“I Identify as Blind”: Lachi on Disability Language, Identity, and Why Words Matter in Schools ~ 1340

Lachi: The disabled population are folks who just kinda tick the box, right? For statistical purposes, they, quote-unquote, “happen to have a disability.” Folks who are part of the disability community view their disability through a lens of identity, solidarity, advocacy, et cetera, and come together to build community, build awareness, work on advocacy, et cetera, et cetera.

And so I was shy, and I was ashamed — ashamed is a big one — and I just seemed like I couldn’t get anything right. Today, I am a social butterfly. I am not shy at all. You couldn’t pay me to shut up. And I am super confident, very successful, have a really great music career, a great speaking career, have worked with household names, have toured the world, done stuff with the Black Eyed Peas and Black Caviar and all these folks. But I’m still blind and neurodivergent.

So obviously being blind and neurodivergent wasn’t the issue, right?

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about words — the ones we use to talk about disability and the ones we’ve been taught to hide behind. My guest opens every show the same way. She tells the audience she’s a Black woman with cornrows and that she identifies as blind. That last part gets some people worked up. It’s also the title of her new book.

Lachi is a world-touring recording artist and producer, a Grammy-nominated Recording Academy National Trustee, host of the PBS series Renegades, and founder of RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. So how does a kid who went to 10 schools, got detention for doodling, and was taught to mask everything end up putting her blindness front and center on every stage she walks?

We get into the difference between the disability community and the disabled population, why she’s done with the word special, and the lenses we all use, sometimes without realizing it, when we look at disability. Plus, she tells me what it takes to narrate your own audiobook, a process that apparently starts with tea and ends with wine.

Before we meet our guest, I wanna tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K–12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive. All right, after a quick break, it’s time to think inclusive with Lachi. Catch you on the other side.

Lachi, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Lachi: Hello, hello. Great to be here.

Tim Villegas: It’s very nice to meet you. I started your book, I Identify as Blind.

Lachi: Amazing.

Tim Villegas: And you do the audiobook version. Is that correct?

Lachi: I do. It sounds like you — I, yes, it is me. It is me. I voiced the audiobook, and I gotta say, that was a really, really fun process. Slightly grueling, but you start with tea in the morning, and then you wind down with wine in the evenings, and you get it done.

Tim Villegas: No doubt, no doubt. I can imagine how difficult that is, to read your book. And it takes so long. When I’m doing post-production on my episode, sometimes I’ll repeat myself four or five times before I’m like, “Okay, I finally get that.” And so doing a book — unbelievable.

Lachi: Because if you think about it, when you do a post on TikTok or Instagram, and you agonized over it, and you keep erasing something and shifting it — so imagine doing that for 356 pages, over the course of a year, and then you have a million editors, and you have millions of rounds of editing. And then now you have to read it.

Tim Villegas: Exactly.

Lachi: You have to read it. Exactly. And so it’s more editing. But you know what it shows? It shows that I must actually really be cool with all the edits. I’m done. There’s no more editing, ’cause I read it myself in front of the world. So I guess I’m good with it.

Tim Villegas: Right. And I personally love when the authors read the book. And so I wanna talk a little bit about the book, and then also the title, I Identify as Blind, because that’s something in the book that you say is a very intentional thing that you say. So when you use that language, what are you claiming for yourself?

Lachi: You know, it’s so interesting. When I was young, I was super shy, quiet, and ashamed, and a lot of it was because I was legally blind. I was neurodivergent. We didn’t have the word neurodivergent yet, so I just had all sorts of things going on that were tied to my blindness.

And so I was shy, and I was ashamed — ashamed is a big one — and I just seemed like I couldn’t get anything right. Today, I am a social butterfly. I am not shy at all. You couldn’t pay me to shut up. And I am super confident, very successful, have a really great music career, a great speaking career, have worked with household names, have toured the world, done stuff with the Black Eyed Peas and Black Caviar and all these folks. But I’m still blind and neurodivergent.

So obviously being blind and neurodivergent wasn’t the issue, right? And so I began to recognize that my blindness is one of the reasons I’m driven, determined, and focused — once it’s accommodated. And so I would open my shows saying, “Hey, I’m Lachi. I am a proud woman. I’m proud of my African heritage, and I’m a proud blind — I am blind, and it all leads to…” And my manager was like, “Okay, that takes too long. Just make it short.” And I said, “You know what? My name is Lachi. I’m a Black woman with cornrows, and I identify as blind.” And it’s putting in my self-description as well, for any blind folks in the audience.

So I say, my name’s Lachi, I’m a Black woman with cornrows, I identify as blind. And I want to stand on that identity, because I feel like we’re all masking in some way. And I think we’re all masking ’cause we’re just afraid to be too much or too different, or seen as weak or whatever. We’re afraid of being pathologized.

And I think it’s just because we don’t know how to talk about it. Whenever we talk about either disability or neurodivergence — or just differences in general — people think to talk about it in a charity way or a grievance way or a paperwork way, as opposed to a fun way.

And so I figure, you can be pathologized for being a woman. You can be pathologized for being gay, being a person of color, for being too short, for being too tall, for being too big, right? You can be pathologized for anything. And so I figure I wanna stand on my disability identity because it essentially says, “Screw your pathologizing. Your pathology kryptonite doesn’t work on me.” And so I just put my blindness front and center, and I say, “I identify as blind.” Also, it pisses people off. The title gets people upset for some reason.

