Outlook on Radio Western

Sounds like… sounds like braille! What does braille sound like anyway?

This week on Outlook we’re continuing with braille. What does it sound like, look like, feel like? From the analog to the electronic and the hiss of fingers sliding, reading along braille paper’s page, it’s the music of the six dots of the Braille code we’re listening to on another Braille Literacy Month edition of Outlook with a mixed bag of topics with our first all-back-in-studio show together of the new year.

We discuss the upcoming year’s Blindness 101 workshops sister/co-host Kerry will be putting on in Ontario, with the next episode’s guests coming on to explain how these will work, so we’re going over ways to demonstrate the six dot braille cell.

Speaking of music and the media, we’re also talking accessible guitar amps, sound boards, and other accessible devices in our digital world, all while we’re joined (in-studio) by a Western Gazette newspaper representative who’s doing a story on Outlook, six years on from some of our first media coverage for the show.

Kerry and BF Barry share about their most recent Air Canada flight and requesting seat back entertainment system screen reader activation, requiring the flight crew to turn it on at their station, not to mention the wider helpfulness of the crew on this last flight when such customer service isn’t always the case. Plus, an airport inclusion update, from customer service to customs officers.

Then there’s story time with storyteller brother/co-host Brian and a tale of Mr. Rogers, a young blind fan, and a question about the feeding schedule status of the on-set goldfish. This alongside discussion of some more upcoming Outlook guests, including for March’s International Women’s Day, while looking back on the previous few years of IWD guests, restorative justice, and a CBC Morning story, in the news, of lived experience of a sexual assault victim minimised in police academy student chat logs.

From harsh discrediting to quiet inclusion to book reviews and release announcements (with “The Will To Change” and the January 20th release of “The Culting of America”).

We’re grateful for accurate media representation, with coverage for this radio show/podcast, but we also needed to end off this one by revisiting the lazy use of “blind” and “blindness” in the commonly used language and culture.

Mechanical or manual, slate or sheet. Keys or stylus. These are the sounds of BRAILLe and check out a link to the patchwork of braille sounds we found in this Youtube video we feature to start this week’s program which our blind and sighted audience can all get something out of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGMsc7G1kiQ

Our first Outlook guest of the year says: I think we’re very poor at educating our population about what our government does and what it doesn’t do and what our rights are and what they aren’t.

Late last year he made headlines after a ruling, his case covered by multiple media sources, but the sensationalisation of how much he was awarded in damages became the clickbait detail, in the end letting the company off the hook from having to truly address their discriminatory attitudes and practices. So, in the end, is this truly a win for workers with disabilities or society as a whole?

We discuss seven modalities of learning and the benefits of learning braille for the brain and for future career development as we begin the show, with our first guest of 2026 and January, for Braille Literacy Month and our conversation with all three of us and long-time friend, Erik Burggraaf. (Happy ending spoiler, he now has a rewarding job in the federal government only after years of fighting with employers to be given a chance to prove he could do the work.)

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with our friend about his recent human rights case, a lawsuit win and the media coverage that has followed from his success plus the parts that don’t feel like success even still.

So how do you know what a legitimate grievance is? How do you know that you have a human rights complaint?

Our guest for this one will share his experiences filing human rights cases. It took nearly a decade but Erik was awarded a settlement after proving he was discriminated against when applying for work at a company unable to prove they had exhausted every possible option for making their in-house software accessible and inclusive.

Erik Burggraaf shares how those in positions of authority but with no lived experience discouraged him from exploring his full potential and extensive variety of interests as a young person, how he felt he learned more about his own rights from briefly being in the States than all the rest of his life (up until that point) as a Canadian living in the country of his birth, and how he can’t imagine what life would be like now if he were to lose the job he currently has helping other federal workers receive the accommodations they need to continue to do the work in the positions they hold.

He happily imparts his own knowledge, wisdom, and experiences, hard earned, with us and our listeners.

Check out an article and video on the ruling from CTV News:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/im-relieved-blind-ontario-man-awarded-28000-for-facing-discrimination/

And read the full Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario’s decision here:

https://dawncanada.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Human-Rights-Tribunal-Decision-Erik-Burggraaf-Convergys-.pdf

Over in Ireland, compared to North America, there’s braille on prescription medications and other products, standard in elevators (lifts) but go down the halls, to the rooms, and none next to or on the hotel room doors.

Happy Braille Literacy Month. The Kijewski siblings (and Barry) are back - new year, let’s go.

