Outlook on Radio Western

According to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, 2023 is the year of the Water Rabbit:

Starting from January 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year), and ending on February 9th, 2024/which will be the day before co-host Kerry’s 40th birthday, (Chinese New Year's Eve). The sign of Rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture.

Our audio guy (having purchased new mics for himself for Christmas at local business Music City Canada) and sibling co-host Brian just so happens to have been born in another past year of the rabbit.

Brought to you by we two, the rabbit and the rat, it’s our first live, in-studio episode of Outlook for the year as we cover a mixture of topics including other online podcast communities and our desire to reach out, hear from, and connect with anyone about disability on the Western University campus. And we share about the holidays (music played by Brian and friends and Kerry’s new keyboard) and on habits and establishing routines as we look to the year ahead.

In the second half we celebrate the life of Ontario’s first lieutenant-governor (2007) with a visible physical disability. David Onley lived with the traces of childhood polio and died on Saturday, January 14th and we include here a few clips of him in his own words as he explains his involvement in making change around issues of accessibility. David was instrumental in keeping the AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act 2005 with aims of achieving its results by 2025) in the news, reviewing its progress or lack-thereof, and the importance for visible representation of people with disabilities in society to work on improved policy for all citizens, but specifically individuals of the population living with all kinds of disabilities of which any one of us could acquire at any point. That is why David spoke out about it throughout his life and why we two do what we do.

So do check out our first Mixed Bag show - 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar. Let’s all find out together and check out these links for more on what we discuss in this first of many mixed bag shows to come in this, 2023, the year of the water rabbit.

The complete interview with David Onley from Beyond Politics as previewed on this episode can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf0QYIbACIU

Check out the What's Your Excuse? Network:

https://wyexcuse.com/shows/

The Story Of How Braille Wound Up On Wine Labels:

https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/the-story-of-how-braille-wound-up-on-wine-labels/

“See the flaming log. Drink the tasty nog, by the warm fireplace.” (Eggnog aka milk punch.) [lyrics quoted from Warm Fireplace by Kibble])

Around the end of one year and the start of another, we look back on the year that just was and on toward the next on the podcast that started it all with us.

On KOP 2022 we return to our spots by a warm fireplace, this time with wine, and this year fire is even more of a running thread through things here.

We toast this time of year (with our friend The Stoker) with a brailled bottle of wine, (Kerry’s favourite, red), as we discuss highlights (and lowlights) from 2022.

These included Kerry’s 25-year kidney transplant anniversary which she spent hosting a new friend visiting from Ireland (the one who told her about the wine with the braille on it), one collaborative musical project which came to an end in 2022 for Brian while he continued to play more music with old friends as the scarier bits of life and reality came a little too close for comfort, and Kerry’s year of online elemental writing classes including water and air (class on fire for 2023).

From convoys to Covid, every year has its ups and downs. And while fire can be comforting, it can also be destructive. Still, we are grateful, after another year, that everyone involved is okay.

On this one we begin with a catchy parody tune about a warm fireplace, share a brief musical composition Kerry came up with on her new keyboard, and end with our annual “cassette clip” plus an additional clip: RIP Al (1955 to 2022).

Support the song Warm Fireplace by Kibble featured at the start of this episode by streaming or purchasing here:

https://alexreed.bandcamp.com/album/warm-fireplace

Learn how braille ended up on wine bottles:

https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/the-story-of-how-braille-wound-up-on-wine-labels/

Order a Purdys Braille Chocolate Box:

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

And check out Brian’s friend Matthew Martin’s song mentioned in this episode which was awarded second place in Aeolian Hall’s inaugural songwriting contest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrRBMTy9eso

This week’s show, where we’re speaking with Utah author Macy Lewis, is being brought to you by the letter P.

This brings us to the middle of January, Braille Literacy Month, as we speak with Macy about braille and how it and literacy brought her to the writing she does now, as she describes the 26 Days of Braille she’s been doing all month long on her social media by using a muffin tin and tennis balls to show what braille letters look like. As this airs live first, this one on January 16, this puts us at the 16th letter of the alphabet: P.

