Creating Inclusive and Accessible Content with Zoe Simmons

Rachel Smith: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives. 

Lynne Testoni: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

Hello again, Rachel. So good to see you again as always. 

Rachel: Thank you. You too! 

Lynne: We’re talking about creating inclusive and accessible content today, and I think it’s so important and such a valuable topic. 

Rachel: Absolutely. And our guest today is someone who’s crossed both of our radar’s multiple times and she brings a lot of lived experience and a storytelling perspective to creating inclusive content. She also dabbles in advocacy, and I think it’s something we can all learn from. 

Lynne: I agree. It’s such an interesting topic maybe doesn’t get the coverage it should and one we are going to explore today with our guest, Zoe. Are you happy for me to introduce Zoe? 

Rachel: Yes, go for it.  

Lynne: Zoe is an award-winning journalist, editor, copywriter, author, keynote speaker, and disability advocate. Wow, Zoe! 

Rachel: That is a lot! 

Lynne: Her work has been published by the ABC, news.com.au, Popsugar, Daily Mail, Mamamia, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Refinery 29, New York Post, New Idea and that’s life. She talks candidly about her experiences with disability, mental illness, autism, and chronic pain to smash stigma, create change, and help others know they’re not alone. Zoe also works as a lived experience advisor for disability, health and research organisations providing trauma informed, neuro affirming perspectives to clinicians, senior leadership and government.

She’s also a published author and poet, and she had a book about her experience as a disabled journalist in the black summer bushfires. She regularly advocates media, including online, radio and tv, and most recently in the former co-hosting the TV show All In. She’s also a lead anchor in the upcoming season of CTV News.

Welcome Zoe!

Zoe Simmons: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It’s so great to be on this podcast with both of you that I’ve been eyeing off for a very long time, I’ll be honest. 

Lynne: Oh, that’s so nice. Thank you. 

Rachel: We like hearing that. Well, that was a very impressive bio, and you’ve had a very interesting career. Talk us through how you started writing.

Zoe: I have always loved writing ever since I was a kid, honestly. I remember being in kindergarten and penning these wild stories and getting so much praise from my teachers. So, I was like, whoa, I’m going to keep doing this, I guess. 

Lynne: I think we’ve all got that story. All writers. 

Rachel: I was first published in the school magazine at the age of five.

Lynne: Amazing. We all love it. 

Rachel: My claim to fame. 

Zoe: Five is pretty good to be published. For me, it was when I was in year ten and I did school work experience with my local newspaper because at that time I was like, yes, I’m going to be an author, that’s my career not realising that the job prospects for that maybe not as great. Yes, you can be an author, but maybe also do something else. I’ve just always loved it and then I fell in love with journalism and the power of storytelling and then how you can use that in copywriting and how you combine lived experience, and you really can make a difference to people, whether it’s working with an organisation that’s doing good things, whether it’s helping someone doing a good thing, say the right words, or whether it’s making sure that lived experience and accessibility is fused into writing, which is often not. So, I like to provide that dual expertise. 

Rachel: Amazing. 

Lynne: You’ve had some health issues. Do you want to talk us through that and particularly how they’ve changed the way you work and what you do? 

Zoe: I’ve always been disabled because I am autistic, although I didn’t find that out until I was 27. But in my early twenties I started to develop pretty bad chronic pain and chronic illness. It really turned my life upside down. I became physically disabled; I started developing a couple different conditions. I have fibromyalgia, I likely have endometriosis or adenomyosis, but I can’t get a diagnosis. It really does completely turn your world upside down because suddenly you can’t do the things you used to do in the same way. You need accessibility, you need to do it differently, or you will destroy yourself. It’s so hard to go from that and to go from someone that was, I was a top achiever in my class. I feel like I had a future and then suddenly I didn’t and that’s not because of my disability, that’s because of the way society views disability and doesn’t create opportunities and doesn’t think about disabilities. So now that is my main goal. It is to try and make a difference for the disabled community, but for the non-disabled community too because it really does benefit everybody, and I think it’s just a simple lack of education. 

