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 300 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Donna J. Jodhan hosts Podcasts By Donna Jodhan, a news show with 300 episodes published.

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  Episode #113

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #113: Interview with Shaun Kelly, Pottery Instructor, SoKo Pottery Studio

  Sep 21, 202649 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #113: Interview with Shaun Kelly, Pottery Instructor, SoKo Pottery Studio https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-09-21-2026/ In this heartfelt episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA welcomes her pottery instructor, Shaun Kelly, of SoKo Pottery Studio , who shares how clay first came into his life through his mother, and how a career as a programmer and IT project manager that kept him always on call, and at 350 pounds, gave way on his doctor's advice to a healthier life in pottery. He credits his first teacher, Pauline Harman, for the projects-and-templates approach he still uses with beginners, and his mentor, Sandi Dunkelman, for teaching him everything from throwing to loading kilns, making glazes and running a sale. Shaun talks listeners through centering clay on the wheel and his "wiggle, wiggle, wiggle" method for rolling an even slab, describes how simple pinch pots helped a man named Ricardo rebuild his motor skills after a stroke, and remembers Studio on the Hill as a safe space where everyone who walked in the door was a potter. He explains how SoKo, named for his initials, became his own studio when he took it on on May 1st, and shares plans for a Christmas show and sale on November 6th, 7th and 8th, a possible spring sale and an Empty Bowls fundraiser, while Donna looks ahead to her Canadiana line. 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 The 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, author, lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 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 the removal of barriers. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: 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, and that is 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. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a quick spotlight on today's guest, a changemaker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I am absolutely pleased and excited to welcome my pottery instructor, Shaun Kelly. Welcome, Shaun, to the Remarkable World Commentary podcast. Shaun Kelly: Thank you very much, Donna, for having me today. It's been a long time coming, and I'm excited to be part of the program. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You changed my life when we met. You have forced me to stretch my imagination and to use my imagination, based on the functional vision I had before I lost it, to develop pieces, to create, and there's no limit to what we've been able to do over the last few years. Shaun Kelly: Exactly. And that's the beauty of pottery, is it's a metaphor for life. We're always evolving, adapting, growing. The only time you lose is when you say, "I can't do it." You gotta push through, right? And we gotta find a way to do it. Shaun Kelly: And that's the beauty, is both you and myself, I've learned how to express, to communicate, to look and... I shouldn't say to look at things differently, to hear things differently, to feel things differently. To express things differently. Just because there's one way, a common way, doesn't mean there's several other ways that might even be better. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Absolutely. So Shaun, I would like to start right at the beginning, long before any of this was your work. Tell me how clay first turned up in your life, and what happened in that very first class that made you want to come back the following week? Shaun Kelly: Yeah, so I was very fortunate that my mom, she always had a love for pottery. And she said, "Come, come, come." And it was like, "Yes, I'm coming. I'm gonna be there." And then during that first class, you could build, right? You could build, you could create. You had the freedom to do what you wanted to do. And you literally had the tools in front of you to accomplish whatever that vision was. And doing this in a shared space, a group space, it had a lovely community feel. You got to meet people. You got to talk with people. And you learned from everybody. And from that first time, it was just like a lovely, humble family safe space that you could create anything you wanted in. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, was she a potter? Was your mom a potter? Shaun Kelly: Yeah, she was. She loved the pottery. She collected it first. And then she started to be a potter, and then both my brother and myself got involved. But I got hooked hard. I took it even further than just the therapeutic side, the hobby side. I went on to do it more professionally. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, okay. Now, you made a big turn in your life from working with technology to working with clay, and I know something about turns like that, because I have made a few of my very own. Walk me through how that turn actually happened for you. Not the tidy version, but the real one. Shaun Kelly: Exactly. So it was a big decision, right? When you pivot, when you change your career, your field of study, it's a big, big life-changing moment. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It is. It is. Shaun Kelly: And for me, it was slowly building. In my corporate life, in the life as a programmer, there was no leaving the building for lunch. No going to the gym. I was always on call, even on weekends. You had to be within an hour on call all the time. So I couldn't go afar. I couldn't go on vacations, and it really took a heavy toll on my life in terms of my health. Right? So I had money, right? I had a lovely career, but I had no time to spend it or to actually enjoy it. And it got to the point where I was 350 pounds. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, my lord. Shaun Kelly: It was just like, "What happened?" So it was like, my doctor said, "You have to make a life choice. You have to decide," right? "What are you gonna do?" And I chose a life, a healthy life. And that's what pottery gave me. Mentally, physically, it gave me that healthy lifestyle, that balance, right? That I think a lot of people need. Right? And all of us, like myself in my early days, I was just running, running, running, trying to get to the finish line, trying to make the buck. And I don't think that's what life was for me. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, I can empathize with that. My goodness. I still remember how clumsy my own hands felt the first time [laughs] that I tried to center a lump of clay, and I doubt that you were born knowing how to do, either. Take me back to when the wheel was still new to you. What did you do over and over and again to get from clumsy to steady? Shaun Kelly: Exactly. And you're completely right. I was not a natural on the wheel by any means. I was very clumsy on the wheel. Trying to figure it out. And part of it is trying to center yourself so you can center the clay. So sometimes if you have a bad day, if you're distracted, if you can't focus, that can really throw off the work you're trying to do on the wheel. Shaun Kelly: So for me, I took a whole summer and I said to myself, "I'm gonna throw a bowl. I'm gonna make a bowl." And if I didn't, I'd scrap it and try again. And I just kept telling myself, "You know what? I can make a bowl. I can make a mug. I can make a cylinder." And I didn't give up. I just kept pursuing that. And I got closer and closer and closer until finally I achieved it, where by the end of that summer I could sit down, and say I wanted to make a bowl and I would make that bowl. And like you say, it's the repetition, the practice. A lot of it is muscle memory. So even for me now, I'll close my eyes and use my hands to feel the clay to reassure myself that, yes, I can do it. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I guess you know how much I detest the wheel, don't you? Shaun Kelly: [laughs] I hear you. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But I— Shaun Kelly: But sometimes we can't let it get the better of us. And it's a tough journey, I have to admit. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, I think that one of these days I will say, "Okay, wheel, I'm coming," you know? But right now... yeah. No, but I think you're right, absolutely right. Wow. Shaun Kelly: And when you get it, the success, that achievement, like, "Yes, I've done it," it's really worth it. Yep. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'll keep that in mind for my New Year resolution. How's that? Shaun Kelly: Wonderful. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, almost every potter I know can name the one teacher who got them started, and for me, that person changed everything. You called Pauline Harman your teacher. What did she do in a class that you still catch yourself doing with your own students today? Shaun Kelly: Yeah. So Pauline Harman was my first teacher, my first official pottery teacher. And she was a hand builder. So as a hand builder, it's like baking, where you roll out a piece of clay to create like a sheet of clay. And she would have wonderful projects and templates every week. So she'd have like a mug, a bowl, a vase, as something that you would be able to cut out and to create and to form into a vase or a bowl. And what was wonderful about it is even though you got the template, the basic shape of it, you could then design it. You could add texture to it. You could add creative elements to it. You could make it your own. Shaun Kelly: And even today, I try to focus on projects and templates in my formal classes this way, because it's a great way for someone just starting out to find it approachable, right? Because sometimes it can be overwhelming. All these new tools, all these new materials, everything is so different in the beginning. But as soon as you can just create or start creating a form, you know you can do the rest, that the rest will come together. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But I think the approach that you and I have adopted is one where we use our imagination to say, "Well, what are we gonna do?" It's not necessarily templates. I mean, you offer me templates, but it's all about imagining and visualizing and going from there, right? Shaun Kelly: Exactly. So you can add to them, right? You can add elements to the template. You can carve the template. Right? That's just the beginning. And then after that, everyone has a different piece. Every piece is unique and one of a kind. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right, right, right. Now, you call Sandi Dunkelman your mentor. And to be a mentor is a very different thing from being a teacher. What has she given you that no class you could ever have signed up for would have given you? Shaun Kelly: Yeah. So my friends and everyone else, they like to say that I won the jackpot when Sandi Dunkelman became my mentor. Because it was just like a perfect match. Right? And she's an incredible thrower. Very determined, very driven, a perfectionist, a woman who speaks her mind. And it was just perfection. I mean, it allowed me to have direction and guidance. Right? So as she threw every week, and as she created items, whether it be a lidded sugar dish or a salad bowl, I would follow along, and I would learn all the steps all the way along. So she could do it all, and I learned as much as I could from her. I was like a dry sponge. Anything she was willing to do, I was willing to do with her. So that created just a very natural roadmap of what I needed to do and how to do it. Shaun Kelly: And it was in a cooperative space. So along the way, we would learn. She would show me how to load and unload kilns. How to make glazes. How to set up a sale, how to run a sale. Everything that involved the studio, she knew how to do. And it was just wonderful. So coming and going, it was a friendship, a lifelong friendship. And we would have lunch together. We would share stories. And we would be there for each other. And it was way beyond just making pottery, right? A sense of community. Being almost a family. Shaun Kelly: And it's that support outside of pottery that was very, very helpful, especially when transitioning from a career of IT project manager to pottery. To have that mentor was priceless. And above all, she also had a critical eye. She speaked her mind and the truth. So if it was a hard truth I needed, it was a hard truth I got. So it was wonderful. And if you can find a mentor, I would take it. Take it in a heartbeat. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But that was quite a switch though, from IT to pottery. Shaun Kelly: It was a huge switch. And it was one that my health needed. My health, my body, my soul, it needed that change. It needed that reflection. And it made the world of difference. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow. Now I'm just sitting here thinking of my own self. I mean, I don't know. [laughs] Let's move on. [laughs] Shaun Kelly: Okay. [laughs] Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: People assume that someone who worked with computers and someone who works with clay have nothing in common. And I have never, ever believed that for a second. Tell me about one way of thinking you carried out of your years in technology that still shapes how you run a class today. And walk me through it in action. Shaun Kelly: Definitely. As a programmer, it was very logical. You had inputs, you had processes, and you had output. Right? Everything was very clear. And so it was the same idea. In a structured class, I could break down the process of a piece. Right? It could be the demonstration, right? Where it would be step one, we would roll out the clay. Right? Step two, you would cut the clay to size and maybe wrap it around your form or place it in your form. Step three would be maybe to assemble it, to score and slip and join all the pieces together. And step four might be to decorate it, to finish, to finalize it. Create that output. Shaun Kelly: So even when it comes to teaching nowadays, the week before or the night before, I'll always go through the project myself, step by step. I'll time myself. And I'll ask myself, "Is it fair to say, well, here's half an hour," if it took me a half hour to do? Right? So I know it might be it's an hour I'll give people, right? If it took me 30 minutes, they'll get an hour, just because of the time needed. So being able to break it down logically, to look at the pieces and just figure out how we get from beginning to end, that has made the teaching process fundamentally easier. I just don't sit there, make it, and say, "Okay, guys, good job. You go do it." Right? We'll go step by step. And along the way, we try to make it easier for people. And everybody has a different way of doing things. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. That's very true. I'm listening carefully as you're saying this. I mean, as a programmer, isn't it step by step as well? Shaun Kelly: Exactly. So carrying that along and logically. And then if we do run into a problem, right, it would then come back to the beginning and asking a similar question and getting a different direction. So being able to think about things logically has really, really helped. Even that creative side, right, to be able to come back to somebody and say, "Well, which path would they take? Which direction would they go in?" Rather than just throwing ideas out. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I want you to teach my listeners something right now. Someone out there has never touched clay and is quietly picturing complete disaster. So talk them through exactly what your hands do in the first minute with a lump of clay the way you would talk me through standing at the wheel. Shaun Kelly: Yep, exactly. So in the beginning, we wanna make you as comfortable as possible. Right? We want you to sit properly, to feel at one with the wheel. We don't wanna force you to create something. Our goal is to match the clay to the wheel itself. To sort of center it. And part of this is even easier if you were to close your eyes. And often, if your eyes are open, you can have an optical illusion as though it's wobbling or that it's not centered. But when you just use your hands, when you touch something, your hands won't lie to you. Right? Which is thankful. Very, very thankful. Shaun Kelly: And so we'll try to place the clay on the wheel, centered in the middle. And we just spin the wheel. Our hands are wet so that we aren't sticking to the clay. And we squeeze the clay at the 3:00 and 9:00 positions. That's sort of on the left and the right. We squeeze our hands in. Sort of cupping the clay. And that way the clay gets a sense of it wants to be in the middle. It wants to be centered. It wants to be steady. Shaun Kelly: Some of the things that I've made a mistake in is I try to push too hard. I try to force the clay to be something it doesn't wanna be. And it bounces back at me. Almost like a speed bump, right? It pushes back. So just if I can squeeze my hands and hold them steady, the clay will eventually form to your hands. So we let the clay and the wheel come to us rather than trying to sculpt it into something it doesn't wanna be. Shaun Kelly: And so the trick is, you'll hear people say this over and over again. Center yourself, lock in your arms. Do this, do that. But what does it really mean? What it means is our body has to be still. We have to be able to keep our body from moving. So if you find your arms are bouncing or you're rocking back and forth, then we're not centered ourselves. Then the clay is gonna be rocking back and forth or shifting. So once we can squeeze our hands together and hold them steady and our body is steady, then that's almost half the battle there. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow. This is so interesting. I bet a lot of us don't really think of all this, right? Until we're put to the test, right? Shaun Kelly: Exactly. And like I say, some people will watch videos, and they'll throw out these terms. What does it actually mean? It's not until we're on the wheel, we're like, "Oh, now I understand. I can feel the way the wheel pushes against me." Right? Or the way the clay moves, and how it may go out of control sometimes. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But what about for a hand builder like myself, how would you describe that? Shaun Kelly: The hand building process? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Shaun Kelly: So I find that very... I try to slow myself down. I

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  Episode #112

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #112: Interview with Brian Moore, Senior Accessibility Specialist, TD