Tim Villegas: You don’t say. You’re saying something, especially on the internet, that pisses people off. You don’t say.

Lachi: Yeah. Yeah. Everyone’s like, “Oh, I identify as a basketball,” or, “You can’t identify as blind. It’s a medical condition.” And I’m like, listen, my identity includes all parts of myself, even the parts that you’re uncomfortable with, and that’s why I say I identify as blind.

Tim Villegas: I like it. I like it. It is provocative in a way, but it also is true. It’s not a thing that you’re just saying to be provocative.

Lachi: It’s a true statement. Yeah. It’s truly part of my identity. I’m legally blind. I am on a path from low vision to no vision. I have a very teeny, minuscule amount left, and I walk down the streets of New York and I’m like, “Ugh, just take the rest. What’s going on here?” But I have to say, it’s that liberation of no longer having to hold on to that or be afraid of it. That’s the point of the book.

Tim Villegas: Sure. Yeah, in the book you talk about waking up with even lower vision than you already had. And I’m wondering — we have a lot of educators that listen, K–12, special education teachers, general education teachers, principals. And a lot of times, I don’t know if educators know how to talk about it. They don’t have the language: visual impairment, blind, low vision, no vision, all of these things, right? Because they just don’t have language for it. And I’m wondering, do you feel comfortable talking with us about your experience in school?

Lachi: Let’s educate the educators. Yeah. Yeah. I’m here for it.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Lachi: First, let me preface this by saying, actually right now I’m working on a kids album that centers disability and neurodivergence, set to bops, because everything she does is dope. But I recognize this problem, because even when I was seven, eight years old, first and foremost, my parents didn’t have anything to put at the top of my vision board to say, “You go chase your dreams of wanting to be an entertainer.” My teachers didn’t have it, my friends didn’t have it, and then I didn’t have it to encourage even my own self.

And so I recognize that there is a gap between lived-experience educators — so folks with disabilities who can educate — and then just educators, who teach the general public. And I say one of the best ways to learn about how to speak about disability, how to do disability, how to this and that about disability, neurodivergence, chronic conditions, mental health conditions, the whole gamut, is to speak to someone who is part of the disability community, speak to someone who has the lived experience of disability.

And I just wanna briefly say what disability community means. It doesn’t mean any old body with a disability, right? A lot of people use the blanket term disability community to mean anyone with a disability. But the truth of the matter is, there’s a difference between the disability community and the disabled population.

The disabled population are folks who just kinda tick the box, right? For statistical purposes, they, quote-unquote, “happen to have a disability.” Folks who are part of the disability community view their disability through a lens of identity, solidarity, advocacy, et cetera, and come together to build community, build awareness, work on advocacy, et cetera, et cetera. These are folks who generally have disability pride, are generally on top of it when it comes to disability culture and disability language.

So you wanna deal with someone within the disability community, not just Frank at work who has a limb difference, because he may not be educated, and so he may actually give you bad guidance. He may actually give you harmful guidance that is unintentionally wrapped in internalized ableism. So that’s number one.

Number two, when thinking about how to talk to someone with a disability, I always say the best way to be an ally, and not do it from a place of automatic pedantism, is to kinda recognize where you sit on the disability identity spectrum. And now, I know folks will be like, “I’m not disabled, I’m not neurodivergent,” or, “I don’t have a mental or chronic condition, so I don’t sit on it. So how do I do it as an outsider?” Now, this is a Lachi view, but I believe everybody lives on the disability identity spectrum, and the neurodivergent spectrum, even if you don’t identify as disabled.

And here’s why. Because disability includes so many things — everything from chronic back and chronic joint pains, to asthma, to diabetes, to general anxiety or social anxiety, to seasonal depression, to light sensitivity, to temporary situations like breaking your arm, even for just a sec, right? All of these put you on the disability identity spectrum, and I only mentioned six things.

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Lachi: And so this is what I mean by everyone. And I don’t just mean, oh, when you’re an older person, or you’ve got a cousin who — I mean you. And once you figure out where you sit on the disability identity spectrum, then you truly can begin to empathize.

Nobody would wanna be spoken to like a baby when they’re literally in their 20s. If someone is blind, they don’t wanna be yelled at. And honestly, if someone’s deaf, they don’t wanna be yelled at either. We don’t need to yell.

Other things, too, when we talk about language — it’s very important. What we need to make sure that we always implement is treating and speaking to folks with dignity. Offering them dignity, because everybody wants dignity. So when you pedantize and when you patronize, you are not offering someone dignity.

And if there’s one thing I’ve found in singing and performing for younger folks, right — so let’s say people from K through 12, K through 8, right?

Tim Villegas: Sure, yeah.

Lachi: A lot of times folks — and teachers are getting better at this — but a lot of times folks don’t talk to younger folks as if they deserve dignity, right? ‘Cause they’re like, “Oh, you’re young. Hurry up, and when you grow up, then we’re both adults and we can talk to each other with dignity and respect.” And it’s like, no, you should be talking to a fucking — oops — somebody who is—

Tim Villegas: We’ll either bleep that or we will leave it in and, you know—

Lachi: Let’s leave it in. Roll with the punches. We’re all adults here. Let’s have some wine.

