Bf Barry says of summer starting, revving up, especially for co-host Kerry:

Barry says “hanging out and hanging in”

But as we greet the summer season, we’re hanging out with someone Kerry came across through Steph McCoy of the fashion, style, and inclusion platform "Bold Blind Beauty".

Of course, it’s about the representation which I think is very important, also for the generations that are younger than me, but also because I think we should celebrate these different perspectives.

And I also hope to show other travelers with low vision, that it’s us who get to share this perspective with the sighted travelers and I think there’s a cool aspect in that.

Marie Elise joins us on Outlook this week to talk travel, the value of experiencing the loveliness and power of the planet by making use of all our available senses, and adapting to the shifting sands of genetic vision degeneration.

Whether it’s chickens, hummingbirds, or horses, Elise wanted to be a veterinarian growing up and now wants to share her message of experiencing the sound of a hummingbird and not just seeing it, and joins us from South America with the sound of those chickens outside the door. She describes her special connection to horses and the trust it takes to ride with fading sight, but the benefits of emotional regulation for a deeper connection and something she could apply to life going forward were helpful for coping with all of it.

She says of her life travels, as she’s worked to befriend the anxieties that developed in her 20s as the realities of her Stargardt's blindness became clearer: “I feel like that if you live in another country, that culture and that country becomes a part of you. It really has helped me develop as a human.”

So whether it’s growing up amongst the bicycles in the Netherlands, studying Spanish in Spain after high school, or her time in Argentina, Marie has a dream going forward: Of course, it’s about the representation which I think is very important, also for the generations that are younger than me, but also because I think we should celebrate these different perspectives.

And I also hope to show other travelers with low vision, that it’s us who get to share this perspective with the sighted travelers and I think there’s a cool aspect in that.

Marie has a blog “Beyond My Blur” where she shares her own perspective on the places she’s been lucky to get to experience and how to do this, with the full spectrum of senses, more fully:

https://beyondmyblur.com

Our guest says: “Let me tell you, nothing…nothing in the world is as satisfying as fighting a salty gamer bro online in Mortal Combat, winning a match, and then telling them - hey you just got beat by a blind, trans girl. Have a good one. No rematch!”

We featured a sibling pair, Zoe and Jessica (both born with the same blindness condition as us, LcA) on our Siblings episode four years ago and Zoe returns as we here celebrate Pride Month throughout June.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Zoe Espinoza about gaming while blind, a pastime many would assume isn’t accessible for anyone unable to see the screen and the visuals found there, but Zoe and regular co-host/boyfriend Barry geek out on this subject on this week’s episode.

With vast knowledge of the gaming universe, our guest shares early memories of adaptations made to play, a love of narrative based games, and a childhood dream to write the stories for these games. She also shares some of the techniques she and her partner (not blind but with other disability such as hearing trouble/brain fog/fatigue) have now come up with to play as a team, co-piloting and coordinating using the skills they both bring to the table to support the other. Barry offering a gaming term, “You’re each other’s augment.” And according to Zoe, “The couple that plays together stays together.”

Here at Outlook On Radio Western we start every show by saying - Accessibility, Advocacy, and Equality. So we discuss deliberately accessible vs accidentally accessible and why it’s worth it for companies to make their games inclusive. Zoe Espinoza and Barry advocate by playing and showing the world that there’s an interest and a desire to escape into the gaming world.

Sibling co-hosts Kerry and Brian didn’t grow up with video games at home, and blindness is a spectrum of course, but we do encourage geeking out, in all kinds of ways, on this program whether it’s AI or gaming or anything else. Barry and Zoe share resources and tips if you, too, are blind and want to play. Or maybe you aren’t blind yourself, you have other disabilities or work in the gaming world, may simply be interested in the topic, making sure it’s an accessible and inclusive activity for everyone.

Check out Zoe’s previous appearance on our show with her sibling Jessica:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-04-12-siblings-series-part-2-jessica-zoe/id1527876739?i=1000516853367

It all started with a trip to Cuba.

Our guest on Outlook this week explains: At one moment in life you don’t really know what you’re doing and then, all of a sudden, you get this opportunity and a huge passion just grew out of it.

From Belgium to Canada, Linsay Lusyne has a love of travel, opening it up to everyone along the way starting with a previous experience training blind people on navigating and guide dogs for blind travel before travel coaching in a different way.

