You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D

We've got another great season  lined up. It starts April 9. Stay tuned for a lot of insight-packed conversations coming in the months ahead. Here's an idea of what's coming in 2024, in season five of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D.

Canada is known as “Hollywood North.” That’s because so many television shows and series, and theatrical and television films have been, and are filmed, in this country. They include Supernatural, Schitt’s Creek, Hudson and Rex, Deadpool, Star Trek Beyond, Star Trek Discovery and Hot Zone: Anthrax. According to figures from the Motion Picture Association, film and television production in Canada e...

Disability is the world’s largest minority group — one that all of us will likely join at some point in our lives. According to World Health Organization figures, 1.3 billion people globally have a disability.   People who have a disability are just regular people, living their every-day lives one day at a time...like all of us. Celebrating triumphs in life, and coping with life stresses...like al...

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. So we thought, what better time to launch a new, occasional series we’re calling, Making the Journey.   It’s a fitting title for this series. Because when a business leader or owner makes the conscious decision to become intentional about disability inclusion in their organization, it really is a long-term journey.  In Making the Journey,...

If you’ve never heard about some of the disability innovation things happening around the globe....like Africa’s first Assistive Technology Accelerator project called Innovate Now....or StreetCo, a pedestrian GPS app developed in France to help people with reduced mobility safely navigate city streets....or the World Health Organization’s first official collaborating centre on assistive technology...

There’s more conversation about disability inclusion in business and employment, than ever. It’s been driven by some rapid changes in the nature and future of work. All this conversation is a good thing. But, it’s a discourse that’s been going on in Canada for over a hundred years. For all intents and purposes, the modern conversation in Canada about disability inclusion started during World War O...

What do you think of when you hear the words, “assistive technology,” or AT, as it’s known for short? And what’s the difference between assistive technology and accessible technology?  From smartphones, to podcast apps, to earbuds, to eyeglasses, to canes, they’re all AT. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes, assistive technology is “an umbrella term.”  There are many things like texting, tha...

In the beginning, the Web was pretty much accessible for everyone....because it was originally text based. In 2023, web-page technology and design has advanced light years beyond the original hypertext markup language (HTML) used to build the world’s first websites.   But is accessibility....that universal power of the Web referred to by its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, keeping pace with modern...

This episode is a check-in...a check-in on hidden mobility disabilities in Canada, and The Hidden Mobility Disabilities Project, or The HMD Project for short.  What are hidden mobility disabilities? Generally, they’re the inability to walk any great distance or stand for a long time.   And The HMD Project has been investigating accessibility as it relates to hidden mobility disabilities.   For the...

Worldwide, there are an estimated 180 million to 220 million youth who have a disability.   In Canada, there are over 540,000 between the ages of 15 and 24.  Over 100,000 of these youth are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Seventy-seven per cent of this group — over 83,000 young people who have a disability — are potential new employees.  A lot of young, fresh talent is being overl...

When you hear the words, “disability inclusion,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind for you? There’s a lot being written these days about accessibility, and disability inclusion in business and employment. But what about something like disability inclusion and accessibility in research? That's not something many of us have thought about. In this second part of our two-part series on new dis...

It’s called the Inclusive Design for Employment Access (IDEA) initiative. This new, six-year research initiative — being done with $9 million in federal funding — is taking a new, different approach to disability and employment research. One that has the potential to change the conversation about disability inclusion in business and employment. We talk with the two experts leading IDEA who are rei...

Business leaders can no longer make excuses for not fostering disability inclusion, the leaders of The Valuable 500 declare, in this episode. Caroline Casey, founder and creator of The Valuable 500, affirms that they must “be curious and intentional about making change,” and urges leaders to “Go into your people, ask your people in business who are connected to disability, how you can do it better...

Have you heard the term, Hidden Mobility Disabilities, or HMD, before? There are actually over 500,000 Canadians who live with HMD. It’s an aspect of disability that’s not obvious, and often overlooked. And it’s one that creates some significant obstacles to inclusion and accessibility.  In this episode of You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D, co-hosts Jeannette Campbell and Dean Askin explore HM...

In this episode, we’re bringing some young voices into the show — Voices of Tomorrow. That’s both the name of a new report that’s the subject of this episode, and it describes our two guests. Sarah Julius is a first-year university student at The University of Windsor, Ontario. Natalia Ayala Giraldo is a Grade 12 student in Windsor. Both of them are on the 2021-2022 Youth Advisory Committee of Re:...

If you’re at any point on a disability-inclusion journey in your business, be sure to catch the new episode that’s out today.  What a great conversation with John Robinson, the founder of Our Ability and Jobs Ability U.S.  Thanks to John for sharing so many business and personal insights about his journey creating Our Ability and the Jobs Ability AI-based job search platform that makes it easy for...

Virtual reality (VR) is mostly known as the realm of gamers. But now — in Ontario, at least — it’s about to burst on the scene in the disability employment sector. Initially, starting at the end of September (through to the middle of March 2022), VR technology called VjobReady is going to be used to help 160 Ontario job seekers who have a disability get a feel for what it’s like to work in the foo...

In this episode, we explore why people who have a disability are the “secret weapon,” or, “secret sauce,” for businesses — and just what that means. Our guests are two C-Suite business leaders — Paul M. Clark and Derek Burleton of TD. Paul is President of TD Direct Investing and Executive Vice-President of TD Bank Group. He’s also chair of TD’s People With Disabilities Committee, and is on TD’s Di...

You Can't Spell Inclusion Without a D is a new monthly podcast produced in Toronto, Canada by the Ontario Disability Employment Network. The podcast explores The Power of Inclusion, and why disability is an important part of the workplace diversity and inclusion conversation. Join us for a new episode every month as we look at The Power of Inclusion, disability employment and the business benefits...