Tim Villegas: That’s right.

Lachi: No, but I feel like we need to be speaking even to our young folks with dignity, and treating folks with autonomy.

So here are some examples. First and foremost, the disability community has devoided itself of the term differently abled, because it is patronizing, it is othering, and there’s nothing different about my abilities, so why are we saying differently abled? Everyone’s differently abled. Some people can sing, some people can dance.

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Lachi: And so we look at the term differently abled as a euphemism, and we see nothing wrong with disability that needs to be euphemized. Words like handicapable — that’s another euphemism. We don’t say handicapped. That is like — what’s it called when the term doesn’t — it’s like a dead term?

Tim Villegas: Archaic?

Lachi: Yes. It is becoming an archaic term. We don’t say that anymore. We’ll say accessible bathroom or accessible parking. Handicapped just automatically means deficit, and we don’t see disability as deficit. We just see it as part of who we are. We’ve decided we wanna own and claim the word disability.

And then lastly, special. Oh, girl, don’t play with me. I’m so done with this term. Special needs. So first and foremost, I have special needs, but they’re in the bedroom, DMs open, @lachimusic. But the truth is that we all have our individual needs. No one’s needs are more special than anyone else’s, and so we don’t like the term special. We don’t like the term special education either, and we’re noticing that some folks are actually changing the name, the term, to inclusive education or whatever. Because at the end of the day, the education that you’re giving to someone with a disability, even if it’s an intellectual disability, et cetera, it’s not special. It’s just the way you need to teach them individually.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes.

Lachi: So we’re against the term special. I was talking to somebody about the BAFTAs. The BAFTAs — everybody’s talking about the BAFTAs. And they were like, “Lachi, you’re disabled and you’re Black. Say something about the BAFTAs.” And I was like, first and foremost, I don’t have Tourette’s, so I didn’t wanna really chime in.

But one thing I will say is that I did wanna make sure that the gentleman acknowledged his colleagues that he made feel uncomfortable. Because even though you have a disability where you do something involuntarily, you still can recognize the harm that your involuntary action can do, right? For me, the way I like to put it — if I bump into someone and I’m blind and I spill their coffee, I’m gonna be like, “Oh, shoot, my bad. Can I get you another one?” And I can explain, “I’m blind. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” And then I’m recognizing their humanity, in hopes that they’ll recognize mine, right?

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Lachi: And so this is why I don’t like the term special, because then people just, they’re like, “Oh, but he’s disabled. Oh, but he’s disabled.” And I’m like, we are trying to fight against that — that “Oh, but he’s disabled.” No, we all have needs. We’re all trying to traverse this world interdependently.

And I don’t want you to feel like helping me is charity and that you deserve some sort of medal. We should both be helping each other traverse this difficult world, because we were invited to this banquet, and we need to have a good time.

Tim Villegas: Right. Wouldn’t a lot of our problems just be solved if we all really saw each other as humans, right? Just plain old humans who are worthy of dignity and respect.

Lachi: Worthy of dignity and respect. But we also do need to recognize that people do come in different bodies and different minds and different colors and genders, and recognize that while it would be so great if we were just all dropped into the world right now and just started making it work — that would be great. But we do need to recognize the harmful history that has happened for people of color or immigrants or folks with disabilities.

There’s a lot of historic BS for people with disabilities that a lot of folks don’t know, like the ugly laws, right? And laws where folks couldn’t even go outside because of their disability, or vote because of their disability. There’s still a lot of voter suppression with folks with disabilities just because of inaccess. So while we need to recognize everybody as humans, we also need to recognize everyone’s different needs.

Tim Villegas: When you were going to school — think about your K–12 experience — did you feel like you were being accommodated, included? What was your experience? And again, if you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s fine, but I just wanted to throw that question out there.

Lachi: I feel like folks were woefully underprepared for what to do with me, for two reasons. A, when I was super young, one of the first schools I went to was an IDD school, right? I was super quiet. I didn’t speak. I stimmed pretty heavily as well, which is moving or humming to kinda self-soothe, that a lot of kids will do.

I had some drastic ADHD, and I could not pay attention. And it wasn’t like I was disruptive, but I just was daydreaming, or I couldn’t see the board anyway, so whatever — I have no clue what’s going on. And I wafted through a lot of my very early years, and the teachers didn’t really know what to do. I would often get in trouble for not paying attention in class. I’d have to stay after. I’d even been sent to detention because I would doodle all the time.

And then — oh, one of the big things that turned around for me was my mom got me into music. And then I would go to my piano to really parse things out. Be like, “Okay, me and the piano get to argue,” and, “Oh, that’s why this and that.” So I was able to express myself through music and then really understand the world around me because of my engagement with music. And then I was also very much a math whiz. I’m still a weird math whiz.

And as I got older though, the discussion of inclusion or exclusion starts to go beyond access, right? So it’s about, do I have the tools I need to even participate in the first place? And then secondarily, am I able to socialize with folks my own age? Am I able to be believed if I talk about something?

I was watching a reel the other day, and this woman was saying, “The most oppressed people are kids, because they have the least rights, they have the least voice, and oftentimes when they speak up, they aren’t believed.” And I was like, wow.

Tim Villegas: Interesting. Yeah.

