Blind musician, producer, and speaker Joey Stuckey joins Big Blend Radio's “Table & Compass” Podcast hosts Joelle Machia and Ryan Slough, and Lisa D. Smith, for a wide-ranging conversation rooted in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals on reducing inequality and building accessible communities.
Listen to the podcast episode below:
Joey shares the story of surviving a childhood brain tumor, how his parents' insistence on travel and unrestricted access to knowledge shaped who he became, and what decades of navigating the world as a blind man have taught him about the gap between the appearance of accessibility and the real thing.
The conversation moves through national parks, museums, TSA checkpoints, and assistive technology, before landing on Joey's own reframing of one of the most misunderstood ideas in the disability conversation.
Surviving Against the Odds
Joey was 18 months old when a fast-growing brain tumor took his sight, his sense of smell, and his pituitary and thyroid function before doctors could even operate. One surgeon initially advised against surgery at all. A second offered a different philosophy: the odds were bad either way, so take the shot. Joey survived a seven-to-nine-hour surgery and spent 60 days in the ICU — the first step in what he calls the first 15 years of his life spent simply trying to survive.
How His Parents Shaped Him
Joey's parents raised him on the belief that a blind child needed data, not protection. His father narrated hospital hallways detail by detail; his mother never restricted what he read or listened to, handing an 8-year-old a pharmacology textbook without blinking. They also insisted he travel constantly — through statehouses, the Carter administration, and eventually the world — on the theory that experience taught more than any classroom could.
What Real Accessibility Looks Like
Joey's stories range from TSA agents who don't know how to screen a blind traveler, to a spontaneous up-close encounter with the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, to a hard-won behind-the-scenes tour of the La Brea Tar Pits. His throughline: accessibility that costs extra money isn't really accessibility, and it's cheaper — and smarter — to design for access from the start than to retrofit it later.
I do not believe in equality. We are not all equal, and isn't that fantastic? What I believe in is equity — the same opportunities, the same access, the same shot as anybody else.
It's a conversation that keeps circling back to one simple, practical philosophy: ask "how can I help?" and let people answer for themselves.
Explore more of Joey Stuckey on Big Blend Radio: https://www.bigblendmediahouse.com/t/joey-stuckey
Learn more about Joey Stuckey: https://joeystuckey.com/
Learn more about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
New episodes of Big Blend Radio's "Table & Compass" Podcast air every first Monday, here: https://table-and-compass.podbean.com/
Learn more about Joelle Machia & Ryan Slough, Founders & Publishers of Wanderers Compass: https://www.wandererscompass.com/