With braille letters, they can stand for entire words to make the best use of space and in the interest of time.

P is people. Perfect pitch people.

On top of a loving nod toward Sesame Street, this week on Outlook we discuss Macy’s school years, first at a school for the blind and then mainstreamed into a public school for the rest of her education. Lewis shares about the time it took to become fast with braille and her love of writing collaboratively when creating characters and plot lines for everything from romantic suspense to children’s books about a blue dragon and an octopus by the name of Octie. Macy collaborates with everyone from family and friends to her local aquarium, planetarium, and the zoo when writing about animals.

So from TBR overwhelm to her wanting to communicate about braille to show people what it is, in her words to share what braille “is, what it looks like, what it means.” - Macy Lewis opens up about where on the blindness spectrum she is, her years of anxiety over reading out loud, and her love of music, her and sibling co-host Brian being “perfect pitch people.”

Macy Lewis and sibling co-host Kerry bond over writing and the big questions, for writing and as a blind writer in particular. Stay tuned for new words from Lewis, “Weathering the Storm”, her first time writing featuring blind characters, slated for release later this year. In the meantime, follow Macy on her socials and by checking out her Amazon author page here:

https://www.amazon.com/author/macylewis

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMacyLewis

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MacyLewis6

They’ve been Kelly and Company, on AMI Audio up till now, but for our first new episode of the new year, they are now Kelly and Ramya, now on AMI TV, and we speak with them both this week.

This week on Outlook, we welcome in the month of January, with first guests of 2023 Kelly MacDonald and Ramya Amuthan. They are announcing this week’s premier on AMI TV of Kelly and Ramya. We speak with them for a conversation with the hosts together, after having them come on with us individually in the past.

Being that January is Braille Literacy Month, we begin the discussion hearing from them both on their own experiences with braille and how it’s fit into their lives. We also learn about how they became a team on air, on AMI Audio in the past, and how the pandemic impacted them and their show, coming out on the other side with the addition of AMI TV to the audio, becoming the new version of the Kelly and Ramya show.

It’s launching this week and we hear about what it’s been like, moving from audio into the visual realm, and how it feels to be adding a visual format element, as the hosts who are blind.

Catch Kelly and Ramya live on AMI TV week days from 2 to 4 PM EST.

Find a listing of the satellite/cable channels AMI TV broadcasts at here:

https://www.ami.ca/channels

You can also catch the show at the same time simulcast on AMI Audio:

https://www.ami.ca/listenlive

And if you missed them the first time, check out both Kelly and Ramya’s first appearances on Outlook:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2020-12-07-accessible-media-in-canada-with/id1527876739?i=1000501639876

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

Outlook for 2022, all wrapped up with a beautiful beau. On this final episode of 2022, right before Christmas, we acknowledge that it’s not a joyous time of year for all of us equally and also we discuss the impact all the beautiful wrapping on gifts this time of year has on the environment. Outlook is about tearing off the fancy wrappings on issues, to get to the heart of it, the contents of an issue involving anything disability.

In the second half of this week’s show, we talk music, inclusive products, and audio description, reviewing a few recent guests (out of all 42) including new friends, one of which we had sit in with us to mark Outlook being on the air for four years back in the fall. We discuss some of the disability inequality and examples of how people who are marginalized have been struggling with things like inflation and poverty, at a time of year when A Christmas Carol (traditionally watched with Kerry and her dad on Christmas Eve) holds lessons for how the world treats the haves and the have-not’s. Plus we’re remembering some of our shared/individual Christmas memories growing up, from gifts not wrapped to red and green construction paper loop chains made to count down to Christmas. We share about what traditions we had and have, with Kerry remembering the colours of Christmas and Brian never having seen enough for that. And we cap things off with a few hints of what’s to come next year.

