The Path to Accessibility and Growth

Get ready to master the platform transition as AXSChat ushers in 2025—the Year of the Snake—with a transformative shift from Twitter to Bluesky. Uncover the reasons behind our departure from Twitter and the impactful introduction of the European Accessibility Act. Join us as Antonio delves into the intricacies of building vibrant communities on Bluesky, a user-centric platform that champions inclusivity and engagement. Learn how we're leveraging this new space to enhance our commitment to accessibility alongside the UAE's dedication to inclusion this year. 

Discover the compelling decision-making journey, with insights from pivotal figures like Neil, Debra and Antonio, and how it reshapes our interactions within the accessibility community. As we embrace Bluesky, likened to rediscovering an old friend, we're fueled by anticipation for a year brimming with challenges and opportunities. Our mission remains steadfast in providing a platform for authentic expression, celebrating unity and progress. As servant leaders, we extend our gratitude to our supporters and look forward to fostering meaningful conversations that embody growth and togetherness in 2025.

Chapters

• 0:00 Transition to Blue Sky
• 15:59 Transition to Blue Sky Platform
• 21:03 2025

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the first Act of 2025. Delighted to be back. It's been a long and restful break, for me at least. I'm still actually living it up in Thailand at the moment, working very remotely. We're recording this at the beginning of January and it's going to be an eventful year, 2025, year of the Snake. It's also going to be a big year for accessibility, because you've got the European Accessibility Act coming in. So if you don't do accessibility, the snake's going to come and bite.

Neil Milliken: 0:40

Yes, but also, seriously, there's going to be some stuff that we're going to be doing with AXS Chat that, again, we for a long time have been running the chat on Twitter. Twitter has become so polarized, so toxic. It's owned by someone that is promoting fascism. It doesn't align with our values. So we've taken the decision that we want to run the chat, part of AXS Chat, which we've been wanting to maintain and been trying to maintain on Twitter X, whatever and we're going to move this to Blues ky.

Neil Milliken: 1:17

So why Blues ky? Well, Bluesky has the same kind of interaction model as Twitter did Old Twitter that is not X which means that we can do our Q&A and we can have interactions and, in fact, a lot of the accessibility community and the access chat community are starting to move to Blue Guy. So, yes, it's a smaller platform, yes, we have less followers, but the interaction and the ability to talk with each other is far greater, because Blue Sky is done in such a way that there isn't a billionaire controlling the algorithm. There's no one there suppressing leads. There's no one there making decisions about what has priority. In fact, it's the users that have priority as to what they see, because you can create your own algorithms on Bluesky.

Neil Milliken: 2:16

So there may be a slight transition period, but I think that, with the way that Twitter has gone, we can't, in all good conscience, stay on a platform where the owner of that platform is using that platform to promote extremism. So how, if you don't use Blues ky, how do you get on there? What do you need to do? How can you connect with it? And maybe, antonio, you've been on the platform the longest, you're our biggest social media expert. Maybe you can tell us a bit more about the platform and ways that you can rebuild, because, frankly, I would reticent to to move because I'd spent years building up my network and my connections and everything else. But it's possible possible.

Antonio Santos: 3:03

Well, I started by looking at people that were already on my network, and the easiest way to find people that I wanted to connect was to look at followers of people that I'm already connected with. So I went to the people that they follow and followed them, and then I discovered some people that have been connected to me through the years. So I think that will be probably an easy step. If you connect with us and look at the people that follow us, you are going to find common connections and I think that will be a start, and we know that our friend, andy Imparato, is already doing Follow Fridays on Blues ky, so it's also a nice way to meet people.

Antonio Santos: 3:52

It's very similar, but allows you a personalization and allows you to create feeds around a specific hashtag. So there are groups out there already who create feeds focused on accessibility. If you are able to search for the hashtag AXSChat, you are able to find a feed. So I think the level of personalization is higher. So I don't think you're going to find a big difference in relation to Twitter, like you did when you were trying Mastodon or you were trying other social networks. I think the similarities are higher.

