Outlook on Radio Western

She grew up on the mountain, on skis from an early age. Shelby Perry grew up with good working vision and never gave any thought to the alternative. So when the accident, “When it happened, I was really at a loss and I didn’t even know what a prosthetic eye looked like or how people lived with one. So it was a very challenging time when that first occurred to get a grasp about how I was going to continue to live my life.”

Outlook On Radio Western is based on the various perspectives of its guests, and this week is no exception. The same goes, as always, for its two hosts - While siblings Kerry and Brian were both born with blindness, their stories are not the same. Kerry has a prosthetic eye while Brian does not and this week we’re discussing a topic many are unfamiliar with until they face it themselves.

On Outlook this week we’re welcoming Shelby Perry. Shelby was always a highly active person (volleyball/yoga/hiking/an avid snowboarder) and suddenly she had to figure out a future with only one working eye, after a snowboarding accident damaged her right one, along with navigating the prosthetic eye process.

She didn’t initially know anyone else going through this until she started to reach out on social media and discovered others going through it, living with it, and this has led to the founding of Eyehesive, a community of those living with prosthetic eyes where experiences are shared and support is given and received for how to take back power with the realization of what’s still possible for a full and confident life after the removal of an eye.

It was the late 90s when Kerry’s left eye was removed after a mysterious virus destroyed it. She was barely using the Internet at that time, long before social media and is only now discovering a community of others finding acceptance with themselves and finding the kind of group understanding on such a unique experience.

Eyehesive is that place so check out what it’s all about, the work this week’s guest has done to build up a safe spot found nowhere else online:

https://www.eyehesive.com

Join the Facebook group:

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

“It is a special place and I always feel a real kinship when I’m here” says show co-host Kerry during her travels across the pond. Brian is live from the studio solo, but is joined by his sister and co-host over Zoom currently enjoying her final week in Ireland. We’re talkin’ travel this week on Outlook.

Kerry discusses the first 2 weeks of her trip spent in Dublin and other regions of Southern Ireland. This is her second time visiting, though since her first in 2011 she has lost more vision. For someone who was born blind but used to see a little more than now, the brain still tries to process sight seeing when it isn’t easy to focus anymore. This can be mentally draining at times, but yet allows for a different unique perspective. While people may assume traveling and going on tours when you can’t see wouldn’t be interesting, there is so much you can still gain from an experience without sight. Kerry has been recording audio diaries on her travels since she decided not to bring her laptop or Braille display. SHe’s also been recording sounds throughout her trip for memories. Not being able to see, this is a substitute for photos, though she also made sure to get people to take pictures because even though someone is blind, they may still want photos to show others.

Kerry’s trip began with a 9-day all women’s tour in Southern Ireland through CIE Tours, organized by Anita Paton, a travel agent Kerry has become good friends with since 2017. While she was traveling solo, this was the perfect opportunity because it allowed her to balance her independence while still being in a group with someone she knows well. Kerry talks about how others on the tour got to learn from her perspective which spurred great conversations. In return, they were able to help her out describing certain things that were more visual. While independence is important, we do depend on each other in a group situation to achieve the best experience for all. Though sometimes it’s also worth staying back from the group if something they’re doing doesn’t seem as accessible which is what Kerry did one afternoon when she came across someone playing the fiddle. An instrument she’s been learning the past few years, this gave her the chance to strike up a conversation with someone new. She talks about dancing on the spot to the music with her cane, the tool she uses to get around Ireland, providing her the power of independence.

Kerry then talks about the second part of her travels spent with friends who live there. After a few days with her friend Nicole, Kerry meets up with Barry, the guest who joins us on the second half of the program and they travel to Northern Ireland where he lives. Kerry is speaking with us from Barry’s living room, chilling with his guide dog Oyster. We talk about how grocery shopping seems to be more accessible there where delivery is more common and cheaper. Kerry mentions how medication boxes there have Braille on them, something we’ve never come across here in Canada. You even get to learn a couple phrases in Irish including “Pog Mo Thoin”.

