We spoke to this guest on a Sunday night/Monday morning, all the way from Australia.

This week on Outlook we hear from author, mentor, public speaker Maribel Steel about motherhood while losing her sight, about her book Blindness For Beginners, and she even gave us a demonstration of a handy little gadget called the PenFriend.

With her guide dog by her side, Steel is always open to the possibilities, acceptance of disability and those same endless possibilities we all want for our lives.

For more info and to purchase her book, check out Steel's official website:

https://maribelsteel.com/

We’re back for our first Monday Mixed Bag show, live in studio, since early February.

This week on Outlook, we make sure to mix in the silly stuff, the light stuff, in with some of the more serious, the sad things like the death of a recent guest, John Rae. Just goes to show, don’t put off something to next week that you could do today.

We share a braille alphabet song to kick things off and discuss the upcoming We’re With U benefit concert for blind Ukrainians being put on by the blindness community. And from Brian’s live musical performances to fantasy baseball, and rounding things off with a little old cellphone grab story, there’s no shortage of things to talk about.

We dedicate this episode to John Rae, a tireless advocate who made a difference with the work he did for blindness in Canada and beyond. RIP

For more info and links to stream We're With U, the blind performing artists' Virtual Benefit Concert for blind Ukrainians happening April 16 at 2 PM EST:

https://mushroomfm.com/withyou

Listen to John's recent appearance on Outlook:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2022-03-07-think-global-act-local-with-john-rae/id1527876739?i=1000553477466

And check out The Braille Alphabet Song by Jack Hartmann:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT_dD7tEIEg

Alexa was out window shopping during her final year of studying fashion in Toronto when she spotted a beaded jacket and had an “Aha moment.”

Alexa Jovanovic loved fashion as a little girl, but it wasn’t until she studied it in school that she learned about a topic not yet trending on social media, not yet a common thing to see diversity boards and plans factored in everywhere, but she thought braille could both look aesthetically appealing and be functional as well. Her final project became the research and launching of Aille Design, now expanding across North America.

Today on Outlook, we speak with its founder about the reactions she got from people when she first explained what she was doing (the persistent misconception that blind people don’t care what they’re wearing or what they look like), the research and development that went into her braille beaded clothing with consultations from the blindness community itself, and the wider issue of disability consumerism and representation in the fashion industry.

Aille Design, pronounced like “eye” or “I” as in the personal, even has the braille character “i” represented by dots 2 and 4 of the braille alphabet.

Check them out and order some clothes on their website:

https://ailledesign.com

And find Aille Design on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ailledesign/

When our guest this week was a child, she’d follow a string her parents had strung up for her, tied to poles on the road between her home and that of her grandmother. She was encouraged to walk the route, but it wasn’t until later that she saw the value in the mobility cane in lieu of one.

This week on Outlook we speak with star athlete Janet Erikson who competed in the Geilo 1980 Paralympic Winter Games.

Skiing and cross country in her mainstream high school, but Janet had grown up in rural Manitoba until the CNIB visited to offer guidance and the family moved out west so she could attend Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind which closed over 25 years ago.

This week we talk of her somewhat sheltered childhood as the baby of the family, about the shock of attending a residential school for blind and deaf children away from her loved ones and community, and we hear how she has taken back her own life and shown that blindness can be empowering rather than demoralizing.

We can all do with a large dose of Erikson’s optimism today. With the years of experience she’s had. We, here on Outlook, are grateful to guests like her, for the sharing of her story with us.

Co-host Kerry was a sensitivity/authenticity reader/consultant on a recent project, a picture book published by Toronto’s children’s book publishers’ Kids Can Press.

“My City Speaks” is a book for young readers, a delightful exploration of a cityscape, through the perspective of a little blind girl. In it, she travels her city, experiencing the sounds and smells along the way.

This week, on Outlook, we’re speaking with the author of the book, Darren Lebeuf and its illustrator, Ashley Barron. They tell us about their author/illustrator roles on this project (and the other two books in the series) and the discussion evolves into one about how blindness and disability have been included (or not included historically) in literature and children’s literature more specifically.