Lachi: What a way to really look at it. And it’s the truth, because when she was saying that, I went back into my head of me as a child, and I was like, “Yeah, I was never heard,” right? So I was very often never heard, so I would just be quiet and deal with it.

And while that’s not good, today I am like a chameleon, right? So I am very adaptable, very changeable. I went to 10 schools from K through 12.

Tim Villegas: Wow.

Lachi: So, very adaptable, very “let me just do what I gotta do.” And that’s very useful today, especially as somebody who’s completely losing my vision, to be able to just be adaptable real quick.

But a kid shouldn’t have to not understand. A kid should understand. And I just never understood, and I don’t feel like I was ever understood. And that is the thing that I really had to deal with.

I was taught to mask. I was told to mask, because any of the things I was doing was disruptive, or keeping me behind, or other kids don’t do that. And so I wasn’t able to really lean in to what is now the best parts of myself — which is, my ADHD is the reason I’m doing the one million things I’m doing, right? My OCDs, which are basically, sometimes I can find myself in a loop for a long time and not even recognize I’m in it, right? And so the accommodations that I’ve put together to help me with my OCD have now become the reason why I’m able to do all of the one million things.

The accommodations I use for my blindness — which are my screen readers, my ZoomText, my cane — all of those things have allowed me to have these lived experiences, allowed me to be driven, allowed me to be all of these things. But I was taught to mask all of them throughout school, and honestly throughout college and my first couple of jobs, until I quit and said, “I just wanna be me.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah.

Lachi: And so I always wanna encourage folks to allow kids to be able to talk about it in an empathetic way, to talk about their differences, to talk about the things that they’re concerned about. And to answer them honestly, as honest as you can for a young mind, because kids can sniff out when you’re gaslighting them. You know what kids are? Kids are like future adults.

Tim Villegas: They quite literally are, but yes.

Lachi: So they can tell when they’re being gaslit. They can tell when they’re being spoken down to, and then they react to it.

I was just talking to some kid that was like — God, how old was this kid? Six? And he says he wants to be a doctor. And I said, “Why?” And he said the reason, and then we kept going back and forth, and eventually it was because, “Honestly, my mom is a doctor, so I wanna be a doctor, but actually, I actually really like to talk to people.” And I’m like, “There’s other professions where you can really talk to people, even in the medical field.”

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Lachi: And so I’m having this conversation — this is a six-year-old I’m talking to. And they get it. I had a half-hour-long conversation with this kid. So anyway.

Tim Villegas: That’s so good. That’s so good. Yeah, I think I’m a little jealous of kids who just say whatever’s on top of their mind, because — you talk about masking, right? I think that I have learned through various situations, just being me, that you can get in trouble or punished for saying whatever’s on your mind, right? And so it gets conditioned out of you. But it’s like that first reaction to something, whether it’s surprise or anger or disgust or whatever it is — sometimes I think, man, I need to let that out more in my day-to-day interactions, ’cause that is so authentic and real. That’s a weird tangent, just reflecting on what you’re saying.

Lachi: No, you’re right. I say it often when I talk about the fact that I was shy and ashamed, and I was blind, and then now I’m not shy and ashamed, and I’m still blind. The whole thing is, it’s not the condition, it’s the conditioning, right?

Everybody has internalized ableism, internalized shame, internalized inferiority complex, but we’re not born with it. It’s not wired into us. We’re taught it. We’re taught to feel ashamed. We’re taught to have internalized ableism and feel like, “Oh, I’m not good enough, so I need to trip the rat beside me in this rat race in order to get ahead,” right? “Or pull down the other crabs in this bucket in order to get ahead.” Instead of, A, who put us in this bucket? Why are we in a bucket? Let’s tear down this bucket. And B, why the heck are we racing? Why aren’t we just hanging out and having a picnic? So it’s really about reframing and no longer just being a victim of the systems that were handed down to us by the people before, ’cause they didn’t know what they were doing either.

Tim Villegas: So true. Oh my gosh, yeah. I am interested in your path to being a musician. So you said that music was something that you started when you were young. When did you know you wanted to pursue this as a profession?

Lachi: Yeah, music — oh, okay. So this is so funny. I recently went back to my old diary, as part of this exercise for writing the book. And when I was eight, I knew that I wanted to be a big-time musician. I wanted to have a music studio in Manhattan, and I wanted to be a big, fancy published author by a major publisher. Even at eight, I knew the concept of a major publisher. And I got — to be honest, after publishing this book, boom, I actually accomplished all three.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, you did.

Lachi: So I’m a big fancy musician. I have a studio in Manhattan. I just had Mandy Harvey in here, who’s like an America’s Got Talent finalist, and she’s deaf. So I had a blind girl producing a deaf woman in my studio.

Tim Villegas: That’s amazing.

Lachi: And now I have this publishing deal. And I say that because I knew I wanted to do it at eight years old. But when I told people I wanted to, people were like, “What are you gonna do? Be the first? Be the first Black blind whatever?”

And I started going on these paths of, okay, I gotta get a job. Like, I gotta go to law. And my parents, they are Nigerian immigrants, right? So we lived in a very immigrant household. Even though we were born here, they really brought the customs here. So we were very much raised on education: “Go be a doctor or a lawyer, or you don’t get dinner.” So music wasn’t really celebrated in the house as a profession, but everybody was supportive of the fact that I loved music. And I was always the black sheep.

