Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

Podcasts By Donna Jodhan feature a variety of audio podcasts that focus on the future of children, particularly those with disabilities. As a blind advocate and entrepreneur, Donna shares her insights, life experiences, and advocacy efforts, aiming to inspire and inform her listeners. Her podcasts cover issues such as accessibility, inclusivity, and breaking down barriers in technology and everyday life, encouraging collective efforts to create a better and more equitable future for all children.

Podcasts By Donna Jodhan is a news podcast hosted by Donna J. Jodhan, with 296 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Donna J. Jodhan hosts Podcasts By Donna Jodhan, a news show with 296 episodes published.

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  Episode #102

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #102: Interview with Aaron Di Blasi, Sr. PMP, Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., Regarding Her Ongoing Attempt To Take The Apex Program's CompTIA Network+ Exam at a Pearson Vue Testing Center As A Blind Woman in Canada

  Aug 7, 202651 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #102: Interview with Aaron Di Blasi, Sr. PMP, Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., Regarding Her Ongoing Attempt To Take The Apex Program's CompTIA Network+ Exam at a Pearson Vue Testing Center As A Blind Woman in Canada https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-08-07-2026/ In this candid and unusually raw episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan hands the microphone to her friend, associate and longtime collaborator Aaron Di Blasi for what he calls a "reverse grilling", a date-by-date walk through her two-year attempt to sit the CompTIA Network+ exam as a blind candidate. Beginning with the $7,500 Apex Program scholarship awarded in November 2024, they trace a scholarship that turned out to be 21 typo-riddled Word documents with no learning platform and no human support; a first exam abandoned in October 2025 when the reader said "I don't know what to do here"; the articles Donna published and the scholarship Apex withdrew because of them, telling her "you've made us the enemy"; the CNIB stepping in twice; and a second exam in May 2026 where the diagrams were still undescribed, the reader and recorder were one person, and her printed results had to be read aloud to her by a friend in the parking lot. The second half turns to what Donna did about it, writing directly to the chief executives of CompTIA and Pearson VUE, and learning in reply that a JAWS-compatible version of the exam had existed all along. Aaron is unusually candid about his own part, admitting he gave up before she did and calling it the advocacy lesson of the episode. They close on the ownership changes neither of them knew about at the time, and on Donna's own framing of why any of it was worth doing: "I am not the point. I was never the point." TRANSCRIPT Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP and MBA invites you to listen to her biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology and information, as someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles. She just wants to make things better than possible. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary. I'm Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch and stubborn optimism. I am a law graduate, an accessibility consultant, an author, a lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. You may know me from a few headline moments. In November 2010, I won the landmark charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just [the sighted ones? 00:01:53]. And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen disability groups to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers. When I'm not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio, you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal: to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas. Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is every bit remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I will let him tell you more about himself, but for now, I'd like to welcome my friend, my associate, my mentor, Aaron Di Blasi. Welcome again to the Remarkable World Commentary. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Hello Miss Donna. Thank you again for having me. It's always great to be on this podcast with you. I always have so much fun, and I think we're going to have a great deal of fun today. And that's what it's about. Sad as the topic might be, it will be a great deal of fun too, to let everyone know what's happening, because I don't think a lot of people know about this. So I am excited to get it into the eyes and ears of many more people. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Let's get started. Go for it. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Okay, well, let's just let people know first a little bit about me, because this being your podcast, I'm going to assume they know about you. My name is Aaron Di Blasi and I am an engineer by trade, a software engineer of more than 30 years. I got into the accessibility space in 2004 when I began working for the then publisher of Top Tech Tidbits, the weekly newsletter, which is currently the leading weekly not-for-profit newsletter for disability technology information. We spun off other publications. We'll get into that. We don't need to cover that in this podcast. The point being, I've been working with Donna as her friend and mentor for probably 13 years now. We were introduced by Mr. Larry Lewis, who was the former publisher of Top Tech Tidbits, and during that time, Donna has taught me a lot about what real advocacy means. And today is two things. It is a tragedy, and it is also a workshop on real advocacy and what that means, the real painful, costly type of advocacy. And with that, I will set the stage. And Donna, if there's anything that you would like to say to that before we open up, just let me know. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No, I can't wait for this interview to take place. And I want to thank you for walking the walk with me. So let's walk. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Let's walk, let's tell the story. Hopefully we don't get too entrenched in that, but the story is the important part. So let's start on November 25th, 2024, when you were awarded a full $7,500 USD scholarship to the Apex program, 12 weeks sponsored by Novacoast. This scholarship was facilitated in part by Doctor Kirk Adams. He helped to make it possible. Would you like to talk about how you felt the day that you received that news? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, I still remember that day when I think it was you who told me and I thought, nah, this can't— Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: I think it might have been. Yeah. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, why would I, of all people, a Canadian, receive a scholarship from Doctor Kirk Adams? Like, well, through Doctor Kirk Adams. And I thought, sure, I can't be true. And then you said, oh yes, it's very true. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: It was indeed. And Apex being a United States based program and you being in Canada, that's the important part to distinguish. But it was wonderful. It was fantastic. I was very excited for you. And the reason I was excited for Donna is she always had a great interest in cybersecurity. So any program specific to blind people, with the word blind people specifically in the program, I thought would make her very happy. And it did. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes it did. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Yes it did. However, days later, Donna received her first login. And this is the nervous part. I don't know if you want to say anything about this part, Donna. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, oh my gosh, the first login, and I quickly realized— Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: This is where you find out if it's real. This is where you find out if it's going to happen. And unfortunately, I think listeners know it didn't happen. The screen reader reads nothing. We contact Apex and Apex says it's a glitch. Well, I go and I take a look. Again, I'm a software engineer. And by look, I don't mean that I just looked. I mean that I use tools to probe the code and to see what was going on. And what we figured out was there was no LMS. That stands for Learning Management System. And that's the only real way that you're going to develop or deliver an accessible experience to a learner online, is to customize an LMS, and they did not have an LMS in place at all. It was simply a static HTML page. And for whatever reason, her screen reader could not read it nor access it. So at her request, we reached out to Apex and asked if they could provide it in a, quote, accessible format. And at my recommendation, we asked for Word documents, because I just know it's a fallback. And surprisingly, they provided us with just that. Word documents. 21 of them. 21 typo-riddled and visibly out-of-date Word documents, at least from my view as a visual person. And Donna backed this up with her use of a screen reader to search for certain terms, etc., none of which came up due to the way that the documents were created. And I think anyone listening will understand that portion. So we quickly realized that the $7,500 amounted to about 21 Word documents, which was okay, because we thought, well, there's still the help that Donna's going to get. There's these workshops, there's all of this assistance. So at least we still get that. Right, Donna? