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The Blind Life Podcast
Ep. 38. The Working Blind Series - Drew Crook Accessibility Architect at Paramount Global
00:32:40
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's Sam with the Blind Life. Welcome back to another working Blind episode. This is my series where I Talk to amazing VIPs in the community who are working in hopes to inspire you as to what types of jobs might be available today. We've got a good one. I have spoken, I have interviewed a lot of people in the community, all types of jobs, but I've never had a crook on the show. Hey, guys, it's Sam and Rachel. And you're listening to the Blind Life podcast.
- [00:41]
B
This is the companion podcast to the popular YouTube channel the Blind Life.
- [00:46]
A
Here I share tips and tricks, how.
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B
To'S, interviews with amazing VIPs in the community, and loads of assistive technology reviews.
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A
The goal of the Blind Life is to help you live your best blind life. So my guest is not actually a crook. He's actually a very nice guy. So this is Andrew Crook. And so like I said, a crook. He goes by Drew. Drew, thank you so much for joining me.
- [01:17]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:19]
A
So first things first, why don't you tell a little bit about yourself, including your vision impairment? I know a lot of people are always curious about that, what's going on, your level of vision, how long you've had it, all of that.
- [01:32]
B
Yeah, so I have a condition called Leber's congenital amaurosis. Don't ask me to spell it, but they, they shorten it to lca. And the high level overview of that is that it is a degenerative retinal condition or retinal dystrophy. And it's, it's inherited. So there's nothing. I didn't have an injury, I didn't have an illness. It just. I was born with this genetic disorder and essentially my rods and my cones are slowly dying over time to eventually, at some point in the future, I will have no vision at all. So I had better vision when I was younger. And then as I got older, through middle school, high school, college, I got to where I am now, which is pretty much I don't have an actual visual acuity anymore. When I go to the doctor, it's pretty much kind of hand movement at about a foot and a half to two feet. So they don't give me like a 20 over any number because they can't really measure it anymore. But my vision's pretty predicated on high contrast. So things that are very light against a dark background stick out to me. I don't see it in detail, but at least it gives me kind of a general sense of oh, there's something there. But it really only helps me for what I call macro navigation. But it doesn't help me for any fine tuned stuff. So it helps me not hit my head every single second of every day. But. But yeah, it's pretty much mostly gone at this point.
- [02:57]
A
Yeah. So I can imagine like walking down a sidewalk, you can tell the contrast between the sidewalk and the grass next to it. So you can do a fairly decent job of staying on the path, but anything pops up some stairs or something like that, you're gonna possibly be taking a nosedive.
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B
Yeah. And thankfully I have a seeing Eye dog to help me with that.
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A
Yeah. And I wanted to mention that. So. And this is not your first guide dog. And a lot of people, we were talking about this in a previous call. A lot of people that aren't really familiar with guide dogs in that whole world, they just assume from. I guess I don't even know where it all started, but they assume that all guide dogs are called Seeing Eye Dogs. And that's not true. That's actually just a specific school. And the dogs from that school are Seeing Eye dogs. And you actually have a legit, for real Seeing Eye dog.
- [03:50]
B
I do, I do. And it's like, it's like a Kleenex tissue situation. I think they just, you know, they were seeing. I was the first school, I think it was 1929, they were established and then all the other schools in the country kind of modeled themselves off of Seeing Eye. So.
- [04:02]
A
Okay.
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B
They just, they were first to market and they kind of saturated the market and that's kind of been synonymous now everybody calls them Seeing Eye Dogs. But. No, I, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, it's dog guides or guide dogs is the generic term. And then Seeing Eye is the specific brand name.
- [04:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. And you just got a new dog, a new partner. You say your third?
- [04:23]
B
Yes. Yeah, yeah. He's so. He's a German shepherd, male. He's still only 2, just turned 2 in August. I got him in May. He's my second shepherd. So I had. My first dog was a black lab and a golden retriever cross. And then I, and then I had two shepherds. And he is, he is one heck of a goofball.
- [04:42]
A
I bet. I bet. Especially at just two years old. Well, let's get into it. So you are currently working. Would you mind telling us a little bit about your, Your job that you do?
