All right, welcome to the AdaptX podcast where we have conversations with individuals who are building accessible businesses
Advocating for inclusion or excelling in adaptive sports today
We are joined by Dustin Giannelli
Dustin is a profoundly deaf diversity and inclusion motivational speaker who has shared his story with corporations large universities and organizations
Around the country and we'll get into some of those as one of the 48 million deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans
Dustin is able to share his story and strategies to create a more accessible world. Dustin. Thank you for joining me today
Thank you for having me. It's so good to see you again. I'm glad the kids are doing well
Yeah, Dustin was the keynote speaker at our first Adaptexpo last year
We learned a bunch about organizing event. The audience loved Dustin's
Speech and presentation but so Dustin as a as a motivational speaker, you're clearly comfortable in your own skin
But was it always that way growing up?
Yeah, you know ever since I was young I had always been advocating for myself and others
I give a lot of credit especially nowadays to my late grandfather who was a double amputee and
you know he
Really normalized disability in my household
So when I was diagnosed with a hearing loss when I was five years old
I was already familiar with what it was like to need a hearing loss
I liked to need help and
accept differences, so
Yeah, you know I've been advocating for myself
For a long time and it's been mostly a positive experience
That's been one of the things that we've been trying to figure out how to navigate because it seems like
barriers to inclusion and accessibility are often an
education and an exposure issue
Like people just don't have experiences interacting with people with disabilities and so then
These stigmas are kind of reinforced. So I feel like through
commonalities whether it's sports or recreation and like you said normalizing disability that appears to be the best path forward towards
creating in a more accessible world do you have any any like
Strategies or suggestions as to not just fitness industries, but other businesses and organizations
What they can do to create a more inclusive environment and accessible environment
Absolutely, you know
historically
People almost shy away from the conversation
The conversation about learning about different types of disabilities and you see somebody
Whether they're in a wheelchair, they're blind with a cane or they're
You have an amputation or they're deaf with hearing aids or cochlear implant. They're almost scared
to
offend right and
It's okay, but we just need to educate ourselves and be
as educated as we can you know because
Some day down the road you may work
With someone with a disability you may be part of a team
With somebody with a disability and the earlier we can
Familiarize ourselves with those different types of disabilities the better will be you know at a young age for me
during recess
Basketball was the sport right and I grew up playing basketball my whole life with my older brother
and I did very very well and
at recess I
As the team captain picked the kids that didn't get picked first. I picked them first
because
It helped me push myself to be the best I can be and it gave me the sense of
inclusion
Because I always wanted to be included they wanted to be included, but they got picked last not on my team
They got picked first
Yeah, I made sure they got the ball
How do you suggest that people have those conversations? You said that one of the best ways to
Familiarize yourself with disability is for people to
To talk to you about it so but like you mentioned people are afraid of offending and saying the wrong thing so
Maybe even putting it in like a fitness
Environment standpoint if you were coming to me. I was your personal trainer
What would you want me to ask you about?
What needs you like what accommodations you need what you want to get out of it kind of how would you want that conversation to go?
Yeah, you know the key to
The key to life is communication
The key to success in life is communication the key to communication is access
So when you and I are building a relationship for the first time and I'm attending your gym
And I'm attending your gym, and we're creating a plan together
Resignate with one another right you notice my hearing aids, or maybe you don't at first most people don't
But they see that I'm very attentive and lip-reading so it's already okay
I see a lip reading is there anything I can do to make this even more comfortable
Or what if I'm over here, and you're over there. This is you asking me, and I feel I love that me personally
right
How can we make this a smooth process and innovate as we go there'll be situations?
I'm working out. I can't see the trainer hear them
There's no live captions, so how do we navigate that?
Scenario and that's all you know important to talk about
What we can do is as a almost workaround is
What preparation method is write everything down?
