Alisa Grisham is a disability rights activist in Pittsburgh, PA. She runs Access Mob Pittsburgh, and organization that helps businesses make accessible improvements to their practice. She is also on the Complete Streets advisory committee, and refers to herself as a “Shameless Agitator”
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Alt Text: Alisa Grishman, a woman sitting in wheelchair and smiling
<aside> 💡 Accessibility, whether it be physical or digital, is important for UX designers to think about because it ensures that ALL products and services be used effectively by people with disabilities, encouraging a more user-friendly experience for all. Ignoring accessibility can exclude a significant portion of the user base and lead to unintentional exclusion.
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My name is Alisa Grishman (she/her), and I am a disability rights advocate in Pittsburgh, PA. I do everything from the loud, angry protests where I’ve been arrested 7 times trying to make legal change to running the Access Mob Pittsburgh organization which uses educational and economic incentives to help businesses make accessible improvements. The city government also just reconvened the Complete Streets advisory committee, so I’m on that as well. I’m as annoying as I can be in the best way. I refer to myself as somewhat of a Shameless Agitator.
I have multiple sclerosis, a condition that makes it so my brain cannot communicate with my body. I was diagnosed when I was 19 and for a while I was ambulatory, but then my mobility started to decrease. First I needed a cane, then I needed a rolling walker, and you don’t realize how bad the sidewalks are until you’re using that. I felt like I was screaming into the darkness trying to get someone to listen to me about how we need to make the sidewalks better. In fact, sidewalks are one of the huge center points of my advocacy work here in the city. At the time, I had been bounced around from city person to city person, and finally I was told to talk to the city’s ADA coordinator, someone who works to make sure that The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is followed in the city. Our coordinator at the time was a beautiful soul named Richard Meritzer. I got bounced to him, and at this point I was giving up and was so depressed and was really at my end.
To my surprise, instead of getting the usual responses, he extended an offer to grab coffee together. So we sat and got coffee. He opened this world to me that I didn’t know existed of Disability Advocacy and the work that others were doing, and he introduced me to all the people I should know. He was my mentor for so many years, and he got me into this. That was my beautiful “AHA!” moment when I finally discovered that disability advocacy was a thing.
Richard, my dear friend, was actually the reason for everything. We really lost a lot when he died. There’s a lot of people who have been touched by him that we are still trying to push forward in his memory. He keeps me going. Richard was the best of all the people I’ve met.
We had this Cross-Disability Group that went to a restaurant called “Social” in Bakery Square every other month for Happy Hour. We were a group made up of people who were wheelchair users, blind, hard of hearing, and more! The restaurant was so great about having us. Then one day, they showed up with braille menus that they had printed with no one asking them to. It’s both good for us because our people get to be independent in ordering and it's also good for the restaurant because they don’t have to have a staff person read out an entire menu to the patron as opposed to doing their other duties as a server. This turned into a wonderful thing. This restaurant got so much extra business because we told The Golden Triangle Council Of The Blind about this and it snowballed into so many more people going. That’s where the idea of my organization came from.
For me, my biggest challenge has been font size on handheld devices. Since multiple sclerosis causes muscle fatigue and your eyes are muscles, I can only read for short lengths of time. Being able to have large font sizes helps me read for longer periods of time. For me personally, font sizes are my biggest barrier. I know a lot of people that have even more barriers than that in terms of being deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or tactile issues. At this point, I’m not there yet, but the font size is a huge problem for me. I also don’t play video games at all anymore because my hands don’t work, but I used to play a lot. I can't play anymore because there aren't enough standardized tools for me to find better ways to play video games. It would be great to find a bigger range of customization for people, like me, dealing with that.
When you make something accessible, everyone can use it. There’s no reason to not make something accessible. It’s not like making something accessible will make somebody else not be able to use it, just more people can use it. It’s a win-win-win-win situation when you support everybody.
Alt Text: Sip and Puff usability for games