Also, reviewing the last twelve months, on a show like ours, often includes tributes to those we’ve lost. And this week we have a loss in the blindness community to announce, along with how the year began with the sudden passing of disability activist John Rae back in the spring. It was last week the announcement shocked many of us in the blindness community (especially in the US and with the National Federation of the Blind), Scott LaBarre passed away on December 10. We had him as National Rep for the Canadian Federation of the Blind’s convention with us as convention MC’s when he attended and gave the banquet speech, all virtually in the middle of the pandemic in 2021. Larger than life, Scott was a lawyer with a family, a leader and mentor to many.

Those like Scott and John are a part of the history of blindness, both in Canada and in the States and we can’t forget why that matters. So RIP to Scott and to all those we’ve lost this year.

And so Happy Holidays and all the best in 2023 from us at Outlook. Cheers to you all and we’ll be toasting 2022 with a bottle of wine with braille on the label we found recently. Please enjoy unwrapping these gems by checking out a few fun and informational links we’re including to round things out, podcasts we were invited on, along with accessibility and art topics we covered this year with our guests.

Check out our recent appearance on the Limitless, Blind Beginnings Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-127-lets-meet-brian-and-kerry/id1518892826?i=1000589083990

Read the story of how braille ended up on wine bottles:

https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/the-story-of-how-braille-wound-up-on-wine-labels/

Remember John Rae by listening back to his appearance on the show from earlier this year:

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

And pay tribute to Scott LaBarre through revisiting his appearance at our CFB convention in 2021 on this 2 part episode:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-06-07-cfb-choices-goals-2021-virtual-convention/id1527876739?i=1000524699528

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-06-14-cfb-choices-goals-2021-virtual-convention/id1527876739?i=1000525501448

We found this week’s guest (final guest of Outlook 2022) through this other recent guest Kyle Kiper, both from Arkansas.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Cindy Scott-Huisman about art, creativity, and ingenuity.

We discuss Cindy’s journey with her son’s and her own Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), Cantrell Gallery which has been in her family for half a century and the pride she has in her work there, and about how Scott-Huisman took chances on a continued happy life post LHON diagnosis.

We at Outlook always like to learn, through another’s self description, what they still can and do see, but we love discussing art (in all its forms) with those who also love it.

To read more about Cantrell Gallery, check out their website here:

https://cantrellgallery.com

PWD - people with disabilities

DWP - Disability Without Poverty

December 3rd of this year marks 30 years since the United Nations adopted this date as the International Day for Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). The theme for IDPD 2022 is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“.

What is Disability Without Poverty (DWP)? What is Bill C-22 (the Canada Disability Benefit)?

This week on Outlook we speak with Janet Rodriguez – Disability advocate; Ontario coordinator for DWP about Janet’s international perspective (speaking of coming from Peru to Canada) and then what it’s been like living here in this country with the push for Bill C-22 as 2022 comes to a close.

Janet tells us about this organization and this bill as the three of us have an open discussion about our own, individual experiences with disability and the connection between disability and poverty in Canada specifically, both before and since Covid-19 came along, contributing to so many societal cracks, all of which were already forming before the pandemic but of which have only widened more vastly since.

When Covid hit, the government snapped into high gear for Canadians when they were unable to go to work. The Canadian government created the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit or CERB, but with cost-of-living on the increase, those living with disabilities (both visible and invisible) have fallen further and further below the poverty line. This ends up harming society more, in the long run, but with disability there’s always been stigma and feelings of being a burden, on the system, in the capitalistic culture we’re all living in. We wanted to speak with someone who is doing something, as part of a group of Canadians living with disability, to engage with policy makers and fellow stakeholders to make life better for pwd, a group any one of us could join at any time.

“Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“.

This may be a global truth, but it must begin and end in the country in which we live, and Janet Rodriguez is our guest for this broad strokes discussion broken down. Those of us with disabilities in Canada (PWD/DWP), we must have a highly visible seat at the table for all consultations on the creation of a Canadian Disability Benefit and that’s just what Disability Without Poverty and Rodriguez are doing by pulling up a chair for human rights here at home.

And as we wrap up 2022, on this first Outlook of December, we promote Disability Without Poverty’s webinar taking place Thursday, December 8th beginning at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET. It’s a year-End review of the Canada Disability Benefit. Together with hosts Michelle Hewitt, national co-chair) and Rabia Khedr, national director, DWP will be discussing "how far we've come and the challenges that lie ahead in making Bill C-22 a reality.”

