. Yeah. My ceiling gets off at one. Oh, and if someone is on mute, could they, if they could off mute, could they can mute themselves? That would be great. All right. We're going to try this again. So stepping out of the pages of the Arizona Daily Star are Emery Webster and her mom, Adiba Nelson, who live in Tucson. And yeah, so it's already been established that Adiba may or may not be allowed in the screen. Right. So the story came out on a Friday and, and then when did you get the device? So I think came out online on Friday and it came out on the Sunday, what is happened? Sorry. It came out in the paper and print here on Sunday. And I got a text message from our DDD coordinator Monday afternoon saying, Hey, guess what? Just got an email that your device is in. I was like, Oh, funny how that worked out. And there's just an article that went live and she was like, Yeah, we know. We've been getting calls. I got a lot of messages from people and I think the started as well and ProPublica, who wanted to purchase a device, but it's not that easy. No, the device is your typical tablet. It's all of the software and the programming that goes into it. It felt good to be getting the story out there just about not only what I was dealing with, but knowing that there were other kids that you were talking to and what they were dealing with like Arizona as a whole does pretty good when it comes to disability. When I talk to parents in other states who have kids that are disabled and they're like, you get what you get what? How does that happen? So in that regard, I'm always like, OK, like, you know, I guess we're never leaving Arizona. But then you hear stories like this and it's just like, but we still have a lot of work to do. I think that shouldn't have happened. There's no reason that that happened the way it did. And so for that reason, I'm really glad that there was some light shed on it. I don't know if changes are going to be made from what I hear. It sounds like there are some changes being made. There's still a lot of talk around DDD and DES about this specific situation. They're still getting phone calls and emails about it. I'm wanting to know what's going on. We're at the ball drop trying to like follow the trail to figure out where it happens specifically. But we'll see if anything actually comes from that. One of the things that we really wanted to do with this project was focus our coverage specifically on the people with disabilities themselves, both in terms of the reporting and then also the adaptations we did, the plain language translation, that did audience. What did you think of that? Or I'm sorry, audio versions? I thought it was brilliant. I've never, ever, ever in my life seen reporting done in such an accessible way. Like never in life. And like we get books from school for every that are adaptive. So they're just a little bit easier to understand. It's not so wordy. You get the gist of it kind of like clip notes type things. But I've never seen that in the editorial space. I felt like I really understood what not only the parents were trying to get across, but also the humanity of the individuals that were being discussed. I definitely felt that quiet. And a deeper you are going to read the day that thing arrived at your house. I already do. I have been told I'm impossible. I have been told to go away. Be quiet. Yeah. I get it from both my kids. I completely relate. You know, at the same time though, it's just confirmation that she's just a typical kid. And it gives her the freedom and the, the liberty to be a typical kid. It gives her that humanity that all other kids have. You know, who's different. You're different. I'm different. You want me to be quiet differently? Yeah. I'm, I would really love to see what the talker looks like. Could you show it to us? Yeah. Okay. Show them what it looks like. I'm going to put it back on its main screen. They put it on its main screen. Okay. There you go. Can you show them? Can you show me that? There you go. Get a little bit closer. There you go. Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on on that home screen? Okay. So what's happening here? Oh, let's. What is it how? Does it just have. Let's write out what it has. Okay. Where's your keyboard there? So what do you use the main screen for? P. Uh-huh. What EPA? What word you're trying to spell here? M. Uh-huh. Oh, are you trying to spell that? Yeah. Example. She's trying to spell example. Okay. So you use the main screen to give examples. Yeah. Okay. So what's happening here? I don't know. I don't know. But it's, it's realistic in the sense of it gives you topics, like real topics. That. And everyone talks about. And that was one of the things I loved about the most is that. When her teacher showed it to me or her speech therapist showed it to me. I noticed immediately. I was like, wait, what? It has a sexuality button. Because. Disabled people have sex too. They don't have sex. And when you click on it, I mean, it literally. Is it safe? Can you explain that? Should I call my doctor? Do you love me? Like. These are real things that people talk about. And for someone who has. Barriers to communication. And. Issues with forming full sentences with their own voice. And when you put your friends together in the correct order for them, this is brilliant. This is brilliant. And granted, she's 11. So there are not be pressing any of these buttons. But when she's 18, 19, 20, you know, I, she might have a partner and she might. Trust you. I trust you. You know, this is, this is reality. This is. This is actually providing. People that are very often not afforded that. So we're very happy with it to say the least. Is there anything else that you want? You know, the, the attendees at our event to know. This. Oh, say that again. Say that again. Hold on. I like. Nope. That one. That was the one. