She noticed something was going on with her son’s eyes one year while he was making his list for Santa and was only writing on the page’s right side margin, but there was a lot more going on, underneath the surface, in the Owens family.

He loved skateboarding and skimboarding and was an excellent student, but this mother was about to have no choice but to teach her son how to advocate for himself and work toward a radical acceptance of her own.

Kim Owens is a blogger, wife, mother, author, and advocate. First she taught her son how to advocate for himself and now her blog shows people how to do the same, offering a place where mentoring happens for many other families.

This week on Outlook we spoke with Kim about chronic illness and disability, hers and her son’s, and about the ways they’ve found to navigate blindness with Owen’s blog Navigating Blindness.

While still newly navigating her own autoimmune disease, after years as a busy career woman in the marketing field and her own massage therapy business, Kim Owens started noticing personality changes in her always adventurous younger son. Known as No Fear Kai since he was little, and always trailing after his older brother on adventures, Kim started noticing his anxiety, requiring visits with several specialists to pinpoint just what was going on. As a mother, she had no doubt that something was happening.

On the show this week we discussed the long road to proper diagnosis, the freedom to adapt and thrive her son experienced once he received the tools for owning his blindness diagnosis and adaptive technology and braille, and the battle for access and accommodation they fought for against the school district.

Kim Owens has received a national braille certification, runs Navigating Blindness which is a resource for others newly experiencing blindness, and is working on a book about her family’s story while Kai is off, at university with his first guide dog, a young man out doing the things he loves most.

Check out the blog here:

https://navigatingblindness.com

Last winter, Kerry took a virtual program called Speaking With Confidence, since it had been years since she practiced her public speaking skills. Plus, anything she learned she figured she could apply to sounding more confident on the air for the radio show/podcast as well.

This week, on Outlook, our guest was Nasreen Bhutta, (Consultant and Trainer- Helping folks to launch or relaunch their Careers), and one of the facilitators of Speaking With Confidence. It’s a 10 to 12-week program for (as the name suggests) speaking With more confidence and developing a stronger presence, as blind people, when speaking for any occasion. We wanted to hear a bit more about how this program got started and about the approach Nasreen and the other 2 co-facilitators take in structuring things, as session 6 begins next week.

In session 5, Kerry worked to further develop her public speaking muscle, in getting more comfortable speaking on the spot, and had fun and picked up some advice along the way, as well as learning with and from the other participants.

On this week’s episode, Bhutta shares about how she adjusted to the ever evolving spectrum of blindness after her RP diagnosis, the kinds of speeches each SWC participant is required to give, and on the work she’s also doing for the fashion, style, and confidence-building website and brand Bold Blind Beauty, including its new Up In the AIR (Access, Inclusion, and Representation) podcast.

If you think you might be interested in signing up for session 6 (Starting the final week of September), email Nasreen Bhutta: [email protected]

Join the Speak With Confidence Training Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/312584286892626/

Check out the Bold Blind Beauty On A.I.R. podcast which features Nasreen as a co-host:

https://boldblindbeautyonair.buzzsprout.com

And if interested, you can sign up to the virtual LinkedIn webinar happening on October 6 here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAof-CgqDstGNajYzf-zGXOSAeGUMAX3yZi?fbclid=IwAR0O9m3hhoymR1fT0lTe_IMQrOqfbkOD4B-AkKXdLHCg1mFS2w5SsbkXdy4

Katie Morgan says she feels like she knows us, even though we only met each other in person when she appeared on this week’s anniversary episode of Outlook. Even her family now know about the program she tunes in for, every Monday morning at eleven.

This program is Outlook On Radio Western because it first started as a radio show, airing on 94.9 CHRW Radio Western, before the pandemic happened and it evolved into both a radio show and podcast. We first aired on September 10, 2018. Now having recorded 173 episodes and with Katie, our 92nd guest, we’re thrilled to have her join us live in studio, taking the hour to look back.

We try to keep this episode light and fun for the most part, while discussing some of the themes we like to cover, along with Morgan sharing some of what she’s learned from listening to our lived experience of blindness here.

Kerry shares an interaction she had with her white cane and someone on her way into the studio before this recording. And Katie shares some of the techniques she uses to manage anxiety, tells a story of ADHD and misplacing her glasses, and how utilizing all our senses can only be a benefit. Accessibility, advocacy, and equality - Outlook is all about the diversity in perspectives, thus where the name of this show comes from.

Morgan has lived in London, in one way or another, since she was young. Since then, she is active in her local community, including sharing details with us of her previous experience with the station, first helping out a friend who has the show, Music Is The Medicine, airing in the morning shortly before we come on. Brian and Kerry really appreciate the freedom of community radio and are grateful to Radio Western for giving them a platform to be themselves and sharing that with listeners.

