Outlook on Radio Western

“For twenty-four years of my blindness journey I wandered around this world pretending I was sighted. I wouldn’t use a cane, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I didn’t want to identify as somebody with a disability,” but then Gina Martin says, “In 2015 I met two women who were both confident and blind and it actually blew my mind”.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Gina with an emphasis on out-of-the-box thinking and the shift” which leads to action which leads to change, leading the disability awareness charge with her company: Diverse Abilities. It’s a disability awareness education program she offers, with everyone from children to seniors, in schools, workplaces, and retirement communities and community centres where she teaches about the diversity to be found in disabilities and the people living life with them.

From power tools to axe/dagger throwing, this Canadian is up for it all. This advocate, teacher, and our guest states: Rather than saying “I’m losing my sight,” I refrained it as “I’m gaining my blindness.” She does this by focusing on exploring the other, non visual senses with her audiences, but by also doing it with her partner, friends, and others in her personal life.

With some tough words from our guest for Canadian society, it’s a truly international discussion as we learn more about Gina’s months-long blindness skills training in Louisiana and what that felt like and how it has prepared Martin for living her best blind life ever since. We’re, all three, the rest of us curious about how those centres work and we pose the question as to why our guest thinks Canada does not offer structure discovery in the same way.

And we hear from Barry, who’s Irish, about the language we use in North America, specifically the word “handicapped” in terms of things like a parking pass or public bathroom, that this word is no longer acceptable or common over there. Gina shares about the language she prefers in her own life and in the work that she does teaching kindness, given and received.

Our guest says: It’s IDEAL - Inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and language.

So check out Gina Martin and more about her programs by going to Diverse Abilities:

https://diverseabilities.ca

And follow her on Facebook for such excellent informative posts:

https://www.facebook.com/DisabilityAwarenessConsultant/

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”

February is birthday month in the family and this episode happens to fall on co-host Kerry’s forty-first exactly so we’re celebrating all things Sister/Co-host with this one.

This week on Outlook we’re talking Kerry’s favourite movie (unavailable with audio description), about the trick of FaceTime “Share Content”, along with the boys discussing fantasy baseball and Brian’s continuing work with his swimming lessons. Also, the first week of the month of February was White Cane Week, live on air (clean-up on isle three), and find out why the birthday girl is “troubled,” her words.

Nine years till fifty … or halfway till eighty-two as brother Brian likes to say.

Check out Kerry’s official website:

https://kayconsulting.ca

“I can’t just sit there and watch life pass me by - I wasn’t built for that,” says Keisha Robinson, a Brian Connection with this one.

They first met when she ushered him to a seat at an AODA (Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act) round table event at King’s University College, at Western for International Day For Persons With Disabilities. When, in fact, we have a more personal family/community connection to our first 2025 guest.

Our first guest of the year and of February, Keisha Robinson describes herself as a social butterfly, now, but what was it that made her come out of her shell? She grew up with pain, was labeled “drama queen,” and with a diagnosis realised it all finally made sense.

Keisha shares about her life lived (before and after) the progressively deteriorating muscular disease diagnosis she received as a teenager, about the umbrella of various symptoms and deterioration predictions and timelines of Muscular Dystrophy (MD, and the philosophy she has gained with her plans with work giving back to sick children in hospital and her study of disability.

Robinson is working towards a double major in Childhood and youth studies and Thanatology—which is the study of death, dying, grief, and loss including all sorts of non-death losses. This week on Outlook we’re learning more about her studies and discussing how to demystify loss and grief and normalise the open dialogue on these parts of life we all share.

We explore the inaccessibility to be found out there (IE housing design) and hear about how it is to get around Western and King’s University College as a wheelchair user, not to mention around the city she lives in, along with some of her tools for doing that.

So while one host says he doesn’t miss a friend he’s never met, the guest might miss ice skating or swimming, while the other two hosts might miss seeing colours or video games and that’s the cross-disability perspective in an example of a non-death loss we’ve been navigating grief over. It’s one really important part of the “Outlook” umbrella we’re showcasing on this show and with guests here, both past and present.

BRAILLE … IS … NOT … A … LANGUAGE!!!

Welcome to our final 2025 Braille Literacy Month episode - kicking things off with a poem from a child who loves braille for (Braille200) an initiative by The European Blind Union.

Meanwhile, for this week’s Mixed Bag on Outlook, we continue to speak about our new low tech device The BrailleDoodle and its role in making braille more accessible, such as for students and for Barry. (Learn more on this item and hear the unboxing we did on the previous show. It’s like a white erase board for blind message writers and note leavers.)

