One Centimetre at a Time: How a Luxembourg Podcast Demonstrated Practical Disability Inclusion
in sourcing and hosting, to storytelling structure, sound design, workflow, and even editorial power dynamics. (Co-published with The Global Disability News Network)
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Today’s piece is Reframing Disability’s first to be co-published with The Global Disability News Network, a platform publishing authentic disability stories by disabled journalists and allies.
Thoughtfully edited by Karina Sturm, and reported by me, this one highlights inclusion practices all the way from Luxembourg.
Accessibility is critical for people with disabilities, but it benefits everyone
In the fourth episode of Lëtzebuerger Journal’s podcast 1 cm, journalist Melody Hansen gently asks her interview partner, “Tamara, is it something that people from the outside told you, [that you can’t be a police officer]?”
“A lot came from myself, [...] but I had nobody to tell me, ‘If you want to do that, we’ll find a way.’” Tamara, a young woman with a disability, replies.
For many people with disabilities, it is not always explicit discrimination that limits possibilities. The absence of role models, internalised ableism, low expectations from others, and a lack of support also shape how they imagine their place in the workforce.
1 cm, an award-winning six-part series by Lëtzebuerger Journal, explores disability and employment by centering the lived experiences of disabled people. Available as audio in Luxembourgish and in plain-language texts in French, German, and English, the podcast aims to make these stories accessible to more people.
The podcast set out to do something many disability narratives still struggle with: move beyond talking about people with disabilities to instead co-create stories with them. To achieve that, producer Maxime Toussaint and his team worked closely with people with disabilities at every stage of the project, from sourcing and hosting to storytelling structure, workflow, and even editorial power dynamics. This collaboration brought to life an audio piece that puts disability inclusion into practice.
Media inclusion in Luxembourg
In Luxembourg, a small multilingual country in the heart of Europe with a population under 700,000, nearly one in seven people “feel disabled“. And yet, they are a “rare sight working in newsrooms,” says Misch Pautsch, a journalist with Lëtzebuerger Journal and the president of the Association Luxembourgeoise des Journalistes Professionnels (Luxembourg Association of Professional Journalists). Newsrooms mirror the reality that “people with disabilities are underrepresented in general within society, especially in public-facing positions,” he adds.
Newsrooms don’t regularly interview disabled people – either on topics related to disability, or others, and when they do, usually the same people are found talking to the media. One of the reasons for underrepresentation, Pautsch says, is that in the daily news business with tight deadlines, finding interviewees with disabilities is hard, especially if you want to avoid interviewing the same person multiple times.
Inviting, instead of picking
Team 1 cm committed to “taking the time” to be inclusive right from the start. To find people who had never spoken to the media before, they posted a call on social media, inviting podcast participants.
“If someone had a story to tell about disability and work, they were welcome to call, text, or email us,” Toussaint says. “We spoke to those who contacted us, explained what we wanted to do with the podcast, and gave them time to think about participation, while we went through the stories they shared with us.” This was the team’s first step in building trust with potential participants, and it worked. More than half of the participants were found through these conversations.
Small, thoughtful accommodations
Days before the recording, journalists set up a preliminary call with the participants to get to know them better and make them comfortable. “For most people, getting behind the mic is very stressful,” Toussaint says. But a lot of their stress can be alleviated “if they at least know their interviewer and trust them as an easy-going person – someone they could have a laugh with and feel comfortable telling, ‘hey, I’m stressed today, can we re-record this question?’” says Toussaint.
Journalists arranged interviews with extra time and remained open to rescheduling when needed. They sent questions in advance to interview partners who wanted them to help prepare and “reduce the fear of the unknown”. They phrased questions respectfully and made sure participants had enough time to answer or could hear a question twice if needed.
The entire workflow was made inclusive, reflecting the idea behind the title, 1 cm. The concept is simple: sometimes, a tiny change can make a big difference. Just one centimetre less on a step can make a staircase easier to navigate for a person with limited mobility. Lowering the music in a supermarket by one decibel can make it more comfortable for someone who prefers calmer environments. Continuing this approach, the podcast’s production relied on many of these small decisions to make the storytelling more accessible.
Pace and clarity are major focuses in the podcast, and the language avoids jargon. The voiceover and background music are soft and calm. Pauses between two speakers or breaks in the conversation can last up to three seconds and are filled with calm music, giving listeners time to process what has been said before the discussion continues. “This is particularly helpful for people who have difficulty concentrating,” Toussaint says.