Whether it’s the lessons Katie learned from travel and the open mind that helps broaden or her advice about being curious, not assuming what others might need, how it comes down to asking others what it is how they feel about things. We discuss lessons in making a new friend by reaching out, how it’s okay to ask for help, or shaking things off and accepting what is.

As we celebrate four years of this show, we thought it would be fun to invite on with us a long-time listener, to sit in, to thank them for supporting us all this time.

Long-time listener turned life-long friend - we dedicate this week’s episode to Katie Morgan and to all the support we’ve received from so many.

Check out Music Is The Medicine, a favourite show of Katie's that lead her to discovering us:

https://radiowestern.ca/program/music-medicine

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]

Toy Story was Rebecca Odum’s first introduction into the world of audio description, movie night at a camp for the blind. Born premature and becoming blind from Retinopathy of Prematurity ROP, even when reading large print and screens was still possible and before becoming a screen reader user, movies and television have been a part of Rebecca’s life.

What is audio description, AD QC, or quality control? This is the field our guest is training in. What constitutes good audio description anyway?

This week on Outlook we speak with Odum about how audio description AD can benefit not only blind people and why it matters and about Odum’s writing background and early vivid imagination. Rebecca also shares about studying ASL or American sign language and being a member of an all sign language choir.

And we discuss the documentary one of our co-hosts and this week’s guest recently trained on, for the art and specialty of audio describing and quality control, a beautiful doc about musician and composer Grace Fisher who acquired a childhood virus in her teens. Fisher is now quadriplegic and has started The Grace Fisher Foundation.

Check out more information on Amazing Grace and what Grace herself is up to with the foundation:

https://www.gracefisherfoundation.org

Follow Rebecca on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/rwritesfantasy

Find her book here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Lightning-Proof-Rebecca-Ann-ebook/dp/B07K65BKN6/

And take a listen to her podcast, Spirit of Avalor, about her favourite Disney series:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spirit-of-avalor-podcast/id1463065687

It’s been a few months since our last purely Mixed Bag Monday episode of Outlook, but we’re back, in the middle of August, as summer begins to wind down with a mixture of topics we’re discussing.

Kerry’s been writing and taking classes in writing and the natural world and then reading her words, in community with others. Brian’s been having a rather creatively productive month, practicing with other likeminded musical friends he’s known and performed with for years. Sometimes, it’s nice to work on our creative interests, outlets in a tough world where there’s always something serious happening in the news and around the world, and art helps us be able to let loose a little.

Whether it’s the stress on the healthcare system in this province and across the nation, abortion rights for women and other pregnant people being at risk and how this issue in the States finally gets us to study up about the issue in our own country, or August 15th being exactly one year since western countries pulled out of Afghanistan which leaves Afghan people and especially women behind to face oppression and other dangers, human rights of all kinds are threatened and this impacts everyone around the world. It’s important we talk about all this on our show, hosted by two disabled siblings in Ontario, Canada.

From saying farewell to a friend or opening beans when you meant to open lentils, it’s truly a mixed bag of topics. We are spending the week with family, celebrating our nephews and their birthdays in August, and talking Blue Jays baseball, a super summery subject.

And last but certainly not least, to round off the show this week, we’re sharing promotional material sent to us by Cheryl Green, on behalf of Green and project partner Thomas Reid on the survey they’re launching. With support from the Disability Visibility Project, they’re putting out a survey collecting information from Deaf and disabled podcasters and consumers of podcasts on building a network or community of Deaf and disabled content creators and consumers of said content. We’ll let them explain all this further, but we then go on to discuss an article Reid wrote for DVP on the discussion around whether giving an image description of oneself is necessary, in meetings and in workshops for example, and if there’s equity or discrimination in the practice or in the resistance to it since the pandemic and Zoom made us all faces, in little boxes, on a screen.

Fill out the survey for Project Project or Podaccess as it’s being known as here:

https://bit.ly/PODAccess

Find Thomas Reid’s article (Making a Case for Self-Description: It’s Not About Eye Candy) on the Disability Visibility Project’s website:

https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2022/04/12/making-a-case-for-self-description-its-not-about-eye-candy/

And for more background on Green and Reid, give a listen to this captivating discussion on the podcast Down to the Struts on the episode Disabled Podcasters Unite!:

https://www.downtothestruts.com/episodes/season-4-episode-6-cheryl-green-thomas-reid

From one president to another. Doug Lawlor has become President of the Canadian Federation of the Blind. This week on Outlook On Radio Western, we speak with Lawlor about this new position and the responsibility that goes along with it, including his recent first-time experiencing a National Federation of the Blind national convention where he had an introductory meeting with the NFB’s president Mark Riccobono.