review that before and after the workout and
Really study the workouts before we attack
Yeah, that's a really simple solution
It's basically just universal design making sure the way you're sharing information is presented in a variety of ways
And I know from
Running hundreds of classes here writing down the workouts wouldn't just benefit you it
Benefits everyone who comes to the gym because they need reminders music's going maybe they can't hear
some people just
Retain information better when they read it as opposed to hear it so
That's I guess one way that accessibility really benefits everyone not just the one user that it might be intended for
Exactly what you said is is a prime example is closed captioning
Yeah, right when you're watching Netflix, so your favorite movie TV shows
80 plus percent of people that use closed captions are not deaf or hard of hearing and
Captions were created for the deaf and hard of hearing community
The same way that Siri on the iPhone was actually created as an adaptive solution for people who are blind
Now everybody uses Siri everybody uses captions everybody is starting to adapt and use things that were made
for the disability community and that's why it's so important for
All of us to be aware especially at a young age
you know get your kids acquainted to different groups and communities and
You know, that's the beautiful thing about life is
You can join different communities at any point in your life
And you're not trapped or stuck in that one community
You know you go to high school. There's all sorts of clubs and you name it go to college same thing
So I'm on the other thing about diversity and inclusion. We're thinking about community
Absolutely on the topic of captions. I sometimes see in social media now. It's been kind of like aesthetically
Ramped up where you have flashing different colors and are there
Just just for people that might not have any experience
Using captions as someone who's hard of hearing
Are those as accessible as just regular black and white captions
It depends on who you ask yeah, you know it's what it came down to is
more and more people are using captions and
Whether they're deaf or not they saw an opportunity for innovation
and
they saw and
people liked
The individual words highlighted right with color maybe with different font or
emojis instead of the word or
An emoji after the word that's innovation you know and as I mentioned before it
It depends on who you ask a lot of people that are deaf or hard of hearing
especially
Perhaps older folks they
prefer that standard
black background white text
three different fonts
to choose from but mainly times new Roman
So you know it's all about innovation and preference. Yeah, that's that's tough because I feel like
I was even reading a LinkedIn post last night where it was
Critiquing someone who said that they're fully accessible because you can't necessarily be accessible for everyone at all times
So that's I think that's one of the things that might prevent people
From making the effort to do so
Is that they know that it's hard to accommodate every person's every need
So what do you think are when you're speaking to a company or when you're speaking to an organization?
What actions do you hope they take after your presentation to kind of work towards that more accessible or inclusive?
environment
Great question, you know
When I do corporate engagements and workshops and trainings
It's a little bit of everything and what I mean by that is it's education around the hearing loss community
I show an audiogram
So that they understand the different levels of hearing loss
And show my audiogram which dips immediately to the profound
Um and show my audiogram which dips immediately to the profound levels
And so what does that mean?
What are the sounds I can't hear?
And how does that relate to?
things like mental health
right, so
There's so many different sub topics
That come out of my my conversation
that
bring awareness
to people with disabilities and abilities
to think
How can I
Be the best I can be
In work at home with my friends in social settings. How can I accommodate for others the best I can?
right, um
And and that's it, you know, I start my talks with
The key to success in life is communication
And the key to communication is access
Accessibility so when we think about that from a workplace standpoint, you could be working for a fortune 500
You're in marketing or you're in sales. You're in it. You're in
Hr. It doesn't matter what
what
Department you're in it's it's it's the common denominator is
communication
Absolutely. Yeah, maybe you mentioned education. So maybe we can just kind of
Talk about deaf and and some various
Subtypes and different terminology and stuff within the
Within that world because I think the audience may or may not be exposed to it. So maybe
A few rapid-fire questions. What's the difference between capital D deaf and lowercase D deaf?
Great question. So I identify as lowercase D deaf profoundly deaf and
You know because I'm a verbal communicator
I can hear
Not very well, but the hearing aids amplify sound
right, so
That helps me and capital D deaf is really all about deaf culture
their primary
language
primarily is sign language and
Whether they're verbal or nonverbal
Capital D deaf is a very tight community within the overall deaf and hard of hearing community
so
Then there's hard of hearing
Who whether you have a mild or moderate
less significant hearing loss
There's all different, you know spectrums of loss, but you you can kind of sense that i'm in the middle
right of the hearing world and the capital D deaf world, so
My goal is to bridge it all together
A lot of people with perhaps my degree of loss
We're all part of this community together. We have different stories and differences and different ways of communicating
But the deaf and hard of hearing community of 48 million people
The deaf and hard of hearing community of 48 million strong in the u.s. Alone
Is only growing in the world. It's 432 million people
And it's going up to 700 million people by 2050
So we're not going anywhere and we need to keep advocating for each other
But was sign language ever on your radar? Is there a reason why you chose lip reading and verbalizing as opposed to asl?