So, anyway, go to school. My first job out of college is working for the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is like a crazy job to get.

Tim Villegas: Interesting. Okay.

Lachi: Yeah. However, it’s not a faint-of-heart, “Oh, and then I’m just gonna do weekend warrior band stuff.” No, once you work for this job, this is your life. And when working in a position like that, they also have your life figured out. So they’re like, “Oh, you’re gonna do this for two years, and then you’ll get this raise, and then you’ll do this for another two years, and then you’ll get this raise.” And so even only a year and a half in, I’m like, “I see the rest of my life already.” And I’m like, “Wait, this isn’t what I want.”

And even at that time, again, I’m still masking, ’cause I’m low vision. I have ADHD. I’m a woman. I’m a Black woman, and I didn’t have terms like ableism. You know what I mean? And so I knew things were weird and wrong, and I didn’t know what, ’cause I didn’t have the words. I remember at one time my boss asked me if I was getting an attitude, and I hadn’t even said a word for four months or whatever, while I was working there.

Tim Villegas: Wow.

Lachi: So I knew something was weird. So I remember I thought to myself, “If life is gonna suck anyway, I may as well be a starving artist.”

Tim Villegas: After the break, Lachi tells me how a scrappy bar gig at South by Southwest changed the course of her music career, and what she wants educators to consider about the lens through which they view disability.

This episode is sponsored by Adaptiverse. If you’re a special education teacher, you already know the time problem. Every week, educators spend 15 to 20 hours manually adapting curriculum for students with complex communication needs, non-speaking learners, AAC users, and students with apraxia or language-based disabilities. Creating personalized materials, building visual supports, and designing multiple expressive pathways is essential work, but it’s exhausting, and it pulls teachers away from actually teaching.

Adaptiverse changes that. Teachers simply describe what they’re teaching and who they’re teaching, and the platform generates grade-level lessons personalized to each student, with built-in scaffolds and multiple ways to show understanding. These aren’t watered-down worksheets. They’re rigorous, engaging lessons that presume competence. Built on 60-plus years of combined educational experience, Adaptiverse has already powered more than 2,000 lessons in 35 states, with educators calling it life-saving and irreplaceable. If you’re ready to get those hours back and focus on what matters most, visit adaptiverseapp.com to learn more. That’s adaptiverseapp.com.

Lachi: So I end up — while I’m still working there, I go down to South by Southwest. This is in the 20-teens, so it’s back when South by Southwest was actually legit and not an AI bro hangout. So we go down there. Me and a guitar player, we don’t even have a gig. We just play some crappy hole-in-the-wall bar, just for fun, to be a part of the festivities. And there’s an A&R from a major record label there. And so we just get signed. That never happens, by the way, folks.

Tim Villegas: That is very rare. Exactly, yeah. That’s pretty rare. But I was just talking to my son about this, ’cause he wants to — he plays cello, and he wants to be in an orchestra. And so I just kept saying — I’m a former musician. I lived in LA. You don’t know this about me. But I spent years playing the venues in Hollywood, Sunset, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff.

Lachi: Ooh. Hi, Hollywood. Hello. What did you play?

Tim Villegas: I played bass. I still play bass guitar.

Lachi: Oh, nice. Awesome.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, but once you’ve played a number of, quote-unquote, showcases, you’re just like, “Okay, that’s the next one.” But I was saying, like, you do what you love, and we’re fully supporting his journey and stuff. But those opportunities like you had, they don’t come unless you actually do the thing, right?

Lachi: Yes. Yes.

Tim Villegas: You know? So you gotta keep putting yourself out there, ’cause you never know who’s gonna be in the audience, or listening or watching, or you don’t know who you’re gonna run into. So it’s that luck-meets-opportunity type of thing, right?

Lachi: Right there. Right there. Oh my God, I keep trying to say that to these people. You have to be ready, so you don’t have to get ready — if you already ready.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly.

Lachi: So there’s a part of the story — and I tell that story all the time — part of the story is that I only was signed to that label for one year, ’cause I had to get out of the deal, ’cause it was terrible, ’cause I was a kid and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

However, one of the things that I don’t talk about in that story is that I already had a website set up. I already had social media going and was just posting my music and stuff like that. And yeah, I didn’t have a million followers. I probably had maybe 1,000 followers or something. But I had a really nice internet presence, and I had gone out and got some pictures done. And before we went to South By, I had actually written to maybe 15 major label heads and A&Rs. I don’t even remember where I got their emails. But I wrote to them and I was like, “Hi, my name is Lachi. Here’s my website. We’re gonna be playing at this crappy bar near South by Southwest. If you happen to be in town, please come check us out, and here’s links to some of my music.” And I had some demos.

I don’t really necessarily say that part, ’cause that just takes too long to say. But what ended up happening — because I’m just like, “And then I went to South By, and then an A&R was there” — one of the A&Rs from the 15 people I had reached out to had come to check it out.

Tim Villegas: There you go. See? Yeah.

Lachi: Exactly. And it wasn’t just — it was a cold email, but I had the website. I had the pictures. I had the music. And then I was at a place where he was already going to happen to be, which was South by Southwest. So it’s not just “And we showed up, and we got signed to a major.” It’s actually, we did a whole bunch of stuff so that we could intersect that opportunity.