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: That's right. We thought that. But lo and behold— Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Well, she reaches out to one David Mayne, I believe. Is that correct? David Mayne. And she asks how a blind person should study specifically. And his response — they had no idea what I was talking about. And I was there for that email. And they literally had no idea what she was talking about. When we say that, I mean his response was, there's the Word documents. What else do you need? They're accessible. You can access them, right? And we said, yes, we can access them. What else do you need? And we explained what isn't there. Is there assistance? Are there workshops? Is there anyone to watch my schedule as I get closer to testing? But apparently there was none of that. And there was none of that simply because they wouldn't answer. So I decided that we needed, if Donna wanted to continue with this, that we were going to need some help. And for me as an engineer, that help is artificial intelligence today. So we took those 21 Word documents and we ran them through some of the smartest AI available. And we had that AI cross-reference some of that incorrect information with correct information and form tests that Donna could actually access using code that her screen reader would understand. Now, the irony is that Donna, probably at the end of it, ended up spending $7,500 getting that information into a format that she could study. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: That's correct. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: So that's the food for thought, I think, for this section. One year later, despite all of this — no assistance, no human assistance, no workshops, no nothing, just an exchange of emails with David Mayne here and there, but no real new information provided — one year later, Donna masters all 21 chapters using the AI-generated study guides and the flash tests that we created for her. And basically it would just generate a new flash test on a subject every single time until she could master them at a 90 to 100% efficiency rate, over and over and over. We think it's a very unique way for a blind person to learn a large corpus of material, by the way. So let's everybody keep that in mind. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, I guess if my head was properly screwed on, I would have realized right away when I saw the inaccessible login that there was much trouble ahead. But you know me. You said so. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: You said so, and I did not doubt you. I was just hoping for the best, but unfortunately, it just got worse. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And you know, for me, I always think it's going to get better. It's going to get better. But it's like, think of it this way. You're in the ocean and you expect those waves to get less and less. Well, they got higher and higher and higher. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: They did. Wait till we see what those waves did. So the point is, at this point Donna moves on and we decide that we're going to do it all ourself. I mean, that's mostly Donna, mind you. And she got through this and she mastered the material and she said, Aaron, I'm ready to test. Which I thought was amazing. And then the next obstacle presented itself. Remote testing was ruled out. Donna's needs for the bathroom exceeded the two hour on-camera window. So that was not an accommodation that they could allow. So she had to test at a center, which we knew, and we figured that was fine. Donna has done that many times for many other certifications. She put in a request for accommodations. Pearson returned about 2 to 3 days later with those accommodations and gave her everything that she asked for. But then 2 or 3 days after that, they called and said that her location had changed, because they could not accommodate her at the location that they had originally agreed to accommodate her at. So they changed that location. And Donna asked basically, are you sure this is final? And they said, of course it is. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: October 1st, 2025. Exam day. Now, Don, I would like you to take the steering wheel here a little bit and talk about the airport style scanners, the Kleenex that was confiscated, and the proctor that you met for the first time ever. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So they confiscated my Kleenex. They confiscated everything I had brought, although I made darn sure that my stuff — I had put them all in transparent bags — so they took everything out of those bags, out of my bags, and gave me their bags. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Pearson is serious about cheating. We all know that. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So then we go into just outside the exam room and I meet my reader. I could tell that she was quite young because her voice sounded young. She was quite friendly and everything. But then what came about next was there were two things. First, they had to read all the agreement documents to me. I asked if it was there in electronic format and they said no. So they read it to me. I signed everything. I walked into the room with my reader. I thought I was going to have a recorder and a reader — a recorder to record my— Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: That's what you were supposed to have. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: That's correct. But I didn't have it. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Was that accommodation met? We don't know. Right? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No. Well, it wasn't met at that time, because I thought it would be two persons. It was one. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: It was supposed to be. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. So we sat down and she logged in. And again she read all the documents to me, the pre-exam documents, which I agreed to, and we signed off on it. And then came the big wave. That being that she brought up the exam. And the very first question was one filled with diagrams. And I knew then I was in big trouble. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: An example of those questions: from the diagrams below, select the configuration that shows a proper network connection. Now just imagine that, listeners — whether you are blind or sighted — that you are attempting to answer a question regarding proper network connection cables in different orientations. I mean, that's an incredible visual challenge, to say nothing of properly describing that visual challenge. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But then came the horror. When I said to her, I said, could you just look to see if there are similar questions to this one? And she quickly scanned down the questions and she said there were quite a few. At that point I said, so I wonder what we should do? And she said to me, I don't know how to read these questions to you. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: I believe her exact response was, I don't know what to do here. That's right. Which we understand — she was not prepared for this. Does not make this person's fault, mind you. However, she was not given the tools, as we later will learn, that she should have been provided for this particular session. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So I made the decision to pull the plug on this exam. We were not going to go anywhere. When someone says, I don't know what to do, I think, oh— Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Well, sure. And nor should your exam be based on someone else's descriptions of an exam that they've never seen before today. You know, I always said from the very beginning, Don, I said that these tests — if I'm CompTIA, I have to provide these tests in an accessible format. That's the top of the chain. So therefore there must exist a sanctioned official description of each network diagram that should be provided to a blind person. So really, if she were handed that document, she could have simply read the ALT descriptions that were approved, assuming they existed. However, we did not know at the time whether they existed or not. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No we didn't. So I pulled the plug on the exam, walked out of the exam, told them what had happened. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Very frustrating day for you. A very sad day for you. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And the administration staff, well, they just simply said, we're not here to help you. We're just here to make sure you take the exam. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: So the feeling that I always got from Pearson is that we prevent cheating at all costs. Even the cost of accessibility, it seems. And I know that accessibility is very close to cheating — I mean, I understand that — but guys, come on. Oh my God, it's just so frustrating. Okay. October 3rd, 2025. After this happens, a call with Apex. They later claimed that they gave consent for her to write about this situation. Now, what we want to talk about at this point is that you began publishing your frustration publicly in a series of articles. These articles exist online, listeners. There are currently three of them available, with a fourth one due to be published soon. And believe it or not, by the end of this podcast, there may even be a number five, because we don't know if this is closed yet. However, on October 14th, 2025, Donna published part one of her series about her experience — and literally her honest experience. Everything that we've talked about up to this point was published within the article. Apex's response to this article, the very next day, was: please pause any further media rollout until a meeting. The reason they gave was, the damage this article has done to our brand is significant. Mind you, this was not a request. It almost seemed to be a demand, as if they had some type of authority over Donna's ability to publicly and honestly log her experience. Does that make sense? That's kind of how I — and I was frankly appalled at their response, not just from a disability perspective, but just from a pure PR perspective. The first — when someone says you're not accessible, or you've hurt me, or your product has hurt me, or your service is not what it's supposed to be — I don't know a company in the world in an email that says, well, take it down until we can talk. I've never experienced that in my 30 years in marketing. So that was unique. And at that point, I think we knew we were dealing with some unique people. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, we were. Those people. Aaron Di Blasi, PMP: Our contacts at that point had spanned out from David Mayne to Katie Mcauliff and her attorney, Emmy Savenelli. And that was apparently the legal counsel for Apex, who was also copied on these initial requests for us to take down Donna's initial post, in which she described her experience with Apex — and exactly as we've desc