My goal is still to create change with storytelling in words, but I have to do it a lot differently now and unfortunately, you see in this space that it’s often not considered, or if it is, it’s pretty tokenistic. You get a lot of people that want to help, like, oh, that sounds great and then they won’t actually ever do the things to make it accessible, which is super disappointing. 

Rachel: I would love to know, what you were writing about when your career started and how it changed, and you decided I’m going to go in this direction and niche more in that direction. What was that process like? 

Zoe: Well, I was always really into social justice and making a difference. So, when I was young, that was usually, mental health and anxiety and having bipolar as a complex mental illness, I didn’t realise how stigmatised that was, so I was quite open about it. And then people tell me, wow, you’re so brave and I’m like, oh my gosh, no, I’m just existing. But I didn’t realise how stigmatised it was, and the stigma really does contribute to so many bad things like the suicide rate. The fact that it’s the leading cause of death for so many cohorts. I can’t remember exactly what age groups, but it’s really bad, but we don’t talk about it.

Lynne: I guess one of the things that I’d love to hear your perspective on is that I think some of us, the non-disabled people make a lot of mistakes with their content. You’re talking about making things more accessible. What sort of things do you see that makes accessibility harder than it needs to be?

Zoe: Firstly, I think it’s just a lack of awareness and not knowing and I think a lot of people want to do the right thing, but they don’t know. So instead, they might do nothing, which I am trying to encourage people that that’s not the way to go. I’m trying to say, hey, just try. Trying is better than nothing.

Even if you just learn about these things. But a lot of people don’t think about it, even though they are quite quick things to make a difference. For example, if you are running an event, just put your event information, your accessibility information online. That’s one very easy way. And if you have a business putting it on your website, and that’s something very simple that no one really gets. But, if you have that on your website, people can Google accessibility and find you. That’s a great way to get new customers because, honestly, it’s a full-time job trying to work out where you can and can’t go outside and people don’t know what accessibility is. So, they might like, oh, it’s wheelchair accessible, but there’s a step. I’m like, well, it’s not wheelchair accessible then. 

Lynne: Yes. 

Zoe: Image descriptions, alt text. Just considering what life is like if you can’t see, if you can’t hear, if you can’t walk. And those are all things that I don’t think people really consider. As well as brain fog and fatigue and people with intellectual disability, easy English, those things are really uncommon and I find, especially in the business space and then in the journalism space, they just don’t really exist. So that’s a huge barrier. People trying to enter this sector. It’s actually the reason why I created my own business is because I couldn’t find an accessible, inclusive job even with all the accolades that I have even now. So, 

Lynne: People don’t think about it. 

Zoe: If I’m struggling with this, what are people that are with less advantages struggling with, and that’s just not good enough. So, I am going to be the squeaky wheel. 

Rachel: How can we learn about communicating in a more accessible and inclusive way? Are there resources that you would recommend that we should all look at or one specific place we can go to learn? 

Zoe: The thing is that accessibility means so much to so many people. People will think of accessibility, like, oh, wheelchair access, yep, I’m done. But it’s so much more than that. So, it’s kind of an ongoing learning thing, and I’m not an expert. I’m doing my best to learn, but I think a lot of learning comes from just listening to the community, making sure you are following diverse advocates who talk about this stuff and why it matters to them.

I think that’s been the most powerful thing. Honestly, I know all sorts of tools and things you could Google and find but having a friend who can’t access content because there’s no alt texts or screen, any descriptions and they use a screen reader and then they can’t see it. Knowing that it’s like, well, you don’t want anyone to feel excluded and imagine what that would be like if you looked on social media and you couldn’t see anything and alt text takes like 15, 20 seconds. So, I think people just need to know about it and what to do and care. So that’s a big part of what I’m trying to do. 

