Outlook on Radio Western

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

Time for another Ketchup On Pancakes annual by-the-fireside lookback on the year that was 2021 and a brief look to what 2022 might have in store, both in the world and in our own journeys.

KOP is the podcast we started out with before deciding to do one on advocacy specifically and we review some of the highlights of last year, Sometimes we record these yearly shows in the final days of an outgoing year. Other times, like this one, we end up recording our musings a few days, up to a few weeks into the new year. This time, we’re into the second month of 2022 and yet we’re once more back, us two brother/sister hosts, along with our always reliable and helpful fire stoker.

In this episode, we discuss standout events from 2021 in the world, specifically the rollout of vaccines for COVID-19 and the dangerous actions of January 6th. In our own lives, we go over such things as the planning and hosting we did (as Outlook) for the 2021 Canadian Federation of the Blind’s National Convention which was all held virtually for the first time, the work we did (Kerry’s writing being published on The Rumpus literary journal) regarding a June book release called There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness by Dr. M. Leona Godin, and the growth and attention Brian’s music radio show Chin Music received.

We look towards the coming year to end the show, capping things off with our regular segment "Cassette Clip of the Week" where we feature recorded messages Kerry and our father exchanged between hospitals across the street from one another in Toronto, in 1997, when Kerry received one of his kidneys. Now, as 2022 is twenty-five years since that momentous occasion, we thought it would be the perfect way to ring in such a special year and anniversary.

The Talk Description To Me episode about fire mentioned at the start of the episode can be heard here:

https://talkdescriptiontome.buzzsprout.com/1136756/9969681-episode-88-fire

To learn more about Indigenous cultures, check out this CBC podcast we mentioned called Telling Our Twisted Histories:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/906-telling-our-twisted-histories

Read Kerry’s excellent interview with Leona Godin on The Rumpus:

https://therumpus.net/2021/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-m-leona-godin/

And listen to archived recordings of Brian’s radio show Chin Music:

https://www.mixcloud.com/chrwchinmusic/

Ruth Vallis once gave a presentation to a master’s degree class studying to be teachers of the blind at Western University: “if you are teaching your blind children to read and produce Braille, I congratulate you! However, if you are not, then you are a failure as a teacher!”

And some male in the audience shouted back: “Controversial, which is why we now mark Braille Literacy Month every January.

This week, we speak with Ruth E. Vallis about her new book Love Is Blind. Ruth was born with a connective tissue disorder, including a type of juvenile arthritis and blindness. From an early age she dreamed of working in healthcare, in a hospital setting, and she went out and made it happen.

Vallis grew up on the hectic streets of Toronto and went off on her own when she was accepted into a program, at a physiotherapy school in England producing blind and visually impaired physios.

We talk the essential need for braille literacy, on her talent as an athlete (skating/tandem cycling/competitive golf), and her experiences in both the working and the guide dog worlds.

An episode about a physiotherapist named Ruth and a woman (a mother) named Peach who taught her daughter how to be strong like her.

Check out Ruth’s website for more info and to purchase the book:

https://www.ruthvallis.com

He was our final live, in-studio interview in February of 2020, right before the whole world changed with this pandemic. We had him on to discuss the guide dog discrimination he’d experienced at a gas station in western Canada while on a road trip to celebrate becoming qualified as a lawyer.

Ben Fulton is back with us on Outlook, at the start of 2022, to discuss the human rights case he’s bringing to the Ontario Human Rights Commission on the grounds that he was discriminated against, while looking for student shared accommodations, after showing up to meet landlords. Once they saw his white cane or learned he is blind, suddenly their rooms were no longer available or they were worried it would be a liability to rent the room to a blind person outright. We, as blind people, are constantly having to prove we are not liabilities, that we don’t all constantly fall down stairs.

There is currently a housing affordability crisis in Canada and minorities, students, they are the most vulnerable in such situations. This stuff happens far too often and though Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects minority groups such as those with disabilities, some landlords have found a loophole when it comes to shared housing accommodations where a kitchen and other facilities are being shared.

Ben is working with the Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB) to put out a call to action, to collect the stories from anyone who has been discriminated against, from any marginalized group whether that’s disabilities like blindness or race, religion, gender, etc.

Fulton is a lawyer who specializes in human rights (a key part of what we advocate for on this podcast). He works with clients, in criminal and civil cases, to deal with minor offences which have baring on both jobs and travel. He works on alternative justice instead of the out-of-date punitive model and, with his own situation, he’s fighting for legislation change for greater access for all.

So tune in to hear his story, to learn from a qualified legal expert what the law actually says, and to find out how you might be able to help him create a more accessible and fair world from here on out.

This episode originally aired on January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and King famously said: “ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere . We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

If you feel you’ve been discriminated against when looking for accommodations, please help out Ben’s case by sharing your experience through the CFB website:

https://www.cfb.ca/discrimination-in-shared-housing

To find out more about him and the legal services he offers to clients, check out his website:

https://benlaw.ca

To watch his presentation on this topic at CFB’s 2021 convention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny0EYPLXxEQ

And to hear Ben’s first appearance on Outlook from 2020:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2020-02-17-interview-with-ben-fulton-on-guide/id1527876739?i=1000488226657

Welcome back to Outlook in 2022. We may be recording from home once again, as COVID-19 and specifically Omicron are prominent right now in Ontario, Canada, but we are nothing if not flexible.