I was the only one in my family that that is deaf
And so growing up in a verbal family as a verbal communicator
I
went to mainstream school and
You know did what I had to do to succeed. And by the way, it wasn't until the school nurses hearing exam that they identified
That I was deaf
One year I passed no problem the second year the school nurse put a board up in between the nurse and the student
And I remember standing in line watching the student not be able to see the nurse's lips
And i'm saying to myself this isn't going to work
Right, so that's how we identified it
But yeah, you know I I did end up going to summer camps schools for the deaf
And you know associated myself with capital d culture and and others
my
My biggest passion growing up with that was basketball and especially during the summer
I wanted to play all day every day and I finally told my mother I said mom
you know I I
Don't think this is the community I
Resonate with the most I would like to also play basketball. I said
Okay
That's fine. But I want you to just know
They're always there for you and they're an amazing community
Maybe speaking about basketball were there advantages to your hearing loss
When you were playing basketball and maybe what were the disadvantages as well?
So well
A lot of times I would get you know be boxing out a shot or
You know going for a rebound and my hearing aid be knocked out
So I would be then boxing out my own teammates at times say don't step on it my hearing aid, you know
But advantages was lip reading
Being able to look over at my coach
Sometimes in town basketball, right?
My brother was my coach for a couple years and he knew all the the ins and outs and i'd be able to glance over
And he'd lip read something to me and boom someone who was wide open if I did this and I passed and they hit the shot
Plays even in football
Flag football I should add
See at a young age the doctor told my mom, um, no contact sports such as football or hockey
because it could damage my cochlear even more and
I would lose more hearing
And so I didn't play football or hockey in high school
But in college, I played flag football and one of my best friends bailey clement was our
player uh quarterback and coach and uh, he would lip read
Numbers to me and we he taught us the tree one through nine every number has a different route
And the other team had no idea what we were doing and I would be open
90 of the time kind of on that topic. I was reading a interesting article a couple weeks ago about uh, gallaudet university
partnership with at&t and they have a um, basically the play gets
Projected onto the quarterbacks helmet on like a visual field
But it was interesting to also read about the history of the huddle actually came from a deaf quarterback at gallaudet and
He quote unquote invented the huddle so he could share his plays
With his teammates and he was able to do that
I guess another interesting example of how innovation often comes from
The need for accommodation and inclusion
Absolutely, it's an amazing fun fact, you know, I I
I love that fun fact about sports and how the huddle was created with the deaf community
Yeah, you also coach right? So you've been coaching youth basketball
Over the years as well? Yes. Yeah, how how would you say that your hearing loss?
Has made you a better coach
Well, it's
This was such a great group of kids. It was sixth grade a you boys basketball
I didn't know them. They didn't know me. They didn't know each other
And that's the beauty of a you and sports in general, but I brought everybody together in our first practice
I said, all right guys, what's the key to the game of basketball? What's the most important part of basketball?
Defense. Yeah, but keep going. That's not the one i'm looking for
Dribble is the key to the game of basketball
Defense. Yeah, but keep going. That's not the one i'm looking for. Um dribbling ball handling. Yeah, keep going
Communication. What was that?
Communication louder everybody communicate right?
And it really brought awareness to all of us to celebrate
That's the key
We just unlocked the key
The key to winning games no matter what the scoreboard says
Because we won one game
And it was awesome
And you know, it just brought us all together a tight group never gave up from start to finish
We even had
Five players one game. We were short-handed and one got fouled out. We played the last five minutes
in a tie up and down game
With four players and we lost by one in overtime
I mean it was unbelievable. So, you know, it's just it's a
important lesson for all of us
to celebrate
Yeah, sports definitely have a power to normalize differences for sure
That's obviously a huge part of what you can gain from participating in sports
What led you to
Pursue a career in speaking as opposed to maybe working within an accessibility department at a company
I've always admired
different professional speakers
You know throughout my career
in school
When you see the passion unleashed
By a speaker on a stage and they own it
No matter what their differences
No matter what their challenges are
When you own it
I mean
It's contagious. It's admirable
And i've always advocated for myself
Since I was five years old right which allowed me to advocate for others and that's ultimately what the goal here is and
When the pandemic hit I was actually in a completely different industry. I was in the commercial architecture and interior design world
I was working for idea paint which was a really cool dry race whiteboard paint company and
Turned your big conference room wall into a giant canvas or your kids playroom into a giant canvas
What that meant to me was
See in a conference room. It's very difficult for me to hear everybody and read lips and
Cross the room on the right side and the left side and then they crisscross and people in boston everywhere talk fast
It's fatiguing, you know, um, but at least I can read what's on the wall
So it was a fun meaningful sell and when I presented that to architects
And designers who specify the product it was just fun
fast forward, you know the pandemic hit and
I needed help
I needed help the world went virtual overnight
and
my
Deaf and hard of hearing community needed help. So I jumped I learned everything there was to learn about closed captioning
I joined a live
captioning closed caption video accessibility
technology company here in boston and
That was just a great segue for me to start here's dustin.com
and
My own personal brand, you know, I studied marketing and sales and management entrepreneurship at university of new hampshire business school
I never learned about
personal branding I
Was always marketing and branding for another organization until I realized I can do this
I can do this for me to impact the greater good
Yeah, there's something powerful about