Antonio Santos: 4:34

Of course, something is almost like you are going to face something in terms of the change that you were not using in the past. Now you have a timeline that is not as algorithm as you used to, so it's more, and sometimes people are not used to that anymore, so you need to get used to that type of timeline again, and then you are able to somehow build your own timeline and within the app you are going to have different sections where you are able to follow different topics different times. You are able to browse across topics, and that gives you a little bit more of freedom to connect with people that you are not connected yet.

Debra Ruh: 5:21

And I want to wish everybody Happy New Year from the United States and prayers always welcome from my beautiful country. As Neil said, when we started getting on, he put his hands over his chest and said Bryce, bryce and Antonio, this is the year of inclusion. The UAE has made this the year of inclusion Last year. In the UAE, every year they have a year of something. Last year was the year of tolerance, and tolerance is a good word, especially in these intense times, but inclusion is a better word. We think so. This is the year of inclusion in the UAE a better word. We think so. This is the year of inclusion in the UAE. So this is our year, this is our year. This is our year.

Debra Ruh: 6:09

So, but I also want to say another reason why we are switching to Blues ky is because a lot of the people that were in our community left Twitter, because of a lot of the reasons why you know Neil talked about already, and so the chat part, which was always so powerful for access chat, it's really been minimized and it's degraded, and we have some beautiful souls that are out there every single week and we appreciate them and we're hoping they will move over to Blues ky with us.

Debra Ruh: 6:39

As Antonio has said, and Neil as well, a lot of the accessibility and disability inclusion field has already moved to Blues ky and is really encouraging us to come over there, because Twitter X it's just become a very political platform, you know it just has, and so it's very easy for conversations to get really muffled and lost in that, and I have a really large following on Twitter.

Debra Ruh: 7:02

But do I really? Because I don't know where the yeah, there's just so much you don't even know what it is anymore. So that's why I personally spend so much time on LinkedIn, because I just want to be about the work. So I'm really glad that we're taking this step, but I want to say to the audience that I'm going to be what I'm a weak link because I don't know what to do. You know Antonio is walking me through it and Niels tell me what to do, but I am committed to it because I really miss our community being able to chat and talk and really discuss these things. It's hard to with all that chatter and confusion over there on X no-transcript.

Antonio Santos: 8:08

ago, Meta is releasing AI profiles on Instagram, Completely auto-generated. So when we expect these platforms to be more human, like their owners are doing the opposite, and I feel that at this stage, if you're looking for a kind of a human-like social network, Blues ky is the place to be and be active. You know it's otherwise. We know that LinkedIn is also a nice place to be.

Neil Milliken: 8:38

I love LinkedIn.

Antonio Santos: 8:40

But it is a different style of network.

Debra Ruh: 8:42

It is, it is and it's not really set up to do it like I mean. It is different style of network. It is, it is and it's not really set up to do it like I mean. It is, but it's not, and also we're limited. Yeah, Because I love.

Neil Milliken: 8:51

LinkedIn. Linkedin certainly has become a place that I spent a lot more time on since Musk took over Twitter X, but it doesn't have the immediacy of the conversation it's a different type of platform right it's not.

Antonio Santos: 9:10

No, no, no, it's not right, right.

Debra Ruh: 9:13

So let's all use LinkedIn.

Neil Milliken: 9:17

I'm not suggesting that we don't use LinkedIn. We could leverage LinkedIn absolutely, but for those immediate conversations that we used to have that were so powerful for a number of years. This is basically the same kind of platform. It works in the same kind of way. It's not ruled by someone else's algorithm. You can create your own algorithms. Is it owned by a billionaire. So it was set up by Jack Dorsey.

Debra Ruh: 9:48

I like.

Neil Milliken: 9:48

Jack, I like Jack. Well, jack's interesting.

Debra Ruh: 9:53

I don't know him, but I've got a good impression of him Interesting.

Neil Milliken: 9:56

I don't know, but I've got a good impression of him Also in that little bubble of San Francisco, people that have gone a little bit weird, because I think the micro doses have got more and more macro over time.

Debra Ruh: 10:08

We need them, we need our doses. We do, we do.

Neil Milliken: 10:14

It's scary, it's scary, it's scary In this particular case, the whole point was to have something that wasn't centrally controlled and that your data would be portable, and so you can configure it. The team that creates Blues ky. There is venture capital investment, but there's a difference between the app and the protocol, because the protocol is the thing that allows you to interact and so you could actually build your own client and interact, and it can actually. They're looking to connect other things like Mastodon and other social networks.

