Have you ever seen a children’s picture print/braille book in your local library? Or any braille at all for that matter?

Our first guest on Outlook for 2021 is a public service librarian from the National Network For Equitable Library Service (NNELS). Pikiora Wylie moved to Canada from New Zealand when she met a Canadian and, since moving here, has lived in Ottawa, northern British Columbia, and now resides in Montreal, Quebec where she is learning French during the pandemic.

This episode originally aired on 94.9 CHRW Radio Western on January 4th which is a special date on the calendar for many blind people. Braille is feared by many, but we at Outlook promote it for equal literacy levels as the sighted have at their disposal. On this episode we talk about how Pikiora became a librarian and her mission for helping people get access to information makes her an important ally and resource, with her job at NNELS. And she tells us all about the resources available on NNELS’s website including tutorials and their YouTube page, with those and how to get a Canadian library to sign up as a way of creating greater inclusion for any of its blind patrons.

We discuss how publishers can make material accessible from the start and how that makes all the difference, instead of having to redo things later, and our guest lets us know about the accessibility summit that takes place every winter between resources like NNELS and publishers.

NNELS is an information access resource for Canadians with a print disability (low vision, blindness, learning disabilities) and Pikiora tells us all about the needs of blind and low vision Canadians who reach out to NNELS for books made accessible.

https://nnels.ca