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. When I get my question yet. We love talking about it with you too, Murray. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you'd like to say to them? What would you like to say? Do you remember me? I do remember you. And being a knows all about you because she did amazing audio recordings of your story. Yeah. They know who you are. But don't say that. Don't do that to me. Tell me more. See. Awesome. You are. Yeah. I told you. What else would you, would you like to ask a question? Would you like to tell them something? What are we doing here? Where are we going? Here? Okay. And where? Okay. And now what? I agree. Is that your famous? Yeah. Well, there you go. What can you do? We are very lucky that you were able to find time to speak with your summary. Oh, you think that's funny? Yeah. Can you say it again? No. I don't know. He understood that. No. Thank you. Yeah. It was our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So that was a Amy and Beena's interview with a diva and every last week. They again, for those who didn't read the story, they had to wait a year and a half to get that device that we spoke with. Yeah. And so if you guys again, have any thoughts or feedback as you were listening to that or consuming it, feel free to text us the number of the five, two, zero, three, two, nine, seven, five, three, zero. If it inspired you to share your own stories, also feel free to share your stories with us. And also if you want to bring these stories back to your community, we also have a link to that. So next I'm going to be sharing my screen with you only for a couple more minutes. And then we'll have a live interview between Amy and B. J. And Drew who were featured in Amy's series. And so I'm going to share my screen with you again. We'll have an audio snippet of the story for those of you who haven't read it. And then we're going to switch over to Amy, B. J. And Drew for an interview. Drew. And then we're going to switch over to Amy, B. J. And Drew for an interview. Drew Bollander is 41 years old. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his mom. His mom's name is B. J. Drew likes weightlifting video games, the band Green Day. Drew has hydrocephalus and brain damage. Hydrocephalus means there is extra liquid in Drew's brain. Drew has seizures too. Drew's mom may have to stay up all night to help Drew. She worries about who will help Drew when she dies. Drew thinks about dying too. Drew was interviewed for this story. He was friendly and talkative. He had a big smile and light brown hair. Sometimes he started sentences he didn't finish. Drew said he wants to stay alive as long as possible. He wants to have a gold casket when he dies. Drew's mom said he really likes one song. Drew's mom said to listen to the lyrics. Not that song. So Amy and B. J. Drew, thank you so much for being here with us today. And it looks like you have someone else with you as well. This is Gladys. She's one of our wonderful caregivers. And she was here when the photographer came. I think you were there too when I spoke with Drew and B. J. We go way back. B. J., we were wondering if you would tell us a little bit about how you found out about this project we were working on and got involved. It was funny because I like to use social media. And it's a good thing considering we have the pandemic now because that's my social life. But I've known people online for many years. Never met them, never talked to them on the phone. And I decided to become active in Twitter. And actually I signed up to get post tweets from ProPublica, but I would get them every so often. But I missed the important one. And one of my friends from 12 years, she messaged me and says, B. J., B. J., there's something going on with ProPublica. And I think it's right up your alley. And so she sent me the link to the tweet from ProPublica. And so I sent in our information right away. Got an email right back. And then Amy and I and Drew started talking. So Drew, tell me a little bit about what it felt like to be interviewed and have a story written about you. Pretty kind of good. Was it, was it painful? Was it a painful process? Or was it okay? Yeah. Yeah. Good and kind of pain. Kind of painful to talk about things that are hard. Yeah. You want to tell us a little bit about why that song by Green Day is meaningful to you. Well, he likes another one also. Oh, do you have a new favorite? That was a few weeks ago. He also likes boulevard or broken dreams, right? Yeah. And the lyrics are similar. You got a thumbs up from Rosie over there. Yeah. Yeah. This is very carefully to the lyrics, right, Drew? Yeah. Can you, B.J., do you have any, do you have any updates for us since the story ran? It's kind of interesting. I don't think I am ever going to find out. I got to answer this first. It's okay. If you don't mind being interrupted. That's okay. What's up, Drew? When the, the, the pure to happen. The pandemic. Everybody. Everybody flipped out when I, when I, when I, when I said, we're also live, you're in games tonight. When they were playing that. Yeah. He's thinking about the time he went to a green day concert. I miss concerts. Don't you, Drew? Is that the last concert you saw? Yeah, I think so. The last concert I saw was Lizzo. I feel like that's probably a good last concert, right? Yeah. Are you familiar with Lizzo? No, not really. No, back to the conversation. Can we let your mom talk now? Yeah. Okay. I was surprised, but I was kind of nervous because of the timing when this would come out. Because starting in the middle of May. We had a big problem with DDD. And it was trying to keep our hours for the caregivers. And we had a fairly new inexperience support coordinator. And it was clear that he was being told do whatever it takes to cut our hours. So it was a very difficult situation and our annual. Meeting that DDD uses called an ISP individual service plan. It was supposed to be that meeting in