How Raúl Krauthausen is Redefining Disability Rights in Germany ~ 1030

Tim Villegas
I really wish I spoke German. My name is Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education and you are listening to Think Inclusive, a show where with every conversation, we try to build bridges between families, educators, and disability justice advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education, and what inclusion looks like in the real world. You can learn more about who we are and what we do at mcie.org.

I’m here at the Circle of Friends coffee shop in Woodstock, Georgia, recording my intros and outros for the month of June, so apologies for the background noise. Raul Krauthausen has been working in the internet and media world for more than 15 years as a disability rights activist and founder of the nonprofit Social Helden, or Social Heroes. He’s a communicator, a design thinker, and the internet is his second home, where he tweets, blogs, and posts about things that are important to him—often humorous, and sometimes very serious or sharp-tongued.

He has become best known for his invention Wheelmap, a crowdsourced online world map for accessible places, as well as his undercover stay in a group home for people with disabilities and his protest against various German laws affecting people with disabilities.

Here’s what we cover in today’s episode:

• If there is a difference in the mindset of Americans and Germans when it comes to inclusion and accessibility
• A little bit about Raul and how he got involved with the disability rights movement
• What inclusion means to him and how he’s been promoting inclusion in Germany

Before we get into today’s interview, I want to tell you about our sponsor Together Letters. Are you losing touch with people in your life, but you don’t want to be on social media all the time? Together Letters is a tool that can help. It’s a group email newsletter that asks members for updates and combines them into a single newsletter for everyone. All you need is email. We are using Together Letters so Think Inclusive patrons can keep in touch with each other. Groups of 10 or less are free, and you can sign up at togetherletters.com.

And now my interview with Raul Krauthausen.

Tim Villegas
Raul Krauthausen, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Raul Krauthausen
Thanks for the invitation. I feel very honored to join this podcast because I’m a big fan of your work.

Tim Villegas
I appreciate that. I always don’t always know who is reading and listening, so that makes me very happy.

Raul Krauthausen
I know your pain. Because in Germany, I’m running a lot of podcasts and writing newsletters and blog articles, and I don’t know who is reading it or if anyone is reading it. But I feel really glad that you invited me. And yeah, I was wondering a few weeks ago, I was asking myself, how can we get a more international perspective on what we can learn from other countries in terms of inclusion? Because I have a feeling that every country has its own struggles. And maybe we can learn from each other.

Tim Villegas
That’s a great point, Raul, because I’ve talked to a few people. I just interviewed someone from Australia and talked to a number of people from Canada. And I think we all think that everyone else is doing better than we are. Germans the same?

Raul Krauthausen
Yeah.

Tim Villegas
Well, I’m trying to remember how I learned about you. I think we connected over Twitter.

Raul Krauthausen
Yeah, maybe.

Tim Villegas
But I don’t know why.

Raul Krauthausen
I’m only tweeting in German. I don’t know how good your German is.

Tim Villegas
Not good.

Raul Krauthausen
There’s a translator from Twitter now. Translation gets better and better. That’s how sometimes I read your articles because I’m not so used to English words for professionals when we talk about education. But in general, I agree 100%. When you read something—and that’s how I came to you—because I’m writing a newsletter for nearly five years about inclusion. And I’m looking not only in Germany for ideas and projects and news, but also in the United States. And so I came to your newsletter.

Tim Villegas
Well, I am 100% sure that your English is much better than my German.

Raul Krauthausen
Yeah, I studied two years in English. But yeah, I never made it good at school. It was just by doing.

Tim Villegas
That’s amazing. Well, let’s talk about inclusion, Raul. It can mean different things to different people. So why don’t you talk about what you mean when you talk about inclusion, and kind of see if it’s different than the inclusion I’m talking about.

Raul Krauthausen
I would say inclusion is a right for everyone to take part in everything, which doesn’t mean everyone can become an astronaut. But they can try to become an astronaut, because of course, you have demands for it. And maybe you need some physical skills, which not everyone has. But maybe to get as near as possible to becoming an astronaut—that should be everyone’s right. And the only reason why it doesn’t work should be your decision, because of your experience, and it’s not possible because it’s too hard for you, or whatever. But not because someone else is telling you it’s not possible, you’re not allowed to do it.

Inclusion is kind of the right for equality and equity. So there are people who have more privileges than other people, and we as a society need to find solutions so we get equity in this—so that people who need more support get this support, like people who don’t need support. For example, to make it easier in their daily lives.