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  Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #101: Interview with Voldi Gailans, Chairman of the Braille Chess Association

  Jul 29, 202649 min

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #101: Interview with Voldi Gailans, Chairman of the Braille Chess Association https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-07-29-2026/ In this warm and encouraging episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan, herself a blind advocate and chess lover, sits down with Voldi Gailans, Chairman of the UK's Braille Chess Association, in a conversation that doubles as an invitation. Voldi traces his lifelong relationship with the game: first meeting the pieces as a boy at a Latvian social club, learning the moves on a pegged tactile board at boarding school with no strategy to guide him, and finding formal coaching only late in life, an experience that fuels his mission to spare today's beginners those lost years. Along the way he dismantles the "mystique" that chess is only for clever people, explains how much richer the game becomes once you learn ideas rather than just moves, and reflects on patience, resilience, and learning to lose gracefully as lessons that carry straight over into life. The second half turns personal and forward-looking, as Donna and Voldi trade memories of the BCA's welcoming community, the Theme Break, the tournaments, the friendships, and float the idea of a future Canada-versus-UK match. Threaded throughout is Voldi's conviction that chess is a lifelong gift anyone can pick up, now played over Zoom, phone, email or across the world online, and Donna's own rekindled enthusiasm as a returning player. It closes on a note of genuine friendship and an open invitation for listeners to give the game a go. TRANSCRIPT Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP and MBA invites you to listen to her biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible. Donna Jodhan: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary. I am Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch and stubborn optimism. I am a law graduate and accessibility consultant, an author, a lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. You may know me from a few headline moments. In November 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just to sighted ones. And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen disability groups to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, in June 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers. When I'm not in a courtroom or a committee room or a pottery studio, you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies make their websites and gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal: to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas. Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose world is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I'd like to introduce you to the chairman — and I hope I have his title correct — of the Braille Chess Association, based in the UK. I'd like to welcome you to our show. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have you on board. Voldi Gailans: Thank you, Donna. That's very kind, and it's nice to be here. Donna Jodhan: Great. So let's start off with this question. You have written that in your 76th year, you find yourself as chairman of the Braille Chess Association — something that you say you never expected. Please take us back to the moment that you accepted that role. What made you say yes? Voldi Gailans: Well, I was asked whether I would consider becoming chairman by my predecessor, and it did take me by surprise, because I never thought of myself as chairman material. I'm not a leader by nature. I like to sit back and try to help where I can. Having joined the Association in 1977, I look back on it all, and I think of what chess has done for me in all those years, and the huge enjoyment I've had from it, and my debt of gratitude to the Braille Chess Association. And I thought, well, I've been asked to do this job, I must give it a go, because I want it to thrive. I think what we give to people is something enormous. It is, as you said at the beginning, life changing. I think it makes such a big difference to all of us — blind, sighted, whoever. Chess is a good thing for anybody to do, and you've got something very special for life. Donna Jodhan: You know, I have to tell our listeners that I met Voldi and his wife, Clare, the day before I returned to Canada from my European trip in June of this year. It was a sure privilege and a pleasure to have met you both. And you have changed my life even before we met, when you started coaching me. So thank you very much. Voldi Gailans: Well, that was on a very low level, Donna. I'm not a great player. You see, this is one of the beauties of it — I absolutely love the game, and I'm not a top player. I've struggled all my life to get better, and I'll still struggle for the rest of it, but I love it. It's such a wonderful game. And I would like to feel I could share that enthusiasm and get other people to love it and enjoy it as much as I do. Donna Jodhan: And I could hear it in your voice, and you sure have started to make me more enthusiastic about chess. So, Voldi, your very first meeting with chess wasn't over a board at all, but at a Latvian social club that your father used to take the family to. Tell us about that little boy, fascinated by the shapes of the pieces. What did chess mean to you before you even knew the rules? Voldi Gailans: I just loved — I came across this board, and it was a nicely made board. They were standard Staunton figures that a normal chess player would have. And I just liked the shapes; they fascinated me. I used to play with them, like children play with figures and make up games. I did spend some time while I was there, because I got a little bit bored — of course, Dad was chatting to his friends in Latvian, and we were just left to drift around quite a lot of the time, and this was a nice little diversion. Somebody did mention accessible chess to me, but it didn't mean anything to me. I was only 8 or 9, something like that. But yes, that was my first contact with the game. And it wasn't until I went to school — we'll come on to that, won't we. I'm sorry, I'm waffling on and not letting you ask the questions. Donna Jodhan: No, go ahead. Voldi Gailans: Well, all right. My real experience with chess first came at school, when we used to have games nights on a Thursday evening, and one of the games was chess. We had these tactile chess boards, which were just wooden or metal boards with holes drilled in and a peg at the bottom of each piece which fitted into the holes. In those days, on that particular design of chess set, the pins were in the white pieces. But anyway, this teacher taught a group of us the moves of the game, and that was it. I learned the moves and I thought, I can play chess. And we all thought, great, wonderful, we've got a new hobby. And we did, and we played games, but we had no idea what to do. We just knew the moves, so we moved the pieces, but we didn't know what was the right thing to do. We had no idea of strategy or tactics. We managed to find the odd chess book with some games written down in it, and a history of the World Championship up to 1935 or so, and I enjoyed reading that. I'd get the board out and follow these games with no idea really what they were trying to do, these wonderful grandmasters. I had no appreciation, but it was something new, it fascinated me, and I had so much time in the holidays to do all this. I spent hours doing it with no real knowledge, which was such a shame. But over the years, of course, things improved, and I know better now. It all came rather late, but it was the most wonderful thing to start learning and to improve on, and I've had so much pleasure from it. Donna Jodhan: Now, many of our listeners have never held a pegged, tactile set. Paint the picture of those Thursday games evenings at your boarding school, around your 11th birthday — the raised squares, the Braille books in old descriptive notation. What was it like to learn the moves, but not yet the ideas behind them? Tell us about it. Voldi Gailans: Well, it was a very long time ago; I'm not sure that I really remember. As a child, you can do it — you pick up these things and you just do them, don't you? You don't think about how, or isn't it hard, isn't it difficult. It's a fairly simple code, the chess code, really, when you think about it. The game itself is relatively simple. You know the basics, because each piece has certain movements; you learn what those movements are, and then you start moving them on the board. And the strategy and the rest of it comes later on — with instruction, with tuition, with playing games yourself, with experience, talking to other people, sharing things. It's a lifelong learning process. Donna Jodhan: It sounds so easy. Voldi Gailans: Well, essentially that first part is easy — you just learn how each piece moves, and you move them. The difficulty is when you come to look at how deep the game is. At each point in the game, for each move, there are so many different options. It's very complex. But you learn certain things, if you learn them properly at the start — like, for instance, when you've got those pieces in front of you, what sort of moves should you make, and what are your ideas in starting the game? I didn't even know about opening