Lynne: It’s such an important thing. There are lots of, easy, I guess low hanging fruit you can do. It’s a bit of like, we’ve often talked about, UX content and making the user experience. Some of that translates to both, doesn’t it, making things simple, jargon free is great for people of all different levels. All different people, or as you say, using alt text. Are there any good checklists that you use or things that you find that there are a lot of mistakes with? 

Zoe: I would say not having image descriptions is a huge thing people just don’t think about. But I think people just don’t think about accessibility in general. But there are organisations and places that can help you and can help you learn. It’s not like about saying, oh, you’re not doing access, you are bad. It’s about saying, hey, would you mind doing a little bit better and maybe learning about this and, firstly, I would say disability organisations are fantastic for that because we have experts, A lot of places have experts for hire, like women with disabilities. Victoria, you can hire youth experts. So, if you were wondering what, a youth disabled perspective would be on something, hey, we can tell you, there’s also obviously a web accessibility guideline that great things you can check by. 

I am not a technical person, I’ll admit, so in terms of things like contrast and making sure that people can actually read it, it’s important to consider things like this, app called WebAIM Checker, which you can check contrast in, and I think often people put pretty over functionality and that’s unfortunate because it means it really limits how many people can see and engage with your content. You know, having simple fonts, having large text, just really thinking like, hey, is this accessible for someone that might have these needs? And I think that’s something that people don’t think about, but they really should. That’s what I’m trying to do, because access does benefit everybody, but it’s not until you need it that you really start thinking about it and we will all be disabled by time. We will probably likely join the disabled community. Health is so fragile, so I don’t think people consider that. So, it’s not just helping yourself now, it’s helping us in the future too, because it does benefit everybody. 

Rachel: Definitely. Well, take us through your work these days because I know you have a number of different income streams. You do freelance work, freelance writing work, you’ve got your advocacy and your speaking work. Tell us all about the different things that you do in a typical week or a month. 

Zoe: Ooh, I do probably too much. Not great for the chronic fatigue, but I guess, I really do want to make a difference. So, I sacrifice everything into my work, I guess, which is probably not ideal. I probably should rest more, I guess if you’re listening to this, don’t do that. But my work is a mixed bag at the moment.

I do freelance journalism when I can, although I would say it’s become a lot more difficult these days to get a commission, especially trying to get disability into mainstream news. It’s really hard and people are like, oh, well, why would we care? Well, one fifth of the population are disabled and likely know someone that’s disabled will likely care about this. It’s really disappointing that it’s not considered sexy enough to talk about and get published about. I also do a lot of copywriting. I work with a lot of organisations sharing both my lived experience and my skills in writing. So, working with a lot of places, doing advocacy as well, like the Disability Advocacy Network. I’m working with Disability Rights Centre. I’m working with Australian Human Rights Commission. And, basically just trying to do whatever I can to share these lived experiences and share these perspectives and make sure that not necessarily people realise that it matters. That it benefits them as well. It’s just a good thing to do because, say accessibility benefits a parent with a pram, it benefits an elderly person that can’t walk very far. It benefits someone with a suitcase, someone doing delivery. There’s so many reasons that it benefits people, but without it, it excludes so many.

Lived experience has become a big part of my work, now speaking, which blows my mind as someone that didn’t do very well in high school and speaking, I’ll be honest, but turns out when you speak about some things that you really care about, it’s a lot easier compared to, I don’t know, Shakespeare.

Lynne: Which one of these income streams takes the most time and energy? Because some of that, I would’ve thought some of the advocacy work would be quite emotionally draining. Do you find that?

Zoe: It really is. Honestly, it’s really bad. A lot of my work is with the worst parts of the system and trying to change it. For example, I’ve been looking at NDIS Safeguarding lately, and so many people are struggling and suffering in so many ways, whether it’s the NDIS, whether it’s the healthcare system, whether it’s the education system, whether it’s the workplace, whether it’s society, and it just destroys me and knowing that my experiences are happening and they’re just accepted, I’m like, well, that’s not good enough.

