Q&A: 6 Questions with Austin Myers
Austin Myers is a Communications Coordinator at the Kansas University Center on Disabilities whose work is driven by thinking about people with disabilities who ultimately benefit from it.
Q: Tell us about your role at the Life Span Institute.
I am a Communications Coordinator at the KU Center on Disabilities and I’m part of the State of the States in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities project. I support my teams’ information dissemination efforts by producing products such as webpages, videos, infographics, interactive course modules, and logos. I also support the team in making sure our dissemination products are accessible to the disability community. I also co-lead the KUCD Plain Language Committee and starting this year, I am a supervisor to a student employee.
Q: What are you most proud of in your work?
I like seeing how my work is used to not only to support people with disabilities in living a self-determined and fulfilling life, but inform others about the disability community and bring awareness to certain issues we face. I tell everyone else that I love working here as opposed to working in a major studio primarily because of that eye-opening impact our work has on the disability community. I feel like I’m making a much bigger difference here more than simply rigging or animating a character walking across the screen for some huge production (though occasionally, I do that in some of my video work here).
Q: What prepared you to do this work?
I come from a background of animation and graphic design. I studied those throughout high school and college (I have an associate’s and bachelor’s degree in animation). Concurrently, I built up my career by taking on freelance commissions and supporting my loved ones in media projects they had. Adding to the latter, two of my best friends were actually my first clients; one of them I met through them commissioning me for a project back in late 2014.
Q: What is unexpected or misunderstood about what you do?
Creating these works is NOT a simple and quick process. While yes, some products can be made more quickly than others, the more complex stuff cannot simply be done in a day. It always takes a careful series of drafts and feedback before we reach the final product. When working on the more complex products, I always advise my colleagues to give us at least two weeks of lead time. That way we can take some time to form it into a product that not only looks amazing and conveys its intended message, but it is also clean, in either plain language or Easy Read, and is accessible.
Q: Who do you hope is helped through your work?
The disability community of course, especially the people in my life that I keep in mind while doing my work on a daily basis. As a self-advocate myself, I hope my work allows them to achieve the fulfilling, self-determined life they deserve and inform the community at large of our struggles and what we need. In particular, there are three people in my life that I keep in mind when I push through my work and help in this fight. Giving up on that would be like giving up on them. One of those people is actually the very reason I am sitting here, as he helped get my foot in the door and opened my eyes to the greater disability community when I was processing my autism diagnosis when I was 18. If I gave up that fight, it would be a slap in the face to that friend who opened my eyes in the first place.
Q: Who are you when you’re at home?
I like to be as calm and relaxed as I am at work. I’m always either curled up on the couch drawing on my Android tablet, reading, watching anime, gaming, or playing with my adorable Border Aussie, Redd.