Lusyne shares about growing up on the coast of a small European country and her early memories of saving up for eye surgery at age five,, about her family’s reaction when she left for an island trip, and the empowering feeling she had from that first big solo adventure.

We discuss her entry into training guide dogs and their companions which started with a love of dogs and an internship, the move she made to Canada with a desire for long-term travel, and her eventually stepping into becoming a travel coach who helps plan and book travel including recently creating group trips and trips of all kinds, as she helps blind travellers in particular to break down their travel and adventure dreams into manageable actionable steps.

As a sighted lover of travel and with her knowledge of orientation and mobility and guide dogs, she runs the Vision Loss Travel group on Facebook and hosts meet-up calls to discuss the group trips she organises with both sighted and blind people, showcasing her love of experiencing the world as independently as one possibly can for everyone.

Lindsay says: Travel is not about ticking destinations off a list. I believe in the transformative power of exploration, and I'm passionate about making travel accessible and life changing for those with vision loss.”

Check out more about Linsay Lusyne, Travel Coach, by visiting her website:

https://www.visuallyimpairedtravel.com

Find her Vision Loss Travel Community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/617168270274903/

LOOK OUT - Goose crossing ahead!

Not all take kindly to the following of directions. Communication takes practice. Patience is needed to get where you’d like to be.

Last week was National Accessibility Week (beginning on the final Sunday of May) and this time on Outlook (where “accessibility” is a given) we discuss the unhelpful helpers, how we orient ourselves, plus goose crossings and fermented mushrooms.

This first Mixed Bag of June we’re talking what’s in store for these warmer months ahead including Pride celebrations, as we examine our gratitude toward those, in other marginalised communities, who come before us in all this disability community’s diverse group and anticipating a new show reboot of the animated King of the Hill with the importance of understanding modern relevance vs a snapshot from a previous generation. Also, we touch on and go over the eager waiting for this month’s announced applications to open up to qualify for the new Canada Disability Benefit and speaking of federal government, with Canada’s new federal cabinet (and Mark Carney at the helm) doing the “Cabinet Shuffle” by eliminating the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion, and Persons With Disabilities.

Happy Indigenous History Month and Pride Month to our First Nations, Metis, and Inuit and 2SLGBTQIA+ friends and listeners - from May mixed bags to June, toward the strawberry moon, and celebrating kidney transplant anniversaries during this summer season.

The theme for National AccessAbility Week this year is “ Breaking barriers together: Paving the way for an inclusive future .”

Established in 2017, National AccessAbility Week celebrates, promotes and showcases the diversity, inclusion and accessibility in this country, and highlights some of the important initiatives aimed at creating an Accessible Canada.

We begin and end in Cornwall with this one as we celebrate “Breaking Barriers” together through exploration and investigation.

The birds are out and for this Outlook, we’re back live, as we discuss the themes of this year’s National Accessibility Awareness Week (airport assistance stories) along with a few narrated image descriptions we all caught on our travels lately, with the birth of an old friend’s baby girl to the serenity of the resort’s deck in Cornwall, we share our image descriptions provided by accessibility app Be My Eyes.. From a shoutout to Scott the Uber driver, cheers to George, and thanks to Tim’s clear directions, we’re celebrating accessibility with kindred spirits and friends who make it easier instead of harder.

On this last May 2025 Mixed Bag show, Barry and Kerry share about a dog encounter on their recent springtime block rout walk with guide dog Oyster and brother co-host Brian shows us a musical release he found, Robyn Rocket from the UK with People You May Of Heard Of and an inclusive audio version of the record’s accompanying comic strip.

From chats with life guards and other visitors including the Cornish gulls at the seaside in Cornwall, England back into studio in London, Ontario - it’s National Accessibility Week, (end of May) as we soon bridge into June.

Learn more about NAAW:

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/campaigns/national-accessability-week.html

Check out the Robyn Rocket album:

https://robynrocket.bandcamp.com/album/robyn-rocket-and-people-you-may-of-heard-of-2

Irish bells, to kick things off, to celebrate Oyster on her seventh birthday like the bells worn around her neck as she runs free at her favourite place.

It’s our post-election Mixed Bag show on Outlook this week, until the next one when sister/co-host Kerry and Regular co-host Barry can hopefully be back in studio with brother/co-host Brian. In the meantime, it’s early May and we’re looking back on the recent federal Canadian election after we discussed voting accessibility, amongst other things, on the pre-election episode from a few weeks back.

