Skip to main content
Group photo of All-Abilities Media students and staff. They're standing on a white sound stage with their arms around each other.

About Us

What We Do

All-Abilities Media supports people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism in producing the award-winning A Valid Podcast, a show about their lives. All-Abilities Media also hosts Podcafe, an online gathering to build podcast skills among people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism.

In 2022, the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism named Ms. Jordan and the All-Abilities Media team a third place winner of its Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability in 2022.  This was for A Valid Podcast’s season 3, about relationships among people with intellectual disabilities, published in partnership with PublicSource and Unabridged Press.

The project is fiscally sponsored by New Sun Rising and funded by charitable grants and individual donations.

‘That’s my dream’ – Our history

All-Abilities Media was founded in 2017 by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University and Unabridged Press.

Unabridged Press publisher Jennifer Szweda Jordan leads the effort to teach people with and without disabilities how to produce and interview for its nationally-award winning A Valid Podcast. 

Ms. Jordan has received The Peal Center’s Art of Inclusion award, and ACHIEVA’s Yvonne Zanos Excellence in Media Award. 

It all started with a woman who has Down syndrome: Erin Gannon. She told Ms. Jordan she dreamed of being on the radio. We taught her podcasting.

And then the unexpected happened. Erin won two journalism awards, beating NPR-affiliate veterans across Pennsylvania.

A college student, Mark Steidl, who uses an electronic device to speak (like Stephen Hawking) won a feature podcasting award alongside Erin.

We’ve helped more than 30 other people with disabilities have their shot, too. We’ve brought together groups to share their take on news coverage of people with disabilities.

This website is a work in progress, and like all of our content, we are continually working to make it more universally accessible. Please contact us with your experience about the site or anything about our work at info@alllabilitiesmedia.org. You can also call, text or send a voice message to 412-339-0748.