“Persevere”, “Rise”, “Flow”, “Connect”. These are the titles of 4 paintings Vera Popovic created for an exciting art project in British Columbia..

We’re back this week with Part 2 of our look back at “Your Eyes, My Vision”, a program in B.C. where blind adults were paired with sighted facilitators to encourage, create, and showcase “visual” art. It consisted of an online VocalEye event where some of the artists got to show and talk about their creations. There was also an in person show in Victoria where some of the participants had the opportunity to display and sell their artwork.

On part 2, we meet Vera Popovic who shares first about her background and long time love of art. As a preschool teacher for 40 years, Popovic discusses the importance of getting away from rigid structure and providing more freedom when creating art. Like Delores Thompson in part 1, Vera chose painting as her medium. The similarities end there as they each come from such different life experiences which in turn changes how they approach painting. Vera was able to use a moulding medium which gave texture to the canvas, something she’d never used before. When painting, Vera points out how the facilitator would tell her she didn’t need to use as much paint at a time, while for her having low vision, she wasn’t able to detect such detail and it didn’t feel like she was measuring out that much. This is another example of facilitator learning from blind artist and vice versa. She was even able to sell three of her paintings at the art show in Victoria, the first time Vera had ever had that chance.

From painting we move to something completely different with Ruth Bieber. Ruth enjoyed art in school, but when she suddenly became legally blind at the age of 7 she adopted the attitude that “blind people and the arts didn’t go together” even though she knew deep down she was an artist. Years later Ruth was introduced to a program in New York called “Art Beyond Sight” which completely changed her assumptions. For “Your Eyes, My Vision” Ruth wanted to try something she hadn’t done before, 3D printing. While the process of designing the files to 3D print isn’t very accessible, Ruth was still able to be very creative and come up with a sculpture that’s quite tactile, even makes sound and has lights woven through it. Ruth’s facilitator drove her to the library so they could print off different pieces which were then glued together for the final creation. Her example shows how the process itself can be the focus and often it takes you somewhere you didn’t envision in the beginning, even better than imagined. It’s all about flexibility and problem solving.

We conclude our 2 part series with the project coordinator, Laurel Dundee. Laurel didn’t create any art for the program as she is sighted, her role as coordinator involved sending emails, matching artists with facilitators, promotion, organizing financials, and providing detailed image descriptions at the VocalEye event. She explains her approach to image descriptions, first describing the artwork as a whole and then going through the piece methodically by giving more detail without too much which can be overbearing. As an artist herself, Laurel works primarily in a digital format through drawing comics, book covers, podcast cover art, and album artwork where her art isn’t very accessible. She hadn’t had experience with blind people before her involvement in this program and it has allowed her to feel more passionate about accessibility and the topics we talk about on Outlook every week.

Thanks to Vera Popovic, Ruth Bieber, and Laurel Dundee for their contributions to this episode.

Here’s the VocalEye event where Bieber shows her artwork:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CymeLjq60KM

Find Laurel Dundee’s website here:

http://laureldundee.com

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Everybody can do it, if they set their mind to it.” Delores Thompson

This week on Outlook we feature the first part of a two-part special episode we’ve been working on for a while. We’ share about a project in British Columbia called “Your Eyes, My Vision” where blind artists were paired up with sighted facilitators to learn from each other and show the world and the artists themselves that art is for everyone and should be accessible to everyone too. “Your Eyes, My Vision” was introduced through the Victoria Society for Blind Arts and Culture in the spring of 2022 with funding from Disability Alliance B.C.

We start by discussing the importance of this program as “visual art” isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when people consider those who are blind or low vision. We each share our own experiences with art growing up as Kerry used to have more vision and enjoyed drawing while Brian was more into tactile options like Play Doh. Similar to physical education, visual art was a subject that didn’t remain as accessible for us in the later elementary grades and into high school which is why this topic needs to be talked about more.

