"In this week’s episode, the Triple Vision team talks with Kevin Shaw, a self-proclaimed entrepreneur who is currently the Digital Accessibility Lead for the online bank, Tangerine, and has some experience starting up his own businesses. The team asks Kevin questions about the challenges and rewards of being an entrepreneur with sight loss. The podcast provides an engaging look into entrepreneurship as a viable career choice for Canadians who are blind, deafblind and partially sighted.

Indeed the team asks the question, ""Why is it that it does not seem that entrepreneurship has ever been promoted as a practical career choice for many members of our community?""

“Entrepreneurship is really about sharing your talent with the world, and going out there, developing a skill. Maybe it's in computers, maybe it's working with your hands, and sharing that with people. I think that’s why it's been growing so much and that’s why I think some people are looking at this as a viable option."""

"In this week’s episode, the Triple Vision team speaks with Elizabeth Lalonde of the Pacific Training Centre in Victoria, and Deborah Gold of BALANCE for Blind Adults in Toronto. Elizabeth and Deborah talk about how their organizations offer rehabilitation services to the blind and visually impaired community. The podcast offers a glimpse into how Canadians do have choice, although still somewhat limited, when it comes to the services they can access.

“We learnt a lot through the pandemic. I’m very proud of the way we pivoted in four days. We were really the first organization serving blind people in North America to be able to continue service. I was online with people all over the States, working in organizations. It took months for many of them to get so that they could provide service again. We never stopped.” "

"In this fourth episode looking at some of the governance issues of the CNIB, the Triple Vision team speaks with Kate Behan, Managing Director of Charity Intelligence Canada. Charity Intelligence Canada is a non-profit organization which provides Canadians with information so they may make informed decisions about which charities to support.

In this fascinating podcast, Kate talks candidly about what makes a good charity, and some of the pitfalls charities can fall into. She explains why the CNIB, as one of the largest 100 charities in Canada, merits only a two-star rating as evaluated by her organization.

""We do always find that when charities have strong feedback mechanisms, and when they are serving the people they serve then they can allocate their spending where it can do the most good. And, talking about the value, where is the money going, and how is it delivering the best value for the community? To me, it always comes back down to the better you can understand the problem, the better you can tackle it. You would hope for evidence-based policies, that you can see if we do A, B, and C, we will hope to see a change in X, Y, and Z. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in this situation.”"

"In this third part in the Triple Vision team’s exploration of governance at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), David Best and Peter Field talk with Chief Operating Officer, Angela Bonfanti and its new National Board Chair, Robert Fenton. Angela and Robert talk candidly about the role of the foundation in the lives of blind Canadians. They also answer some direct questions passed along by Canadian consumers in the team’s previous podcast about participation of blind, deafblind, and partially sighted Canadians on the foundation's board.

“I believe, as Chair of the Board, that it's very important to have good relationships with all of the consumer groups. That doesn’t mean that we agree on everything. It means that we can talk and we can candidly discuss things and share perspectives, and get input from these groups who represent more than one individual or a small group of individuals at a time. It's important to have input from these groups and to be seen as a partner.” Tune into this episode for the continuing narrative of a single story of governance."

"In Part 2 of Triple Vision’s exploration of what is the single story behind governance at CNIB, Peter and Hanna speak with Mary Ellen Gabias and Albert Ruel about what they heard from Jane Beaumont and Kevin Burns in Episode 29. In our last podcast, Jane and Kevin discussed the CNIB governance structure from its origins to where it is today. At the end of this episode the Triple Vision team asked the question, “Do Canadian consumers who are blind, deafblind, and partially sighted share those same views?”

In this episode, Mary Ellen and Albert talk frankly about what works for them and what does not coming out of CNIB’s structure, governance and programs.

“I get a lot of advice from my siblings, my husband, my children. What I do with advice is what most people do with advice. I take it under advisement and accept the advice that I like and reject the advice that I don’t. CNIB as an entity does that too. But, I, as a consumer, if I think that the organization is going in the wrong direction, I can vote with my feet by not showing up, but beyond that there’s very little that can be done.”

Join the Triple vision team for Part 2 of this illuminating in-depth exploration of the single story of governance at CNIB."

"The Triple Vision team starts a series on governance, in particular the governance story behind the CNIB.

The team starts with a look back at how the CNIB was formed, and what it looks like now. David, Hanna and Peter speak to Jane Beaumont, CNIB Archivist and former Chair of its National Board, as well as Kevin Burns, a former Chair of CNIB’s Governance Committee. Is it possible to determine the single story of an organization by how it is governed, by the rules and structures it operates under? How did the organization move from charity to a more modern approach to service delivery ... or did it? Tune into this week’s Triple vision podcast and find out.