Pick up a copy of “My City Speaks” in either hard cover, ebook, and in print/braille versions, along with the other two books in the series (“My Forest is Green and ”My Ocean is Blue), all available on the Kids Can Press website here:

https://kidscanpress.com//

Check out Ashley on her website:

http://www.ashleybarron.com

and on Instagram @_ashleybarron_

And find Darren on his website:

http://landoflebeef.com

and on Instagram @darrenlebeuf

According to John Rae, it was 1975 when he jumped, feet first, into the world of legislative advocacy, community organizing, and activism in the blindness community, first with something called Blind Organizing Ontario with Self-Help Tactics (BOOST) which evolved into the Alliance for the Equality of Blind Canadians (AEBC).

Rae has lived all his life as a Torontonian, fighting human rights cases, and working as a civil servant, taking early retirement where he’s been able to focus on lending his knowledge, expertise, and lived experience as a blind man to various causes.

Today on Outlook, we talk to John about the importance for blind people to travel and experience the smells and sounds of other places, his educational journey from Toronto to Windsor, and how vital it is to have mentors who can show us the possibilities available to us as blind people as there were multiple career options Rae didn’t feel were accessible to him years ago.

He shares his thoughts on the variety of educational settings he went through, such as his time in both integrated settings and what were known as sight saving classes and at what was then known as the Ontario School for the Blind in Brantford in the 60’s.

We discuss the disconnect between the medical profession and its blind patients, the hesitancy to deal with politicians and how being seen in settings of all kinds is how we’ll finally be taken into account, and John’s issues with the dangers of eBikes.

There’s elections coming up in Ontario in 2022 and our issues need to be addressed, but how do we keep up the energy for advocacy? We look to the years of life experience John Rae has accumulated, the importance of finding balance and planning for the bigger picture.

The recent trucker convoys, taking over streets, this has had a clogging up impact on people with disabilities and with blindness specifically. As the pandemic begins to ease, all around us, John Rae is thinking about how we can “build back better” for everyone going forward here in Ontario, and in Canada and beyond.

Send John an email,

And check out an article from 1979 to get a glimpse into some of the history discussed in this episode:

https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1979/1/15/the-blind-speaking-for-the-blind

It’s not hard to get this grouping together, to talk chocolate, so we were thrilled to speak with Ramya Amuthan and Julia Cho about precisely that.

This week on Outlook, we speak with Julia, Marketing Manager of Canadian chocolate company Purdys Chocolatier about their newest reveal, the braille box, which was released to massive acclaim back at Christmas. Also, with her second appearance on our show, we hear from Ramya, on air personality and co-host of Accessible Media Inc.’s Kelly and Company about her role as consultant on the product’s development from the visually impaired community perspective.

We learn more about how the braille box was envisioned and executed and speak about the wider issues of universal design. Ramya shares what it was like to give her input on the braille and other features, including tactile markers and the choice to use grade one braille for this special assorted box of chocolates and its accompanying braille legend.

Ramya also discusses what it’s like to be able to pick one’s favourite from a selection of mixed chocolates, when normally blind people don’t know what they might be getting when they choose a piece unless they ask someone who is sighted. Some may like the unknown adventure of that, the risk, if you will, of possibly biting into a fruit filling when that’s the last thing you wanted. Do you spit out the piece or swallow it down and hope for the best next time?

Well, Purdys has produced a solution for that for blind chocolate lovers and that’s no small thing, as Ramya shares in this episode.

From the feelings chocolate can evoke in many of us to what Julia, in her role at Purdys has learned about inclusive design practices and the access needs for blind people specifically, this discussion was a delight and we, on Outlook, are pleased to feature and support the braille box and Purdys, Canadian and an all around beautiful product.

Purchase the Purdys Braille Box here:

https://www.purdys.com/braille-box-18-pc

Check out the promotion video featuring Ramya:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBEDNQXv62U

And listen to Ramya’s first appearance on Outlook:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-03-29-discussion-with-ramya-amuthan-from/id1527876739?i=1000515098520

Four siblings, left to play together in an empty Canadian hockey arena, while their father guards a net on the ice down below. When the youngest sibling, a boy, sticks his hand up inside one of the candy machines, the three others must soap their little brother’s hand to pry him loose.

From that carefree sibling foursome in childhood to a Family Day celebrated over Zoom - approaching, pushing forty together and we’re still having fun.

They did it once and then agreed to do it again. Celebrating Family Day 2022 with returning guests to Outlook, our two older siblings, Kim and Paul, returning after their debut on the show for Family Day of last year.