Tim Villegas: It was a lot of work. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that is a universal truth, I believe, anyone listening or watching can apply to their own life. You have a dream, you have a goal, and you are laser focused on what that is.

Lachi: Exactly. Exactly. I will say though, after that showcase that we did — my guitar player was blind, like totally blind. And so the A&R gave us his card, and me and the guitar player were like, “What is this?” And we’re fumbling around, “What does it say? Someone tell us what it says!”

Tim Villegas: Oh my goodness.

Lachi: But anyways.

Tim Villegas: Oh my goodness. Oh, that’s great. That’s great. So before we get into the last couple questions, I wanna make sure that we talk about RAMPD. So could you explain what that is, what the acronym means, and your role and what you do, and how it contributes — or how you want it to contribute — to society, disability community, stuff like that?

Lachi: So RAMPD stands for Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. R-A-M-P-D dot org. And we are creatives, executives, music professionals, music creators, who are working within the music industry from the inside to make it more disability inclusive and accessible. So that’s it in a nutshell.

So RAMPD as an organization is a consultancy group. So we do consulting, we do training, we do walkthroughs, we do audits, we do research, and we do partnerships. We throw events that amplify disability, that amplify accessibility, et cetera, et cetera, in partnership with major organizations everywhere from the Recording Academy, who throws the Grammys, to Sony, to Spotify, Tidal, Netflix, Live Nation, et cetera.

On the other hand, we also cultivate a global network of recording artists and music professionals with disabilities, neurodivergence, chronic conditions, all types of conditions, limb differences, folks who are deaf, et cetera, who are peer-vetted folks that are actually doing some really great work in the industry. We work to bring opportunity to folks in our global network — connectivity, networking opportunities, songwriting opportunities for folks to collaborate, et cetera, et cetera.

But I also like to showcase that it’s not just creators. It’s also folks who work within the music industry on the administrative side. So A&Rs, label owners, directors at labels, or managers and agents, and things of that nature.

So the beauty of RAMPD, the way it came to be — and by the way, RAMPD is run by folks with disabilities who are professionals in the music industry, and we take it very seriously that our leadership has the lived experience because of, again, like I had mentioned earlier, that dignity, that autonomy, that comes with being a person from that lived experience, being able to serve others from that vantage point.

When I was navigating the music industry before RAMPD, I remember I was masking and doing everything I can to just get the job done, get into these studios. I had been resigned to a management firm, right, that was sending me off to all these different studios. And they weren’t very accessible, and I would just do what I can to just survive. But I’d trip over wires, or I’d walk into glass doors, which are like the bane of my existence. And I realized that if I wanted to do my job better, I would have to just get ahead of this and tell people that I had a disability. I would go to galas and just sit in the back and miss a wave that would’ve got me a deal, right?

So I started getting ahead of it. I started using my cane, and I started talking to people about what’s going on. And I started getting better gigs, ’cause I was just doing better. You would think that I would get less gigs, right? Because it’s, “She’s disabled. We shouldn’t hire her.” No, but it was actually getting me more gigs, because I was doing my job better. And they were like, “We want it done right, and she does it right, so what do we gotta get you to make it so that you can do awesome?”

And then I had this epiphany where I was like, “Crap, I have been masking all this time. There’s no way other people aren’t.” And it’s just — ah, I don’t know, because they’re masking.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Lachi: And so that’s where RAMPD came to be, and that’s why we peer vet for professionals. We’re like, “We want you to stop masking, and you get to stop masking here.”

Tim Villegas: That is beautiful. That is beautiful. And — hopefully I’m saying this right — I saw you had an interview at the Grammys. And you were wearing this beautiful yellow gold dress—

Lachi: Yellow sunshine dress, yes.

Tim Villegas: —with this amazing hat. And I’m not even into fashion, okay? So it just caught my eye. And you had a sign language interpreter, an ASL interpreter, with you. And you mentioned something about RAMPD being involved with that. Could you explain that?

Lachi: Yes. I’m so glad you caught that. So first and foremost, people keep thinking like, “Oh, celebrities are bringing their own interpreters.” No. Celebrities don’t have interpreters just lying around the house, like a purse that they bring with them to the gala. What RAMPD did is, we worked with the Dream Team, is what they call it, at the Recording Academy. We worked together to make sure that the red carpet had sign language interpreters available for the celebrities or the artists or whoever walking the carpet, to have as they walk the carpet. So that’s number one.

We also worked to make sure — they have a dais where folks perform at the Recording Academy — making sure that’s actually accessible for wheelchair users to get up there, just in case a wheelchair user happens to win an award. We also worked to make sure that there was a deaf journalist in the media center, to be a part of the press conference and to ask those questions, and to also be a part of the red carpet. We were able to get a deaf journalist on the virtual red carpet. This is all RAMPD working with the different places in the Recording Academy, from the Dream Team to the comms team to the this team to the that team, making it all happen. We also wanted to make sure that there’s disability inclusion on the carpet, making sure there are ramps throughout the backstage, et cetera, et cetera, and making sure folks are trained up in how to engage folks with disabilities.

So RAMPD does a lot of work with the Recording Academy and the Grammys, because they were our first client. And so we’re just really deeply embedded.