systems, or the middlegame, or the endgame; they were totally unfamiliar concepts to me at the time. Of course, you soon learn, when you're learning properly, that the first thing you do is get your pieces off the back rank and get them into play. Well, there you go — straight away you've got a whole lot of moves cut out. You've got a little plan, and it's better than not having any plan. And that's the very first thing you learn. Voldi Gailans: And the game is littered with principles and ideas and little tricks that you learn. And then your imagination comes into play, and by experience, by playing, by looking at books, doing the exercises, even doing just problems — which I would think is perhaps a bit akin to doing crosswords, only all you need to know are the moves of the pieces. You get given a problem: well, mate in three moves, or five; find out how to win in your next move, or in three or four moves. You've got the puzzle there, and because you know what the pieces do, you've always got a chance of finding the answer. I've always thought, with a crossword, there might be a piece of information I don't know, or a word I don't know, and however much I try to do it, I'll never get it, because I don't have that information. But the chess problem is quite different, because you know the rules, you know how they move, and so you've always got a chance to solve it. Donna Jodhan: I think you had told me that on https://lichess.org — lichess dot org — that website offers us the opportunity to go and solve puzzles. Is that right? Voldi Gailans: Yes, I haven't done that, but yes, I believe it does, and I think that's accessible. I've just played games of chess so far; I haven't done a great deal with it, partly through time. There's so much to do, even just with the chess books I've got and the games I play, and of course family commitments and other things. But chess is very time consuming — or as time consuming as you want it to be. You could do it 24 hours a day and you're never going to learn it all. But that's part of its fascination, because there are so many different aspects to it. You make your choice, really, as to what you'll study, what you look at, and make a decision as to what kind of game — whether you're a tactical player, whether you're an attacking player, defensive. You learn that by your own experience. Donna Jodhan: Now, you have reflected that, for many years, you and your school friends played with only a rudimentary idea of what you were trying to achieve. Looking back, what was lost in not having a coach in those early days, and how has that shaped the way that you welcome beginners now — someone like me? Voldi Gailans: Well, of course, what was missing was any ideas, any instruction — how you would open a game of chess, what to do with the pieces, where you want to put them on the board, why you want to put them there, what's the purpose of each move. If you look at it like a story, in a sense — you start the game as White, you play your first move, and I think, oh, she's done this, so I'll do this, because... And it was the 'because' that I didn't know. It was a complete blank. I just knew that the pieces moved like this, so I'll move them. As time has gone by, I did just pick up things as I went along, but formal coaching, being taught in the right way, is so important, I think, to get people started and to get them fired up. Because once you get some ideas, once you know a little bit, you think, wow, this is fantastic. You might see a very quick checkmate and think, oh, how did that happen? Why was that such an easy win? You're always asking questions the whole time and finding answers. You look at a chess position and think, what's the best move I can do in this position? What am I looking for? And of course, the more knowledge and experience you gain, the more fascinating it becomes, and the better you become at recognizing. Voldi Gailans: It is, after all, just a game of patterns, you see. You see a particular situation, or a similar situation, and through having played a lot, looked at lots of games, you think, oh, I've seen something like this before — and it gets your imagination going, and it helps you. Now, I didn't have any of that; we didn't have any of that help at the time. As a child, of course, you pick these things up so quickly, and your ability to concentrate and to work hard is so much greater. I certainly noticed the difference now that I'm 76. But as a child, you're like a sponge — you soak it all up. Just looking at the juniors at our club, they are fantastic, and they are so quick. They play very fast games, and it's just such a high standard as well, and it's all because they've had proper instruction and proper learning. I really do regret not having had that; it's a shame. But as a fairly mediocre player, I can truly say that I love it just as much — well, far more than I ever did. Voldi Gailans: Because my understanding is growing, as it would to anybody who looks at the game. Anybody could play it. It's not so difficult as all that, not to get the moves — there are six different pieces on the board, each with their own particular moves, and you can learn those very quickly. And then after that, that's when the hard work starts. But, as I say, mediocre player that I am, it's still fascinating, and there's so much more to learn — so much more I won't ever learn, but I'll keep trying, because it's just a wonderful game. And the social aspect is also wonderful. Now we can play over Zoom or by phone, and you have contact with people through something you enjoy. You can get out and about and go to a chess club and meet people. We'll probably come on to those things, maybe. Sorry, I don't mean to steal your show, Donna — I'm just so excited about this game, and I would love people to give it a go, because honestly, you've got something forever. Donna Jodhan: You know, just listening to you, I could just feel the excitement in your voice, and certainly you have played a part in getting me back to playing chess. I remember I did not want to join the Summer Cup, the BCA Summer Cup, and you kept saying, oh, you've got nothing to lose, so go. And I did join. So I am playing this Friday against John, and I don't care if I win or lose. I'm here to learn. Voldi Gailans: Well, that's a lovely attitude. You see, you just can't lose by playing the game. And something else I think it teaches you is to accept defeat gracefully, and to be magnanimous and sportsmanlike. It's a hard job when you first start — you probably go to a club, or play with people who've had plenty of experience at playing, and because you've had none, chances are you're not going to win many games to start with. Donna Jodhan: No, not so well. Voldi Gailans: Well, anybody totally new, who doesn't know very much... But of course the whole point is: at the end of those games, do you say, 'I lost, I'm no good, I can't do it'? Or do you say, 'Hang on, why did I lose? There's got to be a way of getting better,' and you fight back? That's the whole essence of playing. You have to learn to accept the defeats, because you'll get plenty of them. But I always think that if you get a defeat, there's a reason for it — there always is. Because if you play a move, you've got to have a reason: why are you playing this move? And if the answer is 'I don't know,' then you find out — well, why? What should I play in this position? It's just discovering, learning for yourself, and having a never-say-die attitude, not accepting defeat. And when you're defeated, don't let it prey on your mind, because there's always another game, and you learn from the game you've lost. Have a look through it. It might be a very elementary mistake — you might just put a piece or a [rook? 00:21:27] on the wrong square, and it's taken, and that's the end of it. Well, you try to iron out those things straight away. You want to be losing because you're outplayed, because somebody outthought you — then you can look at that and go on from there. But of course, we all make silly mistakes for no reason, and we can kick ourselves and think, well, why did I do that, and worry about it. But you mustn't worry — you just pick yourself up, get on with the next one, and try to avoid making those mistakes again. Donna Jodhan: At 16, you changed schools, found a chess team, and played your very first competitive games. And then there's that wonderful idea you and a friend had, which was to play a game at a pub at every London Underground station. What did those early years teach you about chess as a way to bring people together? Voldi Gailans: I think it was all rather subconscious. I played for the school team, not terribly well — I didn't have a very high opinion of my chess. I was down the bottom. I probably did have the odd win. It didn't mean as much in those days as it came to me later on, because it's kind of grown with me. I've always played, even since I left school, and after that I played lots and lots of games. When I look back on it, I think, gosh, how did I do it? But I really enjoyed doing it. I'd turn out, week after week, to go to the chess club or to the matches. I never thought, oh, I shouldn't be playing this, I'm not good enough. But since having more coaching and being a bit more focused, it's really made me realize what I've missed out on. And that's really why I want to see our coaching efforts bear fruit, and encourage people to start learning at any time, and actually learn ideas and learn how to play the game properly. Voldi Gailans: Because whe

