Outlook on Radio Western

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Everybody can do it, if they set their mind to it.” Delores Thompson This week on Outlook we feature the first part of a two-part special episode we’ve been working on for a while. We’ share about a project in British Columbia called “Your Eyes, My Vision” where blind artists were paired up with sighted facilitators to learn from each other and show the world...

This is our submission for the “INTENSE INTERIORS – 2023 Architecture and Film Symposium”. It was hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University’s Creative School’s Interior Design department on May 6 & 7, 2023. Our piece is in the form of an experimental audio paper. “Outlook - A Multisensory Installation” explores the concept of mental mapping: a term blind people use that defines the ability to pict...

National AccessAbility Week takes place from May 28 to June 3, 2023 . This year the theme for National AccessAbility Week is “Disability Inclusion: From Possibilities to Practice”. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with returning guest and friend of the show Christine Malec, about what else? Accessibility. Accessibility and the arts and culture. It’s time for Luminato! Specifically, we’re speaki...

It’s been a wild May month so far for Outlook and we were off doing some cool things earlier in it. This week on the podcast, we share the details of our May weekend in Toronto as a part of the Architecture & Film Symposium, 2023, which took place on May 6th and 7th, hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University Creative School’s Interior Design department. The theme this year was Intense Interiors an...

It’s a new day, it’s a May day, and we’re back for another Outlook Mixed Bag episode. This week we’re finally getting to it, explaining a project we’ve had in the works for nearly an entire year now, but first we share a sudden loss in our family and on our own special memories of our uncle Mike who passed away, unexpectedly last week, moments after doing the thing he loved: playing music live wit...

Well we made it! This week Outlook celebrates our 200th episode and we’re doing it with a special guest, with an interview/discussion on the issues which are central to what we do here: accessibility, advocacy, equality. This week we welcome the first person to really discover our show back in early 2019 when he first reached out to us, our very first phone guest. Anthony Hodgetts from Alberta joi...

“If you rely on you're eyes only, you’re gonna miss a lot,” says Donna Hudon who, at age six was wearing glasses and at eleven she was using a cane at night. And by age twenty-three this guest was totally blind. Nights and days, she now has issues with her circadian rhythms like some other blind people (known as non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder), impacting the sleep-wake cycle which makes night shi...

On January 4, 2023 something new was revealed; the World Blind Herald went live, choosing that date because that is Louis Braille’s birthday. This week on Outlook we speak with its founder, publisher, and editor in chief Chris Hofstader. We begin with Chris sharing about his life including the early days when he was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) as a child, sharing all the things he was...

REMEMBER THIs, Jan Karski: “Humans have infinite capacity to ignore things that are not convenient”. We’re back for our final week of Women’s History Month, with another mixed bag show. We wrap up March with a bit of a look back for co-host Kerry’s recent discussion of feeling the stigma of finishing her education late and feeling behind everyone. And reviewing the guests (Rebecca Singh and Daniel...

In our present world, of capitalism and productivity so valued, this week’s Outlook is about Kerry’s journey. While it’s still Women’s History Month for one more week, this time Brian interviews Kerry on some big changes in her life. It is time to share the incredibly winding path which led her here. From talk of Kerry’s rather ordinary early education to the onset of her kidney failure years in t...

We decided to call this special International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month episode of Outlook “Us and Them”, a slight altering from the term us vs them, relating to a chapter in the memoir we’re featuring with this interview Kerry did for a gender studies course she recently took. “Uncultured” is a book by Daniella Mestyanek Young, a writer and scholar who’s studied organizational psychology...

Our International Women’s Day episode of Outlook, first in the month of March and all throughout Women’s History Month, we’re talking with and honouring the intersectionalities of women and race and disability, to name a few. We start the show this week with the unfortunate announcement of the passing of Judith Heumann, so named as the Mother of the Disability Movement. (A fuller tribute to Judy w...

Back on the mics again at last with our second Mixed Bag show of February 2023, to finish off the shortest month of the year. In the first half, Kerry shares more about her recently revealed consulting website, Kay Consulting, which ties in to the recent announcement, by Puffin Books in the UK, regarding updates made to the language in many of Roald Dahl’s children’s stories, in order to make them...