- [04:54]
B
Sure. So I am, I guess my title is Senior Accessibility Architect. I work for Paramount Global more Specifically Paramount Streaming. And I'm one of the people that are in charge of ensuring that our digital content meets WCAG compliance, but also goes above and beyond that and makes sure that the experience is really, you know, fantastic for anybody who's going to be jumping into the streaming platforms. The high, the one that has the most attention right now for me is Pluto tv, Paramount plus, because Pluto was purchased by Paramount. I have not worked with Paramount plus directly too, too much yet. But we're working, you know, we're working to integrate with that, with that platform too. But Pluto TV is, is the application that I have been working on for the last two years with getting it accessible and maintaining that accessibility with any new features that are released.
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A
Yeah. And that's awesome. And. Well, we appreciate that. And so this would be on mobile devices, streaming on Roku, Hulu tv, like all that kind of stuff.
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B
All the above. All the above, yeah. So I don't know the exact number, something like 50 different platforms that the Pluto TV app exists on. But yeah, native mobile applications, so Android, iOS, TVOs, even Vision Pro. That was a fun. I can tell you that story if you want. We can get into that. And then obviously all the connected TVs, Roku, like you said. And then anybody who just has a, you know, just like an LG TV where it's all baked into the TV operating system, even PlayStation 5 and Xbox that, you know, it's all. They all exist on all those platforms.
- [06:27]
A
Gosh. Yeah. I guess, like you don't until you sit down and think about it. There are a ton.
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B
Yeah, yeah, there are. It is quite a lot.
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A
That's awesome. So how long have you been doing this?
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B
I have been working here since 2022. So I started as a contractor, which we can get into that topic too. But I'm. I've always kind of bet on myself. I didn't get full time until about four or five months after I started, but it was a way to get in the door. It was a really cool company. It was streaming, it was where I wanted to be. So I said, I will roll the dice and I'll do the contract thing. And then, you know, just bet on myself and show them that I know what I'm doing.
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A
So.
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B
And then obviously I did because I'm full time now and I have been since September of 22 and going strong.
- [07:09]
A
That's awesome. And that kind of touches on a topic we've talked about on this series many, many times in the past, which was. It's not exactly the same but it's similar is volunteering at a location first. And it's kind of the same thing where it lets you not only test them out, but they get to test you out and see how it's going to work. And in many, many cases, it works out great and you end up getting offered a permanent position. So that's awesome.
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to hear about the Apple Vision Pro. What did you think about that whole experience?
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B
It was interesting. I actually have it next to me on my desk because I got a test device once it was officially released, but I got to go. Yeah, it was before the release. I got to go. I got sequestered in this little room, and I got to test it, and I gave our engineering teams feedback. I actually did it for both Pluto and Paramount plus, and I gave feedback to the teams, pointed out some things that were weird that didn't translate well with the Vision Pro interface specifically. And I know you covered Vision Pro back when it launched, but for anybody who has one, which might not be a lot of people, but there's these layers. Every time you would open a section of the app, if there's tabs, it would be layered. So you'd have maybe your On Demand page, and then if you go to the left navigation bar and you say, I want to open up Search, Search would then overlay on top of the On Demand page. But then you had those little. There's these grabbers that you can see, you look at and you pinch your finger and you can drag. So you can actually have multiple windows of the same application floating in space. And that really tripped me up at first because I, you know, obviously I'm approaching Vision Pro like everybody else. When it was first launched, I had no idea what the accessibility was going to be like. And I tried, you know, foolishly, I tried to cheat and use whatever Vision I had left to kind of figure out the interface, because I had no other. You know, you can't touch it. It's all virtual. It's all around you. So that was a little bit hard for me to get my head around. But once I did, it was actually pretty cool. And I really liked the ability to this whole spatial computing that Apple talks about, where I was able to put the Pluto TV app off to the side, and then the sound would come from wherever that anchor point was in that virtual space. And it was really cool because I had, like, notes on the Vision Pro that I was taking for all the bugs that I was finding and all the different things that I wanted to, you know, give the engineering team to fix. And it was cool because I could just. I felt like I was. I felt like it was in real space, but it wasn't. It was. It was all in the headset. It was wild.