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  Episode #100

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #100: Interview with Frank Smith, National Coordinator of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS)

  Jul 27, 202657 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #100: Interview with Frank Smith, National Coordinator of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-07-27-2026/ In this milestone 100th episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan speaks with Frank Smith, the founding National Coordinator of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students, as he approaches retirement after a 40-year career. Frank traces NEADS from its beginnings, a Carleton journalism student who befriended disabled peers in Glengarry House residence, wrote a federal grant application, and helped convene the founding national conference at Ottawa's Westin Hotel in July 1986, organized entirely by mail and telephone before the internet. He describes what post-secondary study was like for disabled students then: sprawling inaccessible campuses, books on tape that took far longer to get through, ASL interpreters instead of captioning, little recognition of learning disabilities or autism, and mental health supports he calls simply not good. He points to Jennison Asuncion, Anthony Tibbs and many others as proof that students with disabilities, given accessible education, go on to full careers. Turning to the present, Frank argues the need for NEADS has not gone away: a post-secondary funding crisis driven partly by falling international enrolment, Ontario's flip from 80% grants to 20%, growing debt loads, and an accommodation system still anchored in a medical model. He explains what makes NEADS distinct, an organization of students and graduates with disabilities rather than for them, with a disabled board, staff and consultants, and describes its recent employer toolkit and its job coaching work under the federal Workplace Opportunities: Removing Barriers to Equity program. He confirms he turned 65 on July 19 and retires at the end of September, with Katja Newman succeeding him. The conversation closes warmly and off-the-cuff, with Donna raising her Believing Is Achieving camp initiative and a possible collaboration at Camp Massawippi, and Frank recounting how singing lessons taken during a mental health crisis led to six albums. TRANSCRIPT Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, and MBA invites you to listen to her bi-weekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology, and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary. I'm Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch and stubborn optimism. I am a law graduate and accessibility consultant and author, lifelong barrier buster, who also happens to be blind. You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just to sighted Canadians. And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen disability groups to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers. When I'm not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio, you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal: to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience and lived experience meets fresh ideas. Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I am extremely pleased and privileged to have Frank Smith, the CEO of NEADS, and I will let Frank tell you all about NEADS. But Frank, welcome to our podcast, and here we go. Frank Smith: Thank you so much, Donna. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be part of your podcast. And of course, I've been aware for a long time of your significant contributions to the disability movement. So congratulations to you. Of course. I have been with the National Educational Association of Disabled Students for 40 years now, and it's been quite a career. And we're primarily a youth-serving organization. So these days, I'm sort of the oldest person in every room, whether virtual or in person. Some people would say that I have great wisdom and experience. Other people would say, maybe it's about time you retired or something, which I will be doing shortly. But no, after a 40-year career, but I'm so excited to talk to you about everything that the organization has accomplished to date. And I know that the organization will continue to have a bright future after I move on into retirement. Donna Jodhan: You have devoted essentially your whole career to a single mission. So I'd like to begin at the beginning. What first drew you as a young journalism student at Carleton University into the world of disability advocacy? Frank Smith: Yes. I was a young once upon a time. I was a young journalism student at Carleton University, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was a student from 1981 to 1985 when I received my Bachelor of Journalism degree. I lived in residence for the first three years of my honors program, and in residence I was living at Glengarry House. And there were quite a few other students with disabilities, men and women, young men and women, who were living in Glengarry House on campus, in residence when I was there, and I became friends with a number of them. A number of folks with disabilities who were peers and fellow students. Some of them were in the journalism program with me. And over the course of my studies, I started actually writing stories about disability issues. Frank Smith: Or assignments that we had in more than one of our journalism courses. I became really fascinated with the issues affecting disabled students at all levels in terms of access to university studies at Carleton. And after I graduated, I was invited to write a grant application to what was at the time the Secretary of State and the Disabled Persons Participation Program, to establish the first — to hold the first national conference, the first conference of a proposed organization of disabled students across Canada. And that initiative was at the time very much involved students with disabilities who were part of Awareness Carleton, which is the precursor to the current Carleton Disability Awareness Centre, which was a service centre supported by the Carleton University Students' Association. At the time, was more of a club than a service centre. So the majority of the people who were involved in that first grant application to hold a national conference were disabled students. And we held our first national conference at the Westin Hotel in July of 1986. And at the national conference, we were able to bring together students with disabilities from colleges and universities from across Canada for a number of workshops and discussion sessions. And at that conference, we established a constitution for the organization and the first board of directors of the organization. And those were very exciting times for the organization, because it was the foundation of NEADS. And we called it the conference, the foundation. Donna Jodhan: You were part of a small group that founded NEADS back in 1986, and you're still its national coordinator four decades later. What did that founding moment look like, and what convinced you that this organization simply had to exist? Frank Smith: Well, I think when we had that conference — and let me tell you, at the time it was not only costly, but we had a grant to support the costs of the event, which included travel and accommodation of subsidized students to attend. But it was also difficult to organize a conference like that, and particularly one that was founding an organization rather than an organization that had already existed for a period of time and had infrastructure and everything else, lots of staff, as many NGOs did at that time. Right. So we were organizing a conference before the internet. Oh, young people today cannot even imagine what that would look like. Right. So we were literally sending out mailings to schools and using the telephone and using all sorts of primitive methods of networking and communication. And somehow we managed. I think we had about 130 people or something. The majority of them were disabled students from across the country. We managed to organize the thing and get people into Ottawa and arrange their transportation. And we had at that time sign language interpretation. We had various accommodations for the participants. And really, most of us who were involved, including myself, didn't have a lot of experience with conference planning, but we learned along the way. And over the course of the weekend, that first conference, my passion for the organization, which was just starting in its earliest days — my passion for the issues and for the organization just increased over the course of that weekend. Frank Smith: And once we had a board of directors in place, and they seemed to be interested in having me continue on in the role of coordinator, that was very exciting. We didn't have — we had a couple of part-time people who were working with me. So we didn't have a huge staff. We had an office at Carleton. So those were very sort of heady days. And we basically started an organization from scratch, and clearly there was a need for it. There were organizations. There were other student organizations, of course. At the time there was — there wasn't an organization in Canada representing disabled students. And of course, there were service providers who worked in the disability services offices. And there were, at that time, other national organizations of persons with disabilities, including the precursor to the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which was COPOH. They were called the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped. You can see why they later changed their name. Yeah. And there were other organizations too, many of them representing sort of single disability issues. And we formed ourselves — which are, of course, those organizations are important too, but we created an organization that was designed to be across disability and to support college and university students with disabilities as our constituency. Donna Jodhan: I think two very high profile names come to my mind, because I know that they have been associated with NEADS in the past, and that's how I got to know about NEADS. I was never a member of NEADS, but I referred to Jennison Asuncion and Anthony Tibbs have made wonderful contributions to the advocacy movement. And I know that they've spoken very highly of NEADS. So I think definite products of advocacy have come out of your organization. And for this, I personally, I'm very, very grateful. Frank Smith: Yeah. I think you mentioned Jennison and Anthony Tibbs. So Jennison was actually on the board of directors for our organization for a number of years, went on to be involved with Adaptech, Dawson College, and I believe he still works as a senior accessibility person with LinkedIn. He's in the United States now. And I've lost track of Anthony a little bit, although I saw him a few years ago. He spoke at more than one of our conferences. And I know that he's an expert on adaptive technologies. He also has been involved, I think, with AEBC, the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, and other organizations in the movement. There's so many people. And that's the other thing that I will say, is that you mentioned just two people there. Yeah. Between board members of the organization over time who are volunteers, and staff that we've had, and consultants working with our organization, which have all been people with disabilities with one or two exceptions, there are so many outstanding people who were outstanding student leaders at the time that they were with the organization and have gone on to incredible careers. Some of them have continued working on the issues with other organizations or in the private sector, you name it. Right. But it actually just speaks to — and I could name many people, but it just speaks to the fact that people with disabilities, when afforded the opportunity of accessible education, can be successful in all fields of study, in all disciplines, and can move on into the competitive employment market and make a contribution, continue to make a contribution throughout their entire working lives in their communities, and addressing the issues that need to be addressed. Frank Smith: On behalf of disabled persons, by persons with disabilities, which was always the most important thing. And I should say that at the time when I first became involved with the organization, I wasn't a person with a disability myself. Although around 2006, I was hit with a really weird flu like virus, which for a period of time was identified as chronic fatigue syndrome and then Lyme disease. And with different diagnoses, I continue to have symptoms, physical symptoms. And also it's affected my mental health. So I started out as a person without a disability working in a disabled persons organization. And then, like a lot of people in society, I acquired a disability over time. And that actually made me, I think, much better at my job. Right. Having greater empathy and greater understanding with lived experience. And that's always the most important thing in our community, with our organizations, to have lived experience. You talked about that at the beginning, in your introduction. Donna Jodhan: Yeah. Now, when this began in 1986, campus life for students with disabilities was a very different world. No internet, no smartphones. Textbooks [arriving? 00:17:04] on tape or in Braille. Weeks behind everyone else. Can you take our listeners back to what post-secondary study was actually like for disabled students then? Frank Smith: Well, you've actually cited, Donna, a number of the factors and the circumstances that were in place during that time, way back when the organization started, in fact through the 80s and into the 90s. And the early part of the 2000. Well, we ended up having the internet and we ended up having online access. Used to be called the information superhighway. Remember when. Donna Jodhan: Oh, yes. Frank Smith: When the internet was first available to us. So what that meant for accessibility for students with disabilities, what really depended on was dependent upon the student's disability. Right. So their physical access issues, if somebody was a wheelchair user student, they had to navigate a campus that oftentimes was spread out all over the place. Many, many blocks, particularly bigger schools like the University of Toronto or Queen's or McGill University. Some of the Atlantic Canadian universities were fairly spread out, and they all had different kind of topography to them too, right? Some were hilly, some were flat, some had built like old heritage buildings with or without elevators. So there were the physical access issues which continue to this day, although with modern building codes and legislation governing the accessibility of new construction and even renovating older buildings, we have more physically accessible spaces, I would say. But physical challenges still existed then, to a greater extent still exists today, I think. For students, for example, who were with vision loss of any kind, it was particularly challenging, as you mentioned. I mean, some students who had some sight were able to use either regular books or books in large print. Certainly, as you mentioned, books on tape. That was very primitive kind of technology and it took a lot more time for the student, and you would be well aware of this. It took a lot more time for personal experience. It took a lot more time to reread a book and consume information than it does using electronic formats and speech recognition software and things like that with electronic documents. Frank Smith: So there was actually a student who was a peer of [mine in journalism? 00:20:15], Peter Field, who actually went on to quite a career in the federal public service. And he was a blind journalism student. He was in the same program as I was in. And I know it was particularly challenging for him, but he did very, very well. But he would have found it less challenging today. But he managed to work with what, the technology that was available to him. Right. And like a lot of students. Right. And they learned and they adapted. We had, for students with hearing loss, there wasn't captioning per se, but there was. And of course some students needed, preferred to have, would have — I guess there's some sort of primitive captioning at the time. There were ASL interpreters that were hired, I think through the Canadian Hearing Society at the time. And those kinds of services were available. But even just doing research in the library, for example, was challenging for students with different types of disabilities. There wasn't as much recognition of learning disabilities back then. There were assessments, but a lot of students were not assessed properly. There was no understanding of autism spectrum conditions like there is today. Frank Smith: And we now realize that there are a greater percentage of — a very high percentage of students are neurodivergent on our campuses, right? So there are very few services for those students. Back then, the mental health supports were not good. Many students were actually afraid to self-identify as having a disability and even register with their disability services offices. And I think that of course that required, and still requires to this day, medical documentation, which is one thing that has not changed over time. It's still very much a medical model when it comes to delivery of accommodations and supports for students with disabilities, whether it's with exams and assignments or with in the classroom accommodations. It's very much still medical model. So that sort of thing hasn't changed. I will say that, fast forward to 2026, more students have access to technologies that totally level the playing field, whether in school or work. The technologies are, in relative terms, the adaptive technologies are much more affordable and available, but there's still an issue with costs for many things. And many students struggle, of course, with even housing and food insecurity, for example. Right. So even things that are equipment that we might consider reasonably priced in relative terms is still out of reach for some students who don't receive sufficient financial aid to cover the costs. Donna Jodhan: Things have really improved since the beginnings of NEADS, right? I mean, I can vouch for that in many ways, in that I've seen so many stages of technical or technology progress. So, but there is still a lot more work to be done, right? Frank Smith: There is a lot more work to be done. And that's why there continues to be a need for organizations like ours in the post-secondary space. And

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  Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #97: Interview with Dr. Danielle Manis, Chief, Department of Family and Community Medicine, North York General Hospital