May. And because they were trying very hard to cut our hours. Because it saves a lot of money. That meeting was in May. Phone calls. Oops. You still there? Yeah, we're here. Then there were phone calls in June and July. And in August we had the second part of the meeting. And there were phone calls in August and September. And so the end of September, we had the third part of the meeting. And the meeting had to be by video. So it one meeting took six and a half hours over four and a half months. And it was very touchy and very upsetting. And it involved a great deal of work on our part with documentation. And so I was very nervous when the article would come out. Because I, I was nervous. Would there be a retribution of some sort. On the bright side, right when the article actually came out. Because it went longer. And then it came to a head and I actually called a big manager. Program manager, a big one. And told her what was happening. And within one week we had a brand new support coordinator at a brand new supervisor. And gosh darn if it wasn't one meeting and we had all our hours. So. I should, can I interject for a second? I should say we did run, you know, your story by DDD. And it was, it was before that happened. I have no idea if that had anything to do with, with what happened, but I wanted everyone to know that we did ask them for a response. And they, they didn't respond on to any individual cases. Okay. It's possible. That the big high up person may have heard that this. Report was being worked on. But I think it was more a matter of I was able to get to the right person. And speak plainly. She helped. Yeah. So. Um, Bina and Meyer are taskmasters about the time. So I want, we're, we're almost out of time for our segment, but I, I wanted to, um, and with Drew, Drew, is there anything you want us to know about your life? Or about anything else? I'm trying. I'm trying. As. As hard as I can. As hard as I can. As hard as I can go. Hang in there. Yeah. Well, I hope you do. I hope you do. Thank you both so much. I have a question. She's going to go. Okay. I have a question. If you could come back to me before the end of the whole thing, I do have something I want to share with the other parents. Um, I have a question, but I don't know how many people are in charge. If I do. Thanks. You both. So you both so much, so much. Um, so now that you've met the people, our stories are about. We want to tell you a little bit more about how we did the stories. You've seen this beautiful artwork in our slide shows. And we're going to talk to Shoshana Gordon at ProPublica. Um, Mom to Popat who's a photographer for the Arizona, I got pronunciations and still butchered your names, I apologize. Rosie Eck, Karim Samuels, and Erica Clark, who are all artists and staff with Make Studio in Baltimore, Maryland. Thank you all so much for joining the conversation. Over to you, Shosh. Thanks so much, Amy. Like Amy said, my name is Shosh. I use she, her pronouns. I'm so happy to be here and part of this project. I'm a story production fellow at ProPublica and part of my job is I get to commission illustrators and photographers for stories, including Amy's series. And so I'm just going to ask folks one by one some some questions and excited to to spend this time hearing about about the art. So, Mumta, this first question is for you. The art in the story, the illustrations started with your beautiful, powerful photographs. Could you tell us some more about some of the decisions you made while photographing for this story and your goals for this story in particular? Sure. So this was going to be a mixture of documentary photography and portraits. So Ka and Kyra and Drew and BJ were going to be the documentary styles. And I wanted to think about the portraits in a way that I wanted them to all sort of match each other. And so I had to decide between wanting to do natural light or bringing studio lights. And since we're in these COVID times, if I brought in studio lighting, it would just take a lot more time to set up in people's homes and such. And I wasn't really sure how comfortable people wanted for me to be in their homes during this time. So I just decided to go with natural light. So if you notice all the photos, they're all window light. I actually prefer shooting with natural light anyway. But that was a choice for the portraits. And then for the documentary style, I knew that I would only have, I live in Tucson and the two subjects were up in Phoenix. So I really only had about maybe five or six hours with them over one day. So I really wanted to concentrate on getting as much, many images and show their personalities in that time period. Thanks so much, Monta. I'm going to move on to the illustrators, Erica and Karim. Just wanted to say your portraits for this series were also so wonderful and I'm so glad both of you can join us today. And Karim, I think we're meeting for the first time here. So just wanted to say, great to meet you and great to see you again, Erica. Erica and Karim, could you each talk to us about your process for creating the illustrations based off of Monta's wonderful photographs and what stood out to you when you saw the photographs? And feel free to say anything else you'd like about the illustration process too. So I guess Erica, could you answer first? Erica, I think you might be muted. I saw the photographs of Emery. I could tell pretty much from her expression that even with her several falsely, that she was a very vibrant young lady. I could tell that she had kind of an attitude toward her, like a little of a mouth diva, kind of a mouth diva who we saw here today, that she was high-spirited, a very clever young lady. And from what I was told that she has interest in music and art, envisioned to be DJ. And so I felt it would be a good idea to incorporate those within her illustration. I hope show off a bit of her personality. And when it