On the first new show of this new year, we begin by emphasizing why we (two blind siblings who’ve had organ transplants) are once again mostly isolating while this latest surge crests. We know what it’s like to be in ICU, to have the other there, and this is our generation’s world war, with the healthcare and essential workers as the soldiers, and we, once more, make our declaration on what we all need to do to work together on this to lighten the load for hospitals.

We share a bit about our family’s Christmas, a Christmas and New Year’s that did not go as planned this year, with Covid finally getting a foothold with our loved ones. We had to alter holiday plans this time and again we made the best of it, but we’re glad to be back for a whole new year of this podcast.

We discuss those who’ve passed away in recent weeks: Desmond Tutu, Betty White, Sidney Poitierr, all legends in the things they achieved and the mark they all made, whether it was speaking out on homophobia in religion or the representation of women on the small screen or racial progress on the big. Right down to the loss of a musician, from PEI and band The East Pointers, Koady Chaisson, co-host Kerry’s own age, gone too soon. From social justice and progress, to the entertainment and music world. In White’s case, we air an old and forgotten commercial starring Betty as a blind woman, explaining to an ignorant cab driver why a guide dog is permitted in his cab, totally worth the listen.

Also, it’s January and we never let this first month of each new year go by without acknowledging braille and its importance in our lives and for the freedom and empowerment of blind people. This past weekend it was the first of four online events put on by Braille Literacy Canada (BLC), the Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB), the CNIB Foundation, the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA), the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS), and the Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI).

The first of these events to be held was a panel entitled Looking Through the Crystal Ball: Innovations in Braille Technology for the 21st Century and Beyond and those on this panel represented a broad range of ages and backgrounds, but all recalling the braille technologies they remember fondly, those they use most now, and what they’d like to see in the future including more durable devices. Even subjects such as tactile graphics were discussed at length.

So join us as we take Outlook into 2022 to see what we get up to, starting with a blog post/interview with BookNet Canada which was published on January 4th, inventor Louis Braille’s birthday:

https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2022/1/4/how-to-improve-braille-accessibility-in-canada

For more information on Braille Literacy Month and to register for the events discussed on this show:

https://nnels.ca/world-braille-day

BLC on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTmbEZuyVkV49OOo3SZ4c_g

Check out Wintergreen by The East Pointers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P05YtS75gR4

And the Betty White commercial can be found here:

https://www.seeingeye.org/assets/mp3/betty-white-taxi-cab-psa.mp3

Taking a bit of a break at the end of one year and the beginning of the next, but we have some bonus materials we hadn’t planned on airing, but it was too good speaking with author Dr. M. Leona Godin again and we had to share.

On Outlook this week and last, we’re replaying a Zoom interview co-host Kerry did with Dr. Godin about her June 1st, 2021 release of her cultural history, an exploration of blindness throughout the last few centuries, up to modern times. It’s about what sighted people think about blindness, in the tellings in literature and in cultural and historical examinations or lack-there-of and what blind people say when given a voice.

We spoke a lot about her book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness throughout the second half of 2021 and we’re ending the year and beginning the next with it again here and now.

Kerry was preparing an interview for online print literary journal The Rumpus and planned to use the Zoom recording for her notes when writing it up. It turned out, the casual yet informative discussion, taking place on June 24th, 2021, would be an audio basis for the print piece.

So check out the conversation between Kerry and Leona, Part Two of two parts. (And check out Part One from last week.)

Learn more about the book here:

http://thereplanteyes.com/about-the-book-and-the-author/

To check out the online literary journal, Aromatica Poetica that Leona runs, which explores the arts and sciences of smell and taste:

https://www.aromaticapoetica.com

And for Kerry's interview in The Rumpus this is all based on:

https://therumpus.net/2021/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-m-leona-godin/

Taking a bit of a break at the end of one year and the beginning of the next, but we have some bonus materials we hadn’t planned on airing. It was too good speaking with author Dr. M. Leona Godin again so we had to share.

On Outlook this week and next, we’re replaying a Zoom interview co-host Kerry did with Dr. Godin about her June 1st, 2021 book release examining cultural history, an exploration of blindness throughout the last few centuries, up to modern times. It’s about what sighted people think about blindness, in the tellings in literature and in cultural and historical examinations or lack-there-of and what blind people say when given a voice.

We spoke a lot about this book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness throughout the second half of 2021 and we’re ending the year with it again here and now.

Kerry was preparing an interview for online print literary journal The Rumpus and planned to use the Zoom recording for her notes when writing it up. It turned out, the casual yet informative discussion, taking place on June 24th, would be an audio basis for the print piece.

So check out the conversation between Kerry and Leona, Part One of two parts. (Second part to follow.)

Learn more about the book here:

http://thereplanteyes.com/about-the-book-and-the-author/

And read Kerry's interview from The Rumpus:

https://therumpus.net/2021/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-m-leona-godin/