  Jul 7, 202642 min

  🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #97: Interview with Dr. Danielle Manis, Chief, Department of Family and Community Medicine, North York General Hospital | By Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-07-07-2026/ In this warm and candid episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan sits down with her own family physician, Dr. Danielle Manis , a North York family doctor of more than two decades who now serves as Chief and Program Medical Director of Family and Community Medicine at North York General Hospital . Dr. Manis traces her path into medicine, a love of learning, problem-solving, and people, and the example of an influential mentor, Dr. Val Rachlis, and explains why she has never left the community where she trained, practices, teaches, and now leads. She unpacks what comprehensive, continuity-based family medicine really means, and how knowing patients and their families over many years lets her deliver more personal care. The conversation then widens to how care itself is organized: health-system integration, Ontario Health Teams and the North York Toronto Health Partners, the drive to attach every patient to a family doctor (including a new Get Well Family Health Team and a central intake pathway), and the team-based model that lets nurses, social workers, and dietitians each practice at the top of their scope. Running throughout is a frank, mutual thread on accessibility, Dr. Manis openly acknowledges that her office's secure messaging portal and intake tools may not yet work for blind patients like Donna, and commits to doing better, before the episode closes on an optimistic note about the future of primary care and the next generation of family doctors. TRANSCRIPT Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, and MBA invites you to listen to her bi-weekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology, and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary. I'm Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate, and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch, and stubborn optimism. I'm a law graduate, an accessibility consultant and author, a lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. You may know me from a few headline moments. In November 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just to sighted ones. And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen disability groups, to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award, for tireless commitment to removing barriers. When I'm not in a courtroom, or in a committee room, or in a pottery studio, you will find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies make their gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal: to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience, and lived experience sparks fresh ideas. Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a quick spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I am absolutely pleased and honored to have my family physician, Dr. Danielle Manis, as our guest today. Welcome, Dr. Danny. Dr. Danielle Manis: Thank you so much, Donna. What a wonderful introduction that was. Donna Jodhan: Well, let's get going. So, Dr. Danny, welcome to the Remarkable World Commentary. I'd like to begin at the beginning. So tell us: what first drew you to medicine, and how did you find your way to family medicine in particular? Dr. Danielle Manis: This is such a great question, and I've come so far from ever thinking about this, so thank you for making me think about it again. It's been so many years since I chose this path. Part of it was that, as a child, I loved learning. I'm very curious, and I love problem solving, so I was very much drawn to the sciences and the intellectual challenges of solving problems, making a diagnosis, or whatever it may be. But I also really like people. I always default to a positive feeling when I meet new people, and I'm very interested in other people's lives and experiences, and in playing a meaningful role. So that was how medicine was a draw for me. And when I was lucky enough to get into medical school, which was a little bit easier in those days than it is now, I made my way through all of the courses and all of the different experiences and rotations, and I was interested in everything. That was the common thread: I found everything interesting. But if it was too specialized, I found myself getting bored. So, you know, three weeks in cardiac surgery, literally holding on to someone's heart while it's being operated on, sounds really, really cool. But after the second day I thought, okay, this is the same thing over and over again. I like variety. I like not knowing what I'm going to deal with. And then I was really lucky to have some inspirational mentors along the way, and excellent role models, through doing electives and rotations. I already kind of thought I wanted to be a family doctor, because of the meaningful, long-term relationships that family doctors have with their patients. But then I did an elective with Dr. Val Rachlis, who was a leader in our department and a former chief of this department, and a big leader in health care in Canada. And I watched his interactions with his patients, and that was it. I said, yes, this is what I want to be. I want to be that trusted advisor, that expert clinician who really cares about their patients. And that was it. That was it for me. Donna Jodhan: I can tell you that you are a fine example of one of the best doctors that I have ever interacted with. And I'm not telling you this to give you a big head. I mean it. Dr. Danielle Manis: Oh, that's so kind of you, Donna. Donna Jodhan: I really mean it. For some reason, I thought you were from Montreal. Dr. Danielle Manis: No, no, no, not from Montreal. I'm actually quite local. I grew up in North York, so I really haven't strayed too far. I did some undergrad training in London, Ontario, but I did most of my training in Toronto. Donna Jodhan: Okay. So you've built your whole career, your training, your practice, and your teaching, and now your leadership, within the North York General and University of Toronto community. What has it meant to you to put down roots and grow in one community for more than 20 years? Dr. Danielle Manis: This is hard to even put into words, but I'm going to try, because we are a podcast. There's something really special about the community that I work in. I can't really explain the warmth and the collaboration and the open-mindedness and the acceptance. It just creates this culture of wanting to give back and wanting to stay. As a student, I was a medical student at North York General, I was a medical resident at North York General, I joined a practice in North York, and I've never left. And when I look around, so many of my colleagues are the same, some of them quite a bit senior to me. If I've been here for 25-plus years, some of them have been here 40-plus years. What I see with our young graduates from our residency program is that they want to stick around and stay here and give back, because they've had such a wonderful experience in their training that they want to turn around and work with the same group of people, and train the next group coming up. And what it really means, especially in the community-based model that we have, is that it would be very easy to get very isolated and siloed in your office. If you're a doctor in an office and you work with three or four people, and you've never once met any of the specialists at the hospital, or you don't know anybody who picks up the phone at any of these other clinics, it's really easy to be isolated. When you're really embedded, especially in education, or you get involved with Ontario Health Teams or any kind of volunteer opportunities, it just enriches your practice so much. You don't feel so alone. You feel part of a medical community, and it's a really wonderful one. So I feel like I've gotten to know the community for years and years, through all of our trainees, all of our services, all of our committee work, and my involvement. And I just would not want to be anywhere else. Donna Jodhan: You know, that's so refreshing to hear. Some people would say, I can't wait to get out of this environment and move somewhere else. But giving back is very important to me, and I really appreciate you saying this as well. Dr. Danielle Manis: Well, I feel like it's our job, especially as a leader in this department. Retaining our wonderful health care workers is a huge part of our strategy. We have to perpetuate this welcoming community. Practicing medicine and working in health care is very hard; it's very challenging these days. So it's not that we don't have those challenges, it's that we have a very supportive, positive environment in which to do that kind of work. And it's part of the mandate, because we need those people to stick around. I need someone to take care of me one day, too. Donna Jodhan: And your office certainly exudes warmth and welcoming vibes whenever we walk in there. Dr. Danielle Manis: Nice to hear. I always feel like it's a very happy family in my office as well, and we've been working together now for about 25 years. Donna Jodhan: Wow. So you're what's known as a comprehensive family physician. Some people call it cradle-to-grave care. For listeners who may not know the term, what does full-scope family medicine look like day to day? And why have you stayed so committed to practicing that way? Dr. Danielle Manis: So I'll say I'm what's known as an office-based comprehensive family physician. The real comprehensive family physicians are the ones who not only run their clinic in their office, but also come into the hospital and deliver babies, and they might also be working in the operating room as an assistant. And some of them work in the emergency department. There's a whole bunch of other settings in which family doctors can work, especially if you get into the more rural and smaller communities; that is the model that most of those family doctors do, and it is remarkable. In the city environment, a lot of my colleagues are doing all kinds of interesting work outside of their office. I am office-based. So what does it mean to me? Certainly, I'd like to put the family in family medicine as much as possible. We like to have whole families in our practice. We like multiple generations. We like to have all the siblings, all the kids, and the grandmas and grandpas, because it's convenient for patients. It's much easier. When you have a couple in their 80s and they're both coming to see the same physician, or the parents are bringing their newborn in but they're also patients, they don't have to go to different places to get their care. As a physician, I really strongly believe we do better medicine when we understand the patient and their context. So knowing who else is in their family, who they live with, whether they're dealing with a husband at home with dementia and their caregiver stress, or whatever context we know about the patient, allows us to understand their symptoms and their presentation, and how we can best help them. So that's really what it means. It's along the full life span, from birth to death. And there really is no problem that can ever get presented to us where we can say, well, that's not my department. We will always do our best to address it, figure it out, deal with it, and access the services that people might need. We're just kind of there for the long haul. Donna Jodhan: I was certainly so relieved when you took such good care of my mom when she needed your help a few years ago. Dr. Danielle Manis: [unclear] Donna Jodhan: Yeah, she's always asking about you. So, you've cared for many of the same patients and families since 2003. What do those long relationships teach you that a single visit never could? And how does that continuity shape the care you give? Dr. Danielle Manis: It's really about knowing the patients. I feel so spoiled, because in some ways my practice has gotten a bit more challenging over time, just because we've been together a long time, we are all getting older, so we have more health problems, a little more complexity, more things to deal with. So I'm getting a lot busier with the same number of patients I always had. But on the flip side, it's also easier, because I know my patients. So if someone who rarely ever comes in for any reason, really high-functioning and stoic, comes in with terrible abdominal pain, I approach that a little differently than someone I see once a month with abdominal pain that has had 100 investigations. You just have a sense of, okay, this might be appendicitis, because I've never seen this person come in like this. It's that kind of context. It's understanding what's going on at home, what's going on at work, what is causing them stress, what excites them, what their health literacy is, what their understanding of their symptoms is, whether they prefer to go on medications or prefer to avoid medications. I know this about my patients. So you're kind of starting ahead, as opposed to having to catch up from the very beginning. And as you might know, I've had a locum physician filling in for me a little bit in the last year or so while I've been really busy, and he's wonderful, but there's a lot of catch-up you have to do when you don't know people. I already know; I don't have to go back and spend 20 minutes reading the chart before I go in the room. I already know what I'm walking into. Donna Jodhan: And, you know, I often hear your voice saying to me, have you booked your mammogram, Donna? Yes, I have. Good, thank you. October the 13th is the big day, so I thought I'd share that with you. Dr. Danielle Manis: Oh my gosh, that's a big win. That's the thing: sometimes we have to have conversations with people many times to try to get buy-in to make a change, like quitting smoking, or eating a bit better, or going for that test. You have to understand their values and their reasons. You're not going to meet a stranger and have them tell you once, and then you're just going to do it. Sometimes you have to build that trust over time, and we have to be patient. And sometimes people book their mammograms. That's great. Donna Jodhan: I guess it took you a very long time to convince me to go and get it. And I will tell you, I was afraid to go, because those things are painful. Dr. Danielle Manis: Yeah, they are. And I will say, I know you have your questions, but I was very honored you asked me for this podcast. I don't feel qualified, because it's been very eye-opening to learn about your advocacy work, and to really stop and think about how much better we should be doing in my office and in health care for people with blindness. I think, oh my gosh, I'm almost ashamed to have learned that our secure messaging portal is not accessible to you, and that there are so many things we could be doing better. So for me, this is, I'm going to eat some humble pie and say, I want to learn how we can do better to make it accessible. And maybe going for a mammogram is not just about the pain. Maybe getting into the hospital, or wherever you're going for it, is very challenging, and I think we have to be very sensitive to that, too. Donna Jodhan: And I will definitely let you know when I go, how it turns out. I would say that your office, they're very, very aware of accessibility issues, and they're very attentive to my needs and requirements when I get in there. They don't hesitate: let me help you take your weight, let me help you with the blood pressure machine, and all that. So I think you and your office are doing a marvelous, marvelous job. And it's one step at a time. And we work by example and keep going. Dr. Danielle Manis: Yeah. Well, we're very lucky, because we've managed to retain some of our administrative staff for a very long time, and so they know our patients really, really well also. Ramona just celebrated 20 years with us, if you can believe it. So our medical office admins are very much part of the health care team, and that interaction with patients is so important. They need to know patients as well. Donna Jodhan: Yeah. Now, you started out as a brand-new family doctor, and you have since been named Chief and Program Medical Director of Family and Community Medicine at North York General. Looking back, what were the moments or experiences that carried you from the front line to leading an entire department? Dr. Danielle Manis: I'm actually not even sure how this happened to me. I still don't really know. It was definitely not an ambition of mine to say, oh, I'm going to be a leader and rise through the ranks. It's a lot of mentorship, a lot of other people seeing leadership potential in me, and then voicing that and giving me the confidence to try to put myself forward for this role. Because it was definitely not something that I ever thought I could do, or even that I wanted to do, because it seemed like quite a lot. And it's one of the things that, now that I'm in this role, is my mandate and my job: to mentor that in others and to raise other people up into leadership positions. And I will say, as a whole, family doctors are quite humble. They're very heroic; their job is really difficult. But they just kind of get their nose to the grindstone and take care of their patients and do what needs to be done. And most of them don't see themselves as leaders, or think they necessarily have the skills to do certain leadership roles. So it does take a lot of what we call shoulder-tapping, to say, hey, are you thinking about doing this? I had a few very memorable people in my department, who I consider to be mentors, reach out to me and say, this role is coming up, and I think you're the one who should be doing it. And I had to hear it a number of times before I started to think it might actually be true. And then once I got here, it required, and still requires, a lot of coaching and mentorship from the chief who came before me, Dr. David Eisen, who was a huge mentor of mine, and one of the people who had to twist my arm until I finally accepted that maybe I could do this. And the open-door policy around being able to ask questions of anyone, that's really how you get here. That's how leadership happens: through support. And I guess it goes back to how wonderful the culture of our department really is. Donna Jodhan: And such was your humbleness that I did not learn this from you personally. It was Ramona who let the cat out of the bag. Months later, she said, did you know she's now the big cheese? I said, big cheese of what? And then she told me. I'm so pleased. I think no one else deserves it better than you. Dr. Danielle Manis: You know what, it's so nice that you say that, Donna. I sent out an email blast to my patients, and I know you were unable to read it, which is u