- [09:44]
A
Yeah. Yeah. When I did my test, I was at my offices and I was out in the lobby area and I had like three or four windows open, and one of them was YouTube playing a video. And then I walk into my office and you could totally. It sounded like there was a TV on in the other room. That spatial audio was crazy. It's. It's really. It's really funky how it works.
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B
Yeah, it is. It's pretty cool.
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A
Yeah, yeah. If anybody's seen Minority Report, Tom Cruise is throwing the windows up and stuff. I mean, it's kind of like pretty much that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in order to do this job, you said you started out as contract work. Did you need any specific education or training to do this? Working with accessibility?
- [10:27]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm. For me, you know, I was never. I've always been into technology. I was always a consumer, and I, you know, I took accessibility for granted. As a younger person, I obviously was a Jaws user. I was working on my Windows machine in school, and that's how I did everything. And then after college, I got a job at a financial institution and I was kind of middle of the road. I was okay. I wasn't like a super performer, but I wasn't, you know, holding anything back by any means. But then one day they changed their software and Jaws, like, I was getting the blue screen of death. Jaws wasn't working. I had more vision back then. So I was actually using Jaws and Magic in tandem before. Before they bought ZoomText. And so with Magic, I was trying to, you know, zoom in and do all those things. And what happened was I just got to a point where I couldn't do the job anymore. And I'm not the, you know, the lawyer, litigator type person. So I wasn't going to, you know, make a big stink about it. I was like, you know, I'm just going to do something else. So this was around 2015, 2016, and I started to work for Apple, actually in one of the retail stores. So I wasn't working for corporate. I was just, you know, slinging iPhones, meeting customers, talking to people. My second dog at that point. And we were just, you know, walk around the store. And that was. That was the point where I started to really get interested in accessibility and what it does and how it works. Because obviously I hit a barrier at that other job and I had to make a career change. And in my head I'm like, I'm thinking I'm going backwards because I go from, you know, going into a.
- [11:54]
A
Location.
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B
Where you have like these cubicles and it's like more, you know, I guess a big boy job, for lack of a better word. And I go to work in a mall and I felt like I was kind of taking a step backwards to high school, but it was, I learned a lot. I say that because I, you know, that was where my mental state was. But I learned so much at Apple and they taught me so much as far as, you know, the different ways that you, you know, you get through different things with work and different competencies that you can work on and kind of making yourself better every day. So that was a really cool experience and that was really what helped me get to where I am. So between 2016 and 2020, I was working there, I was getting promotions, I was really successful. Learned everything to learn about voiceover and the Apple ecosystem to the point where I've completely converted. I'm a Mac user now. I still keep my job skills up to date, but I'm all Apple everything. And then when I got to, when we got to 2020 and all the stores closed because of COVID and everybody knows what happened in that year, the one thing that I still didn't know was everything under the hood. I knew what wouldn't work. I knew how to articulate issues as far as QA testing because I was working with Apple to beta test voiceover and things like that as releases were coming out. So I'd provide bug reports, but I didn't know the other side of the equation. I didn't know what code could fix it or how it would fix it. So I rolled the dice pretty hard and I got, I enrolled in a 12 week fully immersive boot camp for full stack software engineering on the web. And because it was Covid, it was all remote, it was over zoom. So I didn't have any, I wasn't going to a location. I didn't, I couldn't like walk up to the instructor or the professor afterwards and ask questions. It was all digital and the company, I will, I will name drop them because I'm super grateful. But it was, it was called General assembly and I reached out to a bunch of code camps and a lot of them copy and paste their accessibility statement and just emailed me back But General assembly called me and it was one of their admissions people and they said, oh, we want you to be successful. Let's set up a meeting with one of our lead instructors, one of our outcomes people, which is kind of the job seeking arm, our student success coordinator. And they just, they want to just put a coalition together to work with me to make sure I could do this and be successful. And that meant a lot because that was before I even said I was going to go there, before I paid them anything. So that just goes to show how, you know, being an ally, right, and having people in the community that are willing to hear you out, listen to you and then, you know, allow you to advocate for yourself was super important. And that's really what's, what sparked it all, was that, that boot camp and then.