Welcome to the first Mixed Bag episode of Outlook for 2026, with brother/sibling co-host Brian live in studio and sister/sibling co-host Kerry and BF Barry joining from Ireland. Kerry paints a picture of her first Christmas and New Year’s away from Canada, including traveling out in the snowy weather, or at least Ireland’s idea of what that weather can be. We’re all sharing about our most recent holiday season, including staying in a castle in Dublin (more to come on the accessibility of this) before moving on into a brand new year and giving a brief glimpse into what’s to come in the months ahead.

Recently, at the start of January, a post was made on the Elections Canada social media and on the United Nations Facebook page sharing about Braille and his invention, framing Braille literacy as a right not simply a privilege. We’re talking orgs like the RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind) not even encouraging the learning of braille, its practical uses in career prospects, and much more including low tech, manual, and technological advancements with braille in recent years including the need to bring down the cost of electronic braille devices. Brian also describes how braille came in useful over Christmas.

This week we’re talking awareness days/weeks/months, (like came up on a recent invitation on the AT Banter podcast) with January being the month of Louis Braille’s birth as we talk literacy and equity - access, geography, training, stigma, misinformation, excuses against offering literacy inclusively when it comes to braille.

An outlook, a perspective from a sometimes co-host like Barry is valuable, when the other two of us learned braille as children, but having a different perspective on learning and knowing and using braille illustrates something powerful. Tune in to hear this variety of outlooks on parts of being blind.

Check out our end-of-year guest appearance on the AT Banter podcast from December, 2025 where we discuss braille and much more:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/at-banter-podcast-episode-447-real-talk-with-the/id1118496048?i=1000740865070

And check out BBC episodes of the "In Touch" podcast:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxww/episodes/player

Whether it’s being shamed by your appliance or corrupting the data stream (check out Part One for more on all this if you haven’t yet), it’s all in his own words with blind/gay writer, (lover of chocolate and chocolate chip cookies) who writes romance fiction with disabled protagonists and non-fiction celebrating every bit of love and found family he can find. It’s Robert Kingett on Part Two of our pre-holiday 2025 show.

This week on Outlook we’re returning with Robert and some holiday cheer with musical clips from Ontario family fiddling and step dancing sibling band The Fitzgeralds.

This one begins with a clip from sister/co-host Kerry's favourite Christmas song, sung in multiple versions including by Raffi, from her childhood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WvBFwEu710

Kingett says: “If Apple released a software update that made every screen black and nobody could see the screen then you’d have an uproar. The same thing needs to happen to accessibility and accessible design."

Robert tells us about screen readers tech bros think can be created using AI instead of accessibility being a cornerstone on the syllabi in higher education environments of all kinds, about venting on the blank page/document about doorknobs, and about voicemails that hold the voice of a dear friend who was killed in a hate crime and keeping audio as memory artefact like sighted people keep pictures on their phones to be able to look back.

Our chat in this second, slightly shorter, part picks up with a discussion on AI and the spots it comes up in our guest’s writing and life and ends, in the spirit of the season, with a heartfelt voicemail message…wrapping things up with a third grader’s letter to Santa.

We’re hearing more from Kingett’s perspective, along with a selection of his essays, turned into audio essays narrated by Sean Crisden who you can find here:

https://seancrisden.com/en-cad

Don’t forget to go and check out Robert’s musings, perspectives begun with a feeling rather than sharing endless opinions over on social media, over on his own personal blog:

https://sightlessscribbles.com

Learn more about The Fitzgeralds:

https://www.thefitzgeraldsmusic.com

Has your fridge ever thought you were in a cult? Has your date, on a first date, ever stolen your last chocolate chip cookie? Well our guest in this final interview for the year has written about these experiences and much much more on his blog: Sightless Scribbles

He thanks us for “indulging his narcissism” with this one. Welcome to Part one of two parts with Robert Kingett who describes himself as:

“an obscure, blind, and gay writer that writes fiction where disabled protagonists or disabled love interests find their happy endings and non fiction that is always personal but sometimes educational.”

This week and next on Outlook we’re speaking with Robert, digital nomad, who’s everywhere and who “holds onto audio the way sighted people hold onto pictures” about his genre and essay writing along with hearing multiple audio versions of his essays on everything from a stolen cookie to a smart refrigerator named Chillbert.

Whether it’s a “deep bruised purple” or “a brittle bone white” Robert writes about how “even silence has its shades.”

We’re lucky to get to hear Kingett’s perspective on his synesthesia when it comes to colour, along with his describing how, as an author who is disabled and writing about disabled characters getting their happy endings, he’s come up against a publishing world with what he defines as “a defect in their media literacy” and he tells us how he wants the jagged and the gritty rather than some impossible standard.

