Morgan’s Studio provides a platform for San Antonio’s disability community to share its stories

From Texas Public Radio:

Morgan’s, a nonprofit that creates accessibility opportunities for children and adults with special needs and their families, operates an inclusive theme park, salon, sports park, and Multi-Assistance Center.

Its newest venture is Morgan’s Studio, the home of a new YouTube series, “Inclusion Unlimited.”

The series has been a longtime dream of Morgan’s Creative Media Director Leslie Mouton.

Mouton works with a small team to produce episodes that share stories from the disability community. “It’s a lot of work for a little team, but it’s a labor of love for all of us. And I’m grateful to the team for jumping in,” she said.

“Inclusion Unlimited” launched this month on YouTube and will produce two episodes a week.

The episodes include discussions on animal assistants and a conversation with a musician who made his album available in American Sign Language.

“Inclusion Unlimited” aims to unite the able-bodied with the disability community.

“I think one of the things with people who don’t have disabilities is that they can be intimidated to talk to or address someone who does because they’re afraid of saying something wrong, doing something that’s considered impolite, and that’s not their intent,” Mouton explained. “But what we hope to do is ease that by saying, look, here’s the terminology you should use, and actually, they all want to talk to you, and they all have great fun personalities.”

Mouton said one of their nonprofit partners, Spectrum Fusion, will produce a segment called “Autistics in Cars: Driven by Passions.”

“And it’s basically car karaoke,” Mouton said. “It’s an adult who has autism interviewing someone who has autism about their hopes, their dreams, their goals.”

Morgan’s Studio’s show Inclusion Unlimited is hosted by Leslie Mouton.
Saile Aranda / TPR

The social media presence of “Inclusive Unlimited” also allows for stories of the disability community to be told for audiences with shorter attention spans.

“Really the way consumers consume information today, especially on YouTube, on social media sites — they like nuggets,” Mouton said. “They like little pieces at a time. So it may be two minutes, it may be 14 minutes. I’m going to let the content drive the length,” she said.

Mouton said the disability community is frequently overlooked and ignored.

“Everybody has the same dreams and wants and goals, and we need to make this society more inclusive,” she said. “And think about people who have disabilities, because like 20% of the population does, and they deserve to be represented. Their stories deserve to be told, and able-bodied people should care, because it’s the one minority group that all of us can become a part of. Like that,” she added, snapping her fingers.

Mouton invites people to share their own stories about the disability community. Email them to studio@morgans.org.

Watch Inclusion Unlimited on Morgan’s YouTube channel.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and TPR.org. Thanks for donating today.