Welcome to the show, “All Access with John Samuel”

By John Samuel

Promotional video of John Samuel talking about his new web series. Click on the CC icon to access closed captions.

We recently launched a web show called All Access with John Samuel, which aligned with Global Accessibility Awareness Day. We were honored to have one of the Co-Founders of the day, Jennison Asuncion, who also serves as Head of Accessibility Engineering Evangelism at LinkedIn, as our first guest! The show is meant to share the stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and advocates, who are improving the lives of people of all abilities.

The reason I wanted to do this show is to highlight amazing people who are working toward eliminating accessibility barriers, creating pathways to careers, and changing the mindsets and stigmas around disabilities. This is exactly what we are trying to do at LCI Tech, but I feel that it’s important to hear and learn from others who are working toward these mutual goals, and I think it is impactful to a wide audience to understand where these leader’s passion and drive comes from.

We’re also deliberate about making sure that we’re doing this show on video, rather than only audio because I think it’s important that the world sees what the faces of the disability community look like. We live in a visual world, and it’s crucial that we are seen too – even if many of us can’t see it ourselves!

I recently shared a blog about why I joined Instagram, and my decision was largely based on the numbers and my hope to share my story with folks under the age of 29. Likewise, I think it’s important to look at the data behind YouTube to understand why it’s important for us to leverage this platform to raise awareness:

Roughly 2 billion active users on the platform
300 hours of content is uploaded every minute
Nearly 5 billion videos are watched every day
On average, each month, 8 out of 10 people between the ages of 18 -49 watch a video on the platform

Stats provided by: https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/

With so many people consuming content through video and on YouTube, we need to make sure that our voices can be heard on this valuable and global platform. Now that I’ve explained the “Why,” I think it is important to understand the “Who” we’re doing this show for.

I have multiple target markets that I’m trying to reach out to, including young people with disabilities between the ages of 14 – 25, and their parents, as well as the non-disabled community who are working in the knowledge economy. My hope is that young people with disabilities will see that they’re not alone, and that there are leaders in the workforce who resemble them and that their dreams are attainable. As for people in the workforce, I want All Access with John Samuel to expose them to what people with disabilities can and are doing, and how we need to be more inclusive of all people.

What I hope that people get out of this show is a new understanding and appreciation of the people who are blazing the way forward in leadership and entrepreneurship while keeping the disability community in mind. I want to show students with disabilities that they can pursue higher education, or enter the workforce because there are people out there making sure their experiences will be accessible. I want to show companies and hiring managers why they shouldn’t focus on the “how” a person with a disability will complete a task but see the talent they may be missing out on when they do that.

I’m excited to launch All Access with John Samuel and share the stories of the many amazing people whom I’ve had the opportunity to meet in my journey toward raising the awareness of disability inclusion, and I’m looking forward to meeting many other leaders that I may not have had the opportunity to do so without this platform! Please watch the show, leave your comments, and share it with others – we need everyone’s support to make sure that our voices and stories don’t get lost on this larger than life stage!

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