On the show, we hear about all this, but we begin by hearing about Doug’s childhood in Newfoundland, the trauma of being sent to a school for the blind in Halifax at just six years old, and how it was for him to go from integration to segregation and back again.

From Newfoundland to Halifax, and from Kingston to Louisiana. Doug Lawlor has traveled, using his skills and available technology and he joins us on Outlook in his newest role, always willing to figure it out as he goes.

President of the Canadian Federation of the Blind is no different, but what is next for this Canadian blindness organization?

To learn more, check out the official website:

https://www.cfb.ca

We’ve known of this particular guest for years, through a friend, but now we welcome Victoria Francis as a friend of ours on the show after meeting her in an airport flying home from Orlando, Florida.

This week on Outlook we speak with Francis about her experience coming here as a little girl, her parent’s determination to give her and her twin brother every possible chance as blind people, and their time in both the integrated and segregated education systems once they arrived.

Victoria shares with us about her first snow experience as a child, after being born in Qatar and the benefits and drawbacks of a school for the blind like the one she attended in Brantford. She also shares about her college experience and now life in the working world.

Her ongoing work learning as much independent cane travel as possible has continued to challenge her, but her story is one of part of a close immigrant family and she has come a long way since coming to Canada in the nineties and now living on her own in Sudbury, the largest city in northern Ontario.

Jewelry isn’t only about what visually glitters and sparkles: both jewelry and braille are tactile experiences.

Our latest guest tells us about her more than a decade in the accessible jewelry and accessories world, after studying music and theatre and working in assistive technology roles, leading to the role of accessibility advocate alongside.

Laura Legendary is the founder of Elegant Insights Braille Creations and tells us about what true accessibility means to her, along with her road from grief and the special braille keepsake someone gifted to her when she was going through loss, and now we speak with Laura to highlight the connections in losing a loved one and losing a sense, both things we can learn to adapt to with time, support, and the right tools.

Along with descriptions of some of the products she creates and a few upcoming seasonal promotions, Laura tells us about how she sparkles and assists others in how they can find that sparkle for themselves. Legendary is a people person, businessperson, and our guest on Outlook this week.

To shop Elegant Insights Braille Creations:

https://elegantinsightsjewelry.com

Check out the Fashionability Channel (blog and podcast) where Laura has teamed up with UK fashion blogger Emily Davison to share their fashion and style tips for all:

http://www.fashionabilitychannel.com

For more jewelry education, design, trend, and style information, you can find Laura’s Sparkle On Blog here:

http://elegantinsightsjewelry.com/sparkle-on/

Or else there’s Legendary’s other blog, the Accessible Insights Blog, which provides information on products and services for individuals with low or no vision:

https://accessibleinsights.info/blog/

Find her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Elegant.Insights/

And on Twitter and Instagram: @ ElegantInsights

On Outlook this week, we’re talking disability pride during July’s Disability Pride Month.

Whether it’s us starting out the show talking about Brian’s recent musical practice with an old friend and society’s devaluing of music as an art and a skill, a skill many people with disabilities have. Or our recent guest, H May, whose short film Awaiting Tiresias highlights discussions of the continuum of both blindness and gender and the illustration of intersectionality with Hannah, a black and enslaved woman who had a disability in the 1800’s.

While we may not have a guest this week, it’s a themed episode of our regular Mixed Bag Monday shows, with an explanation of how Disability Pride Month began. With that, we’re sharing quotes from figures throughout history, organizations, acquaintances and friends, in the wide range of opinions on what it means to feel pride in living with disability or not.

Kerry feels that the opposite of pride is often shame and that’s something she sometimes struggles with. Brian wants us to become comfortable and confident in the use of the word “blind” to describe our disability, as the best way to arrive at feeling pride in who we are, instead of feeling shame for what we can’t control. This is the difference in the medical vs the social models of disability.

Pronouncements aside, disability Pride Month puts a focus on attempts to find pride in ourselves as people with disabilities (marked with a literal disability pride flag first created by Ann Magill in 2019), in how we can be proud of who we are, despite what we’ve been told and gone through. And in all we’ve contributed and continue to offer the world, that we’re valued as human beings.

Throughout this episode, we shared a wide array of viewpoints on whether to celebrate being disabled. If anyone has any feelings on how to better feel pride in being disabled (if you think Disability Pride Month should or should not be celebrated), or if you have any possible Outlook t-shirt design ideas, always feel free to email us: [email protected]

Check out the article quoted in this episode from The New York Times by friend of the show M. Leona Godin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/opinion/blind-ableist-language.html

And listen to our recent appearance on the AT Banter podcast which we highly encourage you subscribe to here:

https://atbanter.com/2022/07/06/at-banter-episode-292-brian-and-kerry-kijewski