During the pandemic and lockdowns, Kerry started attending a weekly Wednesday evening virtual space, on Zoom (where else) where art and accessibility came together with the help of a friendly, welcoming host.

VocalEye is a non-profit society, registered charity and the first live descriptive arts service for the blind in Canada describing theatre, arts, and culture for the low vision and blindness community. They’re now making the arts more accessible for people who are blind and partially sighted, online and in-person and this week on Outlook we speak with its community outreach coordinator, Amy Amantea.

We start by hearing about Amantea’s early years including the family’s traveling life with Amy’s father working in the shopping centre industry and about her early childhood diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Outlook may be hosted by two siblings who were born with blindness, a show where they regularly speak with other blind people about their lives, but (as both hosts live with other chronic illnesses), the aim is to discuss more conditions and disabilities than blindness alone in future and this week’s guest experienced blindness as a result of her underlying chronic disease, rather than being born with it.

From a doctor’s prediction of blindness at twenty-four to the reality of that, our guest shares the path she was on, involving precious gems, into an artist’s life (acting/photography) Amy Amantea likely never would have had otherwise. This guest looks at life with chronic illness (neurodivergence) and disability as things that make one wonderfully rare (like a gemstone) and unique and we tend to agree.

Check out the extremely valuable work of VocalEye, including the custom jewelry designed by Amantea herself as The Blind Beader, with proceeds going to this nonprofit’s cultural offerings:

http://www.vocaleye.ca

Hear some of the arts and cultural activities they describe on the VocalEye YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/vocaleyeful

And take a listen to Amy’s AMI podcast, Accessing Art with Amy here:

https://www.ami.ca/Accessing-Art/recent_episodes

For custom jewelry orders by Amy you can email: [email protected]