comes to, you know, and her mother, I could tell that they had a very strong bond. The presence of the two of them, there was pretty mother-daughterly, familial, very comfortable with each other and very warm. It was certainly important to get the feeling of that correct. As well as emphasizing the, as well as emphasizing their hobby because it seems like to me that they tend to probably do kind of dress up things often together. A good way for them to be connected and likely have very interesting tastes as well. Thanks so much, Erica. And for folks who have already read the story, the last illustration Erica was talking about was of Carol and Jeanine with fans and kind of dressed up in a flapper style. So if you haven't read the story, look out for that watercolor that Erica made. Karim, I'd love to know more about your illustration process as well. You want to do this? Go ahead. Yeah, right. Connectivity issues. There we go. Karim, can you, can you hear me? Can I hear me? Yeah, I think we can hear you now. Yeah, in case you cough it on. Karim, could you, could you say more about your illustration process and how you made the portraits? We might be having some tech issues here. So we, if we have some more time, I'd love to circle back to Karim. Right, Karim. I think they, you know, they just wanted you to tell a little bit about what it was like when to work on the commissions, you know, like how, how perhaps we, we communicated. Yeah, I try, yeah, communicate. Well. The Zoom. It was an. I said, that's how I, that's how I take order, give me credit, contact for all the people who are mixed, you know, since the pandemic begins in 2019, since December last year. And now we're doing a home assessment beginning. Yes. And, and for the, for the portraits that you did. I communicated with you almost exclusively via Facebook Messenger. So, Karim got the photos sent from me and I would, I was, I used to ask him like if, if this was up his, his alley and he was basically receptive to any commission that I sent his way. Right, Karim. How many, do you remember how many total you did. It was, I don't actually know the number myself at the moment, but it was quite a few. And there were over a few weeks. And often on my way to the studio where I worked on my own, I dropped off materials, sometimes color printouts, if you needed them. And he turned the commissions around based on those visuals. Pretty fast Karim is. I did these images of people has our own disabilities. Yes, and you used, and you used mostly acrylics and, and Sharpie, correct. Yes. Thanks so much, Stefan and Karim. I'm also going to have to wrap up, but I just wanted to give Rosie a chance to talk about the process. Yeah, I think we have to kind of put up that and hand it over to Rosie now. Yeah, typical difficulty on my zoom. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. We understand. I think, I think, I think we're we can pass it on to Rosie now. Thank you all. I'm glad you could make it on. So, yeah, some of our process in making the zoom screen illustration, which is the first one that we did for this story. She first called me up. We know each other from college. And she knew that I had connection to make studio and working with artists with disabilities and things really fell into place. The next day, I was working on our virtual studio call and knew that there would be artists there who might be open to working collaboratively on that illustration, which we did. We all chose the different zoom squares that we wanted to work on and chatted and kind of compared work as we drew. And then I put it all together on Photoshop that evening. So that was like our entry point into working with this story. And from there we kept getting more images and artists were matched up to which pieces they would work on across several weeks. And something that I wanted to share about artists making art for journalism and stories is that it was really fun and a great opportunity for make studio to connect with ProPublica and talk about making journalism more accessible. And I also hope that through this platform to spread the message that artists with disabilities are ready to do commissions for any type of stories. Just as journalism needs to include artists, sorry, it needs to include people with disabilities in all their stories, artists with disabilities can also do art for all types of stories. Thanks so much to share that message. I'm, I'm so glad. Yeah, we're ending on that on that note because I think it's really important. And just thank you to everyone who who just shared. And now I'm going to kick it to the to the next segment. Oh, Shosh, thank you so much and Rosie just so you know that is something that we've talked about a lot while working on this project. And we've talked with Becca about it a lot too. So to be continued on that discussion. That was great we're going to share resources with you in a follow up email after the event if you want to learn more about make studio, or about mom to work and I know everyone's really excited to offer advice and tips if anyone's looking for that we just didn't have enough time. No, there's never enough time we didn't have enough time to do that so next we're going to be segueing to speak with Becca Montalion, along with two of my editors Jill Jordan Spitz of the Arizona Daily Star and T Christian Miller of Pro Publica. It's very fitting that the four of us are talking for this last part because we have spent a lot of time talking and working together throughout this project. So T over to you. I was already launched into such a genius speech. Okay. Hello everybody my name is T Miller. I was one of the editors on this project, along with Jill Jordan Spitz. And I want to just kind of briefly pick up on exactly what Rosie was saying, which is that a lot of what our drove this project was our interest in making this project more accessible to the folks about whom