Outlook on Radio Western

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.

As we say goodbye to another Blindness Awareness Month and enter the final, uncertain, few months of 2020, on this episode we pay tribute to someone we’re naming most famous Canadian blind person, most well-known across the country anyway.

Tom Dekker was one of our first guests, back at the beginning. We’ve decided to replay the thirty-minute episode where we were lucky to get a chance to interview him because that chance is now gone.

He was known as the iHabilitation man who loved his guide dog companion. He was our fourth episode, way back when, and we’re talking about “blind politics,” a term he used during our time with him. That’s what he engaged in and we’re honouring him, after his recent sudden death from cancer at age sixty-eight.

He’d seen and done a lot, including creating the theme music for this show. He will always be part of what we do. RIP Tom!

https://www.remembering.ca/obituary/thomas-dekker-1080581601

Happiness is blind is a worthwhile state of being. It’s not all misery is blind as so many parts of society might have you believe.

A year of acceptance is what the mother on today’s episode of Outlook describes since the genetic blindness diagnosis of her third child, her only boy, after the Calgary family received the results of multiple examinations and medical testing for genetic markers for Leber Congenital Amaurosis. Since then, she’s gone on to create a blog and social media pages where she can make meaningful connections from sharing about her family’s experience in dealing with what it means to have a child who is blind, the diagnosis journey, in reactions from strangers in public, and in how learning must be altered somewhat and tailored to the child’s specific needs. So check out our interview with Melissa from Happiness is Blind and then go check out her family’s story at:

https://happinessisblind.com

Meet local London friend Rob Castrogiovanni in his first interview on Outlook. We talk school days, sharing a disability with a sibling, and music with his newest project: The Melody Chamber!

Rob's music page can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/robctg

And his writing page:

https://www.facebook.com/robCastrogiovanniAuthor/

The Melody Chamber website coming soon!

BAM!: also known as Blindness Awareness Month has arrived. October is also Meet The Blind month. We are unsure about such a name as we eagerly await Meet The Sighted Month for November. ;-)

October means not only BAM and Disability Employment Awareness Month but World Sight Day was October 8th and we’re back, us two, discussing why WSD seems to include blindness awareness on a day all about sight saving measures around the world.

Back to basics and another mixed bag this week, on this Canadian Thanksgiving holiday Monday. We discuss something known as sensitivity reading and accessibility review work, recent Netflix shows with audio description included, and more talk of music braille and perfect pitch which our most recent guests shared about.

From her early rural west coast years to becoming a city girl, our guest on Outlook this week is someone we met in 2019, for the first time, at the Canadian Federation of the Blind Employment-Empowerment convention. On this week’s episode we discuss a musical life with good tone days and bad tone days. Patricia Elgersma speaks with us about perfect pitch, comparing just knowing a note to automatically recognizing a colour. So check out this interview with Patricia to find out how she hears a busy world around her.

Check out our discussion with an old friend this week on Outlook where we discuss music (piano, voice, and violin) along with music braille. From expectations to transitions, Sarah Jevnikar speaks with us about education and employment and the advocacy of speaking up for ourselves and the improvement for all when we’re persistent in doing so.

Did you know Art Garfunkel (of Simon and Garfunkel fame) had a lifelong best friend and College roommate who went blind in 1961 while they were in school together at Columbia University in New York City?

On this week’s episode of Outlook, we’ve got a review and discussion with the two of us, and a friend and occasional guest host from Ireland, Barry Toner, of this memoir by Sanford D. Greenberg. It’s entitled “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness Into An Extraordinary Vision For Life”. It’s about the real and lasting ideas about blindness that persist in 2020, even as we try our best to understand what it must be like to lose one’s sight in the middle of college, at a time of such change and growth in any young person’s life. It’s difficult, for those of us who’ve been blind all our lives, to hear how the book frames blindness as a “scourge” that must be ended.

"We stumbled over a blind beggar. He was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. He was lanky, hunched over in soiled and torn clothes, wearing oversized and disintegrating shoes, and holding a metal cup. His unfocused eyes were milky with small black spots, his teeth misshapen and decayed. Anyway, that is how I recall him, and from that moment to today that is the form in which he has been a regular visitor in my dreams."

"Will Ludwig, an old blind man would stand and “watch,” too. No one knew what he did or where he came from. He just stood there in his white T-shirt and gray slacks hiked up on his hips. He was creepy but benign, like a friendly ghost. If he wasn’t there, you wouldn’t notice his absence.”

If these were the only images of blindness you’ve been exposed to, you’re not getting the whole picture.