Neil Milliken: 10:51

So it has a great deal of potential and now that it's starting to gain a critical match, I think that you know the conversations are starting to get better. We've mentioned already andy imperato.

Neil Milliken: 11:05

We have another friend, another good friend of that and and that's mike gifford and my love mike pretty much abandoned ex twitter and he's already started an active chat data pack. Because this is the thing they know that people are coming over, they know that they want to interact with their old Twitter groups and followings and so on, so they have these things called starter packs and you can find a starter pack, so you can go search for the access chat starter pack and you'll find a lot of the people that have been engaged with or guests on Access Chat over the years. So it's a good way to get on the platform and find some of your old friends. And then there are other Starter Packs out there.

Neil Milliken: 11:50

You know sociology or you know ancient history or gardening all topics that I follow and enjoy and so the ways to to start building up and actually what you want really at the beginning is to follow loads of people. Because, right, I think the thing that an antonio was alluding to with the algorithm is because you're not being fed stuff by an algorithm. It it feels a bit slow at first. So if you don't follow tons of people, you're not getting fresh new content.

Neil Milliken: 12:22

Okay, good so just go out there, follow loads of people. Eventually, if you're posting good stuff, they're going to follow you back. And then there is this other thing which is a really useful thing, and it's Guy Follower Brute. And Guy Follower Brute has actually been developed by a hobby developer and it allows you to log into Twitter, find your followers, and it then tries to examine and see whether or not there are accounts that look like there are matches on Blues ky, and then you can auto-follow them. Now it can be a bit of a and miss, because if someone has a common name, it might um, it might pick the wrong one because the username might be the same. So I'm following the wrong caroline katie, because caroline katie, founder of valuable 500 I was following her on twitter.

Neil Milliken: 13:18

Yeah, he's not that yet there onB lues ky. So so I'm following the wrong one, because I was a little lazy when it came to sense checking 3 000 different accounts, um, and I let it slide. But hey, I've made a new friend called caroline cassey absolutely um, I think, I think that's's another really useful tool so that you can start really starting to get value again. So it's not necessarily all about the numbers in terms of vanity metrics.

Debra Ruh: 13:47

I agree.

Neil Milliken: 13:48

You don't need thousands and thousands of followers to have a good experience, but you do need to follow enough people that are hosting for it to be valuable. But what we are seeing as well is that the news is starting to break on the platform as well, like it used to do on twitter previously. So when there were important events happening over the christmas period, they were actually starting to break on Blues ky Network. So I'm pretty excited about the fact that we're going to see that kind of powerful thing because, again, that starts driving good quality content and informational accounts onto the platform as well.

Antonio Santos: 14:34

And they created a it's still in beta. They created a it's still in beta. They created a trends dashboard where you're able to go and look for trends. So they are looking into that. So we are able to follow what is trending and I'm sure they will extend that that you can follow if you want. You can check the trends happening in different parts of the world.

Antonio Santos: 14:55

And also something that I spotted at the end of last year is that many organizations were organizing events. You were able to see some people already trying to bring that kind of events dreams events happening to Blue sky where they were able to host conversations. There was a very interesting conversation, a very interesting conference in Australia and they were using Blues ky in order to share what is happening at that developer conference. So in this case, I've actually seen a lot of people from Australia very committed to the platform and tried to bring that the things that we actually missed, because Twitter was a great place to find ongoing news about conferences and we bring that the things that we actually missed, because Twitter was a great place to find ongoing news about conferences and we lost that and hopefully we're able to see that knowledge and information now on Blue Sky.

