How a Facebook message became a standard.

I still find it tricky to be in the conversation about Audio Description, a service created by blind people for blind people, and now Kevin's Way makes that conversation even trickier. My bias as a sighted person slowly disintegrates with every conversation, as I learn more. Countless conversations with blind and sighted people about Kevin's Way have given me a different, more nuanced perspective each time.

Kevin started that connection, and those conversations. Every time I've mentioned my fear of using his name in a way that might be construed as manipulative or disingenuous, or worse, inspiration porn, I'm reminded of why his name carries such weight in this work. Our name, Kevin's Way, honors his legacy. It honors our relationship too. He was my anchor, my mentor, and my friend, and I loved him. He'd smile and shake his head hearing me say that, I'm sure, then turn on some Casey Kasem top 40, knowing we'd share more texts, calls, and conversations about all of it.

Ain't Nothing Gonna Hold Him Back

Kevin's mother told me about the morning his elementary school bus never showed, and she had to take him on the Atlanta commuter train. She held his hand as they boarded and sat next to him. If he'd ever had eyes, he would have rolled them.

At the closest stop to the school, he stood up.

"Kevin, you want me to take you to school?"

He took out his cane, smiled, and shook his head.

"Mother, you can stay on."

He walked off the train and down the sidewalk. She followed quietly, concerned for his safety, but couldn't resist. Kevin walked, and she walked, stopping at every red light on the way to the school. She still laughs recalling him at five years old, running down the stairs to his ham and cheese sandwich while she took her time. That was how he did things. He could get around.

At the school, the teacher opened the door for him.

"Kevin, I see your mother!" "Yeah, I know. I smelled her cologne."

He got around so well it made her feel good he was doing things on his own. She couldn't baby him. She let him play with other kids. He fell down and got back up. Everyone told her she let him do too much.

Ain't nothing gonna hold him back.Kevin's mother

As an adult, he traveled from Atlanta to Jackson on his own to visit friends, coming and going, trying to keep most of it from his mother. He didn't want her to worry. A year before he died, she knew something was wrong. He was having problems. The one thing that had started to hold him back: his ankles had begun to swell, and he needed to get that checked.

A Facebook Message

About two years before he died, Kevin reached me through a Facebook private message:

"I am constantly spreading the word about how blind people watch movies, and I love your work on that. If there's ever anything that I can do to help with the cause, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you again for everything that you do." Kevin Thompson, in his first message to Roy

My Audio Description performance wasn't known by many, and I was reaching out wherever I could, talking about the work. Here was someone responding. Not a bot. He was real, and it felt great to connect with someone who cared about the same thing I did.

I offered to pass suggestions and feedback along to coworkers. He wrote that he'd heard my voice hundreds of times over the last few seasons and was curious about the whole process. As the exchanges grew longer, we talked about dating, and he mentioned being stood up.

"I don't know if he walked out because I was blind, too tall, black, or gay, and he needed to run back into the closet."

A lot of times, when he met sighted people, it didn't go well.

"Today, a waitress went up to my table and meekly said, 'Knock, knock.' I just wanted to order a burger. Was I supposed to say, 'Who's there?'"

Another time, walking down the street, a stranger grabbed his shoulder without asking and shouted, "I'm a Christian, not a crook!" Almost weekly he had incidents with Uber drivers standing him up or grilling him about his blindness. Sometimes people on the bus would hold his hand and pray over him so he could get his sight back. He'd laugh about it sometimes. Other times I could almost hear him shake his head.

He heard my work stories, and I shared my own challenges. He gave feedback and a welcome, listening ear. His role went from audience to advocate, and he started sharing more with me too.

A Shorthand for Quality

We started a Facebook group together, and he led it with quiet leadership. I'd run ideas by him, and he'd tell me what worked and what didn't. We talked about how some shows' Audio Description worked and why others fell apart. Those conversations ran hours long. We started finding similarities, some core elements, and that gave us a shorthand that made our conversations easier.

"Ugh, Roy, the writing. Why are there so many prepositions together in that sentence? It takes forever."

"Kevin, what do you think about that performance?" "I didn't. I was totally into the story." "Got it. The way she read the script, you were immersed in the story." "YES!"

"Roy, if I have to turn my volume up and down any more times in this show..." "Kevin, I know, that show needs a sound engineer."

Some nights it went the other way.

"Kevin! Did you hear the Audio Description on that new show?"

A long pause. "Nooooooo," in a guttural, do-not-mess-with-me tone, his fists clenching his phone.

We talked about how movies should carry that same quality from theater to streaming. "YES!" he'd shout, and turn on some Annie Lennox.

Connecting the Audience to the Industry

We talked about what it would take to connect Audio Description audiences with the entertainment industry directly.

"An awards show! Or Oscars for Audio Description! What about the Emmys, Roy, can you do that? I'll come to the parties. Have Snapple and Gummi Bears at your house, please."

What could we do to start connecting people? What organizations could we reach, and how could they work together? I found myself pacing my room with a headset on more often, our shared energy pulsing between the long distance connection. We kept talking on our unlimited phone plans, our text messages with no character limit, and even more messages after that.

When I read those Facebook messages now, I scroll vertically and it takes me back in time, the scroll bar shrinking, the beginning never quite seeming to reach the top. My blue message blocks and his white ones, getting longer and wider the longer we talked.

2020

His mother said that on Sunday mornings he played his music. That was his time, and she didn't mess with him. She said she was sad when she found him.

I found out on Facebook, where we'd met. Several of his close friends sent me private messages asking to connect. I was so used to reaching him whenever I had something important to share that my first thought was to call him and tell him I was sorry.

Naming What We Were Building

I'd spent months working on a business that would address the challenges we'd spent years talking about, and I was close to announcing it in a keynote for the American Council of the Blind. I couldn't come up with a name for it. I thought about combining his Juneteenth birthday and his initials, but it sounded like a license plate.

That's when my business advisor offered a simple placeholder title, one that told the story of what the business would be. He suggested that blind people would eventually come up with the best name themselves.

So the name Kevin's Way, as a placeholder, would work for now. Years later, nobody has needed to replace it, because the name keeps being true.

Listen to Kevin's interview on The ADNA's podcast series, or get in touch to be part of shaping the standard.