And the one last thing I’ll mention about what RAMPD is really doing is, we’re also trying to make sure that we go beyond the performative, right? So somebody could say, “Okay, great, pretty ASL.” But we wanna make sure that on the inside, that we’re also having leadership from the mail room to the boardroom to the green room — folks with the lived experience of disability and neurodivergence.

So the Grammys has a bunch of chapters — New York chapter, LA chapter, et cetera, et cetera. And so what we’re doing is we’re working to make sure that we have leadership on those chapter boards that are also RAMPD leaders as well, so that we can make sure that the disability voice is in these boardrooms at the leadership level. And also beyond the Grammys, from other music industry boards.

And then I myself am a trustee at the Recording Academy. I’m also part of the diversity committee at the Television Academy. And then I’m also on one of the committee boards at MIDI, and at the Audio Engineering Society. So what we do is we make sure that everybody is in leadership, sprinkled throughout, as we infiltrate the music industry to make sure that our voice is seated at the table, because nothing about us without us.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes, please. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thinking about schools and K–12 educators, do you have any advice or things for educators to think about as they are designing classrooms for students who may have disabilities, neurodivergence, blindness — anything that’s on top of mind for you?

Lachi: Yeah. There’s two things. I think that educators should understand the lens through which they view disability. Which lens do you view disability through? Here are several lenses, and I want you to pick the one — and this is not to you specifically, just whoever’s listening or watching.

Tim Villegas: Sure, yeah.

Lachi: So a lot of folks view disability through a medical lens, and they think, “Oh, okay, this person has a medical problem. They need…” Viewing disability through the medical lens, it only puts the cure as the hero. So let’s say John, the wheelchair user, wants to go to a party, but that party is up a set of stairs, and everybody just says, “Oh, we’d let you into the party, but just go get your legs fixed, and then you can come into the party.” That is the medical lens of viewing disability. You don’t necessarily want to center the cure as the hero, or fixing as the hero.

Another lens — and this is a lens through which I believe a lot of educators and a lot of people, and honestly a lot of parents of kids with disabilities, accidentally fall into this lens. We call this the charity model lens. The charity model centers the do-gooder as the hero. So a really great example of the charity model lens is, let’s say John, the wheelchair user, wants to get into the party, and they go, “Aw, okay, let’s raise money so that we can get a muscular guy to carry him up the stairs.” So everybody raises the money. They get Chad. Chad is a beefy guy, and Chad picks up John, the wheelchair user, and carries him up. Okay, so John’s in the party, but his dignity’s gone, right? Everybody’s praising Chad for being this muscular do-gooder guy, and then they’re all praising themselves for raising the money to get Chad. How the hell is that gonna make this disabled person feel?

And so you have to recognize this charity model is not good. And when we get those Sarah McLachlan “Eyes of an Angel” commercials, or that inspiration porn of “Wow, you did it. You’re amazing” — no one wants to feel pedantized, all right? We want dignity. We want autonomy.

Another lens is the social model lens, and it’s recognizing — seeing disability through the lens of the barriers that keep people from being able to do things. And the hero is just being more inclusive and accessible. So at the end of the day, disability is the fact that I can’t get in because there are stairs there, right? It’s, I’m impaired because of this obstacle, not because of the way I was born. And so, John, the wheelchair user — the people at the party can say, “You know what? Let’s have this on the first floor.” Or in the party planning, they include John. So he says, “I could totally bring five more wheelchair-using buddies if we do it at this spot that I know is accessible,” or whatever.

And so look at disability through the social model lens, where there’s nothing wrong with the person. They don’t need to be cured. We don’t need a do-gooder to amplify them. We just need to break down the barriers, the stigma, and be more accessible. Because I am blind, right? I don’t actually like the term visually impaired, because I don’t believe I’m impaired. When I have my walking cane, my glam cane, when I have my screen readers, when I have my ZoomText — I’m still blind, but I’m not impaired.

And so it’s about being able to give folks the tools they need. And if I’m gonna give educators one piece of advice, it’s called ATP, ’cause I know y’all love acronyms.

Tim Villegas: So true.

Lachi: ATP. And ATP stands for ask the person. Just ask the people what they need. What do you wanna be called? How do you like to be preferred? What’s the best thing for you? And don’t ask the attendant or anybody else. Ask the person.

Tim Villegas: Oh, Lachi, like Versace. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

From studio wires to red carpets, so much of Lachi’s story is about clearing the way for people to do their best work, which brings me to one more thing I wanted to get to before letting her go.

Can I keep you for one more question, called the mystery question?

Lachi: Okay, what is this mystery question?

Tim Villegas: The mystery question is — we have a little bit of time, so I’m gonna explain, in case you haven’t listened. So previously my 13-year-old would write us questions and I would answer. I’d pick from the stack of questions and then we would both answer the question. But since she’s very busy with her own life right now, I have to write my own questions, unfortunately. But that is the history of the mystery question. We’ve been doing it for a few seasons now, and I have a list of cards, and I don’t know what the question says.

Lachi: Oh, you don’t even know?

Tim Villegas: No, I don’t. So it’s a mystery for both of us.

Lachi: Okay.

Tim Villegas: So I select the question, I’m gonna turn it over, and the question is, “If you could star in a movie, what genre would it be?” And then I’m gonna hold up the card so people can see it, my handwriting, and it says, “If you could star in a movie, what genre would it be?” So that’s the mystery question, for both of us to answer.