Brian kicks things off sharing about ambulance rides and stitches with his evening adventures in emerge and we share our plan to get him to wear a helmet. We’re looking back on and Brian explains what made him emotional about a recent “Blind Baseball” episode, a review of recent Elections Canada voting accessibility, and about public vs private as Canada goes forward with our new prime minister on the world stage.

We also describe double-sided ice cream cones while navigating and getting turned around (like anyone who takes a wrong turn) as we found ourselves using structure discovery at Oyster’s park, using terms like “structure discovery” or “shore lining” to explain how we, as blind people, get around (a blueprint for being blind) - our discussions this week are all about getting lost and found again including mobility, accessibility, and the multi-sensory with Oyster bells and church bells.

Fifth day of the fifth month, 2025 as we talk marking the occasion of Red Dress Day on Turtle Island and anniversaries, including it being the eightieth anniversary of Victory In Europe (or VE Day), during the same week, along with guide dog Oyster’s birthday. We’re celebrating, in Ireland, with a delicious lemon cake, which we eat to honour Oyster. Along with all that, the ideal absence of wars, the kinds which sweep disabled people up in the danger and the chaos humans perpetuate with these things, we at Outlook instead honour guide dogs and peace in this month of May.

Learn more about Red Dress Day here:

https://amnesty.ca/red-dress-day/

Irish bells, to kick things off, to celebrate Oyster on her seventh birthday like the bells worn around her neck as she runs free at her favourite place.

It’s our post-election Mixed Bag show on Outlook this week, until the next one when sister/co-host Kerry and Regular co-host Barry can hopefully be back in studio with brother/co-host Brian. In the meantime, it’s early May and we’re looking back on the recent federal Canadian election after we discussed voting accessibility, amongst other things, on the pre-election episode from a few weeks back.

Brian kicks things off sharing about ambulance rides and stitches with his evening adventures in emerge and we share our plan to get him to wear a helmet. We’re looking back on and Brian explains what made him emotional about a recent “Blind Baseball” episode, a review of recent Elections Canada voting accessibility, and about public vs private as Canada goes forward with our new prime minister on the world stage.

We also describe double-sided ice cream cones while navigating and getting turned around (like anyone who takes a wrong turn) as we found ourselves using structure discovery at Oyster’s park, using terms like “structure discovery” or “shore lining” to explain how we, as blind people, get around (a blueprint for being blind) - our discussions this week are all about getting lost and found again including mobility, accessibility, and the multi-sensory with Oyster bells and church bells.

Fifth day of the fifth month, 2025 as we talk marking the occasion of Red Dress Day on Turtle Island and anniversaries, including it being the eightieth anniversary of Victory In Europe (or VE Day), during the same week, along with guide dog Oyster’s birthday. We’re celebrating, in Ireland, with a delicious lemon cake, which we eat to honour Oyster. Along with all that, the ideal absence of wars, the kinds which sweep disabled people up in the danger and the chaos humans perpetuate with these things, we at Outlook instead honour guide dogs and peace in this month of May.

Learn more about Red Dress Day here:

https://amnesty.ca/red-dress-day/

“Blind baseball - it’s like the great equaliser. I’ve found the experience of playing the adaptive sports just as fulfilling, motivating, and frankly competitive as the sports I played as a sighted person growing up.”

Our guest on Outlook this week was used to adversity in life, having faced both grief and treatment of a serious chronic illness as a teenager. When Zach Ship was newly blind, years later, he was wished a “Happy Disability Pride Month” by The Lighthouse Guild and he didn’t believe there was much to be proud of though he soon learned otherwise.

Zach explains to us some of the rules of blind baseball and about what it meant to him when he discovered the sport, in its adaptive form, which gave him something back of the years playing sports like baseball competitively. So when he heard a documentary on the blind baseball team was being made, he was thrilled others might see what blind baseball (difficult to imagine for so many) is like..

So from our friendly cross-border Major League team rivalry to the support group and club we three are all a part of/considering starting, Ship has been through everything( from acute/sudden and unexpected health situations/acquired disability to the loss of a parent at a young age) and shares some of the lessons on the possibilities of adaptation and the power of community.

“No way of reacting is right or wrong, but focusing on what things we do still have, the things you can still enjoy. Even if it’s just you can eat this delicious meal or you can feel the sun on your face. It could be small things or it could be big things, always keeping that very very close in mind is critical.”