Whenever I encounter something, I try to make people aware of it and why it’s not good, because I imagine other people being affected by the same issue and maybe not having the energy to fight. So, I do fight, but emphasis on fight, it is exhausting, and it is a battle for literally everything just to be included.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked around at a business space and looked at how many disabled people aren’t there. We’re not often represented and of course you can’t tell everyone is disabled because invisible disabilities exist. But, when you’re in a space and you can’t see any visibly disabled people, any proudly visibility, disabled people, it sends a message that’s not a space for you and when it doesn’t have accessibility, it amplifies that message. I think it does really get to me, which is why I’m so grateful when places actually, care and try. For example, I was going to an event and there was an after party and someone else looked up for me whether or not it was wheelchair accessible and oh my gosh, that is just such a love message, honestly, just to do that for you. People just don’t do that. 

Rachel: I would love to know, because obviously copywriting and writing, journalism pieces, getting those commissions brings in income. How do you cost the other stuff? Do you find that when you’re asked to speak, you have those awkward conversations of oh, this isn’t paid, but this will be great exposure for your cause, or the advocacy stuff. How do you cost all of that now and are you really sort of militant about putting a price on that, on your lived experience, on that work? 

Lynne: On your time?

Zoe: I’m very firm about being paid for my work. I’m in my thirties now, but in my teens and twenties, I did take on a lot of unpaid work, but that was also before I became disabled. Now that I am disabled and chronically ill, it’s not an option for me to do unpaid work. I cannot live if I do unpaid work. Unfortunately, people often seem to want to ask people to do unpaid work, especially in speaking, especially in lived experience. I feel like half of my job sometimes is just convincing organisations that they need to pay people for their lived experience, which is so disappointing that you have to do that because you wouldn’t have to advocate for a doctor to get paid. You wouldn’t have to advocate for a CEO to get paid. So why is our lived experience any different, especially if it’s being used for service improvement. It’s so frustrating. 

Rachel: How do you work out a cost? How do you put a cost on that? Is that a tricky thing to do or does it come from the organisation?

Zoe: I generally charge a rate when it’s with an organisation, but it is hard because a lot of my advocacy work is unpaid. For example, all the work I do on social media or the work I do in contacting organisations to try and make things better, all the work I do, raising awareness – most of it unpaid, unfortunately, which is difficult when it’s already much more expensive to be disabled, and it’s already so many less opportunities for accessible jobs. This is the reason I’m able to live so when people don’t pay me, it’s pretty insulting.  

Lynne: Well, I think it’s a common problem for writers everywhere, and particularly I think we’re all a bit more vulnerable when it’s a cause that we feel strongly about, because it’s harder to say no. Talk to us about making an income from speaking, because I do some speaking, and I turned down a bit because I want to get paid. How do you manage that? Have you got an agent? How do you manage some of that? Or is it, does it build up over time? 

Zoe: I don’t have an agent, but I would like one. So, if anyone is listening.

Lynne: Well, we can always hope. 

Zoe: May as well put a little plug for myself. But it is all me doing it at the moment. I would love to be able to get support some way. It’s very difficult. Sorry, what was the question? 

Lynne: How do you make an income from speaking and how do you cost that, and do you find that? I know as an entry level speaker it’s harder to get paid, but you’ve been doing quite a bit now, so you must be getting to a point where you can ask for a decent amount of money. 

Zoe: I’ve actually only done one unpaid speaking thing, which I think is actually great. The rest of my career has been paid, even if it’s been a low fee. But it’s not bringing home the bacon, uh, vegan bacon, I guess. But I think it’s just about staying firm and that you deserve to be paid for your time. For example, I was asked to speak at some disability expo, and they weren’t going to pay me, and I was like, oh, I need to do that because I need to live. I have limited energy and if I don’t use that to get work and get paid my work, I don’t get to eat. I don’t think you understand that.

Lynne: The irony of a disability expo not wanting to pay you. 

