Access: a love story (with Jasmine Oliver and Cheryl Green)
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Season 8 kicks off with a very special first episode—a love story, just in time for Valentine's Day.
On August 19th, 2023, Qudsiya married the love of her life, Sean Collins, in a small celebration in Chicago. Listeners may remember hearing from Sean in the season 1 bonus episode Accessing the News, where he shared his gift of crafting vivid image descriptions to bring important news events to life for blind, low vision, and disabled news readers.
Qudsiya and Sean enlisted photographer Jasmine Oliver (J Lauryn Photography) and access artist Cheryl Green (Social Audio Description Collective), also a past Down to the Struts guest, to create an immersive accessible platform so they could forever cherish their wedding day both visually and through audio.
In this episode, Qudsiya, Jasmine, and Cheryl take a behind the scenes look at how they created the accessible wedding album, how the experience transformed Jasmine's perspective on her craft as a photographer, and the new possibilities for access art that Cheryl uncovered in the process.
Access is not just about having what we need as disabled people to equitably participate in things like work and education. It's equally about being a part of the moments in our lives that bring us joy, bonding us all in shared humanity, disabled and non-disabled alike.
In this episode, you will hear music from Qudsiya and Sean's wedding by Adrian Morris of Quartetto Solo, the song “Made of Gold” by Ibeyi, and “The Way I Am” by Ingrid Michelson, performed by Qudsiya's niece, Zoha Hasan. Image descriptions were performed by Ramya Amuthan.
Transcript available here
About the guests:
Jasmine Oliver
Jasmine Oliver is the Lead Photographer of J Lauryn Photography. She is based in Chicago (but will travel anywhere), a lover of pretty things, and a storyteller dedicated to capturing genuine and authentic love stories. Some would say she is a hopeless romantic. So naturally, she gravitated towards wedding photography as her chosen profession.
Cheryl Green
Cheryl is an Access Artist, Co-op Member and former Digital Operations Lead at New Day Films, a member of the Social Audio Description Collective, and co-host of Blind-Centered Audio Description Chat. Her audio and written blog, transcribed podcast, Pigeonhole, and documentary films are at www.WhoAmIToStopIt.com. Cheryl brings her lived experience with multiple invisible disabilities and chronic illness to creating media that explores politically and culturally engaged stories from cross-disability communities with creative access at the heart of all of her work.
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