the story was and also making sure that there are people that there's plenty of participation by people from the community in our stories. And so I thought it might be helpful. Tonight I'll kind of be a moderator here to ask some questions of folks about what their roles were and in thinking about accessibility and where we can go as as journalists trying to communicate a message and trying to interact with our audiences so I'm going to ask Becca Montalion was as a professor at the University of Toledo and disability studies. She was our are the person who led our transformation led the charge into using plain language. So what we would do is we wrote the story in original English and then we would turn it over to Becca, who then render it into plain language to make it accept more accessible. So, Becca, this was your your first time working in journalism. We do believe this was the first time that investigative journalism was was done in plain language. So tell us about a little bit about what it was like having this line. Yeah, thank you. Hello everyone. I'm Becca Montalion. I use she her pronouns. I'm a white woman with dark brown hair. I'm sitting in front of a bookcase and a window if you can't see me as well as you'd like to. So, so plain language translations are something that I have been doing for a long time for five or six years right but it's always been for technical documents and things I use in my own research like consent forms or research summaries that are written in in an accessible way or you know fact sheets for disability organizations. So like T mentioned this was the first time I'd ever ventured into the world of journalism and we do think this is the first time any major media outlet has done this kind of translational work for accessibility. Amy and I originally connected over storytelling. I was working at detour company theater, who partnered with ProPublica over the summer for a storytelling event, and then we got to talking about thinking through you know how people with intellectual disabilities can be sources for this kind of work but also consumers of news as well. And I think I mean I think everyone agrees that when you're having a conversation. We should center the perspectives of the people who are most impacted but in in intellectual disability that's so rarely the case and so it's often because kind of these conversations are structured to be difficult to understand whether that's a certain kind of writing gets valued as being good writing and often that's very complicated writing or you know it's something like disability services. There's a lot of jargon, there's a lot of acronyms it's it's a complicated system right so these conversations are designed to be difficult to understand and plain language is about making sure that how something is written down doesn't exclude certain readers from being able to participate in the conversation so whether that's two things like simplified sentences or using familiar words, explaining jargon, you know using bullet points or active tense, all of these are kind of the tools that we use. And doing this sort of for for this kind of investigative reporting, brought to light a couple of new and I think really interesting challenges right so you know for example you can't change what people say right so someone gives you a quote you can't you can't quote them differently just because you're writing a plain language translation. So working with the team here on how to make sure that the journalism was held to the same standard that the original text was, while also being able to be consumed by a lot more different kinds of readers, with such kind of an interesting challenge and and of course this story, the plain language version went through the same review process as the original but it was editorially reviewed and it was, it was legally reviewed as well and I think he can speak to that, a little bit further. And so what's really interesting here is that, you know we have a lot of conversations we were worried about these journalistic standards but what we found here is that it is totally possible and so that should not be a barrier to making this kind of translation or this kind of writing, more available, more broadly. And just to echo what Becca said is the stories that we did in plain language were every bit as rigorous and nuanced and complicated as our original stories but they were just rendered in a way that made it as easier to consume for for its audience. One of the things that if you're thinking about doing work in in plain language is it is possible to sort of maintain kind of your journalistic standard where they may be at the same time is making your work more accessible. I'm going to have our time is short. I'm going to go over to Amy now Amy Silverman was the reporter on this project. Amy can you tell us a little bit about the kind of origin story why do you want to do this story and and what do you think of it. I wanted to do this project because I had known for a long time that Arizona has a phenomenal reputation for providing services for people with developmental disabilities and a lot of people do get good good services like a diva Emory's But I've also heard for a long time that there are a lot of people who struggle and to almost two years ago when a woman with a developmental disability who lives at an intermediate care facility in Phoenix gave birth to a baby boy surprising basically the world. The beehive kind of opened up and there's been a lot of discussion about services and institutions and certainly we understand now as a society the institutions can be problematic. But Arizona almost everybody with a developmental disability who's in the system here lives either at home or in a small community setting and so we wanted to see what life was like for them. So that that was really where we came came out from. And what were your interest in the accessibility