Raul Krauthausen
In Germany, when we talk about inclusion, sometimes it feels like a utopia. And because it’s a utopia, people think we will never achieve it—and that’s why they don’t start. That’s a wrong decision. We should all aim for that, right? We also aim for equal rights for women and men. I’m not saying it’s not possible—that’s why we don’t do it.

When we talk about inclusion, it also means acceptance—acceptance of others. And not only excellence, because acceptance also means I might have a different view, but I have to accept that you have the same rights as me. We can argue or debate in our daily lives, but it doesn’t give me the right to tell you you’re not allowed—as long as we are accepting the laws. Of course, we can also change laws when they are unjust.

Tim Villegas
I think what you’re saying is that acceptance is a huge part of inclusion. And I think that is something that is exceptionally difficult.

Raul Krauthausen
It doesn’t mean that we all have to love each other. Inclusion will never be happy land. It will be a place where we can learn from each other. And sometimes it’s hard—like when I learn that I had misconceptions and assumptions in the past, I can learn to get better. It affects everyone. People with disabilities can also learn a lot from nondisabled people, and vice versa.

The hardest part is to accept that I don’t know everything. And there will be someone who might know it better—and to learn from that and accept that.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, I think everyone would benefit from that type of mindset. From your perspective, when you look at the cultural climate in the United States, is it the international perspective—or maybe just from Germany—that we are divided politically and culturally?

Raul Krauthausen
Yes, that’s something Germans think about the United States—that the country is divided between two big parties, and a lot of radicals, and you have too many weapons in your houses. In Germany, we don’t have so many weapons at home. Most people don’t have weapons. But we also have a lot of neo-Nazis and trouble with them who have weapons. That’s a problem in Germany.

But I am not only looking in a negative way on the United States, because in the United States you have big achievements like the ADA—Americans with Disabilities Act—which got a lot more rights for disabled people than Germans have here. You can sue everyone which is not accessible in the United States. Not in Germany. We don’t have enough for that.

Raul Krauthausen
If a McDonald’s store is not accessible in the United States, you can do something about it. In Germany, I can’t do anything—except if it’s in a new building. But when the McDonald’s store is in an old building, you can’t do anything. That’s a problem because 90% of our time we are living in private company houses and buildings.

It’s not only about the school being accessible or the public transport—which is more or less similar, or maybe a bit better than the United States in terms of accessibility—but when we can’t do the private sector, then there are a lot of really bad things happening here. Like when you want to go to a shop or a store or get a cab and sit in a wheelchair, it’s nearly impossible. You can’t get a wheelchair-accessible cab in real time. You have to order it three days in advance. And that’s ridiculous because that’s not the concept of a taxi.

On the other hand, I was visiting Canada a few years ago, and I met some people with disabilities there, and they told me—and that really shocked me—that they had to pay for their electric wheelchairs with their own money. In Germany, we have insurance for that. Every German has health insurance. And if we need a wheelchair, this health insurance pays for it. It doesn’t matter what kind of insurance you have. So, of course, that’s better. And that’s a good thing—health insurance means everyone has a right to mobility.

I once watched a movie from Michael Moore—Bowling for Columbine. He made a movie about the social systems in Europe compared to the United States. He went to France and asked people, “Are there people in your country fighting against health insurance?” And they didn’t even know what the word might be in French because everyone has health insurance. There’s no word for that because it doesn’t make sense to fight against it.

Tim Villegas
I do. Yeah, I remember that. I remember some Michael Moore movies.

Raul Krauthausen
Yeah, that was very funny.

Tim Villegas
We’ve been talking a little bit about the differences between the United States and Germany with regard to inclusion. But I learned something about you—I hope that it’s true—that your parents put you in one of Berlin’s first inclusive schools. Is that correct?

Raul Krauthausen
Yeah. And I did it by accident. My parents were very young when I was born. My mother was 20 years old. She didn’t have a concept of inclusion or integration for children with disabilities. So she was unsure what to do. She met other parents with disabled children. There was one family with a child in a wheelchair, two years older than me. They just followed their steps.

I’m very thankful for this family because they put their child in one of the first integration and inclusive schools. It started with kindergarten when I was two years old. I was together with 15 other children with and without disabilities in kindergarten. This group of 15 children went together to the same school as a group in the same class. The only thing that changed was the building and maybe the teachers.

Raul Krauthausen
In Berlin, you do six years of primary school, then you go to middle school. I was in an inclusive school all the time—from kindergarten through middle school. At this middle school, I got the possibility to make my Abitur, which is the highest degree you can get when you go to school and allows you to go to university. In Germany, you do 13 years of school if you want to go to university. If you don’t, you only have 10 years.