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  Episode #96

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #96: Interview with Gail Sinclair, Retired Lawyer, Department of Justice, Government of Canada

  Jun 25, 202654 minS2026

  🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #96: Interview with Gail Sinclair, Retired Lawyer, Department of Justice, Government of Canada https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-06-25-2026/ In this illuminating episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna Jodhan sits down with Gail Sinclair, a lawyer who recently retired after more than three decades with the Department of Justice, and who years earlier was lead counsel for the Government of Canada on the opposite side of Donna's landmark accessibility case. Gail traces her path into law (a large, rule-bound family; a degree in both civil and common law, in both French and English) and her career representing the public interest on constitutional questions, from the same-sex marriage reference to electoral and democratic rights. The heart of the conversation is Jodhan v. Canada, the case that forced the federal government to make its websites accessible, told from her vantage as opposing counsel: Justice Kelen's Federal Court ruling, the 15-month suspended declaration, the appeal written by Justice Nadon, and the harder constitutional question the case ultimately turned on (whether a trial judge may keep supervisory jurisdiction over a Charter remedy once it is under appeal, a point on which Canada prevailed, echoing Doucet-Boudreau). They also revisit Donna's later ArriveCAN human-rights complaint, the role of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, memorable courtroom moments and expert witnesses (Cynthia Waddell and Jutta Treviranus), and the line Gail draws from Donna's case to the Accessible Canada Act. She closes with advice for anyone weighing whether to stand up for their rights: be brave, get educated, and prevail. TRANSCRIPT Podcast Commentator: Greetings. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, and MBA, invites you to listen to her biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible. Donna Jodhan: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Remarkable World Commentary. I am Donna J. Jodhan, a lifelong disability advocate, and one who sees the world mainly through sound, touch, and stubborn optimism. I am a law graduate, an accessibility consultant, an author, and a lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. You may know me from a few headline moments. In November 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites accessible to every Canadian, not just [sighted?] ones. In July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act, with more than two dozen disability groups, to turn equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers. When I'm not in a courtroom, a committee room, or a pottery studio, you will find me coaching kids with vision loss, producing audio mysteries, or helping to teach companies to make their gadgets talk back in plain language. Everything I do circles one goal: to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice. I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench, where policy meets lived experience, and lived experiences sparks fresh ideas. Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest — a change maker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I am pleased, and I am privileged, and I am honored to welcome Gail Sinclair to our podcast. Welcome, Gail. Gail Sinclair: Thank you, Donna. Donna Jodhan: So we are going to discuss your remarkable journey. And we're going to start. Gail, welcome to our World Commentary. Before we get to the case that first brought us together, I want our listeners to know you. You retired this past December after more than three decades with the Department of Justice. What first drew you to the law? Gail Sinclair: Good question, Donna. I grew up in a large, boisterous family where there were a lot of rules. My dad was a hero, but he'd drop bombs on Germany in World War Two, so there tended to be very firmly enforced rules. And as a middle child, as a girl, I wasn't always convinced that the rules were applied fairly or evenly. And so I wanted to go to law school to learn about rules and how they should be applied. Donna Jodhan: My goodness, I can understand that, because I too wanted to be a lawyer when I was growing up. But Dad thought that the courtroom was only for [men?], and so I did not belong there. But this being said, let's go to our next question. You earned a law degree in both civil law and common law, and you worked in both English and French. You even began in French language and literature. How did this bilingual, two-legal-traditions foundation shape the lawyer that you became? Gail Sinclair: I think learning the traditions of Canada's two legal systems and our two official languages taught me that there are more than one way to solve a problem, and they're all viable and worth exploring. And we have a fascinating country made up of different traditions, and it behooves us to know them and to apply them. Donna Jodhan: Well, that is quite a feat in both languages. Oh my goodness, I didn't know this about you until now. Gail Sinclair: Well, I remember doing my civil law degree at Université de Montréal, which came after my common law degree. They said to me, 'Well, you can write your exams in English.' And I thought, how silly is that? You study exclusively in the French language. In French, [it] is not a mortgage in English; it's a different legal system. So to say to us that, for exams, you could write in English — I thought that was a misapprehension. The journey that you take, you are completely immersed in one world from another, and then you get to have this continual conversation with yourself, and with some professors who are interested in comparative law: 'Oh, that's so interesting that civil law does it this way, and common law does it this way.' Donna Jodhan: Oh my goodness. Now, you spent a career representing the public interest on some of the hardest constitutional questions that this country has faced. What did that work mean to you? Gail Sinclair: It was a tremendous honor. It was fascinating. It schooled me in what I refer to as the quintessential Canadian compromise. Canada is an extraordinary country, and still an extraordinary possibility. But we have so many people within, and we have our two legal traditions, our official languages, and then we have our Indigenous languages. We have people from all around the world. And to blend that in terms of the public interest was a tremendous honor. I think in a different life, I might have wanted to run as a member of Parliament. A lot of my work was about section three, the right to vote, and to be involved in these fundamental democracy issues in the first 30 years of the Charter was just fascinating — probing work about representation and democracy. And as we all know, democracy is more at risk in the Western world than it has been in many a year. And so it was just a fascinating journey, and an honor to represent the Attorney General of Canada — which is to represent, for the courts, that balance between individual rights and what section one demands of us, which is effectively bringing to bear the interest other than the individual who is challenging the law or a policy. Donna Jodhan: I think it's so very interesting for me personally to hear you talk about this, because you don't really have the opportunity to ask too many lawyers these questions. So I do want to thank you for this, and I think it's great. Gail Sinclair: I'll just add one of the cases that I was involved in, from literally the Friday afternoon when it came in the door — I was acting as a manager at the time — was the litigation challenging the opposite-sex nature of marriage. And so I was involved in that case probably, I'm guessing, seven years, until the Ontario Court of Appeal — the second appellate court, third appellate court — rendered a decision saying opposite-sex marriage is unconstitutional. It's judge-made law, and so we change it now. And a same-sex marriage was conducted on the lawn of Osgoode Hall that afternoon. The government went through a fascinating process of deciding how to respond to this. The B.C. Court of Appeal had rendered its judgment but suspended the declaration, and I think Quebec had done so, or shortly thereafter. The Ontario Court of Appeal spoke, and the government decided that they wanted to accept these judgments of three of Canada's appellate courts. They were concerned about whether they could enact legislation to change the definition of marriage and get it through the Parliament of Canada. And so they took a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. And that journey was an absolutely fascinating journey. I, with my colleague Michael Moore, have written an article about the history of the reference — a good publication paying tribute to Peter Hogg, because he was our ultimate lead counsel. And it was just a fascinating journey. I saw some of my colleagues who I worked with, who were visible minorities, who had immigrated to Canada and were in same-sex relationships. And it was only when Canada opened up marriage to same-sex couples that their parents accepted them in their love relationships. And that was very moving to me to see, from the perspective of those parents looking to belong in Canada: when Canada said these couples belong, the parents accepted their children's orientation. Donna Jodhan: Wow. Okay, very interesting. Now I'd like to turn to how we met — on opposite sides of the courtroom. Here is what makes this