side of things. My interest in the accessibility. Well, you know that's really been an evolutionary process for me personally. As the parent of a child with Down syndrome. I've had to kind of shift the way I think about writing about Sophie and our family and disability from from me writing about her to her having her own voice and expressing herself. And so that's why I really wanted to focus the reporting on the people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But as that process unrolled and as we worked on a storytelling event together this summer with Becca. We realized that it wasn't enough to to interview people with developmental disabilities and put them front and center that way we needed to make the journalism accessible to them. Once once we created it and and we're very lucky to have Becca in our extended family and and she has done plain language translations before so it was just a natural fit. And I can say to any journalist folks who are out there, a lot of Becca's translations were admired fired above anything I edited because they were or that I wrote. They're so direct and so easy to understand so that caused quite a stern journalism role and why people paid attention to the fact that you can do a story like this. So now let me turn to Jill, who is the editor of the star. Jill, it's not an easy time for news organizations in these days. Your organization, the star devoted quite amount of a bit of time and resources and effort. I don't know if you guys saw the story in the Sunday paper but it took up six full newspaper papers on the Sunday paper which is a tremendous amount of resources to dedicate to a single story. So Jill, tell us a little bit about why you know you thought it was important to do that. Well, as Amy said it started out as a topic that we both felt passionately about we both have kids with disabilities. We both see that sometimes the world doesn't see kids like ours. Sometimes somebody with a disability maybe slow to answer a question maybe hard to understand maybe gets too close to the person talking and sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. So you talk around the person and what is your son think about this, instead of asking the person it happens all the time. And the other thing that happens in journalism a lot is hero worship of parents aren't you just such a wonderful person to love this inherently unlovable children or child which is so unintentionally offensive, but really really hurtful. So I had wanted to sort of find a way to burst through that for a long time. And as we went down that road, as Amy said, the issue of making the journalism accessible to the people who are most affected by it became such an obvious need, that we really wanted to do. So that benefits people like our kids it benefits parents like us, but it benefits all journalists to understand these things to learn these things and so I wanted to involve all of our staff to help to get people involved and to help them see and learn what we're learning. We want that knowledge to be shared broadly and it's an important story and the end and a big important stories deserve big important space. So that part of it was the easiest decision of all really. Great. We are approaching our, our 5pm mark. I did want to return to BJ though who had wanted to bring up another point I believe. You're on mute right now could you unmute yourself. Hi. Hi. A couple things. I've been to have 10 years as a disability training coordinator for the state of Arizona. Part of my job was giving public presentations to DDD employees and support coordinators and supervisors about disabilities and about assistive technology like the AC devices. I just want you all to know. I'm thrilled with how the whole process went how the interviews were done. How a group of people worked on the project and all the efforts at accessibility and doing the YouTube to share and to do the video and phone calls and have the transcripts in the chat. Very, very unusual. I just want all the other families to realize that this effort is rarely made and coordinated so well. So I wanted to get that across. Number one. Number two, DDD families don't know each other. I would love to meet Diba and Emery and Karim and everybody, but we're not like communities like they call the deaf community or the blind community. In DDD, our problems are so unique and individual. We don't have the connections and there are no groups. There are no social ways for us to get together. And from the story that I read and that I get to see tonight, oh my gosh, I just wish so many of the DDD families that we had a way to share our stories with each other and talk to each other. So I wanted to encourage if anybody wants to reach out or if there's an email. I can give my email address and whatever, you know, we can have something really, really informal like, you know, by email or whatever. Or BJ people could follow you on Twitter, right? Yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm cobalt on Twitter cobalt123. Yeah, I talk a lot. Anyway, I also want everybody to know and this, the photographers and the writers and the accessibility team all that may not realize. We're old experience DDD family because Drew is 41. Most of the DDD families you think about their children are much younger. They're still in grade school, middle school, high school. They think of people being DDD when they're old, like Drew and I. But I can tell you right now, every family that participated. The reason if we have success, I absolutely guarantee is because their families do not give up. And families must learn to be really good advocates and being a really good advocate. It was a joy, I'm sure every family Amy and Mumta told you how grateful we are that someone cared and gave us a voice. It meant a lot to me. And even though my son was having a hard time today, because he's declining since we started our