It’s a December two parter and with Christmas approaching, this episode includes music clips from a recent live performance at Stonecroft Folk, A Fitsgeralds Christmas.

Robert says: I may not see the colour of your eyes, but I will always see the colour of your intent. It is a language of profound and sometimes painful clarity.

We’d love to have Robert back again sometime, and we will…whether it’s talking romance or technology and AI - so that’s “topics for another day,” but we’re so glad he reached out and joined us to round out 2025 here on Outlook.

Check out Robert’s blog:

https://sightlessscribbles.com

Learn more about The Fitzgeralds:

https://www.thefitzgeraldsmusic.com

Niagara Falls and a Christmas snail.

Twas the grand month of Christmas and all through the studio, it was our final in person episode of 2025 you know.

From Best Western to Radio Western, light shows and Niagara Takes Flight. At the Falls the mist was rising into the air, our 70th birthday celebrations to show our father we care.

The photos of Bob through the years, made up by his eldest son whose artistic talents were clear.

Sister/co-host Kerry and BF Barry and Oyster were all ready to fly back to Ireland for Christmas, Air Canada’s accessibility features on their TV screens, inclusion and access so good we could cry.

When what to bachelor brother/co-host Brian’s hands does appear, but the best Christmas gift, from any sister, of any a year.

When what with our blind eyes should appear, but Bill C15, announced by Canadian Assistive Technology, Canada Post appealing The Free Literature for the Blind Service, this development is unclear. Learn more here including how you can help:

https://nnels.ca/news/bill-c-15

This December it was a snowy holiday visit to Niagara On The Lake for us and, for Kerry and Barry and parents, a Coyle’s Christmas shopping extravaganza, coming home with gifts for parents, seasonal snacks, and nature themed ornaments for the minimal Christmas tree at Walter Street.

Nollaig Shona duit

BFB (Barry) and Lester/Oyster wish everyone, our amazing listeners, a Happy Christmas, from one Canadian weather extreme to the other, in the Irish language.

So farewell as we at Outlook close 2025. Bob through the years, hands off Franklin The Turtle, and Niagara Takes Flight yet it could be even more inclusive with audio description.

Happy Winter Solstice or however/whatever you celebrate this time of year. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

And get ready to rumble! Reindeer rumble that is.

Check out Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry the Christmas Snail,” played annually on John Solomon’s 25-hour holiday radio show, with a soul jazz extravaganza in a festive league all its own:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k1jilPdaFEo5KA8cFOrGgZgOIfHTx4v00

This year, 2025, this month is the ten year anniversary of a bad fall Brian had, acquiring a brain injury and seizure disorder just before Christmas and we wrote a song about that time which premiered on Jon Solomon’s show in 2020. Check it out here:

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

And here’s co-host Kerry’s favourite Christmas song Brian plays for her on his Christmas edition of Chin Music every year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARq6uYSsUq0

Winding down and ramping up.

Bf Barry and guide dog Oyster (not Lester) are back for a pre-Christmas visit and join us as our additional Outlook crew.

The Centre for Independent Living Toronto, Fanshawe College and George Brown and Toronto Metropolitan University, Disability Without Poverty, and Alliance For Equality of Blind Canadians all celebrate December 3rd’s United Nations International Day of/for Persons With Disabilities along with our other holiday related news.

This week on the show we’re pre-recording because of last minute 70th birthday celebrations, but we did a Friday night recording discussing IDPD and related events, Barry shares his AI personal assistance/unpaid testers and snowy return to Canada diaries, and we discuss how “seeing isn’t knowing” on this Mixed Bag Early December episode.

We’ve been eating a lot of cake lately and we talk Thanksgiving in the States, how this time of year can be a difficult one for many, and yet the arrival of changes of the holiday season becoming more diverse. On a high note, Happy 70th birthday to our dad, who met our mom 50 years ago this month, while we look back a few weeks ago to a special honouring of an early sibling organ transplant story at London, Ontario’s Health Sciences Centre.

Brother/co-host Brian’s been winding down as the end of this year draws near while sister/co-host Kerry has been ramping up with Blind Beginnings, (more about that in January).

Give Leona’s article a read:

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/blindness-photography-paul-strand-walker-evans-jacob-riis-1234763708/

Check out the George Brown/TMU event with David Lepofsky:

https://tinyurl.com/4k85hpnh

INCLUSION BENEFITS EVERYONE

December 3rd is The United Nations International Day of Persons With Disabilities where the theme for 2025 is:

“Fostering disability inclusive societies for advancing social progress"

And this year, on Saturday, December 6th, from 1 to 4 PM EST, Alliance For Equality of Blind Canadians is putting on a virtual day of events to mark the occasion.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with President of AEBC, Marcia Yale, about going from the busy streets of Toronto to the busy summer/sleepy winters of Huntsville, about her experience at what was then the Ontario School for the Blind and then being integrated locally at home, and about how she got involved in AEBC and ended up in her current position there.