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A
Yeah, go ahead real quick, General Assembly. Is that all they do or do they offer training and other things?
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B
They, they do. So they have I think two or three, I think there's three verticals that they, that they train in. So the software engineering vertical, then there's a UX or user design and then there's data science and cybersecurity and stuff like that. So they have those three, but they're all tech based and code and all that type of stuff.
- [14:53]
A
Okay, well so it sounds like if anybody listening is interested in that kind of stuff, that'd be a great place to reach out to.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I can't recommend them enough. So yes, once I finished that program, I think I presented my Capstone project on Christmas Eve of 2020 and then I started my first official accessibility job on February 1st of 2021. I was working at CVS Health. They have a huge accessibility team there. They do accessibility really well. And then I worked there until 2022 where I got reached out to by a recruiter at Pluto. And obviously because I'm super into tech and I like streaming and all that, I definitely jumped at that opportunity because that was an industry that I wanted to get into and healthcare was, you know, it's great, but it's not, it wasn't like a passion of mine, you know, so, so I, you know, I jumped over to Pluto and been there ever since.
- [15:42]
A
Wow, that's. Yeah, that's the story arc crazy. Well, it leads into, you know, the next thing I want to talk about is disclosure. I'm assuming all of these different jobs, you know, especially like even Apple where it was an actual physical place that you had to go to, to, to work. Did you disclose when did you Disclose, because that's, That's a, That's a. A big question for people. A lot of misinformation out there, potentially, of what the law is. You know, do you have to disclose? When do you have to disclose? So. Curious to get your input on it.
- [16:18]
B
Yeah, I think it's. It's definitely personal to everybody individually. You know, I understand people that want to disclose right away. I understand that people that don't. I've actually kind of hybridized it myself. I have an unfair advantage in the industry that I'm in now because I'm working with people that understand accessibility, that are already allies, they're already empathetic. They may also have their own disabilities. So they just get that struggle. So I've tended to disclose early. If I've been interviewing for Jobs. You know, like when I interviewed for cbs, when I was interviewing for Pluto, I didn't shy away from it. I actually used that as a talking point and as an actual strength because I can say, I know code, I can. I can talk to developers, I can relate to issues, I can make bug reports. Oh, also, I'm an end user and I do this every single day. So, you know, I have, I have the utmost confidence in myself that I'm going to be able to point out issues that maybe somebody who's sighted, who has been trained, you know, traditionally on how to use a screen reader could miss. And that's what I like to do a lot.
- [17:18]
A
When you were working at the Apple Store, did you mention what your vision impairment was at the time that you were working?
- [17:27]
B
Oh, that's a good question. So I. The way that it worked at Apple and then in the other place that I was working at that I ended up leaving before Apple, you know, they just kind of. And this, this process might be a little bit different now, but this was obviously pre Covid and everything. But they reached out, they said, hey, we're going to have an event. You can go to a hiring event. You'll meet everybody. So at that point, there's really no hiding. I had to go into a physical interview. So at that point, I'm strolling in with my guide dog. There's no. It's not a secret. You know what I mean?
- [17:53]
A
Kind of hard to hide.
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B
Yeah, But I, I did intentionally in those two interviews because I was also younger, and I, you know, I wanted to just let me. I didn't want them to have any preconceived notions. I wanted my resume. And then they're like, oh, I'm gonna Meet this guy Drew. I just wanted that to be in their heads, not, oh, this guy's blind. Is he gonna be able to find where he's going? Do I need to, like, open the door for him? Like, all the things that people that have not, you know, that they, like, panic and think about. I was like, no, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna roll in and be like, hey, I'm me. So that's what I did. And yeah, I mean, obviously for folks that are listening, that are curious, like, there are questions and I, you know, I'm the type of person, I welcome the questions. I would rather have somebody ask me than to either make the wrong assumption or be too afraid to ask because they want to offend me or something like that. Like, I'm totally fine. And I know not everybody is, but I'm totally fine with people asking, what is your vision? What can you see? Not in a, in a, like a rude way, but just, just like you were doing, Sam, where you were just asking just to set the stage so people understand what my lived experience is. I'm totally fine with that. And I think that helps build that connection with a potential employer or manager or co workers, whatever it is, because then you, you kind of level set and they know what you, your limitations are. They know what you can do. And then obviously, you know, if you, if you know what you're doing and you're good at your job, that's going to do the most, that's going to speak the best for you.