interviews. He is so proud of this and I'm sure Emery must be and every person who participated so I just really wanted to say thank you thank you. Thank you for your time and the availability for both you and Drew to kind of be a part of this story. We really appreciate the risks you took in talking with us and also glad to find out that it didn't turn out so seriously. But you know every step that you can make out there putting your voice out there as an advocate for you and for Drew is a great one. And if we were able to do help that in some way. Great. We've had some some questions come in so first I'll start with a question from joy about plain language back if we wanted to find out how to write in plain language or to use plain language. Are there resources out there available classes, internet sites anything you might be able to recommend. Yeah, thank you so I wrote some recommendations in the Q&A directly if people need you know the text for what I'm going to recommend here. It's not a super formalized field as of yet but there are some really great resources so one thing that I always direct people to you is a PDF guide called Am I Making Myself Clear that was published by Mencap which is a UK disability nonprofit. That's just a really nice introduction about what accessible writing means and it's really clear about it's not about censoring it's not about removing content. It gives you some like really clear guidance on how you might try it out yourself and some really good examples to. Another suggestion would be just to try to find some plain language translations and read them and become familiar with the form, especially if you're able to compare kind of original text versus plain language. So of course we have this series of stories here that you could could read and do that comparison work. My mind immediately was last summer a book came out called the Disability Visibility Reader it was published by Alice Wong and there's a plain language translation of that done by Sarah Luterman who is an autistic journalist herself. That might be a really good, another good kind of source to just kind of get a sense of what this actually means so those would be my my immediate suggestions. I'm going to actually work on a guide of some kind in the next year so stay tuned. So, so keep your eye out. We have a second question coming in from Hezzy. Hezzy would like to know what ProPublica and the Daily Star believe is the scope for making non disability related content available and accessible format. I mean, sports stories and police stories and government stories the kind of stuff that we kind of cover day in and day out. And then second, Hezzy would like to know journalists thoughts about not only using community engagement to make content accessible, but also employ and train diverse stakeholders, including personal disabilities, intellectual disabilities to co produce journalism. I'll turn that over to you first. You can toss it back to me. Yeah, I really think we are onto something wonderful with plain language in journalism. I think in general not just stories involving disability but stories about city council meetings and sports stories. A lot of them are filled with jargon. I think plain language in a language that makes sense to us as journalists and probably to nobody else. And they could be better and I think plain language shows us a different way. I think a really good example, T and I wrote a column in the that that ran with the story explaining why we did plain language why we did the story in general. And truly the plain language version was so much better than our pithy journalistic version. It's a night and day difference so I think we're onto something wonderful and I really, really, really want this to be the beginning of a discussion about how this sort of language can influence journalism in general. So on your second question has a journalists across the country and journalism organizations across the country have certainly become much more aware of the need to represent a diversity of voices in our newsrooms and in our news pages. We're always looking for opportunities to employ all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, and that of course would include folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I cannot right now point to any particular examples of that occurring, but there are organizations out there that are promoting sort of writing and tools of writing for, for people with intellectual disabilities. And hopefully those folks will want to write about news and we are would love to be able to kind of shepherd people with that sort of interest along into the world of journalism. Let's see if we have any other questions coming through. From Bruce Rose and just want to kind of point out that legal documents in New York City have to be written in plain language, and also jargon is just bad writing. I think that's a really great question because plain language is in some ways audience specific right so if it's, if the concern is using words that your audience will be familiar with, you know, is plain language just language which is, you know, a third grade level language for instance like what do you consider all think about that. That's a really great question because plain language is in some ways audience specific right so if it's, if the concern is using words that your audience will be familiar with you need to know who your audience is. There's not a, again, there isn't a ton of kind of official guidance on plain language as an accessibility tool, versus you know how it's defined in, for example, in, you know, governmental situations right, but there is some some kind of differences that seem to be emerging so some of them do have to do with, you know, what sort of grade level attribution can you give it which that's language that I try to avoid when I'm talking about plain language. Because I think that