Rachel: Wasn’t that like the International Women’s Day events? 

Lynne: That’s the last one I did for nothing. When I’ve been asked to be on an International Women’s Day thing, talking about the inequities of women not being paid enough. 

Rachel: They don’t pay.

Lynne: They’re not wanting to pay me. 

Zoe: Oh my gosh. The amount of times I’ve spoken about accessibility and then not had an accessible venue. The last place I was speaking at about accessibility, I got stuck in the bathroom because it wasn’t disabled. It was like they said it was disabled. I’m like, I don’t think so. But, okay, I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll just try and then I got trapped and had to get someone to let me out because there wasn’t enough space to turn around and open up the door. Oh my gosh, it is hard, and people don’t think about it.

Rachel: How do you structure your week? Because I remember you mentioned you work at different times and that sort of thing. What works for you? 

Zoe: Honestly, it depends on the day, depends on the week, it depends on my health. Living with chronic illness and chronic fatigue. Sometimes I do have times where I cannot work. Getting out of bed and feeding myself is too much. Thanks to medication and lots and lots of coffee I have managed to get a little bit of semblance of life back, which is nice because there was a stage where I really couldn’t do anything and even just having a conversation like this would’ve destroyed me. That would be all I could do for a day. So, when people don’t pay for it, they don’t understand like, hey, how am I supposed to eat? 

Lynne: Tricky. The other issue that I really wanted to cover is about representation because you did sort of talk about when you see a group of people, so how can writers ensure that disabled people are represented respectfully in our work?

Zoe: I would say if you’re writing a disabled character and you yourself aren’t disabled, probably get someone to read it and check. I can’t remember what the terms are for that. 

Lynne: Sensitivity reading. 

Zoe: Yes, sensitivity reading. Same with any marginalised group that you’re having. If you are not part of that marginalised group, I think you should really consider, even if you do, because there are things that you’ll miss even if you have the best intentions, and you don’t know what harms that might create for a marginalised community.

I think it’s just important to remember that disabled people are the experts and although we’re not the experts of all disabled people. For example, I consider myself to be someone that’s quite knowledgeable with disability, but I don’t know about everyone’s disability. So that’s why it’s important to make sure you have a diverse range of people with diverse experiences, feeding lived experiences, feeding this information.

Rachel: That’s great.

Lynne: That’s a good point, isn’t it?  

Rachel: Well, we do love to ask all our guests about their favourite tech tips or the tools that they’d be lost without in their work. So, what are yours? 

Zoe: Oh my gosh. I feel a little bit by this question because I don’t tend to use a lot. 

Rachel: You’re low tech. The amount of people that come on the podcast and say, oh, I basically use Word and that’s it. It’s fine if that’s the case. 

Lynne: It’s amazing how much you can do.

Zoe: My favourite thing is just the read out loud function in word, and because you pick up things that your brain misses when you’re reading. And even as editor that’s quite experienced, I still miss things. So, when you’re hearing it, and it’s also just great when you have chronic fatigue. I think it’s how I edit everything now. I wouldn’t be able to survive without that, honestly. Other tools I use, I love Canva. Thank you for the templates, Canva. 

Rachel: Yes. Time saver.

Lynne: With Canva. I just wonder, are there accessible templates in their arsenal? 

Zoe: Oh. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of the templates in Canva probably aren’t accessible, especially with the wild fonts that people can’t really read. I often don’t actually use their thing. I just make it myself and put Canva sans, something that’s easy and readable and a nice colour because I don’t think they think about that. Even with their scheduler, you can’t add alt text as part of the scheduling so that’s really disappointing. Same with like most social media scheduling apps, you can’t actually add alt text, so someone using a screen reader cannot see the image, which is one of my main gripes. However, I found that Buffer does. It’s three free accounts so that is what I use, and it’s three for free, which is amazing and you can add alt text. 

Lynne: Oh, that’s good to know. 

Zoe: Honestly, that’s the reason why I chose it, because I know there are so many other options. But if they’re not accessible, what’s the point? 

