Just about two years ago we began to plan for the reopening of our campus, from how we would space our staff out to how we would implement the new hybrid learning modality that the school had settled on. Our campus, for better or for worse, had until that point lagged in our adoption of newer pedagogical methods, limiting them to pilots and one-off deployments. That meant that in order to line up with how teaching was going to be done we had to contend with supply chain issues even further. I remember sitting in meetings discussing how we would source everything from webcams to cables and looking at sources I never thought we’d order from. Sending my team to Home Depot was a regular occurrence because shipping was a nightmare.
But that isn’t what I want to talk about. And I’m sorry to say this is going to go a bit beyond my usual focus on AV because supply chain issues affect accessibility far outside just being unable to buy equipment. It stretches into what is missing to make life accessible to those left behind as we reopen.
On a basic level, we all experienced scarcity and supply disruptions beginning in 2020. First, it was toilet paper, purell, and of course masks for medical workers and the public. Then it was eggs, meat, and other staples. Now it’s become less obvious in people’s day-to-day lives, except when things like produce are stalled because of political stunts, but it’s also because of issues from last summer’s backlog at the ports and so on.
But how does this apply to accessibility? Well first, and most obviously, the microchip shortage has naturally affected the availability of many solutions I have highlighted because lead times are longer because parts aren’t fully available. But it’s also about rethinking education, and participation in society, in general.
As we reopen, one issue which keeps cropping up in discussions over access in the “post-pandemic” (really post-caring about the pandemic) era is how many people with invisible disabilities are being “left behind.” This isn’t the supply chain we’re used to hearing about, but it’s just as important to consider.
Back in the early phase of the pandemic, when the country was still “locked down,” ingenuity was on full display as we found workarounds to our normal way of life. Not only did we embrace delivery and curbside pickup, but we also ended the stigma surrounding such practices because we normalized them. We softened the blow to people who weren’t used to being unable to browse stores or eat in restaurants by offering specials, cook-at-home kits, and to-go cocktails. Naturally, there were problems, because in doing that people were going out rather than remaining isolated to stop the spread but it’s what our country decided it would accept.
But then came the end of the caring about the virus phase, and with it came struggles with supply chains, wildly increasing prices, and the desire to “go back to normal.” And that led to a supply chain issue of a different sort.
It led to a split in our society, between those who had a need to remain protected for medical reasons and those who didn’t.
The supply chain, the moral supply chain, fragmented at that point because so many of the mitigation methods we had put in place began to be rolled back.
We’re going to have to reexamine the supply chain as more than the bulk supply lines we rely on if we are to move forward as a society. The obvious supply lines fractured in the pandemic, but as we move toward the new normal, the informal supply chains have been obliterated.
We have a duty to our fellow human beings to make sure those are rebuilt to be more resilient and stronger than ever.
To us, in AV that means we need to be prepared for every event, every talk, every class to be hybrid. We need to continue to invest in hybrid infrastructure and continue to push the development of new ways to create meaningful hybrid experiences because we simply can’t go back to the haves and have-nots system that we had before. People who are unable to attend live events in person, who can’t easily shop, or who can’t work a 40-hour week in an office, shouldn’t be frozen out of society. If we learn no other lesson from the last two years, let it be that.