- [19:12]
A
Right? And I've, I've mentioned it in previous interviews that it's, it's a, it's a great opportunity to, to turn it into a positive during the interview process anyways, because they always ask those, those questions like, what are some of your strengths? Or, you know, what kind of. Any time in your life where you experienced hardship and turned it around? And it's like, ah, perfect, let's talk about this, you know, and adapt. So now you're at Paramount and everything seems to be going well. Let's talk about accommodations. So, yeah, what kind of accommodations do you use or do you need in order to successfully do your job?
- [19:48]
B
So in the role that I'm in now, and I'm glad we're talking about this because I wanted to mention something on this. So as far as accommodations, I don't have any specific assistive technology. I have my Mac. I run voiceover on it. The only thing I asked for was a larger monitor that they provided me. And that's really helpful for when I know I can't see all the stuff on the screen, but I can at least get a sense spatially of where things are. And the bigger the screen, the better. It also helped because you know a lot because I'm working remotely and a lot of people are all over the world. We do a lot of video calls, we do a lot of meetings. And when I was on a laptop and I would just open the laptop lid first off, I might not always be sitting straight in the frame because I can't see where I am in the video, but I'm also like, because we're on the call and then I'm trying to do something else. If I'm trying to review a document that people are sharing, I'd be leaning close to the screen and then I like, you know, I look like I'm right in front of the camera for everybody. Yeah, exactly. So, so I got one of these monitors that has like the pass through where it's got speakers and microphones and the camera already built in. So I have this nice 27 inch monitor, it's one of the LG ones and it's just sitting right in front of me. And I'm always going to be centered because I have that center stage thing that Apple has built in. But also it's also on the top edge of the screen and the way that, sorry, it's on the top edge of the bezel of the monitor and the way I sit, I'm never going to have that happen again, which is nice. So that was the only technology accommodation I asked for was just if they wouldn't mind providing me one of these types of monitors. But as far as accommodations in the workplace, the thing I wanted to talk about is for me there's a big part of my job is there's new features that come out that have been designed, they've been prototyped, they've been kind of thought through with our product teams, our engineering teams, our design teams and they have these high fidelity prototypes that are usually built in a program called figma. And figma. Think of like the most inaccessible PDF you've ever interacted with. That's figma. And it's not figma's fault. It's inherently a very visual process because you're talking about where you're going to position buttons on the screen, what the text is going to say, what the colors are going to be. So that is a barrier for me and it's a barrier for most people who can't use, who have to rely on a screen reader to navigate figma. And like with all companies, they're, they're making strides. Figma, they're making strides to make their experience accessible. But right now, for what I do for my work, it's still not there. So what I've had to do, and this is, this actually ties into something that you were talking about a minute ago around, you know, overcoming adversity and telling stories and interviews. One thing that I've, I don't know if I've coined the phrase, but I talk about it as what's called text based wireframes. So in this, in the industry with design, there's something called wireframes where you kind of, it's like a rough sketch of what your UI or user interface is going to look like. And I call it text based wireframes because what I normally do is I'll partner with a designer and we'll have a meeting, typically 15 to 30 minutes, and they'll walk me through the design and they'll describe it live. What we typically do is I'll either write notes or they'll provide me with notes, but it's all just written out in text and it describes everything that's going on with the ui, both from a flow perspective. So user clicks this thing, this will happen. User clicks this thing that will happen. And I use that to build this mental model in my head and then I go through and I write all the requirements for the accessibility experience. So that I guess would probably be the biggest accommodation that I've had to do because I had to partner with the design team and I had to talk to them and explain what I needed and why that was beneficial but not the unknown. I knew it was going to happen, but they didn't. The cool thing that has happened is it gives the design team a different perspective on their own designs. It's almost like if you ever remember when you were in school and people said, you know, read your essay three times, have somebody read it back to you, read it backwards. So you catch any like weird grammar or thing because you, you kind of, you get brain bright, brain blind to your own content. You think, oh, I went back and I made that color yellow. But then you go through, you're like, oh, I actually didn't, but you just assume you did. So your brain kind of fills in those gaps when it needs to. So the same concept for these designs and these design reviews. So I've had multiple designers tell me later, they're like, it's really hard but they're like, it's super helpful. And it helped me. This is me being them. They say it helped them to look at it differently. And they actually changed some things in their design. Sometimes on the fly, they'll change. They'll be like, hang on, I'm going to change something. And they change it on the fly, which is pretty fun. So it's a really cool experience. I love when we have those meetings.