We discuss Braille Literacy and Braille Literacy Canada getting a shoutout on a CBC Radio Morning show (even if they incorrectly referred to braille as a language), about the practical uses for braille, and we dive deeper into the lived experience (what’s known about it) of the code’s inventor: Louis Braille.

So airing originally on International Holocaust Awareness Day, we’re talking the realities of DEI (diversity/equity/inclusion) and what disregarding them can point and lead to, along with Ontario’s upcoming provincial election at the end of February and what it might mean for blind voters like us, with braille still being our primary topic on this one: Braille, then and now and in the lives of all of us who need and read it.

And so, we say again, for those way far in the back:

Braille is a code!

Learn more about Braille Literacy Canada:

https://www.brailleliteracycanada.ca/en

While sure there are big things, big horrible things happening in Washington, D.C. - on a freezing day in January, we are on air for another Mixed Bag, lurgy filled episode.

This week on Outlook On Radio Western we’re finally all back, in-person, together at Radio Western after holidays and illness and continuing the celebration of Braille Literacy Month (Braille200) by sharing an unboxing of a new low-tech braille product.

The BrailleDoodle from the TouchPadProFoundation has arrived and we explore its design and uses, live in studio. It is a laptop-sized product with magnetic braille dots and the letters teaching the braille code while on the other side, a tactile grid with holes and magnetic dots pop up with the help of the attached pen or stylus.

We discuss the uses of the BrailleDoodle vs the electronic braille displays we use, along with other braille teaching methods. We share about places braille is appearing, on hard cover books, clothing, and Lego, all sorts of novelty braille as well. Kerry and Barry give an update on braille lessons/learning while Brian updates us a bit on his lessons which are of the swimming kind.

Who says our Monday must be Blue? While there’s so much nonsense happening in the world, here on Outlook we’re playing with The Doodle and having fun.

For more information on the Braille Doodle, teaching device for students and learners using both braille and tactile graphics, check out more here:

https://www.touchpadprofoundation.org

And purchase one here:

https://atguys.com/products/brailledoodle-braille-stem-and-art-for-everyone

Broadcasting live from both Kerry’s office/house and the Radio Western studio, the year and our first show of 2025 begins with the sound of guide dog Oyster’s nails and paws on the floor with our first episode being partially from home as a result of snowy Canadian winter.

It’s our first Outlook of a new year and, instead of being all together in studio like we’d planned, two of us are joining from home with co-host Brian there in person.

We talk about the previous year of Outlook (Kerry taking her Barbie white cane wherever she goes/regular Outlook listener shoutouts/Others Like Me) including guest totals and new episode numbers, all things Brian loves while talking the holidays and the interdependence a nasty virus or two can highlight between Kerry, Barry, and Brian who avoided the illness for the most part.

Kerry shares about being cursed with technology, a fact Barry has arrived at from witnessing it up close as we discuss inaccessibility of modern appliances such as a new air frier, troubles with Kerry’s cell phone and a mysterious lack of data, and more as the love/hate relationship between accessible tech continues in 2025.

We discuss how grief isn’t at all linear, Kerry’s recent experience visiting the emergency department on her own and the excellent care she received at her town’s hospital, and about venturing out in the winter terrain as a blind person as Kerry and Barry recently did to go to retrieve their new couple’s Tim Hortons pyjamas from the community mailbox.

It’s our first mixed Bag show of the year and on this one we mostly dedicate things to Braille, braille, and the literacy that system/code of communication has in the lives of blind people and this will be our overall theme for the rest of the month on Outlook.

“So after I was injured, all of a sudden I was discovering - Oh, there’s a whole other possibility of how I can use these artistic disciplines I’m really passionate about, but with now this whole new lens on it of being somebody with a disability, somebody who’s part of a community that has largely been marginalised and devoiced and that I think, by putting on stage, putting in the stories, suddenly there’s a transformative element there. So I think it’s something that I rediscovered, post disability, and rediscovered with new purpose,” says our new friend (made in 2024), Regan Linton.

Barry’s back, and guide dog Oyster too, joining us on our final episode of the year to speak with Linton to finish 2024 off with a bang.

This week we’re speaking with theatre and VoiceOver artist, performer, writer, and educator/advocate Regan Linton about finding one’s voice and using it optimally as she has had to before and since the accident she experienced around her college years. Linton is one of our new pals from the disabled artist’s retreat in Mount Vernon, Maine over the previous summer and together we’re looking back over our time together at Drama Club Camp.