Promoting and advocating for yourself and seeing what you can build personally as opposed to build for someone else
but I find that's
it's tough sometimes to uh,
to market yourself it feels
do you ever feel like it's kind of like
self-consuming or
Do you ever do you ever have a hard time I guess sharing your accomplishments and kind of promoting yourself
You know it's at the beginning yes a little bit, but I never looked at it as
Promoting myself
the same way that i'm not
fighting for
x y and z rights i'm not fighting for rights I am
advocating
So i'm not promoting myself
I'm not promoting myself
I'm advocating myself
Right and so that's a very big realization. I think
For me for others other speakers other
Influencers if you will, you know, it's it's not about just me
My story is a vessel to the overall message
And it's not about just the deaf community
It's about the disability community and the ability community the word ability is in disability for a reason
right and
as soon as we
all
you know
You build your own communities, especially over linkedin
And you know, i've created such an amazing
group of
group of professionals
accessibility experts diversity inclusion champions
it who event planners
and
We're helping each other again. It's not just about me, you know
So I put out as much information as I can events that i'm going to
put together a cool little video with music and closed captions and
Just make sure that we learn something from everything
I think what is your process of preparing for a presentation because as of you'll be now episode 30 and
It's definitely become
somewhat of a skill I guess to host these podcasts and something I need to refine and improve and I find myself reading
Biographies to try to learn how authors portray their guests or their subjects of their stories
Uh, so i'm always interested to learn from other speakers in terms of kind of how they lock in how they prepare for presentations
So if a company reaches out to you
What is that back and forth and what is that process kind of like?
Well, you know, there's so many podcasts out there i've got another one next week two and
The ultimate goal is yes to have a great conversation and bring awareness to their audience
But also what else can we do together?
Right. What is going to really build our relationship and help bring more accessibility to your
every day
And so that initial conversation is really to identify
other
engagements or you know social media opportunities or
What events do you go into what conferences you're attending this year? Can I be part of it? Right and it's
right and it's
continuously building a relationship and that's one of my other keynotes is
Uh relationship building and the art of selling yourself
Because again, you might be in marketing or hr it event planning, but everybody is in sales
You're selling yourself
and your abilities
and so
You know, it's just very important to build a relationship more than just have a conversation on a podcast and that's why
You and I have stayed in touch since
Last may last year. Yeah about a year ready. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah
No, I I think you're definitely right and that everything
Uh kind of revolves around sales. It almost makes you think that
It should be a mandatory part of of really any industry or any curriculum or education
Everything becomes kind of sales and marketing. It doesn't matter
How good the adapt X courses or how good the podcast is if it never reaches a big enough audience?
So it always kind of revolves around growing an audience
Growing a brand sharing a message
but i'm also interested in like how a speech goes from
motivational to actionable like
What you want the companies to then do after your speech is done?
It's a great question, you know, there's when you understand
The why
first
For example in the in the speaking engagement itself
You learn in 30 minutes 45 minutes
all about the why
Why and then it's the what and the who what where right when how?
When we start to come together as a team and you go back
and you
Back to that project you were just working on and then you hear someone like my speech. It's like, okay
We didn't really
Think about this design
with disabilities in mind at all and
Then the conversation the product the evolution of creating it evolves
so
you know, we also keep in touch by doing different workshops later on to make sure that
disability inclusion and accessibility is top in mind and we do different updates
companies are always changing especially nowadays layoffs and
you know
unforeseeable
things within the organization, but
It's important to
Continue to talk about these things and and share one another's progress
So that's the actionable item that we're looking for is to share that progress
Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I like the mention of
reconsidering the design process
From a disability standpoint as well making sure that accommodations and accessibility needs are
Prioritized from the beginning can't always be like retroactively resolved
Sometimes it has to be often times it has to be considered from the get-go
One of the biggest barriers that you face due to your deafness either
Professionally or personally whatever you're comfortable sharing just so maybe people can take away and kind of better understand
I guess what that life is like
So, you know, I think the biggest challenges early on too in being a solopreneur
Is
Overlays to mental health
right and focus and
the grind
it's
Certainly not easy
But your passion does a lot of the work for you. You just got to keep following the passion
and the work will come
and
What comes along with that is
failure
Quote failure, right and the word no
Someone needs to know
Someone recently told me an old mentor of mine the word no actually stands for right and oh next opportunity
And that's how we succeed
Is we take no and we turn it into a yes
And this dates back all the way to my grandfather's mentality. He didn't take no for an answer
You know and
He always advocated for himself himself and had what he would say a positive mental attitude pma
Right and you know, that's just such important life lessons, but being okay to fail is
Extremely important in this journey
You learn so much about yourself
How you pitch your services how you engage in a partnership
pricing
different social media type of opportunities
and
The more you can feel included from the beginning
Literally that sense of inclusion the sense of belonging the more you can feel that from the start
The better the relationship would be
You might not have any strong opinions one way or the other but
It's just kind of a topic that came to mind as you were speaking
with disability simulations, um, or just with the term of
helping people better understand disability by
Simulating a specific impairment. Do you have any strong feelings?