We talk bulldog and bunny updates, work/life balance, and the aging that creeps up on you when you least expected.

For even more background on our two older, sighted siblings, check out their first appearance on the show with us from one year ago:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-02-15-family-day-with-the-kijewski-siblings/id1527876739?i=1000509546236

Author of novella Dial E for Endearment, Heidi Gray McGill says, “…When I wrote this story, I purposed in my heart to shed light on blindness in a lighthearted, relatable fashion.”

The heroine of Dial E for Endearment, Everly Johnson, is a radio call-in host in the real life town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. She’s a daughter and a friend. She may be blind, but she does not get rescued in this sweet contemporary Christian romance story. She does the rescuing, always giving advice on love on air while looking for it in her own life, in learning to let go and forgive her mother, and making friends with Max the dog along the way.

Heidi Gray McGill describes herself as growing up a pk (paster’s kid) to today when being a grandmother is where she finds joy in experiencing things anew through her grandchildren’s eyes.

McGill is now down to five percent peripheral vision with rp (retinitis pigmentosa) and she tells us about what she misses, driving, while finding value in being able to share a simple car ride with someone. She tells us about her life with a white cane, going all the way to China with the safety a cane in the hand provides. We three talk tree-in-the-face moments and wet floor sign encounters.

We speak to Heidi on Outlook this week, during Low Vision Awareness Month in the US and White Cane Week in Canada, about fighting fear, finding faith, and what it means to her to find her joy and how she has Everly seek the same.

During February, when you purchase Dial E for Endearment in ebook or paperback formats, 50% of the proceeds will go to Metrolina Association for the Blind. MAB is the non-profit that provided support, counselling, life skills, and white cane training when Heidi received her Retinitis Pigmentosa diagnosis.

Purchase Dial E for Endearment:

https://books2read.com/b/b5XzQk

Connect with Heidi on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorHeidiGrayMcGill

And check her out on her blog here:

https://heidimcgill822089357.wordpress.com

From January and Braille Literacy Month to February, the first full week in February, and White Cane Week (WCW) here in Canada - we on Outlook are back, live in studio after January and Omicron.

This week we’re talking about white canes, the shame and embarrassment and also the freedom and safety they provide those of us who use them.

We review the guests we’ve had on Outlook already this year, including the author of a memoir called Love is Blind. We briefly discuss our feelings on common expressions like that.

Also this week, we want to highlight two of the most recent episodes of another podcast we listen to and greatly respect. Talk Description to Me is a podcast created by two friends in Toronto, one sighted and one blind, who discuss the visual world and our world’s current events, focusing on image description for blind people’s benefit. JJ and Christine make a great pair on air and lately they spoke about fire and about the trucker convoy.

So we discuss how we think of fire, from the warmth and romance of candles and fires in fireplaces or outdoors, all the way up to massive and destructive forest fires. One of us has had enough sight, in the past, to see what a candle flame or a camp fire look like, while the other sees light and has only ever seen light and dark.

Being that February is Black History Month, Kerry has a story of a man from history she discovered while doing research for a piece of writing she is doing, a man named George (Washington) Jones, aka George Gravy who came to Canada and eventually made his way to the town of Woodstock in Southwestern Ontario in the 20s and would become our unofficial town crier. So check us and the show out this week, for more on why this relates to Outlook On Radio Western and what we do here.

Not to mention, while we do end this week’s episode on a tough note, with the most recent episode of Talk Description on the upheaval right now in Canadian society, and our thoughts on what it means when the media uses such hyperbolic headlines as “Dancing On the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa.” How when some blind hear that, they may not realize often it’s an expression, a metaphorical action rather than a literal act. Blind people hear the horns of the truckers on the news, but don’t get to see the signs being carried and posted, for example, leaving us out on some of what others are getting. Yet even what one person sees on a story in the media is never exactly the same as the next person.

Yes, here on Outlook we talk about the hard things, as well as chocolate. (Hint to an upcoming episode later this month featuring Purdys Chocolatier, their new braille box, a perfect gift with Valentine’s Day coming up.)

Learn more about the town crier Kerry discusses:

https://woodstocknewsgroup.weebly.com/town-crier.html

Give a listen to the recent episodes of Talk Description to Me:

https://talkdescriptiontome.buzzsprout.com

And the perfect gift for a blind person for Valentine’s Day:

https://www.purdys.com/braille-box-18-pc