“The issue, of course, is we are talking about working with disability at a time when, well, we call it disability studies now, but back then it was called something else. It was called charity. It was called helping out. So, one of the things that is a big line in this story of the CNIB is how the instinct to be a charitable organization providing services becomes a movement that is about dealing with people’s full participation in whatever way they choose to live their lives.” "

"In this episode the Triple Vision team continues its exploration of the danger of a single story by speaking with Dr. M. Leona Godin.

Dr. Godin, who has taught literature and humanities at New York University, is a writer, performer and educator, lecturing on art, accessibility, technology, and disability. In this episode, she speaks with Peter Field and Hanna Leavitt about the themes emerging from her book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness. She reflects on how some of the single stories of blindness over the past two-and-a-half centuries have led to myth, stereotyping and unbridled inspiration porn.

""I think the most obvious thing that I am pushing back on in my book is that the story of blindness in our literature, in our media, our films, and even from a journalistic perspective, has almost exclusively been told by sighted people. That is the No. 1 big issue, because I think that the ideas that sighted people have about blind people just don't make any sense in terms of our own lived experience.”

Learn more about There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness: https://drmlgodin.com/2021/05/there-plant-eyes-a-personal-and-cultural-history-of-blindness/"

In this episode the Triple Vision team takes a page from a Ted Talk by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called “The Danger of a Single story”. In her Talk the author relates what happens when someone else tells the story about another person or a community, and how much they can get that story wrong. Throughout the podcast you will hear the voices of the Triple Vision team, David Best, Sharlyn Ayotte, Peter Field and Hanna Leavitt discussing how the story regarding the community of Canadians who are blind and visually impaired has been told for years without them, and what the consequences of that are.

“I was shocked by that. It was a story that had been generated for an awfully long time by the agency about who we were as blind people, dependent, helpless, terrified by everyday living. I couldn’t stay any longer because the story I knew about my friends and myself was that we were educated, self-determined, independent, skilled and talented.” The single story is a theme the Triple Vision team plans to return to often in its upcoming episodes.

Resources:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story (2009): https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

"In this last episode of Triple Vision’s first season, the team of David, Hanna, Sharlyn and Peter look back at their first year of podcasting and some of their most memorable moments.

From Professor Serge Durflinger talking about his book, “Veterans with a Vision,” in Episode 1, to colonialism, library services and several episodes dedicated to education and employment, the team recalls what they learne and what they are looking forward to next as they prepare for a second season.

“I’m looking forward to a conversation that talks about how governance matters, and which narratives take priority when we are talking about ‘nothing about us without us,’ and how the current governance models are not working to support that perspective.”

“The challenge that we have is that we’re such a small group that a lot of what we say gets overlooked. Even today, we see that a lot of the traditional ways of doing things lingers on. We have to try to figure out how we can shift that thought process; for example, today we depend on computers, technology, the iPhone, everything like that, and it makes a huge difference in our lives. But, for the most part, we are basically told what we need. We’re not given much opportunity to say, 'I am the end user and this is what I want. This is how I do things.'”"

In this last in a four-part series on employment, the Triple Vision team speaks to Jen Ferris and Wayne Henshall in order to answer the question: “Do employment programs for blind Canadians really work?”

Jen Ferras is a "Free Agent" employed by the Government of Canada working on modernization initiatives; she has been working towards her own employment program for Canadians who are blind called “Talent Launch Consulting” on the side. The idea is to seek out gig work from established companies and then provide that work to qualified individuals looking to start their careers, or change their employment situation for the better. “What makes it unique is that it's well-established. It's legitimate companies requiring work to be done on their projects, and it's meaningful work. It’s not just tokenism.”

Meanwhile, after 20 years in the corporate world, Wayne Henshall is now head of the Come to Work Program at CNIB. The program supports blind and visually impaired individuals moving along the continuum of vision loss through to the pursuit of work, careers and venture start-ups. The national program has grown from 30 participants in its first year, to now taking in 1,100. “The hard part is, how do you make the overall numbers change? We have such a high unemployment rate, it's three times the rate of the rest of Canada, and so I would say, are we making meaningful change? Two hundred and eighty of those 1,100 individuals have gotten jobs who had not been working for six months-plus, and in some cases had never worked, ever in their activities. So, that is a start. … Even if I got all 1,100 of those, that would only change the overall employment rate by less than .01%.”