towards that like do you think that's a beneficial activity if maybe
Employees were put in your shoes quote-unquote and they were unable to hear each other and they had to go through a workshop
Of how they would communicate do you i've also read a book called
on the other side of the spectrum where people with disabilities are
kind of offended by that type of thing because they make it seem like it's transient and then
They take the headphones off and they're able to go back to their life and it makes it seem like disability is just kind of
Something to be played with do you have any strong feelings one way or the other?
It's
That's an interesting question
You know and in fact the museum of science boston is doing a very cool
They're creating a new exhibit that's all about the science of hearing
what you might hear versus what i might hear and
That's fascinating to me
To others it might be quote offensive but it's important because
That is reality people don't know what it's like to live as a profoundly deaf individual or
A blind individual or someone with autism or dyslexia. We don't know what we don't know and the more that we can
learn
Because life is a journey you need to continue to learn about as much as you can in life
and
I'm all for it personally
You know and I think that you can sense that yeah in that same vein. I think it's interesting to maybe have
People try out wheelchair basketball try out different different sports because it's that's essentially it's not really a simulation
But you're you're trying out different things you're
Gathering different experiences you're understanding different perspectives
So yeah, it's just something where it seems like
Seems like when you have people that are polarized one side or like one way or the other it almost
discourages you from even trying because you don't want to be
critiqued
By either end if that makes sense
So then it sometimes prevents people from even becoming invested in the topic. So
Yeah, I think if kind of finding a common ground
But so that's where it's good to hear from you saying like oh no, I think that's a good thing
That's a great approach to education. And I will add
You know when you see somebody with a visible disability
Your strangers, but you feel like I want to help that person. There's ways to go about that and approach it
appropriately from both sides
Say someone's walking with a
White cane in the streets and you're a visible person you want to help them across the street safely
Your intentions are great
How do you do that?
Well, you never want to grab their arm. You never want to invade their space and assume that they need help
People with disabilities can also live very independently
successfully
And unless they're showing that they need help
You don't have to offer it
Again, your intentions are there but
This is an independent life as well. And so uh, you don't want to uh approach it in the wrong way
But you know, it's important to
Be aware of all of it all of it
The more you know, the more you know
Let's see what else I feel like we touched on most of the topics. I like maybe like does the
Regarding etiquette and communication does does the term disabled?
Does that have a negative connotation to you?
Or are you comfortable being referred to as a disabled individual?
Yeah, you know personally i'm i'm okay with it
I'm okay with it
I'm part of the disability community. Um, but again the word ability is in disability
So I talk about my ability before anything else and you know a lot of times especially at a loud convention or a networking event
restaurants
People don't realize i'm
Deaf and they don't see my hearing aids because they're beige and they kind of blend in and they're not
They're not deaf and they don't see my hearing aids because they're
and they don't see my hearing aids because they're beige and they kind of blend in and
Uh, you see my charismatic personality and you just don't realize he must be deaf
and so
You know, it's uh
it's just
In those settings, especially that's where I my motto comes in called be on offense
Uh is is what do I need to do to succeed?
