As the Black Lives Matter movement gains traction, people with disabilities are being overlooked in this push for racial justice. Disabled black people and other disabled people of color are even more disproportionately impacted by poverty, racism, and are at greater risk of COVID-19 infections than their non-disabled counterparts.
Many black people with disabilities are unable to participate in the protests because of the severity of their disability, increased risk to personal safety and being immunocompromised. Their voices are not amplified and heard around the nation-- they continue to be marginalized and forgotten.
There is scant media coverage about people with disabilities and even less about people of color with disabilities. The Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium (SCAC) seeks to amplify voices of people with disabilities, including black, indigenous and other POC. SCAC’s mission is to connect arts organizations with information and resources to improve accessibility for people of all abilities. We want to elevate the issue of how their access to arts, health and civic life is impacted by intersectionality. We want to produce a podcast series about the experiences of people with disabilities attempting to participate as productive members of society.
This pilot project of four podcasts would be accessible through transcripts for deaf/hoh and deafblind communities. We would interview BIPOC about their accessibility experiences and their thoughts and feelings about this unique time period we are living in now. We want to give opportunities to people to express their views and start to work towards solutions.
Creating this oral history here in Seattle has never been done before and is so timely given that we are in the midst of a pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and as the 30th anniversary of the ADA approaches. This material would then allow us to apply for additional grants to sustain this very important work.

What our grantee is saying: "We are thrilled to receive this grant from the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter! It will go a long way in ensuring that the voices of people with disabilities, particularly BIPOC, are heard. Thank you so much!"