When I left school, I found out that this was not normal—that other children with disabilities had to fight for their right to go to a regular school. Otherwise, they would have been put in special schools for people with disabilities, which still exist and are growing in Germany. That’s a big issue because the majority believes that people with disabilities need “safe spaces” where everyone cares for them. But nobody checks if it really is a safe place or good for them.

A big foundation in Germany publishes studies every year, and every year they say exclusion is a problem. People who went to special schools get worse degrees than people with the same disabilities in regular schools. That leads to exclusion. People with disabilities who go to special schools often end up working in sheltered workshops, where they don’t get minimum wage. That’s discrimination.

The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities regularly says Germany is breaking laws.

Tim Villegas
So what I’m hearing you say is people will go to work in sheltered workshops and work for less than minimum wage.

Raul Krauthausen
Yes. In Germany, every state has these sheltered workshops. People who work there don’t get minimum wages because they are not considered employees. They have fewer rights. The CEOs of these workshops are never people with disabilities. It’s unjust.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. So you said you went to an inclusive school by accident. What about the school—why did they include people with disabilities if that isn’t common practice?

Raul Krauthausen
They also did it by accident. In Germany, every state has its own education laws. Berlin is a city-state. When I went to school, Berlin was divided—West Berlin and East Berlin. I went to school in West Berlin, which was under the influence of the United States, France, and the UK. They wanted to show that their model was a perfect answer against communism. So there were a lot of good social systems and small schools.

There was a law that said people with disabilities were not allowed to go to regular schools. But the director of the school ignored that law. It worked. When it came out that for six years people with disabilities learned together with nondisabled people, there was a big uproar. There was a danger that the pupils had to leave the school. But instead, they changed the law because there was no proof that people with disabilities were mistreated.

The magic of the school was that we had smaller classes—15 pupils and two teachers. I think 90% of the inclusion problems worldwide are because classes are too big and there’s too little staff. Inclusion needs good moderators and enough moderators so everyone is seen.

Raul Krauthausen
In our class, we had five pupils with disabilities and the rest without. That’s a big quota—about one-third. We had different disabilities: someone with hearing aids, someone with a learning disability, and I was the only one with a physical disability in a wheelchair.

To be honest, at the beginning, I didn’t identify myself as disabled. In math, biology, and German, I was good. It was only when I got older—when sports became more relevant, when there were parties and dating—that I realized I wasn’t the first choice. That was hard for me. I started thinking about my position in society and identified myself as disabled.

I learned a lot from other disabled people about how they coped. There was one moment that really touched me. In fifth grade, a girl with a learning disability said very loudly that she wanted to learn to read and write. Everyone in our class said, “You don’t need to read and write. It’s okay.” But she wanted to because everyone else could. After one year, she was able to write her own name. That taught me that if you have a goal, you can achieve more than people expect—especially with the right support.

Tim Villegas
Thank you for sharing that. What put you on the path of what you’re doing now—advocacy and activism? Did you know you wanted to go this route after university?

Raul Krauthausen
I never wanted to become an activist for inclusion or disability rights. I thought, “If I don’t get a job, maybe I’ll do something for disabled people.” But the world was so open for me. I wanted to learn so much. I wanted to work in media, commercials, advertising, communication. So I studied communication science.

While studying, I realized that the perception of disabled people in Germany was so different from my own perspective. I never felt represented in the media. That made me angry. I knew how to work in an advertising agency, so I founded my own organization—not an ad agency, but a nonprofit working on communication: how can we change the perspective of disabled people in Germany?

At first, I thought telling people that disabled people have the same rights would change the world. But I realized that was wrong. It’s not about convincing someone else. It’s about enforcing rights. If the bus driver doesn’t let me on because of the ramp, I want to sue him—because I have the right.

So we started thinking: how can we change laws? How can we sue companies? We fought for the right to sue companies. This year, we got that right. Next year, we start using it.

Tim Villegas
Knives out! So is your organization Social Helden?

Raul Krauthausen
Yes. Under this organization—the umbrella—we make all our projects. I founded it 17 years ago.

Tim Villegas
So tell me about Wheelmap. Is that a current project, or is there something more current you’re working on?

Raul Krauthausen
We have a lot of projects. Wheelmap is the biggest and the first one—an online map for wheelchair-accessible places. The idea was that everyone who uses a wheelchair can share information on which places nearby are accessible or not. We started it with our own money, and it’s still running after 12 years.

The idea behind it was to convince mapping companies like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Nokia to use this information—or at least do the same. We didn’t want to own the market; we wanted to show how it could look. People with disabilities want to know where they can go. Now Google launched their own version, which is a victory for us.