Our own experiences with art are followed by discussions with 3 people who took part in the project. Amy Amantea shares about creating her art through the medium of glassblowing along with a poem she wrote as a companion piece. Vincent Atkins and Delores Thompson are featured next as a pair who took part in the project, Delores as the blind artist and Vincent the sighted facilitator. Delores talks about the paintings she created and Vince shares some of the insight he gained from his experience working with her. In many cases, the process itself is focused on more than the final results. It’s all about providing blind people with opportunities they might not normally have.

So check out this discussion on creating “visual” art as people who are blind and stay tuned for part 2 where we feature 3 others who were involved with “Your Eyes, My Vision”.

Thanks again to Amy Amantea, Vincent Atkins, and Delores Thompson for their contributions to this episode.

Find the VocalEye event from earlier in 2023 where some of the artists involved in the project were featured here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CymeLjq60KM

The original event from 2022 when “Your Eyes, My Vision” was pitched to the community:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHqaFM-YWQU

Check out the podcast Amy Amantea hosts “Accessing Art With Amy”:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/accessing-art-with-amy/id1535042180

Find Vincent’s music/art on his Bandcamp page:

https://vincentatkins.bandcamp.com

This is our submission for the “INTENSE INTERIORS – 2023 Architecture and Film Symposium”. It was hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University’s Creative School’s Interior Design department on May 6 & 7, 2023. Our piece is in the form of an experimental audio paper.

“Outlook - A Multisensory Installation” explores the concept of mental mapping: a term blind people use that defines the ability to picture or imagine things in the world around us or us and where we are located in a space. Throughout the experimental audio paper, we explore the idea that the visual isn’t the only best way of getting a clear picture of where we are in space, that tactile maps are one way of understanding an interior and out into the exterior world.

The audio paper was presented alongside an in house installation including tactile maps, accessible Purdys braille box of chocolates with legend, iPhone for touch screen demonstration, and 3D printed models during the symposium on May 7, 2023.

It was an honour to be included in this symposium, to share our perspectives as two blind Canadians.

Thanks to co-chairs: Lorella Di Cintio, PhD and Vahid Vahdat, PhD.

Learn more about “INTENSE INTERIORS – 2023 Architecture and Film Symposium” here:

http://architectureandfilm.org

Credits:

Joanne Beckford speaking the name of the exhibit, Penny Mary LeclairBennett (Outlook 2021-06-28 - Deafblind Awareness Month with Penny Leclair), Mitch Creedy (Outlook 2022-11-14 - Blindness and Gender Intersecting with First-Time Guest Mitch Creedy), and Patricia Elgersma (Outlook 2020-10-05 - Perfect Pitch and Mental Mapping with Guest Patricia Elgersma).

Thanks to the companies who contributed to our installation:

https://www.purdys.com

https://see3d.org

https://ailledesign.com

Image description: Kerry and Brian are standing behind a tall podium as part of their exhibit showcasing their tactile maps. Brian is wearing a charcoal grey pinstriped collar dress shirt and Kerry is wearing the Aille Design braille blue dress with white braille beading. Kerry is holding in her hands a box of Purdys Chocolates that has accessible braille packaging.

National AccessAbility Week takes place from May 28 to June 3, 2023 . This year the theme for National AccessAbility Week is “Disability Inclusion: From Possibilities to Practice”.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with returning guest and friend of the show Christine Malec, about what else? Accessibility.

Accessibility and the arts and culture. It’s time for Luminato!

Specifically, we’re speaking to Christine about this year’s Luminato Festival, taking place from June 7 through June 18, 2023. We discuss her role in the festivities and fun, what she’s learned about herself regarding features of this year’s festival such as puppetry and dance, and on what is gained by putting herself out there to play music for passersby in the Toronto subway system.