in those loud environments
and how can I
turn the negative of
Too much loud noise not being a bit of lip read perfectly into a positive
I'm on offense. I drive the conversation first. I'm almost able to sense what they might say next
I'm getting used to their voice and the way their lips move at the same time because i'm letting them talk first
First that's helping me be on offense to understand them down the line and build a relationship
Little things like that, you know, it's tricks that i've learned over the years
um
and be on offense came from
When I was 11 years old
I know I told you this story, but in short for the audience. I went to Michael Jordan's basketball camp
When I was 11, my brother was 14
And we got to meet him every day and one day he gave an audit auditorium speech
And I was about 50 60 feet away from the stage as soon as he came out. I very quickly realized
I couldn't hear anything he was saying
In those days, there were no live captions. There was not a screen projected on his face so I could lip read
And it was up to me in that moment to ask the counselor in the i.o
Well, hi, i'm deaf. I lip read may I sit up front?
but instead because I was embarrassed sitting next to my new teammate from all over the world and
Didn't want that
to be a barrier
I pretended to laugh
And pretended to smile for a full hour and missed everything my idol was saying
So I created a pun to basketball be on offense get the help you need
Because others aren't always going to get it for you
Yeah, and it's not just like others don't want to get it for you
It's that others might not understand how to get it for you unless you do advocate for yourself
They don't know what they don't know either and that's okay, right and so
That's why it's so important. It's a two-way street
What are the coolest opportunities that have come about over the last couple years for you since you kind of transitioned into this new career?
transitioned into this new career
Well being able to speak in front of you know hundreds of people uh at a time both in person and virtual it's it's
it's
The feeling of inclusion
You know you you feel
Empowered and and you know, you're doing important work. And so that itself is probably the coolest
um
Accomplishment, I guess I could say but you know speaking to companies like converse headquarters
hubspot
uh the td garden and and staples corporate and university of michigan and university of new hampshire and
Princeton and you know all these amazing amazing prestigious organizations
I learned so much from them
Right and again, it's not all about me and my story and the deaf community and the disability community. It's about all of us
and so part of what here's dustin is all about is
Learning and spotlighting other companies and organization dei and accessibility initiatives
Yeah, absolutely. I thought you were gonna maybe mention. Yeah, I thought you maybe mentioned your model and career as well
Yes
Uh, thank you for bringing that up
I did participate in runway of dreams in new york fashion week in september
this uh organization runway of dreams is amazing they
Showcase adaptive clothing so all the brands that participate you have tommy hill figure gap
You know adidas victoria secret coles target
You know
They showcase adaptive
equipment and and clothing and all the different models
Have a variety of disabilities and abilities, so
It's really an amazing way to bring together differences and celebrate one another that was in september and just an amazing opportunity
um, maybe to wrap up most of these episodes we talk or I just ask a
question that's uh
That's common across kind of like all the different guests and their different experiences
But um, what do you think needs to be done or what could be done to make fitness more accessible?
I would say you know, uh live captioning and clean audio
Especially in the different types of
Studios that are dark red lit
Very uh, you know people are moving around everywhere music is
craziness
um
I'm lost in those environments and I think even people that are hearing are lost
You know, they're just kind of looking at each other and following along the best you can
But yeah, you might be getting a good workout in but there's a way to get a better workout in
And it comes down to feeling more included
And if you have live captions and better audio and
Visuals, you know f45 does a good job with visuals. They put up a screen that has a quad
Of four different workouts
And you're able to kind of see it first and then you know, which
Workout you're doing based on which quad you're in
You know, it's all about
thinking about the senses
And what if as a gym owner you lack one or two of those senses?
How would you need access?
Yeah, I remember seeing f45s and and immediately thinking like oh this this might not have been intended to be
inaccessible
Accessibility thing but it's a super
impressive uh and effective way
To uh to display the information. So I do remember seeing that
And being really impressed with it. It's definitely a probably an easy thing that really any gym that does group classes
could use
Just some sort of display screen that shows
What clients are doing so they have those things to refer back to we've started using some mobile apps
for some of our adaptive athletes that have videos and pictures and they just scroll down on the ipad at the gym and
They check off their boxes as they finish their exercises and it's just a just an easy way for them to
stay on task and uh kind of refer back to information that they need if if it's not being presented auditorily by a coach, so
Well, dustin, I think um
I'm glad I was able to have you on again
I always appreciate talking to you feel like some of our conversations when we just meet on zoom like
We we talk about these topics and i've always thought like I should probably be sharing these conversations because I think they're super worthwhile
So that's kind of where the podcast came about. I was like i'm meeting with all these incredible people
I'm having all these conversations. I wish I could share and now the podcast gives me the opportunity to do so
So really appreciate the work you're doing really appreciate your friendship and your support
We'll make sure we include here's dustin here's as an hears
Dot com and the show notes will share any material where people can find you
Uh social media handles, etc. But dustin. Thanks again
Thank you for having me and I look forward to all of your continued success
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