We have more projects. One is about broken elevators, where you can see in real time which elevators in public transport systems are broken. We convinced German Rail to open their data about working and non-working elevators and put it under an open data standard. Now Google can use this data in their platforms.

Our strategy is to find the data, open it, and mainstream it. From these projects, we became experts in accessibility data.

Media companies approached us to make reports about our organization. But they regularly failed in how to write or talk about disabled people. Every article started with “Despite his disability…” or “Although he is in a wheelchair…” That annoyed us. So we built a platform where journalists can educate themselves on how to write about people with disabilities.

We launched it during the Paralympics in 2012 in London. We told journalists, “Paralympics is your day to do a lot of things wrong. Don’t do things wrong—educate yourself here.” It worked really well. Now we give workshops in media companies on representation: Why don’t we have disabled people in TV shows, magazines, or as experts in economics or education? In Germany, when you see disabled people on TV, it’s only about disability or sports—not about other topics.

In the United States, you’re at least 20 years ahead. You have Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones as a sex icon. In Germany, we don’t have that.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, it’s a big problem. Thank you for telling me about the journalist resource. That’s so useful.

Raul Krauthausen
Yes. And please, stop saying “bound to a wheelchair.” In German, we say the same. But if you see someone bound to a wheelchair, call the police—because nobody should be bound to a wheelchair.

Tim Villegas
A lot of people who listen are educators—elementary, middle, secondary. Many already believe inclusion is the right thing to do. What would you want them to know, as someone who went through an inclusive school?

Raul Krauthausen
I want them to know that every child in the class can also be a good teacher for everyone. I was the one who always did my homework, so others copied from me. Disabled people are not only taking something—they also give something back. They enrich a class in many ways—not just by “inspiration,” which I don’t like, but by sharing homework, being funny, bringing empathy.

Children don’t think about exclusion. When you ask them, “Do you have people with disabilities in your class?” they say, “No, we have children.” At first, they’re curious—they ask why you can’t walk, does it hurt? That lasts a few hours. Then they accept it. They invent games so everyone can play.

For example, my disability is brittle bones. When kids played tag, it was dangerous for me. So they agreed: no running near Raul. If they wanted a break, they came to me. I was in the middle of the game. That’s inclusion.

We had a very slow elevator in our school—so slow you couldn’t use it between classes. So the kids carried me up the stairs in my wheelchair. Nothing bad happened in six years. If I tell this story now, people say, “What if something happened?” Life is dangerous. If you don’t want accidents, build a better elevator.

We have this misconception that disabled people need to be protected from everything. If you protect me from everything, I can’t learn anything. I need to know my real limits—not just what others assume. If I fail, the educator’s job is to help me overcome that feeling—not to prevent me from trying.

Tim Villegas
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. So the elevator—doesn’t your podcast have something to do with an elevator?

Raul Krauthausen
Yes. My podcast is called Die Neue Norm—and one of my formats is recorded in an elevator. Everyone knows what it’s like to be in an elevator with strangers. You can’t choose who enters. You can ignore them or talk to them. That’s inclusion: everyone has the right to use the elevator.

Tim Villegas
I love that metaphor.

Raul Krauthausen
It’s like being in a park. You can’t tell someone to leave the park because you don’t like them. Same with an elevator.

Tim Villegas
Is there anything you want our audience to know—like how to get in touch with you?

Raul Krauthausen
Yes. I don’t know how the situation is in the United States, but in Germany, we listen too much to people who don’t have the expertise or power to decide things. I don’t care what my neighbor thinks about mobility rights or inclusive schools. It’s not my mission to educate my neighbor. My mission is to make sure my neighbor never gets the right to decide against people with disabilities—whether it’s about buses, public transport, or schools.

Even if my neighbor is the president, I would fight for the right that everyone has the same access to education and mobility. If we keep listening to people without knowledge or power, we miss those who actually make decisions. If we left it to public opinion, women still wouldn’t have the right to vote. It’s not about convincing everyone—it’s about convincing decision-makers.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. Hopefully, more decision-makers will listen to this conversation and others about inclusion, education, and disability rights.

Raul Krauthausen
And remember, not everything is better in other countries. It depends on the system. In education, maybe the U.S. is better. In health insurance, maybe Germany is better. We need to differentiate.

Tim Villegas
Raul Krauthausen, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast. We appreciate your time.

Raul Krauthausen
Thanks for the invitation. It was an honor.

Tim Villegas
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound-designed by Tim Villegas and is a production of MCIE. Original music by Miles Kredich.

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Thanks for your time and attention—and remember, inclusion always works.