So check out the podcast and stay tuned for events all week, including replays on Youtube as We’re discussing more about AEBC and the speakers and panel happening on the 6th - all with her guide dog companion Nottingham supervising our conversation.

It’s true that inclusion does benefit everyone and that’s one of our main messages (of universal design principles) at the heart of what we do on this show.

To register for the conference, click the following link:

https://tinyurl.com/36bxf8v6

Or email [email protected]

And learn more about AEBC on their official website:

https://www.blindcanadians.ca

It’s November and Indigenous Disability Awareness Month (IDAM) raises awareness about and celebrates the significance social economic and cultural contributions that Indigenous people experiencing disability bring to our communities. It’s also an opportunity to mobilise to address the complex ongoing intersectional challenges Indigenous people face in their everyday lives.

According to IDAM: Over 30 percent of Indigenous Canadians age 15 and over experience disability compared with 22 percent of all Canadians aged 15 and over.

Created in 2015 by "Indigenous Disability Canada, British Columbia Aboriginal Network On Disability Society," proclaimed by government of British Columbia 2017 - United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities recommended Canada officially proclaim and recognise IDAM nationally every November.

For the first boots on the ground Mixed Bag show of the season, this week on Outlook we’re marking IDAM, Disabled Veterans Day, and Remembrance Day. Then sister/co-host Kerry shares about a disability focus group held by Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly, the “Say It Plain) course put on by her writer/activist friend Kerra, and howling like a wolf in community with a group of women creatives facilitated by other friend and previous Outlook guest Jen.

Speaking of British Columbia, we’re talking fear and risk as Kerry is traveling solo there, to the Blind Beginnings offices in Vancouver, for a training weekend, facilitated by a federal grant to put on what are known as Blindness 101 workshops in Ontario during 2026 (more to come on this early next year).

Question: About how many needles have you had in your lifetime? Have you ever tried to count?

We both wish we would have counted.

We’re discussing an event this month we’re attending, with our parents, as the four of us who’ve donated and received kidneys are excited to be taking part in a celebration of 50 years since one of the earliest living donor transplants from one sister to another at London Health Sciences Centre back on November 19th, 1975.

Finally, Santa, if you’re listening, Kerry could use a new white cane for Christmas.

Happy 70th birthday Dad and check out Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly mentioned in this episode:

https://stingingfly.org

Listen to an episode from the Outlook archives with Neil Belanger, CEO of The British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-12-06-neil-belanger-from-british-columbia/id1527876739?i=1000544243467

Don’t mind the puns in this one, but we’re entering the “home stretch” of 2025 as we discuss how to “level the playing field” for us, as blind Blue Jays fans, when comparing baseball radio broadcast with that done on television on this Monday after the Big Game.

This week on Outlook it’s a MLB Mixed Bag show as we’re joined, virtually, by BF Barry until he can join us in studio soon--to lament the close call in Game Seven of this year’s World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

We give a post-series blow-by-blow of watching the games together, the three of us, with Barry’s international perspective, along with brother/co-host Brian’s info about the father-son connection (Dan and Ben Shulman who broadcast on TV and radio respectively), and a special Radio Western connection to Dan Shulman who used to call Western Mustangs games, and an example of an exciting moment from the final game, using a clip of the radio broadcasters to illustrate the unique playing field levelling for those of us who cannot see the games visually. Shout out to both Ben Shulman and Chris Leroux for calling the games on the radio as it seems the TV broadcasters more often get recognized.

Then sister/co-host Kerry shares about her Halloween (first year going trick-or-treating) in a while, alongside learning some sad news about an old classmate, all the while describing using her friend’s daughter’s plastic sorcerer’s staff as white cane for the evening plus the haunted house they walked through, a notion truly scary to Kerry in most circumstances.

First episode after clocks went back (a lack of sleep for some of us) as we three are all hyped up with the close call loss, a series so close to being a win for the Jays and for Canada, as emotions run high with Kerry sharing what it’s like, looking back at one whole year now since the worst guy for the job got voted back in the Whitehouse - so from one horror to another and the disappointment all across the country, we end with a song from Obama’s POV.

"No man’s ignorance will ever be his virtue.”

—Seriously, from This American Life, written by Sara Bareilles, sung by Leslie Odom Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8TCA3fJcs