We first heard Zach Ship on “It Happened to Me, A Rare Disease and Medical Challenges Podcast - It happened to me. I’m not alone and neither are you.” This is the message he both benefited from thanks to others, in his own journey, but also the message he believes as he’s become a disability advocate now himself.

To learn more about Blind Baseball and the documentary being made about Zach Ship’s team, check out this Indiegogo page:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blind-baseball-documentary-halfway-funded#/

Watch the documentary teaser trailer here:

https://vimeo.com/963770229

“On the way to the library, I flew a kite.”

We here on Outlook decide to begin this particular Mixed Bag episode with the above quote, start to a social media status, because we on this show love libraries/love books and love the outlook of writer Leona Godin, also close friend of this radio show/podcast, but really because elections make us want to take a break to fly a kite too.

As the federal elections here in Canada approach, we’re together, just after Easter, to discuss some of the issues in our country’s politics from a disability perspective as issues facing disabled Canadians have been mostly overlooked during this election season, so soon off of the rushed Ontario provincial elections we just so recently dealt with. We’re telling about the realities of the PC Party being no-show’s at both provincial and now federal disability town halls and a still-totally inaccessible, inadequate, and inequitable voting system/process.

Kerry shares about experiencing a new holiday, Irish style, after being in Ireland for Halloween and now Easter, along with being in Ireland last time during the presidential elections in the States and now, being back this time during our Canadian ones. Also, she and Barry celebrated Easter by having KFC fried chicken for their Easter meal, coming to the conclusion that KFC in Ireland seems better to her than eating it in Canada. Parades, Irish Sea gulls, and Kerry cuddling with an Oyster guide dog as we talk traditions, whether holidays or looking for change (but not necessarily only for change’s sake) when voting for politicians who often ignore the concerns of disabled voters.

Kerry also shares about a plane ride conversation with a generation z stranger, about the multi-sensory experience of taking guide dog Oyster to her favourite park again, and Brian’s revisiting previous voting attempts and their inaccessibility as he’s off to try again himself.

So, it’s Canada’s federal election on April 28th and we’re doing a mixed bag edition, one co-host in studio live and the other in Northern Ireland. With a bit of distance from the anxious Canadian citizenry, sister/co-host Kerry hasn’t flown a kite, but instead has flown like one into the future of the UK time zone five hours ahead of brother/co-host Brian and yet modern technology makes it possible to open up a bit of a pre-election mixed bag of discussion topics, both silly and serious as one voted already while the other is on his way after this show and we will continue with a post-election wrap-up shortly.

Speaking on the Canadian (Can lit) literary scene and on April/May’s The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) specifically, Canadian author and accessibility advocate Amanda Leduc says: It’s impossible to have something that’s 100 percent accessible all the time. We’re always working towards a more accessible world, working towards making those adjustments, bit by bit by bit. And that’s where I think having a sense of humility about this and an openness and willingness to learn and to change and grow, for all of us, is really important.

This week on Outlook we’re talking with Amanda and learning more about Cerebral Palsy and her own experience with the neurological condition causing everything from muscle weakness to fatigue to pain. Leduc tells us about her time getting her Masters at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland and something she calls “a monument to exclusion” when it comes to the inaccessibility of heritage buildings and old cities.

From the built environment of capital Edinburgh to the natural environment of Canada’s winters, Amanda is speaking to us on the show about her own accessibility needs plus considering other’s accessibility considerations after being bullied for a visible limp in childhood to her practice of valuing rest and energy preservation (recharging and rejuvenating) in order to be at her most creatively as a writer.

For Amanda Leduc, it’s about reimagining what storytelling can mean. Check out more on Amanda’s work by visiting her website:

https://amandaleduc.com

Leduc tells us about her previous role as the Festival’s Communications and Development Coordinator, about the origins of FOLD for filling a void in Canada’s literary and festival spaces as far as diversity and representation are concerned, and about some of the events being offered (both virtual and in-person) such as the Friday night Literary Cabaret and the Sunday High Tea and her involvement in some panels from April 27th to May 4th.

And so as The FOLD celebrates its tenth year here in 2025, we’re talking bringing people of all experiences and perspectives into the fold with creativity and innovative opportunities for diversity, just as we do every week on Outlook On Radio Western.

For more on FOLD go to:

https://thefoldcanada.org