It’s always great to find out what Christine Malec is up to. So check out more about this year’s Luminato festival here:

https://luminatofestival.com

Don’t forget to tune in to Radio LUMI online during the festival where you can hear programs hosted by Malec and others:

https://luminatofestival.com/event/radio-lumi/

Listen to the most recent episode in the Radio LUMI podcast series featuring Malec:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1793756/12912775-podcast-episode-4-joy

And support Christine on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/ChristineMalec

It’s been a wild May month so far for Outlook and we were off doing some cool things earlier in it.

This week on the podcast, we share the details of our May weekend in Toronto as a part of the Architecture & Film Symposium, 2023, which took place on May 6th and 7th, hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University Creative School’s Interior Design department. The theme this year was Intense Interiors and our exhibit was titled Outlook - A Multi-Sensory Installation, all based around the concept of mental mapping, a way of understanding and navigating one’s surroundings and of spacial awareness for blind people. And, in our exhibit, we displayed a number of tactile maps of interiors and exterior city layouts, a box of inclusive and accessible mixed chocolates with a braille legend to help demonstrate the point of our Outlook installation, along with a number of 3D objects and other materials explaining the real life lived experience of blindness, with a focus on other sensory modalities for understanding the world around us, to counteract the misconceptions of blindness which can be found in one of this event’s supplemental films: Blindness, 2008 (book authored by Jose Saramago).

In this episode, we describe how we traveled to and within Toronto for the weekend and how we navigated the hotel and other accessibility features such as braille on doors and in hotel elevators, our Friday night spent with the founder and assistant of accessible braille fashion company Aille Design after Kerry decided to rent the Blue Braille Dress, a bit about some of the keynote presenters and panels on the Saturday at The Ace Hotel, and about our installation and discussions we had with interested parties who stopped by to find out more about us and our maps and other assorted accessible items; along with the showcasing of inclusive companies such as Aille Design, Purdys Chocolatier, and See3D.

Thanks to the co-chairs of the symposium: Lorella Di Cintio, PhD and Vahid Vahdat, PhD.

This event was a year in the making, a few times remnants of Covid made us think it wouldn’t actually happen, and we were so glad to be in attendance. We finish off this week finally airing the audio paper we initially submitted for consideration in this year’s proceedings to wrap up this one. (We will be posting the audio paper (nearly 10 minutes in length, as its own segment in this podcast feed in the coming weeks.)

So for more on the symposium, check out the link below:

http://architectureandfilm.org

And make sure to check out and support the companies who graciously contributed to our installation:

https://ailledesign.com

https://www.purdys.com

https://see3d.org

It’s a new day, it’s a May day, and we’re back for another Outlook Mixed Bag episode.

This week we’re finally getting to it, explaining a project we’ve had in the works for nearly an entire year now, but first we share a sudden loss in our family and on our own special memories of our uncle Mike who passed away, unexpectedly last week, moments after doing the thing he loved: playing music live with friends.

The much hinted at project is our participation in a symposium taking place on May 6th and 7th in Toronto: Intense Interiors.

Ours is Outlook - A Multi-Sensory Installation where we’re exploring mental mapping using multiple sensory modalities to show a range of perspectives, along with clips from guests appearing on this show.

We’re showcasing a range of accessible products including braille fashion and mixed chocolates and tactile and 3D printed maps and objects.

We discuss this last year and how we became a part of Intense Interiors, we give a demonstration of the symposium’s organizer saying her own name on the website the symposium is using where you can record yourself saying your name so others can hear how it’s properly pronounced, and we tell what it’s been like developing our installation, beginning with the audio paper we produced to illustrate the ideas demonstrated within.

Check out this site and record your name which you can add to your email signatures so others will know its proper pronunciation in any situation:

https://namedrop.io/

And to learn more about the symposium, go to:

https://architectureandfilm.org/

Mike Kijewski: 1952-2023

Well we made it!

This week Outlook celebrates our 200th episode and we’re doing it with a special guest, with an interview/discussion on the issues which are central to what we do here: accessibility, advocacy, equality.

