Mixed Bag Monday, though I know when it’s a podcast, days of the week aren’t a part of it anymore.

It’s our second episode of 2021 and the first with us two co-hosts back at it, as Outlook discusses what’s in the news, in the world of social media, and what’s happening on this show in the weeks to come. It’s another Mixed Bag Monday show.

Today, on Outlook, we discuss the recent celebrations for World Braille Day and Louis Braille’s birthday, our music making to cheer us up in the midst of this pandemic, and also the latest rumours going around on TikTok with young people needing not only mored education on someone from the past like Helen Keller, but how it’s more important than ever that we showcase the best of the ordinary lives of those of us living with disabilities. We are out here and we are making things happen and disability makes us stronger.

https://worldblindunion.org/blog/news/wbu-statement-for-world-braille-day-4-january-2021/?fbclid=IwAR15EcpVqFITrPPTvmTs9z7H7pmiQMjrQmvA1FV5qtHwUFsaZxuTUA7Myjg

https://medium.com/@isabellalahoue/the-generation-that-doesnt-believe-helen-keller-existed-e14d5945013c

https://rikermusic.bandcamp.com

http://soundcloud.com/skipatrolmusic/ski-patrol-lighting-up-a-dark-season

Have you ever seen a children’s picture print/braille book in your local library? Or any braille at all for that matter?

Our first guest on Outlook for 2021 is a public service librarian from the National Network For Equitable Library Service (NNELS). Pikiora Wylie moved to Canada from New Zealand when she met a Canadian and, since moving here, has lived in Ottawa, northern British Columbia, and now resides in Montreal, Quebec where she is learning French during the pandemic.

This episode originally aired on 94.9 CHRW Radio Western on January 4th which is a special date on the calendar for many blind people. Braille is feared by many, but we at Outlook promote it for equal literacy levels as the sighted have at their disposal. On this episode we talk about how Pikiora became a librarian and her mission for helping people get access to information makes her an important ally and resource, with her job at NNELS. And she tells us all about the resources available on NNELS’s website including tutorials and their YouTube page, with those and how to get a Canadian library to sign up as a way of creating greater inclusion for any of its blind patrons.

We discuss how publishers can make material accessible from the start and how that makes all the difference, instead of having to redo things later, and our guest lets us know about the accessibility summit that takes place every winter between resources like NNELS and publishers.

NNELS is an information access resource for Canadians with a print disability (low vision, blindness, learning disabilities) and Pikiora tells us all about the needs of blind and low vision Canadians who reach out to NNELS for books made accessible.

https://nnels.ca

We’re Back! Before Outlook, this is where it all began.

Every year, around this time, we at Ketchup On Pancakes sit down by the fireside for a talk on the interesting year we’ve just experienced and the one still to come and 2020 was no exception; far from it.

So we may not be recording as many episodes here as we once did, but even though we’re focusing our attention on Outlook and our advocacy on that show most of the year, this podcast still means a lot; it’s where we started our podcast work and the idea for a show about advocacy and blindness came out of this show which is more personal and focusing on family, humour, and creativity, a place where we can discuss any number of things unrelated to disability.

On this year-end-review, we start with the creativity with a visit to downtown London, Ontario just before Christmas where Brian and his bandmates (all COVID-19 precautions seen to) played a bunch of holiday favourites. That leads us right into the crackling fire and we talk about what’s changed (one Christmas to the next), about the pandemic that we did not anticipate interfering with ongoing podcasting projects, and where we are with our music and our writing.

We feature the recent holiday themed song (Lighting Up a Dark Season) we wrote and recorded about a terrible accident five years ago and we share a bunch of Christmas memories (along with our cassette clip of the week as proof) of the pancakes with Ketchup breakfast that’s the inspiration behind the name of this podcast. Some family members have taken on the pancake making technique passed down to us from our father’s mother (Oma) and are carrying that tradition into the future.

So check out our By The Fireside episode for 2020 and we will see what we have to say by next year. See you by the fireside.

(Note: we also say goodbye to two beloved pets that passed away in 2020. Rip Dobby and Lumos.)

You can hear the holiday-themed song Brian produced and Kerry wrote lyrics for here:

http://soundcloud.com/skipatrolmusic/ski-patrol-lighting-up-a-dark-season

And Brian's band's debut EP can be found here:

https://rikermusic.bandcamp.com

On this final episode of Outlook for 2020, we (brother and sister hosts) return with another Mixed Bag Monday for a discussion about how Outlook has grown over the past year.

In a year where we were made to record from home rather than going into the station, we changed from 30 minute-long episodes to hour long shows where we began a year of interviews that can’t be beat: From mothers with blind children and teachers of blind students to discussions on music braille and perfect pitch. From learning about dangerously designed bike lanes in city design to what travel looked like to blind adventurers, before this pandemic changed all our lives, all travel included.

In 2020, we made the move to get Outlook up on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify, at Outlook On Radio Western.

We continue to consider and feature the outlooks of everyone who want to speak with us and we at Outlook On Radio Western will return for even more interviews and a focus on life with a disability in the world in 2021 and we hope you’ll join us for all that and more.