- [24:25]
A
That's good. Yeah, I can totally see that. Because I'm sure designing, you know, sometimes it's. It's just practical. All right. The window pops up at the bottom. But then when they think about, well, if. If a user is not actively viewing that portion of the screen or the focus isn't on that portion of the screen, then they might not know it pops up at the bottom. So they can think, well, I could just as easily have it pop up in the middle. It's not going to change anything for the sighted user's perspective, but it might help them. So I could totally see. And I do that all the time. As far as I'll record a whole entire video and then I'll get into the editing process and I'm like, this is just terrible. It's. Maybe I just didn't have enough energy in the presentation or whatever. And I'm like, I'm just going to have to do the whole thing over. And it's always much better the second time. It's always much easier to record the video the second time because I've already gone through it once. So. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Obviously, the jobs that you're doing now and you've done since you've been in accessibility, everybody knows you're visually impaired. And I'm sure, you know, it's. Everybody's happy that you're visually impaired, prepared, because it helps you be better at your job. But I'm curious, jobs you've had before, positions you were in before, did you ever get any negative experiences with coworkers or. I know you mentioned that one, but, you know, any. Any negative experiences you had?
- [25:47]
B
I did. I had a couple. Well, it wasn't. I guess not with co. Well, so there's one with CO workers and one with. With customers, so.
- [25:53]
A
Customers. Yeah.
- [25:55]
B
Yeah. Well, two with customers that I can think of. So the two quick customer stories were both. When I was working at Apple in the. I had my seeing eye dog. It was Lena. She was my female shepherd at the time, and I was helping a customer. And she's always been great with Customers, never a problem. So she's laying down for anybody who has been in an Apple Store. You know, they have these big wooden tables, and there's nothing underneath them. There's like four legs and then there's a. Then there's a power cord to charge all the stuff that's on the table, and that's it. So that underneath was a perfect spot for me to have her just hang out. And I would stand on her leash so I had both my hands, I could talk to customers. So I was working with a customer, and the customer I was working with was great, totally awesome. But I had this other person who was on the other side of the store with a pet dog. Like a little tiny pet dog on one of those flexi leashes that, you know, you just like, they just run and they go and it goes. And they can just keep running until it stops. So I'm just like. I froze for a second because I'm like, I don't know what to do here because, you know, obviously I have to stop and be like, hey, you gotta get your dog away. But also kind of, I couldn't be assertive in the way that I wanted to because I'm like, I'm wearing my Apple shirt. I can't. But thankfully, the. The manager that was. That was working that day, she was. She's awesome. And she saw that I was kind of like, crap. And so she ran over and. And she was like, sir, you can't do that. You gotta move the dog. She's working. Blah, blah. And then I was able to keep working with my customers. That was one. And then. And then the other one was there was a guy that didn't want to work with me because I couldn't see, didn't want to. I was talking about the Apple Watch or something, and I was showing him all these things, and he was kind of being a jerk about it and didn't want to work with me, wanted to work with somebody else. But it is what it is. You can't win them all over. His loss, because I would have showed him some cool stuff.
- [27:46]
A
Do the Apple stores, they don't have any kind of no pets policy.
- [27:50]
B
They do, but we were in a mall, and the mall actually has a no pet policy either, but people don't listen.
- [27:54]
A
Yeah, it drives me crazy.
- [27:56]
B
That's like. That's like everywhere, though. That's a problem. Anybody who's a guide dog user that listens to this or, you know, knows about people that have guide dogs. It's. It's a big problem right now. The two biggest issues are other dogs and people not knowing how to control their dogs around the working dogs and rideshare refusals are the two big issues right now.