  Sep 17, 202656 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #112: Interview with Brian Moore, Senior Accessibility Specialist, TD https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-09-17-2026/ In this candid episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA welcomes Brian Moore , a blind digital accessibility leader at TD Bank whom she has known for many years, for a conversation that runs from an eleven-year-old taking the bus alone in Montreal to a senior role auditing a national bank's apps and websites. Brian traces a career that began in 1994 at a small Calgary assistive technology organization in the DOS era, moved through close to twenty years of tech support at Frontier Computing in Toronto, and became a self-taught specialty in web and document accessibility once AODA compliance started bringing people to his door. Along the way he is unusually frank about what he learned from the other end of the support line, about tokenism in earlier jobs, about automated scanners catching only thirty to forty percent of accessibility issues, and about the day he had to ask his eleven-year-old son to sign his own employment background check because the form was inaccessible. The heart of the episode is a barrier Donna and Brian hit roughly two decades apart. Both were blocked from a professional certification not by the subject matter but by diagrams no human reader could neutrally describe, and both walked away with the knowledge and without the paper. Brian argues the fix is structural rather than personal: standardized alternative descriptions supplied by the test provider, delivered to a computer rather than read aloud by a person. They close on the discipline of picking your battles, the ones Brian has lost, and his conviction that advocacy has to leave room for actually living a life. 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 The Remarkable World Commentary. I'm Donna 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, author, lifelong barrier buster who also happens to be blind. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its website 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 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: 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. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a changemaker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. Brian Moore, I'd like to welcome you to our Remarkable World Commentary podcast. You and I go back many years. I won't tell our listeners how many years, but it is a pleasure and a privilege to have you. I've watched you grow. I'm really, really proud of what you've done and the way you stick up for something whenever it matters to you. Welcome to my show. Brian Moore: Thanks, Donna. I appreciate you inviting me. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Anytime. So, Brian, most people meet accessibility as a rule they have to follow. You have spent more than 30 years meeting it as a way of life. Tell our listeners who you are and what you actually do on an ordinary Tuesday at the bank. Brian Moore: Okay. So I am a blind person first. So that's the lens that I bring to everything, because it's unavoidable, right? I can't turn that piece off. I mean, so what I do impacts my real life every day, and the lives of many people I know. Brian Moore: So my job is actually sort of leading a digital accessibility program. So things like, we should ensure that our apps and our websites and basically as many of our processes as we can get to and dig into are accessible to everyone. And that involves all kinds of things. So, like you said in the introduction, I've been in the accessibility space for almost my entire adult life. In everything ranging from tech support to helping with website design, like where you're actually in the code, to sort of now more of a manager role where I don't get to be a geek quite as often. I still get to do some of it because it's fun, but now it's a bit more of an oversight role, and audit, and providing training, and sort of trying to influence policy decisions and that type of thing. Brian Moore: So my typical day will involve maybe coaching on code, maybe meeting with the vendor to push them to make sure that the things that we're buying that we're going to use to expose to customers are accessible, to meeting with senior leadership to say, hey, this is why you should do what we do, and this is why you should not push back against this executive order from the government that says that DEI and accessibility, which was included, are bad and against the will of whatever flavor God you believe in. So it's a whole range of things. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So basically, Brian, you're all over the place, right? Brian Moore: Yeah. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Enjoy it. Brian Moore: I do, I love it. I still love it even after 30 years. Means change, but I still love it. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now you have said that you started out at a school for the blind and then moved into mainstream school while you were still living in the school's residence. That is a very particular kind of childhood, in that it is one foot in each world. What did living in both of them at once teach you that you still carry with you today? Brian Moore: So I've heard a lot of people who sort of were in mainstream education and had a terrible time, like didn't have any friends and didn't have good interactions with their peers and stuff. And that simply was not my experience. I think part of that, which was an unheard of concept when I went, was people get educational aids now, like a full time adult to trail them about. No wonder they don't have friends. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right? Brian Moore: I had none of that. When I was 11 years old, I took public transit to school and that was just normal. Like I took the STM, or whatever they're calling it now, in Montreal. And that was just expected, right? That was part of integration. Brian Moore: I think we spend a lot of time now, particularly in education, but I've seen it in other areas, where we shelter people too much, like try and insulate them from the real world, and consequently they don't adjust to it well. And the downside of that, I mean, there's a few downsides, but one of them is that you don't develop the friendships and the social interactions that are typical of a kid in school. And that I did develop, because I didn't have an adult shadow, because I went places by myself. I don't know, I could go on. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But it's true. I mean, I grew up a bit ahead of, you know, of your era here. And it was the same thing for us. You know, we did this. We didn't have an adult chaperones as such. And today it's so much more sheltered for these poor guys. Right. Brian Moore: Yeah. Like the concept of an 11 year old kid taking public transit to school. They just wouldn't do it now. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No, no. Brian Moore: But, I mean, look at the bright side. I haven't had an O and M lesson since I was 12, and I'm almost 60, because they did a really good job of teaching me the basics. They covered it well. They did what they call structured discovery before it was called structured discovery. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Boy, things have changed a lot. Brian Moore: Yeah. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Gosh. Now take me back to 1993 and that small organization in Calgary where all of this began for you. What did assistive technology even look like back then? And what was it that made you decide, this is the work I want? Brian Moore: So it was actually an organization. So in, well, 1994, actually, that was Calgary, the TRC. So I would have been 27. And it was an organization that did assistive technology for various disabilities. Actually, blind wasn't one of them. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, okay. Brian Moore: It was mostly people with physical issues. So it was things like Dragon and what very limited alternative keyboards there were at the time. So it was all DOS. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, gosh. Okay. Brian Moore: Yeah. There was no Windows yet. Really? Well, there was 3.1, but it wasn't super widely adopted. And I mean, it was a lot harder to get working than it is today. It was a lot more geeky and technical and fiddly, and, gee, I have to install this board to make my speech work. I gotta find an IRQ and a free COM port. And like, nobody even remembers what I'm talking about nowadays. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Brian Moore: But it was work. It was life changing for people. Right. For some people, you know, you could use a computer and they couldn't otherwise. And I sort of broadened the scope, just because I was there, to let's talk about screen reader stuff. And I used a thing. What did I use? Oh, TinyTalk, I think it was. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh my Lord. And yeah. Brian Moore: You had to have a hardware synthesizer. Yeah. And it was interesting because it was only a contract, but at the time, I actually went there to volunteer because I thought, oh, it'd be neat to learn this stuff. But the executive director said, hey, I have some money from the Alberta government to employ some people. Are you interested? And it wasn't much money at all. But it was a whole lot more than I was getting on welfare, because Alberta wouldn't give me disability because I wasn't disabled enough. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, I don't get it. Brian Moore: No. They said being blind is not sufficient to get the what they call the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, God. Oh, my God, I'm blown out of my chair. Okay. Hold on. Brian Moore: So, you know, working any kind of low wage job was better than that, right? And I wanted to work. So I did that for close to a year. And then the funding ran out and he said, I'd really like to keep you, but I can't afford it. And then, to make a very long story short, I ended up coming to Toronto and working at a place that no longer exists called Frontier Computing. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right, right. Brian Moore: That was an adaptive tech dealer. And even that was, I went because they were offering an internet course which I didn't really need, but I thought it would be a cool way to meet people in this new city. Well, the next time they ran the internet course, I was the teacher. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Are you going? Brian Moore: Well, and then I stayed there for years. Like it was on and off. But I was there sort of doing adaptive technology tech support until 2015. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow. Okay. So for close to 20 years. Right? Yeah. You were, in your own words, an entire technical support department of a Toronto access technology company. Brian Moore: Well, one of them. There were a few at the time. Yeah. I don't think any of them are left, but. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No. Tell me about that company and those years, and tell me what being the voice on the other end of that phone taught you about our community. Brian Moore: So it taught me so many things. I mean, it was a company started by two blind guys, which was a novelty at that point. And they made it successful, like regardless of what ended up happening. These were these two blind guys that wanted to start, and they made it successful. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Brian Moore: Like whatever else happens, I'll give them that. They made it successful. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, it was a good place to work. Like I liked the people. Brian Moore: Tech support, you know, and I was basically self-taught. Right. Like I never went through any training really. Later, I did like, you know, a few years later, for example, in 2008, maybe I took like the JAWS scripting course, for example. But essentially, I started out as completely self-taught. Because I was a nerd and I liked to play with this stuff. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And you still are. Brian Moore: And I still am. Absolutely, yes. I wear that badge proudly. Even when I don't have to do it at work, I still do it on my own. Brian Moore: So it was a great place to work and it taught me a ton about our community. It taught me a lot about myself too. First of all, you can only do it for so long because quite honestly, intellectually, it's not that challenging. Doing tech support. So I stayed longer than I should have. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, okay. Brian Moore: Because I got burnt out. But, you know, I gotta eat, right? And my kid thinks I should support him. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: That's right. Brian Moore: But I learned a ton about our community. First of all, one of the biggest lessons I think I learned was that there are so many people that aren't as privileged or something as me. And I don't know what that something is. Because in my experience, I knew lots of blind people and people with disabilities, but a lot of them were like me. Right. They managed, they lived on their own. A lot of them had employment. Sometimes we didn't. But a lot of times we did and some didn't. But we were functioning adults. Brian Moore: And what I encountered during this job was a lot of people who, because they never had the opportunity, I think mostly just didn't have the skills to sort of live independently and stuff, with things I took for granted. Right. I didn't know that was not a thing. But I remember having to train somebody once, and they lived somewhere and I called them up and I said, hey, you know, I have the address and stuff. I have no idea where that is. How do I get there? And they said, I don't have a clue. I don't ever go out on my own. And I did a double take, right? What? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Brian Moore: That's far more common than I thought, actually. Or people who live with family because they don't believe they have the skills to live independently. And I think that is because no one's ever expected it, right? If you've always been given the message, you can't, you can't, or you need protecting, or you need somebody to take care of you, eventually you will internalize that and believe it. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, that's very true. I mean, yeah, I agree. I think I'm very sad though, you know, like. Brian Moore: It really is. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Because, you know, I consider myself to be very privileged in many, many ways like yourself, but there's too many of our community that they're not in the same position. Right? Brian Moore: No, no. I mean, I have lots of stories of things that happened related. And I would never share anybody's personal info. But I think just an anecdote, one of the ones that really stuck out was I remember going to train somebody at their home one time and they said, oh, don't let your guide dog go in the kitchen because I dropped the jar of pickles. And I said, well, okay, are you going to clean it? Oh no, I don't know how. But my home care worker is coming in three days and they'll be able to sort of pick up the glass and stuff. And I'm thinking, wait, what? So you're going to be stuck out of your own kitchen for three? I said, like, do you have a broom and dustpan? Yeah. Can you get it for me? But it really made me think, right? Like, I guess I'm privileged or something. I don't know what it is. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I've heard similar stories. And, you know, like you. What is it? What is it? And how have things changed? Brian Moore: Well, and I really think it's, if no one's ever expected it of you, they won't get it. Right. If no one's ever told you you could. And in fact, often the opposite. That's what you'll get as an end result. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Somewhere around 2015, you started teaching yourself web and document accessibility because people kept coming to you asking how to comply with AODA. Nobody trained you. So how do you teach yourself an entirely new discipline when so much of what is written about it is not accessible to you in the first place? Brian Moore: So a lot of it actually is. I mean, yes, there is some that's not. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes. Brian Moore: But a lot of it is. And basically the internet. So by then we had Twitter, which, there was a real, before it turned into the mess it is now, it was actually a pretty thriving community with a quite active accessibility community where we all shared tips and tricks and hey, how do you do this? And how do you do that? And I had a mentor kind of. He didn't know he was my mentor, but he was. So there was a guy who was part of the W3C working group who started up a business. It was not a blind guy. He had other disabilities. But he ran a business conducting workshops on this stuff, and he asked me to come to one of them and do a screen reader demo. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Brian Moore: And obviously paid me to do it. But I went to this three day workshop. And I thought, this stuff is really cool. I want to learn more. So I started reading and reading and reading and absorbing everything I could, and going to any free webinar thing that was happening, and trying things like writing code and, okay, this works for me, this doesn't work for me. Brian Moore: And back to the, this impacts my real life. I would encounter barriers all the time, right, when I tried to do things online. And I thought, how much better would it be if I could explain the barrier, and if we're real lucky, how to fix the barrier. And sometimes that's useful. Sometimes it's not. Like if you, for example, encounter it with a big company and you call sort of the call center, there's not much point having that discussion with a call center agent. They're likely not going to have a clue what you're on about. Right. And they're not in a position to do anything about it anyway. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Frustrating me. Brian Moore: Yeah. And that still happens today. I mean, so the building I live in has a portal where you can submit maintenance tickets, pay fees, etc. And I actually use it in my sort of teaching web accessibility stuff in my job as an example of how to make a site co