Here's a link to the song Kerry wrote the lyrics for and I produced:

http://soundcloud.com/skipatrolmusic/ski-patrol-lighting-up-a-dark-season

And my band's debut EP which was just released:

https://rikermusic.bandcamp.com

On one of the final episodes of Outlook for the year, we speak with Judy Robinet, advocate and ally to those of us with disabilities as she shares her own journey with the “D word”.

Her father was the major influence in her life, but along the way she met other influences including Stevie Wonder and went on in the fields of child and youth development, special education, and orientation and mobility training.

The accident she went through as a teenager made her disabled and “disfigured,” basically being told she was no longer marriage material, that education was beyond her reach, but her father’s words kept her going: “Choose a life worth living”

And so she did. And so she created a resource to help people realize that there is life after disability, a life worth living:

https://alifeworthliving.ca

Welcome to December and our first International Day For Persons With Disabilities or IDPD episode before 2020 comes to an end. The interviewer becomes the interviewee, but you can’t totally take the host out of the guest and we three soon find out we have one thing, in particular, in common.

He’s on AMIAudio with the afternoon talk show Kelly and Company. Today, he’s our guest. We speak with Kelly MacDonald about the pros and cons of his years at W. Ross MacDonald School for the Blind and Deaf-blind and how it shaped him, how he got the best of both worlds, how he’s worked with Accessible Media Inc. since it was a basic reading service, and how a career in media and broadcasting has given him so much.

His radio voice is classic, well practiced, and perfectly suited to spending an hour together. Having an accessible network in Canada like AMI is helping to promote inclusion in media representation so check out Kelly and Company, weekdays from two to four eastern:

https://www.ami.ca/listenlive

And also available as a podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/kelly-and-company/id1235188417

Someone who is blind has just as much of a stake in a healthy environmental imprint as anyone else. Yet, when you hear a bicycle flying by, when the wizzing sound of the bike’s tires surprises you when it’s most often too late, when this is a dangerous impediment to smooth travel on public transportation, it’s serious and must be taken into account.

On this week’s episode of Outlook, we speak with Oriano Belusic about the recent results of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal case he filed about dangerous bike lanes and “floating” bus stops in Victoria.

It’s a situation that matters because the environmental issue and the safety of all pedestrians, blind travellers who have no choice between car or bicycle, they are both of consequence. It is one form of city design that could and has spread to other cities around the country and the world. We need to be considered and included before, not after-the-fact.

On this latest show, we discuss Oriano’s early life growing up in Croatia, what he’s built as a life for himself here in Canada, and what he’s seen the need for the Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB) to be.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-floating-bus-stops-human-rights-tribunal-1.5811152

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/cycling-guidelines-need-to-be-revised-in-wake-of-tribunal-ruling-advocate-1.24243483

We met him at the Orlando Airport, all coming home from the National Federation of the Blind convention of 2018 and we learned we all wanted to do more to advocate for blindness and disability in Canada.

Check out this week’s episode of Outlook where we speak with Patrick Bouchard about finding the best educational environment, working in the online accessibility world, and how he found and took an active role in the Canadian Federation of the Blind here in Canada.

Canada could sure use more Patrick’s.

Did you know there’s a way to add descriptions to photos on Facebook now?

On this week’s Outlook, we pay tribute to Alex Trebek (long-time host of gameshow Jeopardy) as we discuss the influence and memories that show had and we had with it and Alex. We share a story of the first blind contestant, a big deal for us back in 1999 as he went on to win big, once the accessibility issues were addressed.

On the latest Mixed Bag Monday, we discuss learning to play violin by ear and how to do yoga without being able to see the instructor, we do a step-by-step demonstration of how to add the alternative text (alt text) to our Facebook photos, and the recent difficulties over at the Center For Equitable Library Access (CELA) with putting out accurately reproduced braille in their books.

As a sighted Facebook user, to add alt text on mobile so blind user’s can tell what’s in your photo, do the following:

After your photo has been posted, click in the top right and select “Edit Alt Text”.

Click “Override Generated Alt Text”.

Type your own alt text describing the photo. Click save.

For blind users, double tap on the photo.

Swipe right until you find “More”.

Double tap on “More” and then swipe right until you find “Edit Alt Text”.

Double tap and then swipe write until you find “Override generated alt text”.

Double tap and then type the text you’d like to add.

Locate the save button and double tap it.

This week, on Outlook, we discuss disability literature with the reviews of two books, involving fairy-tales and the story of a blind mechanic.

In our first half hour, we review Disfigured by Amanda Leduc, as we recall the fairy-tales we knew as siblings, growing up with blindness and disability. pure goodness and pure evil and how themes of physical or invisible disabilities manifested in fantastical stories through the generations, Leduc's scholarly exploration of the themes of disability in fairy-tales offer plenty of examples of the ways in which inclusion, diversity of thought weren’t always clear.

Next, it’s The Blind Mechanic by Marilyn Davidson Elliott, based on her father and his life around vehicles and their engines, how he was able to support his family with jobs in the automotive sector. He was one of the survivors of the worst disaster in Canadian maritime history, losing both his eyes in the Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion of 1917.

After you hear our reviews on these works of disability literature, maybe you’ll want to check out one or both books, whether you like princesses or automobiles.