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Looking at Life from Both Sides

Hello, and welcome to Celebrate Creativity. I’m George Bartley. And I promise that starting in the next episode, I'm going to begin to teach you how to use voice control.

But today, I want to talk about accessibility, disability, voice control, and something even larger than all of those: what it means to look at life from more than one side.

There is a phrase that has stayed with me for years from a song by Joni Mitchell: I’ve looked at life from both sides now. I am not quoting the whole song, and I do not need to. That one phrase is enough, because it expresses something I have thought about for a very long time.

I have looked at disability from both sides now.

I have lived as someone who works with people that have motor difficulties. And I have also lived as someone that many people would never assume had a disability unless I told them.

I have looked at communication from both sides now.
As someone who helped others communicate.
And as someone who has known what it means to need a different kind of access to the world.

I have looked at institutions from both sides now.
From the hopeful side, where they want to help.
And from the realistic side, where good intentions often collide with lived reality.

And I think that matters.

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