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  Episode #111

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #111: Interview with Priscilla Gagne, Paralympic Athlete, Judo Canada

  Sep 16, 202653 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #111: Interview with Priscilla Gagne, Paralympic Athlete, Judo Canada https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-09-16-2026/ In this genuinely uplifting episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA welcomes three-time Paralympian Priscilla Gagné , who traces a path from a childhood in Granby and Sarnia, where doctors spent more than two decades cycling through diagnoses before landing on a rare, then-unstudied form of retinitis pigmentosa, to a silver medal in Para judo . Gagné describes a home where she was allowed to scrape her knees and a school system that would not let her run, the two years at W. Ross Macdonald School that taught her to advocate for herself, and the rugby team that made her the water girl and gave her the same ribbons as everyone else. She walks listeners plainly through how para judo classification and weight classes actually work, and is candid that the hardest part of moving to the national training centre in Montreal was not the training volume but the years when almost nobody would partner with the blind athlete on the mat. The through-line is belief as a discipline rather than a mood. Gagné explains what ninety percent of a fight being mental actually looks like in practice, lyric-free music so the imagery stays hers, fight-by-fight rehearsal, and saying "I want to be here" out loud until she meant it, and describes rehearsing the Rio nerves in an elevator doorway until they lost their grip. She is equally direct about the everyday work of access: drive the car yourself, be patient with people who have never met a blind athlete, and insist on training partners who have both skill and empathy, because either one alone fails. Donna closes by inviting her to speak for her Believing is Achieving initiative, and Gagné shares what is next, a green card, judo and self-defence programmes in American schools for the blind, and a massage therapy certification to carry her through the transition. 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 and welcome to another episode of The 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. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010, I won the landmark Charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its website 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 with equal access into federal law. And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removal of barriers. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: 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. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, before we jump into today's conversation, let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a changemaker whose work is every bit as remarkable as the world that we are trying to build. I'm very pleased, and I'm very privileged to welcome Priscilla Gagné to our show. Priscilla, welcome to the Remarkable World. Priscilla Gagné: Thank you so much. Wow, what an introduction. You are incredible. What a phenomenal intro. I love stubborn optimist. I'm going to start using that. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, I am sure that you are ready and willing to take up the baton and move on. Okay, so let's start with the beginning. And Priscilla, I'd love to begin at the very beginning. Take me back to your early years in Granby and Sarnia, and help my listeners to understand what childhood was like for you growing up with retinitis pigmentosa. Priscilla Gagné: Sure. So my parents didn't know that I had a vision impairment when I was born. There's. Sorry. Go ahead. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I said, oh. Priscilla Gagné: Oh, yeah. They didn't know. It took them, I think I was 18 months old when my mom noticed that my eyes were shaking. I guess she was changing my diaper or she was doing something and she was trying to get me to follow her fingers. She was wiggling her fingers and she's trying to get my eyes to follow her fingers. And apparently I could do it, but my eyes were making like little circles as they were focusing so hard on the movement. And so she brought me into the doctor and they just said, bring me back when I'm older and we'll get glasses. Priscilla Gagné: So when I was three we ended up moving to Ontario. But so we were back and forth from different hospitals, Montreal and Ontario. And they said it was a lot more serious than they knew and that I would probably go blind. And at first they thought that it was Leber's congenital amaurosis. They put me under so many different types of testing because they were wondering, is it a tumor that's blocking something? They really didn't know. So I went through a lot, a lot of testing and finally they just said it's Leber's congenital amaurosis. Eventually they said it was macular degeneration. And then I went along and rod-cone dystrophy. And then I went many, many years, a good ten years where they just didn't know. They just didn't have a diagnosis for me. And it wasn't until I was probably 25 when a neuro-ophthalmologist and a retinal consultant finally made the discovery that it was a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa that hadn't yet been studied. Priscilla Gagné: So that's why they were a little bit unaware. So childhood with that in mind. So my vision, I had night vision, couldn't see in the dark. Or if it was dimly lit, I couldn't follow things. It was too fast or busy. The room was too full of stuff and people, I couldn't keep track. I couldn't follow anybody. Little things. Like I couldn't follow a hockey puck. I couldn't find toys on the ground. That sort of thing. Couldn't read anything that wasn't extremely large, bold print. Priscilla Gagné: And so but I had a tenacity. I was born with a just wanted grit, you know, I just wanted to do what everybody else is doing and just try to stop me. But I was also extremely shy. So the combination of those two things, me being shy and yet me having this strong desire to belong and to just do what everybody else is doing, kind of clashed. And eventually, because going through school became difficult. At home, I was allowed to do pretty much anything. My parents were divorced. And so my dad, when I go to my dad's house, he would basically let me try anything with my older brother. You know, safety in mind, but one of the like, you can scrape your knees and you'll be fine. You'll figure it out. You know, you'll learn your limits. But my mom was the opposite. Priscilla Gagné: Like, you can ride a bike, but you have to wear a shoulder pad. You have to wear knee pads, elbow pads, you know, wrist guards. If she could have wrapped me in bubble wrap, she would have, but love her for it. But in all of that to say, I had no real limits at home. I was allowed to experiment and just be a kid and just try things. And my family was super supportive. Cousins, aunts, uncles. I mean, I had all the support one could dream of, but that all would change when I started school. Priscilla Gagné: So in school, they didn't want me running around on the equipment. They didn't want me doing the Terry Fox Run. I wanted to join the track team and nobody volunteered to guide me and they wouldn't assign anybody. So I just wasn't allowed to run. And, you know, fast forward when I turned 14, I went to W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Brantford, Ontario. My mom didn't want me to, and I guess the people from Brantford had tried for many years while I was in elementary school to convince her to let me go to the school, and I didn't know, she never told me about it. And so my vision resource teacher in the seventh grade, she was telling me, or eighth grade, I think I was in eighth grade. She was telling me about it and I was like, well, this sounds amazing. I want to go check it out. Priscilla Gagné: You know, I didn't care that it was residential. I didn't care that I had to live there for the week and come back. I just wanted to see this dreamland of all things sports, you know? And so I got to go for a tour. My mom came, the vision resource teacher came, my educational assistant, she came, and my grandma and my mom and dad. And so here we came, my little entourage all in different cars. I think we had like three or four cars. And I don't know why we didn't just carpool. But anyway we drove about 2.5 hours to Brantford and I got a tour of the school and the residence, what life might look like. Priscilla Gagné: And man, the gymnasium, they had goalball courts, which I didn't know about goalball yet. But they had an indoor track which really attracted me, that outdoor track, which really I loved running. They had wrestling mats. So I knew they had a wrestling team, that was intriguing to me. And I just thought, wow, they don't hold people back here. Like we can just do things. So I was like, sign me up, you know? And much to my mother's chagrin, I think she cried more than I did when I left. But she knew it was good for me. So she let me go. Priscilla Gagné: But I only stayed there for two years. I learned all the things I needed to learn, to advocate for myself, to speak up for myself. I met my best friend Whitney there, and she was not a pushover. You know, I learned from her to have a backbone. So I learned how to advocate for myself, but with a little more finesse, maybe, than she might have had. Priscilla Gagné: But all that to say, I went back to the mainstream system for 11th and 12th grade. