Celebrating the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2022

Kennan Wellar:
I think that international connection is so important. We look at the diversity of this conference alone, but then across the world, these connections being made and perhaps even strengthened as a silver lining of the pandemic because there have been so many opportunities to connect virtually and speak with people that you might not have connected with before. So I think it's a rallying point. I think among all the different, there are so many different commemorative days, but I find this one, I find that there's such a focus on policy change and moving forward, and it's always a chance to reset and reflect heading into a new calendar year as well.

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. Each year, December 3rd is recognized as International Day of Persons with Disabilities, or IDPD. IDPD was first proclaimed by the United Nations in 1992. The day is intended to promote the welfare and inclusion of people with disabilities in all spheres of life. IDPD presents a significant opportunity to reflect on global linkages between disability segregation and economic development. It's also a time to consider the existing obstacles or barriers to accessibility. Today the global population is around seven billion people. Some 15% of them live with a disability. Approximately 80% of the world's disabled population lives in the developing world. Today, we celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities. It's time to put your finger on the pulse.
Hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta and I'm delighted to join you again, as I do every week, from the Accessible Media Studios in downtown Toronto. Today, my hair is pulled back in a bun, which is my preferred hairstyle, and I'm wearing a V-neck red sweater. We're talking about International Day of Persons with Disabilities. You've likely heard a lot about it on this channel in the week that leads up to IDPD, which is December 3rd. And I'm very pleased to say that, as we do every year, we're going to be covering, right here on AMI-audio, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities Conference that is put on every year by the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians. This is the sixth annual IDPD conference organized by the AEBC and their partners. This year's theme, Empowering Ourselves, Thriving in This New Reality.
The conference will take place virtually over Zoom on December 3rd from 1:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern Time. You can still register, but of course, you can also catch it on AMI-audio right here on AMI-audio, where I will be co-hosting the event, I should mention that as well. But if you miss the conference in person, but would like to get caught up with some of the speakers, you can find the podcast on the AMI-audio live podcast feed, which is available to you on your favourite podcast platform. You'll of course be hearing in the second half of this show from one of the panellists featured in this year's conference. But first, I'm really delighted to welcome to The Pulse, I believe for the very first time, Marcia Yale, the National President of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians. Marcia, hello and welcome to The Pulse. It's great to have you on the program.

Marcia Yale:
Thank you. And it is the first time, that's amazing, but it is. Just a little thing, it is a longer conference, it is from 1:00 to 4:00.

Joeita Gupta:
Ah, okay. Good to know. Well, we can pack in a whole extra hour of fun then.

Marcia Yale:
Yes, definitely. That's great.

Joeita Gupta:
Let's talk a little bit about the theme of the conference, Empowering Ourselves, Thriving in This New Reality. What are you hoping to accomplish with that theme and why did you land on that?

Marcia Yale:
Well, we wanted to do something about how we make the best of our lives and how we move forward and make lives better for ourselves, for those who come after us, for those who are around us, and we've landed on this because it's very open-ended. How do we stay connected in this virtual reality? How do we deal with the whole issue of mainstream versus specialized tech, specialized treatment? Anything like that. Accessibility, it's good for all, not just people with disabilities. And how do we advocate for ourselves in our daily lives? How do we get through the day with way the world is and figure out a way to interact with it and to not always feel like we're pushing upstream.

Joeita Gupta:
Can you give us a sense of who some of the speakers are, we have some keynote address speakers as well as an amazing panel. So who all can we expect to hear from during the conference?

Marcia Yale:
So first of all, we have an Indigenous blind woman who is going to open the conference up for us. We will then hear from David Lepofsky. I don't think I need to say much about him. I think his name says it all. For those of you who don't know who David is, he's been very active in the disability rights community for the last, oh, 20, 30 years, especially in Ontario. He's a champion for the accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. He's giving a 10 minute speech. Then we're going to move on to Sandhya Rao, who is the vice president and co-founder of iBUG Today, which is a blind users group that started in the States in 2011 and now offers hundreds and hundreds of virtual training and social and independence-seeking opportunities for blind people. They offer iOS training, they offer MAC training. I think they're even doing some Windows training, and it's all virtual, and then they're all so interested in the social aspect, and they do a movie night every Friday night as part of that.
So she's going to be speaking. Then we have the honour of having the first accessibility commissioner of Canada, Mr. Michael Gottheil, and he has decided that he just doesn't want to do a speech. He wants to do an interactive chat. So that should be fun. Don't know where that's going to go. It's going to be interesting. And then we have our panel, one of whom is Keenan Wellar, who you'll hear from later in this hour. And we have Penny Bennett, who many of you might remember her as Penny Leclair. She is a deaf-blind advocate. She's been an advocate for as long as I've known her. And her view is that there are many tools in our toolkits, but they need sharpening. So she's going to be talking about advocacy and she's a great advocate, that's for sure.
Then we have Robert Hanson, who is an activist and an advisor in the accessibility realm. And he is also a former parasport athlete. He was a swimmer for 17 years, and he's got medals to prove it. So it's going to be a fantastic panel. I really look forward to seeing how the three of them mesh and feed off each other, and then our two amazing keynote speakers. In the breaks, we're going to give some time to some local musicians. So I really think it's going to be one of, if not the greatest, of the six.