We talk cross-disability solidarity, along with intersecting access needs, as Linton shares about her experience living as a wheelchair user. She shares with us about how theatre became a part of her life (both pre and post accident that caused paralysis from the chest down. She tells us about the road trip she took through southern states immediately after this year’s election on her way to Warm Springs, Georgia, a special spot for her study of disabled president Franklin D. Roosevelt, a part adapted/and being played by Regan on stage as we discuss staying locked in our own bubbles vs being more open to other people’s lived experiences which helps us better understand our own overall.

We’re looking back at the week we spent together getting to know each other, including the road trip we went on in Linton’s wheelchair accessible van, an adventure from Maine to Boston, Mass, interdependence being key with our friend Regan and a key theme for this show.

We’re talking the umbrella of disability and disability experience with social change agent and artist and expert Regan Linton, as she shares about her own internal revolution, on Outlook on the final show of 2024.

To check out more about our guest this week, her VoiceOver and educational work plus so much more, visit:

https://www.reganlinton.com

Q: What do Lego and musical theatre have in common?

A: Our guest for this second last show of 2024 that’s what.

This week on Outlook we’re speaking with our new friend Matthew Shifrin, someone we met with the rest of the gang at the drama camp/artist’s retreat we attended in Mount Vernon, Maine over the summer.

We spend the first half of this episode talking all things accessible Lego as Matthew shares about how the world-wide children’s activity was finally made accessible for him on his 13th birthday, about his visit to LEGO HQ in Denmark, and how he’s created Bricks For The Blind, a non-profit organisation bringing sighted allies and blind testers/users together to adapt 220 complex sets in its first year in operation, not to mention unthought-of uses for the famous stackable blocks.

In the second half of this second last show of ours for 2024, we hear about how Matt’s love of musical theatre began, including learning to play accordion in a week to attend an Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and his work at one time with a gesture coach, Matt being kind enough to share with us and the listeners a bit of his immense musical talents with a few songs from his various performances such as the musical he wrote about his Jewish grandmother.

Bonus Material: we’ve included a second song (two-for-one) for this episode of the podcast which wasn’t included for the live airing on Radio Western originally. And, whether sighted or blind/young or simply young-at-heart, go check out Bricks For The Blind to learn more about how LEGO’s being made accessible, one brick at a time, by Matthew Shifrin and friends:

https://bricksfortheblind.org

From dusk till dawn. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but what’s wrong with dusk? Where’s the beauty in it?

It’s December and nearly are we arriving at the shortest, longest, darkest day/night of the year.. On our International Day of Persons With Disabilities 2024 episode, we are discussing disability within a larger framework of discussion, expanding into age and the changes it brings, including experience with illness and disabilities as we all, inevitably, get older.

Through a sudden scare with the sight in his right eye, Frank Bruni goes ahead, in his book, to explore a shifting perspective on themes of vulnerability, ageing, and the perspectives that come from a life turned into life lessons well earned. This week on Outlook we discuss New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s medical memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found which came out a few years back.

We examine themes from the book such as light and dark from the images held in the book’s title referring to beauty found in the dusk and the influence of language and using such words as “affliction” and the negative weight such a word holds for the imagination.

We need more thoughtfully written books like Frank’s to normalise disability as a part of all our lives. Co-host Kerry stumbled upon this one and, upon reading, wanted to review it on the show, to explore how those who gain valuable lived experience of disability suddenly, or later in life, can still write about these things from a thoughtful and careful place with sensitivity and wisdom.

Find the book available in various formats here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Beauty-Dusk-Vision-Lost-Found/dp/1982108576

Co-host Kerry’s back!

Sister/co-host Kerry returns and is live in studio after being away for a month. It’s a month away from Christmas on this late November, mixed bag show.

This week we discuss what was and what has been, with a badly sprained ankle, Kerry luckily got all her Dublin exploring out of the way, mostly. And Brian has been taking action regarding his mental and physical health. We talk about Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children book release and the unfortunate lack of access in audiobook versions available for those, like some blind people, who would prefer or are best able to read any book in its audible format. Also, Kerry shares about her recent literary and media wins with The Toronto Star and CBC Radio.

Kerry is wearing her Poets For Harris t-shirt in protest, while accepting results while Brian broke the pool, referring back and ahead to the 2003 Elf film which is over 20 years old this December. This upcoming Christmas. We’re looking forward but we are also looking back, on Kerry’s time in Ireland this last time, as well as the holidays and traditions of the season, along with recent guests.

It was a big deal, having/seeing her writing in newsprint - check out a link to Kerry’s Toronto Star travel essay here:

https://www.thestar.com/life/travel/i-m-blind-but-i-still-wanted-to-experience-my-beloved-ireland-through-my-other/article_84ee3c60-983e-11ef-9c6e-ef822316d85c.html

And listen to Kerry on CBC radio’s Fresh Air:

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6567168