there's sometimes some confusion that when you say you're writing something at a third grade level that means that I can't include anything that would be inappropriate to tell a third grader right which is certainly not the sort of goal of plain language right it is, as I mentioned, never about kind of censoring. It's not about condescending down to people, but it is about recognizing that someone's reading ability shouldn't determine whether or not they have access to a conversation. Right, so I can't give like tons of great specifics right so there's some suggestion that plain language is somewhere around a fifth to sixth grade level in the accessibility conversation. And then there's a sort of another version of this called easy read which is somewhere closer to a second grade level. But again, those are not sort of attributions that I like to try to use, because they're certainly not always helpful either right so again it's it's about knowing who your audience is and what you want to communicate to them and doing it in a way that will actually reach them. Exactly. Bruce points out some of the best writing is for children. One is introducing concepts that does not make it childish, which is exactly right. We have we're joined by Cassie Camacho I believe, who was one of the folks we featured in our stories. And Cassie are you there. Oh hey there you are. Would you like to address what it was like being a part of the stories being interviewed by reporters and how you felt about the experience. It was fun about being in stories. Yeah, I like the story that Amy wrote about me. And a lot of people like it. The story that she wrote about me she made it inspiring. And did you like the all the other people in the story being able to go out with with developmental disabilities. Yes, and what is that story going to do is it just send a. What is the story going to do. If I could predict that I would be making a lot more money than I am right now. My, my hope is that this that the story will go out to the world and that people will read it today tomorrow and months from now, and that they will make them think about how do I reach more people in the articles that I write. Journalists think that their work matters, and that it's important, and that we're exposing something that is important for people to know. And part of that is we want as many people to know as possible. So, you know, you're being a part of the story helps us to make the case to other journalists to other folks with developmental disabilities that this is a combination of communication and reporting that can make a difference in the world. I like the story about me was very good. What did you think about Amy. Well, I loved getting to meet you even though it was on zoom and getting to talk to you about your life and I also wanted to add that, you know, there are a lot of people out there who think that if you have a developmental disability, you automatically get services and you know very well that No, it's not. Yeah, so I it was so valuable for you to literally put a face on the story so that people really understand what your life is like and what other people's lives are like so I'm just really grateful to you for that. And thank you and thank you for doing this. The story is it going to be. I think you told me that it wasn't to be online is it online yet. It's online and I have a copy to mail to you too. Oh, you do you mail it to my address or to email. Yeah, let's talk on email later and we'll figure it all out. Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, and for folks, for folks who do want to make a castle just so you know, the name of the service state of state of denial, like, and so if you look it up by state of denial and for public or the star. The online presentation, and I hope Amy does send you a copy of the newspaper itself because there was extraordinary job done by the layout folks and the people at the Daily Star to make it a very beautiful presentation. Oh sorry Cassie go ahead. All right, well, there we go. So it was it was a good story. I really like it and thank you again. You're welcome. Can you just tell us super quickly Cassie what are all those awards behind you. All of my words Oh, I skating cheerleading bowling track and swimming. Wow. For special Olympics right. Yeah special Olympics doesn't Sophie do special Olympics your daughter. She does in normal times. Can we turn it back over to to be now I'm going to have to go is okay because of course 630. You're, yeah, you're the busiest person in show business. Thank you so much for Cassie for joining us. Thank you again. Thank you. Nice meeting all you guys talk to you soon. You too. Well, I think I'm wrapping it up here. Thank you to Amy, Becca T and Jill, and everybody who participated in our event and helped us make this evening possible and thanks of course to all of you who attended. We also want to send out a special shout out and thank you to Norma coil and editor at the Arizona Daily Star Ariana Tobin for public as engagement editor and Rick Wiley the stars photo editor for also making this project possible. So if there are any last thoughts you'd like to drop into the chat or send to us via text. That number is 5203297530 and journalists are still standing by we are here anytime you want to talk to us. We would love to hear from you even after the event is over. If you would like a copy of this video or if you would like to screen it to a community that you know like a group home or a day program, just tell us in the chat or you can text call or email us. We are listening and you know how to reach us with any other feedback. We will also be sending out an email after this event with all of the links that we mentioned here and additional resources for learning more about make studio and doing your own storytelling. So thanks everybody. Good night and thanks for being here. Bye. Big is nice knowing you.