day so very special for me. We first met because you were lead counsel for the Government of Canada, and I was the woman suing it over websites that I could not use. For listeners who do not know the story, how would you describe that case from where you were sitting? And you can do so at any comfort level that you wish to. Gail Sinclair: Yes, I'm happy to describe it. The case is Donna Jodhan versus the Attorney General of Canada, and it proceeded in Federal Court. Donna had challenged, effectively, two websites and the standards — the Common Look and Feel standards — that Canada had at the time for departments and government institutions to respect, to ensure web accessibility for the visually impaired. Donna applied for a job — and I believe it was with Statistics Canada, through the Public Service Commission — and she found barriers on their websites. And so she started a Charter challenge on the premise that these websites were not accessible to her as a visually impaired person, pursuant to section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the document that promises equality, equality on what we refer to as a number of enumerated grounds specifically stated, and then analogous grounds that have unfolded since the words were in the document in 1982. And so the ground was disability. And so our job in responding to this challenge was to find out where the Government of Canada was in terms of web accessibility, and to have a hard look at these two websites, and then in turn Treasury Board's standards at the time, which were the Common Look and Feel standards — standards which were informed by the web accessibility guidelines, I think 1.0 at the time, which had been promulgated worldwide. And what a journey it was. What a learning curve. It was a case in which Donna prevailed. The Federal Court, years down the road, not only issued a declaration of unconstitutionality with regard to these websites at the time, but the court issued a declaration that websites well beyond those that were at issue were also inaccessible to a visually impaired person. And all of a sudden, the case — by virtue of that judgment at first instance — became that much bigger, because we had represented and had worked closely with Statistics Canada, the Public Service Commission of Canada, and Treasury Board of Canada. And all of a sudden we were now representing at least 100 different government departments and institutions. And there was quite a hoopla, because — you smile — we cannot represent some of those entities, because they have independence from the government. And so one of the first things we had to do when the judgment was rendered was to ask the court to correct that, and only have us, in effect, represent those that we were entitled to represent. And so we had to get that corrected. But the case, by virtue of that judgment, had an implication far beyond the few websites and the few departments or government institutions at issue. Donna Jodhan: You know, I will admit that when I first met David Baker, who was my lawyer facing off against you, I had no clue what the heck I was getting into. And even sitting here now, I say to myself, what did I do, and why? I still can't catch myself at times. But it's over now. And at least we got to meet each other. Gail Sinclair: And I am sure — I know — that your case, your bravery, your persistence made a huge difference. And I hasten to add, I think on at least two occasions, opposing counsel who have a law degree and are engaged in law but are not necessarily litigators represented individuals, and I was opposing counsel, and they said to me at the end of first instance, 'We didn't know what we were getting into, and what a journey — but you were very helpful in that journey.' And that's part of the role of counsel for the Attorney General of Canada. Of course, you're in opposition, you're defending the public interest, but at all times you're representing Canada. And for these individuals who are taking on these challenges, you want them to feel they have the right to do this, and to facilitate, when appropriate, how to do so. So it's not just the individuals taking on the Charter who can feel intimidated by the system. But let me hasten to assure you, I have had opposing counsel tell me the same thing. Donna Jodhan: Now, we actually faced off more than once. There is also my human rights complaint involving the Canada Border Services Agency. What's it like to be on the opposing side of someone who becomes a friend? Gail Sinclair: Well, I'm honored that you refer to me that way, Donna. When that Canadian human rights complaint came in, my managers made the link with Donna Jodhan and asked me if I would take it on, and I readily said yes. And I said yes for a number of reasons. One: the complaint, as you'll recall, was against Canadian Border Services Agency and Public Health Agency of Canada, because they co-developed — well, what was the name of the— Donna Jodhan: The ArriveCAN app. Gail Sinclair: Right, the ArriveCAN app. Yeah. And they would have developed it toward the end of it being accessible — not only to the visually impaired, but to other communities that face challenges — and they had failed in one aspect. It was accessible in other ways. And so when I saw that, I thought, I know Donna; it's unfortunate that this happened. I know so much about web accessibility — I know less about the accessibility statute that had been enacted by the Parliament of Canada since then — and I thought it was an opportunity. There would be efficiency, because of everything that I had learned about web accessibility. And the purpose of the Canadian Human Rights Act, different than some statutes that govern litigation, is really to resolve matters without the need for litigation. So I thought it was a good fit. And, as you know, we prepared for a mediation, everybody brought their best selves to bear, and we were able to solve it that day — and, of course, with our follow-up. And I was delighted, and I found it very salutary. And I hope that was your experience as well. Donna Jodhan: Yes. And was there ever anything personally hard about defending the government in a case like mine? Or was it simply the job? Share only what you're comfortable with. Gail Sinclair: It's never just the job. Many of us at the Department of Justice feel it's a higher calling, because we are representing the public interest. It's a pleasure being opposite someone that you respect, and you have seen their courage in taking on a challenge. It's not difficult, because it enabled me to work with Canadian Border Services Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada to identify what was inaccessible, what was accessible, to cajole, encourage, move things forward, and to come up with more modalities for settlement that enabled them to do what, in an ideal world, they would have done — such that there might not have been any reason for a Canadian human rights complaint. Donna Jodhan: Now, looking back, what did you learn in responding to my Charter challenge? Gail Sinclair: I learned some fascinating things, I would suggest. First and foremost, how incredibly empowering the internet is for the visually impaired — as long as there are no barriers. And in order to obviate creating barriers, you have to think about accessibility from the get-go. Retrofit is harder and more expensive. And so there was a huge journey from the beginning, but especially after Justice Kelen of the Federal Court issued his judgment, with the declaration that went well beyond the three departments or government institutions that had been named in the originating process. There was a huge endeavor to make Canada's websites accessible, to overcome the barriers, and to provide supports to departments of tremendously different sizes. Imagine the difference between Global Affairs Canada and a small entity like the Lobbying Commissioner. So tremendous resources were put in place. There was cajoling, and carrots and sticks, but we were trying to ensure that huge improvements were made by the time 15 months from the release of the judgment had lapsed — because Justice Kelen did something quite unusual with his declaration: he issued it and suspended it for 15 months. And during that 15 months, Canada had to make huge improvements to web accessibility, or then his judgment was that he would start to exercise power to hold the government to account. And this raised huge issues well beyond web accessibility and its importance for the visually impaired. This raises huge issues about the three branches of government — the executive, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. When a judge renders a decision at first instance, he's what we call functus officio, which just means he's done his job. It's over. The Government of Canada, the Attorney General of Canada, had appealed Donna Jodhan's decision. And the greater importance of the decision was whether it was appropriate for a judge at first instance to maintain a supervisory jurisdiction over the implementation of the remedy, especially when it had been appealed to the higher level. And at that point, by the time the 15 months had lapsed, the matter had been heard by the Federal Court of Appeal. So it was in the hands of Justice Kelen's court. And could he exercise the jurisdiction he was purporting to have, when the matter was now in the hands of his higher brethren? And so this was the complexity of the issue at the higher level. Of course, web accessibility was there — whether there was a section 15 Charter breach for these three websites, or websites that were not at issue — and, as I said, the bigger issue became the maintaining of

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