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I did track and field. I tried out for the rugby team. They wisely let me be the water girl. But what I loved about that whole situation is I tried to hide my vision impairment and thought, I'm just gonna try out like everybody else and see if they notice. And so I tried, but there was a couple things that they were having us do. And I was like, oh, I don't know if I can do that safely. And so I would just kind of skip over them. But I'd do everything else, all the sprints, everything. And I didn't know the entire time, they already knew who I was. And they knew that I had a vision impairment. And so they weren't making me do anything crazy. But then at the end of it all, they put me as a fullback, which to this day, I don't know what that is. For the tryouts, I didn't know what my job was. And they'd say, okay, these are the people who are on the team. Priscilla Gagné: I don't know if they truly cut anyone, to be honest, but they didn't just let me sit on the bench and be part of the team and wear the uniform. They found something for me to do and made me part of the team in a valuable way. You know, they gave me the assignment of being the water girl. So my job at every game was, I had about 12 empty, huge, like two litre water bottles that I had to clean out. And they all were in a tray, so I had to clean them all out, fill them all up before every game. And then when they call water, I just had to run towards the sound of water and jiggling all these water bottles, you know? Priscilla Gagné: And I loved it. And the girls accepted me. Everybody accepted me. When the girls got ribbons for winning stuff, I got the same ribbon. It was just a beautiful thing. I know I wasn't on the field tackling people or getting the ball, but it was such a special thing that they allowed me to participate in that way. And by the time I graduated high school, I had played multiple sports and had made a goal to go to the Paralympics. And so with the support of my family and the coaches at the right place at the right time, and I think it was divine appointments that happened, I was able to participate in three different Paralympics. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What can I say? I mean, like you are an advocate. Welcome to the club. I mean, I am very impressed. And, you know, before I came into your life, okay, you had already tried sports such as wrestling. Priscilla Gagné: And. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Volleyball. What did those early experiences teach you about competition, confidence, and the kind of athlete that you wanted to become? Priscilla Gagné: Wrestling and cross country running, I think, were the first two that I really learned a big lesson. And it was, music is powerful and it can set your attitude, set your mood. So I learned to become very careful what I listen to, because I don't think it's anybody's secret, I'm a huge Celine Dion fan. So. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Here, here. Priscilla Gagné: You too. Yeah. And so I would listen to Celine Dion songs. I would listen to different things. But there were certain songs that would just get me up and ready to go. And I just felt like, I'm ready to go. For cross country, there was one that I had in my mind. Do you remember Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? They had this song, I Won't Back Down. That song, I was introduced to that after the 9/11 Tribute to Heroes concert. And so that one just kind of really became my heart. And then also there was a song by Celine Dion called A New Day Has Come that she had come out with. And so that one was huge for me because it was like new beginnings. And the song That's the Way It Is. That was another song of mine. And then the one by Kelly Clarkson. You know, actually she had just won, going back many years now. She had just won American Idol. And so her Breakaway song was playing a lot on the radio. And it's like those songs are all seasonal for me. They all meant something to me in that season and helped me get in the right mindset for change, or get right in the mindset for the zone to compete in and to be ready. Priscilla Gagné: Some other lessons was, and one of the biggest, probably life lessons that I learned in that was, you can't wait on other people for your time. Like you can't rely and wait and just wait and wait for somebody to come and help you. You just got to get out and do it. Priscilla Gagné: I remember there was a race and I didn't know where we were warming up. And my coach, I couldn't find my coach and I knew the race was coming up. I had two choices. I could either just say, well, I don't know where the warm up area is. I don't really even know where to go. So therefore I'm just not going to run. And then, you know, I don't have to worry about being nervous. Or option two was, you know what? I don't care how well I do. I don't care what time I get there. If I'm there before they shoot the gun, I'm racing with everything I have, whether or not I see my coach first. And that's what I did. I couldn't find my coach, never did find my coach. I got on the line just at the last second. They were actually upset with me that I was late until I told them I was legally blind and couldn't find the spot, and they were more compassionate at that point. Priscilla Gagné: But that decision has followed me through my whole life. Like I don't wait on other people. If the help is there, fantastic. But I'm not going to allow other people's behavior, decisions or actions determine my path in life. And I guess I don't know if I knew that that decision had been made. Like I don't think I had the words for it at that time, but I remember feeling it in my soul, if that makes any sense. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And yes, I do. Priscilla Gagné: Yeah. And I think another important lesson was too is just who you surround yourself with. They're going to either build you up, your teammates, even on your own team, they can build you up or take you down, or encourage you or discourage you, or make you feel alone or you could feel not alone. But ultimately it's up to me. Who am I going to choose to hang out with? If there's nobody positive to be with, then I'm going to put my headphones on and get myself in the game mentally before I ever get out there physically. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But I think it takes a special person to have those inner resources to move forward. Not many of us do. Not many. Priscilla Gagné: It's not easy. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No, no, it's not easy to say like, I'm not going to wait for somebody. I'm going to get there. A lot of people are afraid. They're too shy. They're not aggressive enough. But in today's world, that is changing so fast. You got to be able to say to yourself, listen self, I'm getting up and I'm going. And I admire your attitude. I think it's terrific. Priscilla Gagné: Yeah. It's a stubbornness in the best of ways. You know, people think to be stubborn is a negative thing. But I actually think we can fuel that for change and we can fuel it for something very positive in our own lives. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now, judo was not your first sport. So what was it about judo that truly grabbed you? And when did you first sense that this could become a Paralympic journey rather than simply another athletic challenge? Priscilla Gagné: I actually entered judo with the Paralympics in mind. And so I was actually on the national goalball team and originally was going to try to aim for the Paralympics with them, but I just really missed combat. Because I was a wrestler, that was my passion for a good five, six years. Well, all through my childhood wrestling with my brother and my cousins, but then competitively on a mat wrestling for a few years. It was my passion. I loved it, and I just missed it. But it's not in the Paralympics. Priscilla Gagné: So after a year of being on the national team, and like every national team, there was team drama. There was politics, which is normal for any and every sport. But when you're super passionate about a sport, like judo definitely got a lot of issues with like lots of drama, lots of, oh my goodness, like emotions high and low and politics and policies. But I'm passionate enough about the sport and I love the sport enough to deal with it. So I wasn't passionate enough about goalball to deal with it. So I just switched and I thought, you know what? I know there's judo in the Paralympics and that's a whole lot more like wrestling. So I switched and I showed up to the YMCA sensei. Because I have a mutual friend who was actually one of my teachers at the blind school and I met him in an airport. Priscilla Gagné: This is one of the divine appointments, I say. I met him at an airport gate where both B1 athletes, like blind athletes, and we meet at a gate in an airport somewhere that's not Montreal and flying to different places. And I said, are you still doing judo? He's like, no, I'm trying goalball. And I was like, oh, I want