This week we welcome the first person to really discover our show back in early 2019 when he first reached out to us, our very first phone guest.

Anthony Hodgetts from Alberta joins us as we reflect on 200 shows and we learn a bit more about one of the hosts of fellow radio show Bumping Into Walls. Anthony tells us about the bus adventures he goes on to travel from his home in Calgary to visit relatives in Alberta’s capitol city of Edmonton and co-host Kerry shares about once being left behind when attempting to take a bus home from Toronto.

Anthony tells us about the SCORE computer camp he attended here in Ontario, put on for teens by the CNIB, something hosts Brian and Kerry never experienced even living in the province. He shares how he discovered Outlook, a little about his own show which is in the works again on university and community station CJSW, and related is the subject of how to find guests for shows like ours.

Hodgetts was given oxygen at birth which caused his blindness and tells us about being integrated into the mainstream school in the 70’s and still being segregated in a classroom for students with disabilities (separate but equal as they say) for the first several years of school and then being thrown out into a regular classroom in the later grades. He tells us about the skills he acquired early on (braille and orientation and mobility) and his experience of feeling on display to the sighted kids when finally included among them.

We discuss how heavy manual braillers were, cupboards to the head and chairs in the way, and about Anthony’s feelings on guide dogs (we all agree that women seem to like a guy with a cute dog), as he explains the types of transportation he uses in his province as well as the reactions drivers have to blind riders. We get into comparing assistive device and accessible equipment support programs between provinces, a little on Anthony’s work as an accessibility tester, and we finish off hearing about his interest in a number of hobbies: bowling, choir, and being a member of the Lions club.

Happy Birthday to guest (co)host) Anthony Hodgetts and Happy 200th episode to us!

You can find episodes of the radio show/podcast Bumping Into Walls here:

https://cjsw.com/program/bumping-into-walls/

(also available wherever you get your podcasts)

“If you rely on you're eyes only, you’re gonna miss a lot,” says Donna Hudon who, at age six was wearing glasses and at eleven she was using a cane at night. And by age twenty-three this guest was totally blind. Nights and days, she now has issues with her circadian rhythms like some other blind people (known as non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder), impacting the sleep-wake cycle which makes night shifts doable for her.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Donna, a personal care worker from Nanaimo, British Columbia, out there on Vancouver Island. She’s one of only a handful of blind people around doing personal care work and advocating, simply by doing this work, for more to follow in her footsteps.

Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, we discuss the role Hudon’s sisters played, in the early years of Donna’s blindness, to get their mother to treat Donna like any other child and the influence this had on the trajectory of Donna’s life.

She’s wanted to work taking care of others and children with disabilities of all kinds for a long time. Even with a rehabilitation practitioner diploma and a degree in child and youth care,

Donna still had to push to get hired anywhere because employers wouldn’t look beyond the blindness. In the end, however, a little word like “no” never did slow this woman down. And now the Nanaimo Association for Community Living, where she works, is creating policies in their procedure manual: how to have somebody with a disability work to being an independent worker.

As she shares with us about her life looking for jobs, raising and homeschooling two children of her own, along with volunteering and being an active member out in her community, Donna shows why it’s important for those of us with disabilities to be tenacious in carving out a space for ourselves - in employment like in the rest of life.

And speaking of night shifts: Donna was just coming off of one of those, a twelve hour shift, to be with us this week, but after facing breast cancer a few years ago, not to mention all the discrimination she’s been up against when trying to contribute to her community and to the broader society all these years, she also likes to get away from all of that sometimes. So we finish off the show hearing about her favourite pastime…her kayak out on the ocean and being on a competitive cancer survivors dragon boat team because nothing slows Donna Hudon down for very long.

For more info on her work experiences, check out this article: "Blazing New Trails Takes Persistence: My Job as a Personal Support Worker" from the November 2019 issue of The Blind Canadian:

https://www.cfb.ca/november-2019-version-of-the-blind-canadian?id=2