Lachi: Okay, so that’s the question. So I am a horror person.

Tim Villegas: Oh, okay.

Lachi: I don’t say horror buff, because I’ve been rebuffed, and I’ve been toe to toe with real horror buffs, and I’m like, “You’re a horror buff. I’m just a horror person.” But while I do love me a really good horror film, I would probably want to be in a drama that centers music as part of the genre, or as part of the movie — like music is a big element. What’s the one with the girl and the guy and the boat, and it sinks?

Tim Villegas: Titanic.

Lachi: The girl and the guy and the boat, and it sinks. It sinks. Why, you ask? Because I’m trying to get an EGOT, and I have learned that the way you get an EGOT is, it has to have music. So we wanna do a really awesome song for this movie, right? So that we can get an Oscar for composition. We get a Grammy for the whatever. Then they adapt it to a play. Then we get a Tony.

Tim Villegas: Right.

Lachi: Right? And then the Emmy somewhere. I don’t know, daytime — I don’t know, how do you get an Emmy? Somebody tell me.

Tim Villegas: Somebody tell you how we do that. Yeah. Must we turn it into a TV show? They turn it into a TV adaptation.

Lachi: There you go. That’s a lot of work for this one film.

Tim Villegas: This film is doing a lot of work for everyone involved.

Lachi: Yeah. It is. But you know what? And it’s still gonna have some horror elements.

Tim Villegas: Okay. All right. I was gonna say horror, ’cause that was the first thing that popped in my head, but I’m gonna say a dark comedy, because I am a big fan of the Coen brothers.

Lachi: Okay. Okay.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, the Coen brothers, or even Wes Anderson, can have like a dark comedy vibe.

Lachi: I like that.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, and you know what? It says star in a movie, but I wouldn’t wanna be the star of the movie. I’d wanna be like a character actor. You know what I mean? Like a person that is supporting, who has maybe a couple memorable scenes, but I don’t wanna carry a whole movie. That sounds like a lot of work.

Lachi: You don’t wanna learn the lines.

Tim Villegas: No. No. I don’t wanna learn the lines. I wanna ad-lib.

Lachi: Yes. You just made me think — I would actually really love to be in, like, there’s this genre popping up of almost like Afrofuturist horror, right? Like the kind of Jordan Peele kind of things. That kind of genre has really been appealing to me. It’s like the in-your-face horror of everyday things. I’ve been finding that really fun.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I’m gonna throw out a movie, to see if it’s something that you have seen, experienced, whatever. Do you know about the movie Rebel Ridge?

Lachi: No.

Tim Villegas: It’s on Netflix. And I don’t know what your movie experience looks like for you, whether you use audio description or not.

Lachi: I do. Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Okay. But Rebel Ridge was made — and I’m gonna forget the name of the person, so I apologize — but they’re the same person who created Green Room, which is a horror flick. And Green Room, it’s about like a metal band, and they are playing this dive—

Lachi: I’ve heard of Green Room. That’s on my list of things to watch.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So watch Green Room, and then watch Rebel Ridge, ’cause it’s the same person. And I turned to my wife after we watched it, I’m like, “That was…” Gosh, I’m really not good at describing movies, but it’s this ex-military, this Black dude in Louisiana riding his bike, and gets hit by a cop and gets pulled over because he had money to bail out his cousin, and he’s going to the courthouse. And it just devolves from there.

Lachi: Oh, no.

Tim Villegas: Like racism, and just — but the whole thing—

Lachi: But it’s also like a horror-tinged, edge-of-your-seat—

Tim Villegas: Yeah, exactly. So I was telling my wife, I’m like, “That was — we just watched a horror flick.” It wasn’t super gory, but the way — you know what I mean? And then I looked it up, and the writer-director wrote Green Room, and I’m like, “That makes a lot of sense,” right? Because of the tension and all that stuff. And I know we might have lost a few listeners with this conversation, but that’s okay, because I do love the horror genre, so I just wanted to kinda connect that with you.

Lachi: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s such a reflection of the human experience, because we traverse so much of our lives building up defenses against fears of the unknown. And that’s what horror really amplifies, and that’s why I love it. It’s such a thesis on our own social trappings. But anyway, I could go on.

Tim Villegas: We could go on. That’s a whole other podcast episode. Lachi, I’m gonna sign us off, but don’t go anywhere just yet. Lachi, thank you so much for your time with us on the Think Inclusive podcast. Best of luck with I Identify as Blind and your career.

Lachi: Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.

Tim Villegas: That was Lachi. Here’s what I’m taking with me. It’s not the condition, it’s the conditioning. Lachi was shy and ashamed as a kid, and today she’s confident and thriving — and she’s blind and neurodivergent. Blindness was never the problem. The masking was. And the accommodations she was taught to hide — her cane, her screen readers, the systems she built for herself — are now the very things that let her do a million things at once.

One practical step for educators: try Lachi’s ATP — ask the person. When you’re planning support for a student, go to the student first. Not the file, not the paraprofessional, not the parent in the hallway. Ask what they need and what they want to be called and what works for them. It’s a small habit that offers something every learner deserves: dignity.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey From Internet, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the Donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere @thinkinclusive.

Thanks for hanging out. And remember, inclusion always works.