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  Episode #110

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #110: One Size Does Not Fit All

  Sep 2, 202612 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #110: One Size Does Not Fit All https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-09-02-2026/ In this reflective episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA presents her first solo podcast for September and builds it around a single argument: one size does not fit all. Thanking listeners who have written in, she makes the case that no template can meet every situation, because every person with a disability has a unique requirement and a unique set of needs, a mistake she admits making herself at times, and one she calls a lack of respect. It applies, she says, whether you are a phone rep, an agent, a teacher, a government department, or any other type of entity. She then unpacks the assumption that lies underneath it. People hear blind or vision impaired and conclude the person has no vision at all, which she calls a very false statement. She walks through the range instead: functional vision, where a person moves independently but needs glasses for distance or close reading; low vision, where a screen can be read only with special devices and only slowly; minimal vision, her own, where light, dark and shadows come through; and no vision at all. The same spread exists for hearing loss, she notes, a person may be categorized as having hearing loss, but how much? Her story of the month comes from a listener who used her Mental Stretch technique, built on drawing on the different senses, after unwittingly becoming a victim of online dating. A perpetrator nearly extracted a large sum with an untrue story, but the listener sat down, gathered their resources and their thoughts, spoke to trusted friends, and recognized the scam just in the nick of time. 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: Greetings, everybody. And I'm Donna J. Jodhan, your host for the Remarkable World Commentary. And this is my solo podcast for September, my first solo podcast for September. Hope everybody is doing good. So I want to thank everybody for all those who have taken the time to write to me. Those who have taken the time to give me their feedback and tell me what they're thinking. Thank you everybody. So for this month, month of September, my first solo podcast, I want to talk about this topic. All right. One size does not fit all. And I'm praying and hoping that the rest of the world is listening somehow, and that this statement will help others to realize that, no, one size does not fit all. Right. And yes, it does not fit all. We're all not the same. We're all very unique people in our own way. We're each very unique people in our own way. Okay. And why do I say this? One size does not fit all. You cannot use a template to match, or to meet, every single situation in a landscape where there are too many different types of situations, there are too many different types of circumstances. When I say one size does not fit all, I mean that in the case of a person with a disability, it is simply not possible to say one size will fit all. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Every single person with a disability has a unique requirement and a unique set of needs. Okay. This is a definite, definite mistake that so many of us make, including me at times, but I don't think it applies. I don't think it is appropriate. It's a lack of respect really in many, many ways. Saying one size fits all — one size does not fit all. Okay. It doesn't matter if you are a phone rep or agent, or a teacher, a government department, or any other type of entity. One size does not fit all. Too many people fall into the trap of thinking that because one is blind or vision impaired, there's only one set of requirements to be done. And they think that because a person is blind or vision impaired, that person has no vision. And that's a very, very, very false statement. The word, or the term, blind or vision impaired, sight impaired, a person with sight loss, applies to different persons with different types of, or different levels of, vision loss. So if you say a person who is blind or vision impaired, that person could be someone with functional vision. That is, they can get around on their own, but they need glasses to help them see things at distances or read things close up. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Then you have the person with low vision. Again, can probably see a screen, can probably read a screen, but can only do it reading with special devices, and they do it reading very slowly. Then you have the person who has minimal vision, like myself, probably can see light and dark and shadows. And then you have the person with no vision, can't see anything. And I may not even be touching on all of the levels of vision loss, but what I'm trying to say is that when one is told that a person is blind or vision impaired, or a person with sight loss, it does not mean that that person is totally blind. Okay. All right. There are different levels of vision loss that fall under the category of blind or vision impaired, and it is the same for other types of disabilities. Persons with hearing loss. There are different levels of hearing loss amongst persons with hearing loss. Okay. I hope I'm making sense or saying it clearly enough. Again, hearing loss applies to different levels of hearing loss, not just one level. So a person may be categorized as a person with hearing loss, but how much hearing loss does this person have? Again, what I'm trying to emphasize here is that one size does not fit all, okay? Each person with a disability is a separate case to be considered. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I don't like using the word case, but each person with a disability has a unique need. All right. My story of the month is one that was sent in to us by someone who has used my Mental Stretch technique to help them out. My stretch technique emphasizes using different senses like sense of smell, sense of hearing, sense of touch, sense of feeling, sense of sight. And for this month, I have someone who has sent in their experience of using my Mental Stretch to help them as an online dating victim. This person, or this listener, inadvertently or unwittingly became a victim of online dating. I guess they went into it with their eyes half closed, or maybe their eyes shut, so to speak, became a victim of online dating because the person who was encouraging them or inviting them to date did not provide them with the true details, and they ended up almost having to pay a lot of money to this… this… almost having to pay quite a bit of money to the person who was inviting them. I can't seem to get the word right now. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Perpetrator. That's it. The perpetrator almost, almost got this poor old victim to pay them a bunch of money because they gave them a [stress SOS? 00:09:40] — gave them a story that was not true. But the victim was able to deal with it after having sat down, used our mental techniques and our Mental Stretch. And they got their act together, gathered their resources and their thoughts, spoke to some trusted friends, and realized just in the nick of time that the perpetrator was only a perpetrator and no one that had any good intention of dating in a meaningful, committed and open manner. That's my story for this month. Someone who was a victim of online dating and someone who used our Mental Stretch, which is built on the use of using different senses to help them get out of it. So you use a sense of smell. Sense of touch. Sense of hearing. Sense of feeling. Sense of taste. Sense of sight. Your five senses. This is it for me. For this month. For my first Remarkable World Commentary solo podcast, I'm Donna J. Jodhan. Please write to me at donnajodhan@gmail.com and let me know how you're doing. Okay? Write to me at Donna Jodhan, donnajodhan@gmail.com. Take care now and see you again real soon. Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donnajodhan@gmail.com. Until next time.