As a kid, he wanted to be a race car driver. This week on Outlook we speak with returning guest Ben Fulton about the work he’s now doing as a lawyer focusing on human rights. Ben gives a summary of the events he first came to us about, his experience being arrested when he was standing at a gas station counter, with his guide dog, just trying to get himself a cup of coffee. “Why don’t we go outsid...

UNESCo: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Kerry (February birthday girl) just took a course, a geography/tourism course, which covered this organization so should know what this acronym stands for, but can’t remember as we mark a favourite day around here. This week and year, the theme for the 12th edition of the World Radio Day, to be celebrated on the 13th of Febr...

In January and February of 2022, Kim Kilpatrick was in Ottawa, the place she’d lived most of her life, when the trucks rolled into town. Canada’s capitol city and the “Freedom Convoy” were all over the news, but what was it like to be there during those tense weeks, to be right in the thick of it? This week on Outlook we speak with Kim about what the impacts were on her, being a person with a disa...

April 2022 - broadcast on over 20 Internet radio stations - 11.5 hours - over USD$100,000 raised A few months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jonathan Mosen hosted “We’re with U, ” an online benefit concert featuring blind performers on his Internet station: Mushroom FM to help blind people in the war-torn country. Radio. Advocacy. Assistive tech. Jonathan Mosen has worked in a...

According to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, 2023 is the year of the Water Rabbit: Starting from January 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year), and ending on February 9th, 2024/which will be the day before co-host Kerry’s 40th birthday, (Chinese New Year's Eve). The sign of Rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture. Our audio guy (having purchased new mics for himself for Chris...

“See the flaming log. Drink the tasty nog, by the warm fireplace.” (Eggnog aka milk punch.) [lyrics quoted from Warm Fireplace by Kibble]) Around the end of one year and the start of another, we look back on the year that just was and on toward the next on the podcast that started it all with us. On KOP 2022 we return to our spots by a warm fireplace, this time with wine, and this year fire is eve...

This week’s show, where we’re speaking with Utah author Macy Lewis, is being brought to you by the letter P. This brings us to the middle of January, Braille Literacy Month, as we speak with Macy about braille and how it and literacy brought her to the writing she does now, as she describes the 26 Days of Braille she’s been doing all month long on her social media by using a muffin tin and tennis...

They’ve been Kelly and Company, on AMI Audio up till now, but for our first new episode of the new year, they are now Kelly and Ramya, now on AMI TV, and we speak with them both this week. This week on Outlook, we welcome in the month of January, with first guests of 2023 Kelly MacDonald and Ramya Amuthan. They are announcing this week’s premier on AMI TV of Kelly and Ramya. We speak with them for...

Outlook for 2022, all wrapped up with a beautiful beau. On this final episode of 2022, right before Christmas, we acknowledge that it’s not a joyous time of year for all of us equally and also we discuss the impact all the beautiful wrapping on gifts this time of year has on the environment. Outlook is about tearing off the fancy wrappings on issues, to get to the heart of it, the contents of an i...

We found this week’s guest (final guest of Outlook 2022) through this other recent guest Kyle Kiper, both from Arkansas. This week on Outlook we’re speaking with Cindy Scott-Huisman about art, creativity, and ingenuity. We discuss Cindy’s journey with her son’s and her own Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), Cantrell Gallery which has been in her family for half a century and the pride she...

PWD - people with disabilities DWP - Disability Without Poverty December 3rd of this year marks 30 years since the United Nations adopted this date as the International Day for Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). The theme for IDPD 2022 is “Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world“. What is Disability Without Poverty (DW...

The world of audio description is still new and it can be hard to know how to break into the field, for anyone wanting to write it or engineer/mix it or voice it, even do quality control on it. As we’ve said, it’s all a collaborative process or should be anyway. On this week’s episode we welcomed author and audio description writer Kelly Evans for a frank discussion on how she got into this work a...