Rachel: I use Buffer as well, but what did you say? It’s free for three accounts. I had pay for it and I’m sure I’ve got three accounts on there. 

Zoe: Oh my gosh. Maybe you should check and see if you can get it for free then. 

Rachel: Well, I recently changed it because I had eight accounts and they put it right up and then I said, okay, I’ll probably really only need three of these, but it’s still about five hundred a year.

Zoe: Oh, my goodness. I’m not paying anything. I think you should maybe check out the free version. 

Rachel: Okay. I’m going to do that. Maybe it’s because we post a lot. 

Zoe: Oh, actually, that would be a thing. I think there’s a limit on how many posts you can schedule, so if you’re very good at your scheduling and have it well in advance, that’s probably not the option for you, but I am bad at that. So, eight scheduled posts suit me fine. 

Rachel: That’s why, we post hundreds. We do hundreds of scheduled posts in advance, so, that would make sense. 

Zoe: I’m tired. 

Rachel: Oh, my goodness. 

Lynne: Oh, fantastic. Well, I’ve never used the Word read aloud thing, so it’s definitely something to have a look at.

Rachel: That’s been mentioned in the Rachel’s List group, I think. I know other editors use it, so, it’s quite helpful.

Zoe: It’s got made me notice errors that I would not have with my eyes and it’s like, why are you betraying me eyes? This is my job. But it’s just good to get extra and just make sure, because you want to give your client a good version and I think it’s just a good check to add in.

Lynne: Definitely.

Rachel: Absolutely. Well, that’s good to pop into the show notes. 

Lynne: Fantastic, Zoe. So interesting. Such a great chat. Is there anything else we should mention that’s really helpful as far as making your copy accessible? 

Zoe: Well, as we’ve mentioned, it’s basically just using simple language, using easy to read language, understanding, not everyone knows jargon. I think it’s also about the way you present your information, making sure that it’s obvious if a screen reader came onto this page, they could read it left to right, top to bottom, and understand it, not have this gobbledy gook everywhere and not have all these things that don’t have image descriptions and alt text.

I think it’s just about realising that there are these differences and that we should cater for them. It’s so easy, just put an alt image, just put alt text on an image. It takes a minute and then it’s done.  I know a lot of people might be like, I don’t know what to do, but there are very simple, easy things that you can just start to do. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be a work in progress. 

Rachel: Love that. 

Lynne: Wow. So good. 

Rachel: Tell us where our audience can find you and connect with you, Zoe. 

Zoe: Ooh, well, I have a little bit of FOMO, so I’m on most of the social platforms. You can find me on LinkedIn at ZoeSimmons. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok as @somethingbeginningwithz and that is the actual title, not just saying it’s something beginning with Zed because lots of people think I’m just what is it? And then I was on Twitter, but I honestly don’t have access to my account and its X anyway, so I don’t know who cares about that right now. But website, you can google me, www.zoesimmons.com au. You can send me an email, love to get in touch. I’ll just connect. 

Lynne: Oh, fantastic. Well, we’ll put all those links in the show notes so you can find out where to connect with Zoe. I know we are connected on LinkedIn, and you’ve always got some really great content there, so thank you so much for being our guest.

Zoe: Thank you so much for having me. 

Lynne: So that brings us to the end of our show this week. Thanks to everyone listening, and if you like the show, don’t forget to leave a rating or review on the platform where you find your podcast and don’t forget to look at the show notes in your app and then you can find out how and where to connect with Zoe. And we’ll see you all again next week. 

Rachel: We will. Bye everybody. 

Lynne: Okay, thank you. Bye.

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Credits:

Connect with Zoe through her website: https://zoesimmons.com.au/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-simmons-7119a994/

Free Kanban Challenge: https://peopleloveprojects.com/free-kanban/

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com 

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au 

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au 

If you have questions you’d like us to answer in our next Q&A episode, just send them here.

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Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co