Debra Ruh: 15:46

All right. So we're going to stop talking about Blue sky now. We're not going to make this a Blues ky commercial, but what we're going to say is we are going to make sure that our community knows how to join us on Blue sky. And so, as I said, I signed up for Blues ky right away and then I didn't use it. It was the same way. We also took time to get to the right platform because I was nagging right away. I was nagging saying let's leave x, let's leave twitter, let's, and they're no. And so we took the time to see which platform would play out and what we found. After a lot of investigation and for friends like Mike Gifford, we realized and Antonio was an important part of the decision too but we realized this was the right thing to do. So I know a lot of our audience doesn't do the chat anyway. You're following us on a podcast or the video, and we're very grateful for that. You're following us on a podcast or the video, and we're very grateful for that. We're also very grateful for Amazon MyClearText for sponsoring us. But everything's going to be the same, except we're just going to do our chat on Blue Sky and we're going to go out into our website, give us time. This is volunteer. We're all volunteers here but we'll go out and we'll make sure that it's reflected on the website and we'll tell you on the website some of the tools we're figuring out Because we want you also to be successful there. We understand we must convene. We know that Access Chat is what we're in our 11th year now. So our goal is continuing to use these conversations in a way to have positive change for the world. That's why we're making these changes.

Debra Ruh: 17:18

But if anyone listening to this is concerned about this change and you want some help, you know, just send us a little message. We will definitely help you. I'll send the message to Antonio. No, you can send it to any of us and if I don't know it or Neil doesn't know it, we'll ask Antonio or Mike. As we transition you know it used to be. We were the largest tweet chat on Twitter for years. So we just we've lost a lot of the audience during the chat. That's why we're going to move over to Blue Skies. But I'll be learning it along with you. We'll be. We'll continue to put stuff out on Twitter so that people know we're making the shift. So we're excited and I'm a little like, oh gosh, I got to learn this now. But that's okay, we're going to learn it together, right guys?

Neil Milliken: 18:05

yeah, absolutely. Um, you know you don't have to interact with us, but but being part of the community has always been part of the joy, part of the learning.

Neil Milliken: 18:16

So the guests that we've had, the hundreds of guests, that we've had over the last decade have been a key part of my learning, my journey. Uh, it's been really an important part of my professional and personal development. It's been a privilege to meet so many people, but also the people that then participate in the chats have been a huge part of my journey. I've made loads of friends over the years, loads of connections. So social media is an important part and tool for the disability community to organize and get stuff done, share ideas, share best practice and really connect. And that connection was weakened over the last couple of years. We needed to, as Deborah says, sort of evaluating where we wanted to go, and it wasn't obvious because there were a lot of candidates in the beginning, but really it becoming clear which way things are going. There's a critical mess within a particular platform and we're going to try making it better Rekindle that excitement.

Neil Milliken: 19:32

That's definitely there, and I think there is some excitement amongst the people that are on the platform. So, as Debra said it's not an advert. It's not an advert for the particular platform? We don't know yet, but it's absolutely no, but it is, I think, time for us to explore that particular avenue, because we have to close the door, after a decade, on the history of where we held our cats previously, because of what's gone on on that platform.

Debra Ruh: 20:05

I think that, because that's what I'm finding is I'm starting to play with it. Those of you that were on Twitter and love Twitter you're going to like Blues ky and you can do the same thing on Blues ky we used to do on Twitter. If you want to follow people that are involved with accessibility, go and follow Antonio and look and see who he's following. Go and follow Neil. Go and follow me, even though I'm not doing it yet, but I'm working on it. I mean, I am out there. Debra Rue, we can follow by doing a lot of the same things we did on Twitter. I mean, so that part feels almost like we'll get to come home, and I know you've been doing it for the last couple of weeks. Neil, that's what you said when you first got on.

Neil Milliken: 20:48

You were like wow it's sort of fun being out there again. Yeah, absolutely it is. It feels kind of familiar.

Debra Ruh: 20:54

Yeah, a little bit, I like that, I like that.

Neil Milliken: 20:57

Kind of familiar and like rediscovering an old friend.

Antonio Santos: 21:02

Yeah.

Neil Milliken: 21:02

Yeah, absolutely so. Look, I think, here to 2025, whatever it may bring, it's going to be an eventful year for sure. We know that. Buckle up, folks and enjoy the ride.

Debra Ruh: 21:17

Yeah, a lot of good's going to happen too, when a lot of bad happens, a lot of good happens, and we're the servant leaders, we're all, all of us, this community. We're about moving forward, so we got this Absolutely.

Neil Milliken: 21:30

We're here to give people a voice and to keep that community together. Thanks to our friends and our sponsors, amazon and MyClearTex, for supporting us and keeping us accessible. And here's to 2025. Happy New Year, everyone.

Debra Ruh: 21:51

Happy New Year.