Register here:

https://plan-9.hubspotpagebuilder.com/reg-dwp-year-end-townhall

You can also register by phone at:

1-877-775-6652

Read more about what Disability Without Poverty are all about by visiting their website where you can sign up for the DWP newsletter for updates in your inbox:

https://www.disabilitywithoutpoverty.ca

And find them on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/disabilitywithoutpoverty

The world of audio description is still new and it can be hard to know how to break into the field, for anyone wanting to write it or engineer/mix it or voice it, even do quality control on it. As we’ve said, it’s all a collaborative process or should be anyway.

On this week’s episode we welcomed author and audio description writer Kelly Evans for a frank discussion on how she got into this work and how audio description and related accessibility are showing up in more and more places, even as many still get it mixed up with closed captioning, and how something that helps the blind can also be handy for anyone. There’s still no real set of standards and so AD production requires devoted parties at all levels.

Evans has gone from working in project management and IT, in investment banking and in museums over in England, and back here in Canada writing historical novels, being an expert in the black death and plagues in general. She writes about historical women, in the renaissance period, requiring lots of research. These skills transfer over into how she moved into doing AD script writing which also requires plenty of research into the subject matter of any show needing description. We talk about the value of feedback and including the blind community in the collaborative process for the audio description to be the best it can be. Kelly, as a writer herself, she knows why quality matters and how valuable feedback is.

This latest guest on Outlook is a Canadian writer of audio description Kerry met in a Facebook group for those doing just such work, an excellent place to go to for like-minded people striving to describe shows, films, plays, and so much more as time goes on and the AD industry continues to evolve.

To continue the ongoing discussion on audio description, join the Facebook group where Kerry and Kelly met here:

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

And check out Kelly's writing on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Evans/e/B0187JGTOQ

It’s been several years since both of us had our one-and-only guide dogs, in our teens and twenties, but that doesn’t mean it’s been so long that we can’t identify with another guide dog user around the impact of the end of a guide team partnership. Our guest this week made it on with us, even as he’d just recently experienced the loss of his German shepherd guide dog companion, a difficult loss for so many.

On Outlook this week we spoke with first-time guest Kyle Kiper, originally of Texas and now living near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border, about the big question guide dog handlers are often asked after they lose a dog guide: will you be going for another guide dog then?

On this episode we discuss all three of our positions on this question, along with a conversation spanning the array of other topics there are to speak to this particular guest about.

Kyle tells us about his family of mostly blind people and the retinitis pigmentosa diagnosis running throughout his life, his early career as a paramedic and how he had to pivot once the RP got in the way and how he moved into his next field which was rehabilitation counselor requiring his adventure going to school in England, and about his life with his wife as travel agents.

- 51 countries visited and all 7 continents.

We hear about the benefits of cruises for blind travelers from his lived experience perspective and about the obstacles he faced when biases about the kinds of jobs blind people can do presented themselves in his path.

Kiper is open to sharing so much of his life with us and our listeners, making this one an impactful one to begin to wrap up the year with.

RIP Uma and check out Outlook with Kyle Kiper and his own outlook on life.

Blind people, well all people to a certain extent, but specifically blind people are either constantly told we cant do things. Or else we’re told we can be/do anything we want. This week on Outlook we relate over this position, and over the barriers that feel hard to surmount without support.

It’s that time of year again when snow’s making an appearance, but we’re glad to be speaking with our guest for this one, talking the reality of vulnerability.

This week on Outlook we speak with Mitch Creedy about growing up in South Africa and what they noticed after coming to Canada, about anxiety and vulnerability, and they share about their intersecting blindness and coming out as transgender and non binary, how they feel about learning to advocate in the healthcare system during their recent gender affirming surgery..

We touch on a plethora of other topics too, from forest bathing to kitchen gadgets.

You can connect with Mitch on Facebook and ask to join their group for entrepreneurs with disabilities here:

https://www.facebook.com/michelle.creedy.7