Unlike many websites around the world, Lëtzebuerger Journal also avoids advertisements scattered across its web pages, a practice screen reader users particularly appreciate. But it was the inclusion of plain-language text in English, German, and French that played a starring role in the project’s accessibility. In Luxembourg, where under 77% of the population speaks Luxembourgish and more people are fluent in English, German, and French, plain language makes the podcast accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, those with low language literacy, and anyone encountering a new topic.
Nothing without us!
It helped that the Lëtzebuerger Journal had already produced podcasts on disability. What was different this time was that they took a workshop by Info-Handicap – the national council for people with disabilities – on having respectful, accessible conversations with people with disabilities.
“The workshop alleviated almost all our uncertainties about working with persons with disabilities,” says Pautsch. “We already knew that the fears that [journalists] have when tackling these subjects are largely unsubstantiated.”
Often getting to know something, be it a subject or people, Pautsch notes, is the best antidote to reservations. “A lot of uncertainty stems from seeing the disability first, instead of the person. Once you get past that point and see your interview partner as a person with a disability, rather than a disability attached to a person that is doing the speaking for it, you’re good to go,” he adds.
Info-Handicap’s focus on “nothing about us without us” strengthened 1 cm’s decision to include someone with a disability on their team. That’s how independent consultant Joanne Theisen –whom the Lëtzebuerger Journal team had known from an earlier interaction – came into the picture as a host.
Accessibility is a winning investment
“Maxime contacted me and suggested that I could be an interview partner as well as the host of the series,” Theisen, who had not responded to the social media call, recounts. “He assured me that I could share what I wanted about my life and leave out anything delicate,” she says. That conversation put her at ease. “They didn’t just want a story from me, they wanted us to work on it together,” she says.
“During our first conversation, I explained the whole concept of the podcast to Joanne as a 5-minute monologue,” Maxime recalls. There was what seemed like a long silence. And then Theisen, who is autistic, explained to him that she takes time to process information, and would like him to speak slowly, share less information at a time, or repeat some things when required. “So, I started again and did it her way,” Toussaint says.
“Joanne prefers to work in quiet spaces with low lighting, so we recorded her voiceovers when there was no one else in the office,” says Toussaint. But who doesn’t? “I realised that I and everyone else would prefer to record in such an environment as well,” he emphasises. Accessibility is critical for people with disabilities, but it benefits everyone.
Working with Theisen did not slow down the work; quite the opposite
Theisen works in a very structured manner. “Usually, we take an hour for recording the voiceover for a podcast, but with Joanne, it was 30 minutes for two,” Toussaint enthuses. She was always well-rehearsed and prepared when she arrived for the recording, so there were barely any retakes. “Working with her was like working in perfect conditions,” Toussaint says.
Theisen added value to the series through her experience in disability inclusion. She was invited to participate in the editorial decisions, wrote the conclusion for the series, and reviewed the podcast script for language and tone. For example, Theisen’s knowledge of laws and policies helped clarify a mayor’s statement. The measure and promise the mayor mentioned referred to a national policy already in place. “We then clarified it in the narrative,” Toussaint says.
Tapping into new audiences
Even though Luxembourg’s disability law endorses the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and digital accessibility is a legal requirement, Pautsch and Theisen say that news media lack accessibility features such as integrated text-to-speech, sign language interpretation, and audio descriptions. By virtue of fair representation of persons with disabilities and thoughtful accessibility, the 1 cm podcast has attracted a lot of interest from new audiences.
“The disability community is feeling represented and included,” says Toussaint. Non-disabled audiences have found the podcast to be a rich resource of stories and perspectives they don’t get to hear in their everyday lives. “Several non-disabled audiences mentioned getting insights they don’t usually find in the media,” says Theisen. She sincerely hopes that other media projects will learn a thing or two and adopt inclusion and accessibility in their work.
Will there be a second season of 1 cm? There are no plans at the moment. But if there is one, Theisen would love the team to run a survey for people with disabilities to ask, “What could we dive into now? What would you like to hear about? Which organisations should be interviewed?
For making the podcast accessible to those who can’t make time to listen, she suggests including a list of quick takeaways from the interviews. And perhaps also find other people with disabilities like herself who haven’t had the opportunity to work in the media yet, because the right understanding and environment were not in place.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify.
ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)
Reframing Disability published three issues in March, the previous one about the launch of the Global Directory of News Media Professionals and the one earlier with Namrata’s essay, Centering the Chronically Ill Person the Media Forgot. Check them out!
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