- [28:13]
A
No, I get it, man. I don't. I don't understand that either, because. So I. I have a nephew, actually, my wife's nephew, who has down syndrome, and he is petrified of dogs. I mean, every time we come over, we don't even bring our dog. But he's always, like, super, like, cautious. Like, is that dog around here with you guys? He's terrified of dogs. And even it doesn't matter what big or small. And so he's been out before at, like, with his. With his dad at, you know, like, Home Depot and places, and someone will come walking up with a dog and he flips out and he's. He's in his 20s, but he's a big guy, and he's jumping on people trying to get away from the dog. And it's like, just don't bring your dogs into places like that. I'm sorry. Yeah.
- [28:58]
B
I might sound like an old, old.
- [29:00]
A
Boomer here, but come on.
- [29:02]
B
No, I agree. You know, there's countless times where I'll go to any name the store doesn't matter. But you go to the store and then you got these people that have, you know, this little yippee dog that's in the cart, and I'm trying to work with justice or any of my other. Any of the dogs, and it's like the dog's barking its head off at my dog, and my dog's, like, trying to be good and trying to put their dogs. They're like, oh, what? Like, if I was, you know, if you. If we were just walking around and some guy just starts getting up in our face like, hey, you. Hey, you. Like, we're gonna obviously be like, what the hell is up with this guy?
- [29:32]
A
You're right. Yeah. Keep an eye on that guy.
- [29:35]
B
Exactly. So, you know, it's so hard. But yeah, so that was. That was that experience. And then the only other, like, co worker, I guess, experience was I worked at a grocery store when I was in high school, and they had me go collect carts out in the parking lot all the time. I was like, guys, this is not, like, great. And one of the managers had me go out. It was like. And my vision was better back then, but I was also. I'm losing my rods. I'm losing my cones. I have very terrible night vision. It's like nine o'. Clock. @ night, they're like, go. Go and get the carts. It's nine o' clock at night. I go get the carts and I'm going. And then I end up. I don't even know how it happened, but I'm walking and I didn't know there was a car there. And they were backing up and they didn't know I was there, and they ended up backing right into me. Oh, I didn't get hurt. I mean, I. I got. Didn't get injured in a way that was, like, detrimental. I just kind of, like rolled my ankle because I tried to move out of the way. But that was. That was not fun. That was not a good day.
- [30:30]
A
I would have been there, out there like all night long until closing, just kind of blindly searching for cars.
- [30:35]
B
Oh, I totally. Yeah, no, I totally would. There was carts that I'd always. I would only ever go to the carriage corrals. I would never. Like. I was like, there's no point in me trying to Anything else because I'll be out here forever. So I come to Terry Scraps, and if there were any that were solo, just hanging out. So sad. Too bad the next person's gonna get it.
- [30:51]
A
Manager walks out, like, what's this guy doing? There's carts everywhere. It's funny. Well, Drew, I appreciate it, man. So if anybody would like to reach out to you, what's. What's the best way they can do that?
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, the best way. Just. I use LinkedIn a lot, so I will give you my LinkedIn. I think it's. It's the typical LinkedIn.com that's just my name, Andrew E- Crook. But I'll give you the link if you want to put it in the. In the show notes.
- [31:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, I can throw it in there. Awesome. Well, cool. I appreciate it. And guys, listening. Stay tuned. Head over to the Blind Life YouTube channel because at some point in the near future, I'm going to be doing a video about some of the app accessibility for Pluto Paramount. Whatever Drew gives me permission to test, I'm going to do that. And we'll check it out, see how. See, see, We'll. We'll grade his work, see how well he's been doing.
- [31:47]
B
Sounds good. I welcome any and all feedback.
- [31:50]
A
Excellent. Well, don't say that.
- [31:52]
B
You're gonna get inundated. Yeah.
- [31:55]
A
All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for listening. Thank you again, Drew, for. For joining me. If you guys are interested in more working blind episodes interviews, jump over to the YouTube channel and check out the playlist where lots of. Lots of great information, lots of great interviews there, but that is it. Thank you so much, guys. Sam and Drew here with the Blind Life. We will see you next time. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you'd like to connect with me, you can do that through the contact form on my website, theblindlife.net. thank you again and I will see you next time.