Welcome to the show, Mark.
So glad to have you here.
Hi, Andre.
Hi, Jenny.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us a little bit about your background and your role
at Disney.
I've been at Disney almost 24 years, and all 24
of those years as part of the Accessibility and Services
for Guests with Disabilities Team.
Currently, I focus on our services
here at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando.
I'm what's known as a CODA, and that stands for Child
Of Deaf Adults, so both of my parents are deaf.
I also have one sibling.
His name is Paul, and he is deaf as well.
So that's sort of my connection into this work, and of course,
my passion around sign language.
It's incredible that you used your backstory
and knowledge to create accessibility
for guests at the Parks.
What does the process look like for creating sign language
for these iconic characters?
The goal is to provide just a real great overall experience
for all our guests.
So for guests with hearing disabilities,
we offer sign language interpretation
as one of our Park offerings.
And tied to that, the venues we interpret many times
feature Disney characters.
So in our effort to ensure that our guests with hearing
disabilities that use ASL want or need
to understand kind of what's going on,
we've developed a series of signs for those characters who appear
in those individual shows.
And is the deaf community involved in helping
create some of these signs?
Yes.
The deaf community is involved.
We have a business employee resource group called Enabled.
We also leverage sign language interpreters themselves,
so it's a combination of all of those groups
to ensure that when we develop a particular sign for a character
that it makes sense and is a good representation
of that particular character.
And these signs, by the way, are generally done in the presence
of the character.
So the action that's happening on stage
is being signed by the interpreters,
so those particular characters are a part of the action.
Can you teach us a couple of Disney signs?
Sure.
Absolutely, Jenny.
I think the first one that we should learn
that's, of course, wildly popular with our guests,
is the sign for Mickey Mouse.
With all of these characters' signs that you'll see,
we try to leverage something about their appearance,
so it makes sense for a child who's deaf.
And when they see it, they say, yeah, that makes sense, right.
For Mickey Mouse, you're going to make two letter Cs,
and these go kind of on top of your head
like you're putting on a set of mouse ears.
See what I'm doing there? Yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
Two times or more, you're just going to kind of tap your scalp
a little bit with those mouse ears,
and then you're going to say on your mouth, "Mickey Mouse."
And that's an important part of all of this
as you're signing something.
It's showing in your face a little bit more definition.
So I wanted to show you a sign for Kylo Ren.
So you're going to use that C hand shape that we talked about
earlier, but this is now going to serve as something that
starts up here kind of on your forehead
and goes down your face.
It's tied to the type of mask that he wears.
So this is Kylo, and then you're going to hold a lightsaber
with two hands, and you're going to go
one way and then the other way.
So all of that together is Kylo Ren.
Hawkeye, he uses a sort of a bow and arrow, right,
so you're basically going to replicate grabbing an arrow
and shooting it.
That's the sign for Hawkeye.
So what you're going to do is you're
going to kind of grab behind you,
right, and pull an arrow out.
You're going to put that arrow in the bow.
You're going to pull the bow back
and you're going to shoot it.
Captain Marvel, the sign for Captain
is the letter "C," which has come up a few times,
and it actually goes right here on your shoulder.
And then for Marvel, we're using the letter M.
So if you can see here, it's my index finger,
my middle finger and my ring finger all kind of
draped over my thumb.
If you look at it, it almost looks like the letter M,
and that is going to go right here on your chest,
right here in the middle of your chest.
So you're going to put both of those together
and you're going to do "Captain Marvel."
Captain Marvel.
ASL is a long list of vocabulary terms
that are just ever-changing, so much like English, right?
So in ASL, there are those signs that are sort of established
that the deaf community knows, but some of these newer
characters that we've added in more recently,
it takes a little bit of time for like, kind
of the word to get out.
So the hope is that as guests come and visit our properties
and they see a particular character sign,
they'll remember that sign, and then when they go back
into their local communities, use that sign as they're
referencing their visit.
So it takes a little bit of time,
but yes, there is a slow progress in making these signs
a bit more established.
It is also National Disability Employment Awareness Month
where we commemorate the many and varied contributions
of people with disabilities to America's workplaces.
What is important to you about bringing
about an inclusive experience to both guests and employees
of The Walt Disney Company?
We've had inclusion as part of our business
for many, many, many years, but more recently, we've formally
made inclusion a part of that.
Obviously, there's a lot of attention and a lot of focus
that we're putting on inclusion of all guests,
and part of that is focus on our guests who have disabilities
and being very intentional in ensuring that our offerings
and our services are inclusive of all
of those different groups.
I'm very proud to say that we do accessibility really well,
and we're always just continuing to try to push the envelope
and be better, because we want to continue
to offer more and more for our guests with disabilities.
Thank you, Mark, for teaching us these signs.
I am honestly inspired to learn more ASL,
and thank you for all of your contributions
for the disability community and for being on the show.
Well, I want to thank both of you, Jenny and Andre,
and that's the sign for "thank you," is that right there.
And thank you for allowing me to be a part of your show.
Thank you.