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  Episode #109

  Remarkable World Commentary Episode #109: Ask Advocate Donna

  Sep 1, 202620 minS2026

  ️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #109: Ask Advocate Donna | By Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-op https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-09-01-2026/ In this practical episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA presents her September Ask Advocate Donna feature, opening with a favourite quotation, speak in such a way that others love to listen to you, listen in such a way that others love to speak to you, before turning to her recurring word game. She contrasts two pairs of advocacy words: commitment versus compliance, where committing is proactive and complying is merely following the leader, and afterthought versus forethought, illustrated with website developers who bolt on accessibility features at the end and managers who only remember employees with disabilities once the plan is already written. She then works through three listener-submitted stories, running each one through the same four questions, what advocacy is here, who gets involved, why it is necessary, and when you step in. A listener reports drivers occupying wheelchair parking spaces they do not need, and Donna argues the response belongs to everyone, built from the ground up through awareness and escalation to community members and elected representatives. Marissa asks her condo management for a talking elevator and gets a proactive yes, which Donna celebrates as a success story of two parties working together. Chris, who is vision impaired, is refused entry to a restaurant with his guide dog; his friends rise in unison to back him, police are eventually called, and the owners comply, a case Donna frames as standing on rights that Canadian law already guarantees. She closes by inviting listeners to send their own stories. 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: Greetings everyone. And I am Donna J. Jodhan, welcoming you to my September, or the month of September, Ask Advocate Donna, my Remarkable World Commentary podcast for the month of September. Ask Advocate Donna. Hope everybody is doing well, and let's get started for this particular episode of mine. Okay, so let's start off with my favorite quote, or one of my favorite quotes. Okay. Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you. Try this quote. It is very, very effective if you sit down and think about it. It's all about using this, or the words of this quote, to engage in meaningful communication. Give it a whirl. Okay, now I'm going to move on to my word game. In every segment, my word game consists of presenting you with two pairs of words as they pertain to advocacy. Okay. And more often than not, these words come up in the landscape of advocacy. And I think it's a good way for us to really sit down and think about these words. Give it a think for just a few minutes. Okay, let's start off with commitments or compliance. What does commitment mean? Commitment means, in the world of an advocate or the world of anybody who is serious about what they do, you commit to doing something. You commit to carrying out something. You commit to saying, I'm going to do this, and you do it. It is a proactive word. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: On the other hand, compliance means, well, you just comply. You just follow the leader. You're the sheep following the shepherd. You prefer to just simply react, not proact. So again, commitment means proactive. Compliance means reacting. And as an advocate, you're often being called upon to decide whether you're going to commit to something or you're going to comply with something. Now, does commitment necessarily mean complying? And I don't think so. Commit is, again, proactive. Comply is reactive. You comply without really thinking about it. You comply with saying, oh, I'm just going to do as I'm asked to do. Commit is going a step further and saying, I'm not just going to comply, I'm going to go out there and I am going to commit to a specific action. So here we go. Complete commitment or compliance. That is my interpretation of these two words. Okay. Here it comes for the second pair of words, an afterthought or a forethought. In my humble opinion, an afterthought is this: if you only do something after everything else has been done. And this can apply to anything in our lives. An afterthought could be, well, I'm invited to this birthday party and I'm going to go and I'm going to have a good time. That is your first mindset. But then you think, oh heck, I should probably take a gift along with me. That is an afterthought. That, or an afterthought would probably apply to website developers and designers when they develop a website. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And then they say, oh, maybe I should put in some accessibility features. Maybe I should deal with accessibility. That is an afterthought. Same for management. They develop these wonderful accessibility — not accessibility plans, but these plans to move forward for the next year or two. And then they say, oh, we have employees who are employees with a disability. So maybe I should be putting in some thought into how they would fit into the plan. Right? That is an afterthought because it was not thought of while the main plan was being developed. That is an afterthought. That is sort of a delayed, late reaction, or just simply saying, oh yeah, I should put this in, or I should do this after the main body of the plan has been developed. Whereas on the other hand, a forethought is including what should be done or what must be done, or what ought to be done during the main planning of your project. Okay. An afterthought is a delayed thought. A forethought, again, is being proactive. This is my humble opinion. Okay. A delayed reaction is an afterthought. A proactive action is a forethought. And this applies to almost anything in our daily lives. Okay. So there you go. Not just as an advocate, but as a person yourself. Okay. Now, I want to go on to the stories that were submitted to us this month, and they're interesting stories. Here is the first story. Wheelchair parking being abused. Okay, so what does that really mean? In my books, wheelchair parking being abused is when someone who really, really is not using a wheelchair, or who does not need a wheelchair, just simply motoring into the parking space designated for wheelchairs, and they don't care. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: They just get out of their cars and walk to their locations. That is wheelchair parking abuse. Okay, that's what I think. And you see that all the time. You go to a mall and you see people going into these wheelchair parking spots. They get out of their car and they literally run to the building. They don't even have a wheelchair. And in order for us to deal with this in a very meaningful manner. Okay. What is advocacy in this situation is when we start to speak up against those who are abusing wheelchair parking spots. And who gets involved? All of us do, not just the person using a wheelchair. It's a matter of consciousness, or conscience, or doing the right thing of calling those out who are abusing wheelchair parking spots. Why is it necessary? Because we need to speak up. We need to [trip? 00:09:59] those who are abusing the wheelchair parking spots. How do you do that? It's from the ground up. You start building awareness about what's going on. You start attacking the consciences of those who are abusing it, and then you go further up by going to community members, by going to church members, by deciding if you go to your member of Parliament, you go to your member of Congress, who you go to. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It's a long, drawn out thing, but starting from the ground up is the best way to go. Okay. And when do you get involved in advocacy? You get involved in advocacy, in this case, when you honestly feel that your conscience needs to be pacified because you see somebody abusing the wheelchair parking spot. Okay, so this is one of the stories that was sent in to me by a listener who says they've seen this going on. They want to know what to do. And that's what my piece of advice would be. Okay, here's a second story. Talking elevator not working correctly. And again, this happened to Marissa in her condo building. Marissa is a vision impaired person. And for many months and even a few years, she was advocating for an elevator to become a talking elevator so that she would know which floor she was on or going to. And she felt that it would make her life easier and safer if the elevator would talk, as it went from floor to floor. She approached her management office. And in this case, we had success. The management office agreed with her right away and decided to do something about it. They were proactive. And this is a success story that I really enjoy telling you about, because Marissa and her office management worked together to bring in talking elevators into her condo complex. All right. Good for you, Marissa, and congratulations to you. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: What is advocacy in this case? Advocacy is identifying a need and then deciding to work with others to make this need a reality, or to address this need. And who gets involved? Marissa, to start with. And then she goes out there and she decides to talk to her management office about it. Okay. Why is advocacy necessary? Because there is a need to be addressed. Marissa's need to want to have the elevator talk from floor to floor, or as it goes, from floor to floor. Okay. How does one get involved in advocacy again? It's about Marissa and her management office working together to make this happen. And when do you get involved in advocacy? Again, it's all about when you think a need needs to be addressed. You identify the need, you want the need to be addressed. You think it's a legitimate need or requirement? Okay. Congratulations, Marissa. Here's a third story that was sent in to us. All right. A person with a service dog denied at a restaurant. This, unfortunately, is a very, very common problem. And it may all boil down to the fact that owners of a restaurant may come from a culture where dogs are not dealt with in ways that they are in North America and Europe. And I'm not identifying any specific culture. I'm just saying that because of a culture difference. So in this case, Chris was denied access to a restaurant. He went to a restaurant to enjoy a meal with some friends. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: The friends were waiting for him. But when he got to the restaurant, they would not let him in. When he asked why, he was told, well, you have a dog, and we don't — dogs are not admitted to this restaurant. His friends were watching for him and saw what was going on, and they all got up in unison and came to the front to support Chris. It was a bit messy because the owners kept saying, we're not letting him in. And the friend saying it is his right to be let in because this country has laws against not being let into a restaurant because of a service dog or a guide dog. Okay, so there was a bit of a shouting match, and eventually, thank goodness, the owners decided that they would comply with Chris's request to have him and his dog enter into the restaurant. Okay. Unfortunately, the police had to be called because the owners would not back down, and Chris and his friends would also not back down. The police came and, using their… I wouldn't say their tactics, but using the methods that they were trained to use, were able to get the owners to comply with the request to let Chris enter the restaurant with his dog. Okay, so what is advocacy here? Advocacy here is standing up for your rights. Chris standing up for his rights and his friends supporting him because it is his right, or was his right, to be able to enter that restaurant with his dog, his dog being a guide dog or a service dog? Okay, Chris was vision impaired, so him and his dog had to be — they were not to be denied entry into the restaurant. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: They had to be — their rights had to be adhered to. Okay, this is Canada and those are the laws and the rules. And who gets involved in advocacy? Chris, to start with, and then his friends. So it was a combined effort. Why is it necessary? Because Chris was being denied entry into this particular restaurant. This is why advocacy was necessary in this instance. How do you get involved in advocacy again? It's a matter of combined efforts on the part of those involved and not backing down, if you know that your rights are being infringed upon. When do you do it? When it directly affects you. Okay. All right. This is it for me for this month. I am Donna J. Jodhan, with this particular feature, Ask Advocate Donna. Please write to me with your story, and I would be pleased to talk about it, discuss it, and share it with our listeners. We have hundreds of thousands of listeners worldwide. We post to over 45 media channels, and we have over 26 advocacy influencers on our team. Do not hesitate to reach out to us. Write to us at donnajodhan@gmail.com. Again, donnajodhan@gmail.com, and that's spelled donnajodhan. Thank you very much for listening in. Take care and see you again soon. Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donnajodhan@gmail.com. Until next time.

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