Joeita Gupta:
It sounds like it's going to be a phenomenal afternoon. And I don't just say that because I'm getting to cohost. I think it's just remarkable how diverse the speakers are and how much experience and knowledge they're bringing to the table. You mentioned that you think it's probably going to be one of the best, if not the best of the six conferences, but you've been involved with it from day one, Marci. Do you feel that there's been a lot of growth and evolution in the IDPD conference?

Marcia Yale:
Actually, I've only been involved in the last three years. So the three years before, which were not virtual, they were in person. Since I live in Huntsville, which is far enough away from Toronto to make getting down there a little bit of a chore. I, unfortunately, did not get to participate in those three. But the last three, we've learned over the years how to choose people that mesh together and how to make sure that everybody gets a chance to shine. And I think that this year we did a really good job of it, or at least I hope we did.

Joeita Gupta:
You've mentioned that it's over Zoom, and one of the nice things about Zoom is exactly what you've alluded to. People just couldn't get to the conference if they didn't live in Toronto, but now it really opens up the possibilities to have a national conversation or indeed an international conversation. But of course, Zoom is an accessible platform. But tell us a little bit about some of the things you've put in place to make the event accessible for as many people with disabilities as possible.

Marcia Yale:
Certainly. We have American Sign Language interpretation and just English. Apologies, we don't have LSQ, but we do have ASL and we do have English CART. That's the real-time captioning. And we've already done our tech check and we know that that's going to work properly. So we hope that as long as we don't have any gremlins everything will work the way it's supposed to. And we are doing our best to make sure that everybody knows what is going on. There won't be any silent videos. Everything will be definitely auditory and the visuals will be an added bonus.

Joeita Gupta:
Well, it sounds really terrific, but if you'll indulge me, and I'm going to ask you to remove your conference spokesperson hat for a moment and put on your National President of the AEBC hat for a second year. How does hosting this conference every year tie in with the broader mission and the larger work of the AEBC?

Marcia Yale:
Well, it gives other people who wouldn't necessarily know about us a chance to hear about us. And it gives us a chance to wave a flag of hey, here we are, and to show that advocacy makes a difference. My view of my whole run as president is that I want to make a difference, even in a small way. I would like to see that we've made a difference in the community in even little tiny things. Never know how small something may be that will affect so many people.

Joeita Gupta:
So yeah, no, it's a great point. Think about the butterfly effect or you throw a stone in the middle of a pond and there are all these ripples that go out. So it sounds, as I said before, like it's going to be a great afternoon. And I did mention that folks can still register if they would like to attend the Zoom conference. How do they go about registering? Do they go to the AEBC webpage or is there another way to do it?

Marcia Yale:
Actually, if they go to the web to blindcanadians.ca, there is a bulletin board notice that has the link to Eventbrite, where our registration is taking place. There is also an email address listed there, but I can give it to you. And that's AEBCToronto, all one word, @gmail.com. If people have trouble with Eventbrite, Eventbrite is an interesting platform. It has its issues, but like I said, the links are there and I'm sure they will also be up on AMI somewhere as well.

Joeita Gupta:
Absolutely. We'll definitely put them up. If you're watching on YouTube, we'll put them in the description box down below and we'll also have the links provided in the podcast description. So you will definitely be able to go and access the AEBC webpage via our website or access that email address via our website. And I hope many of you do come out because the conference is only as successful as the participants and the conversations that are generated at the table. So I want to say, speaking of conversations, that I've really enjoyed my conversation with Marcia today. Marci, thanks so much for stopping by the program and please don't be a stranger, do come back.

Marcia Yale:
Thank you. I'll come back time you want me.

Joeita Gupta:
Marcia Yale is the National President for the Alliance of Equality of Blind Canadians. Next up, we'll be speaking to one of the panellists featured in this year's IDPD conference hosted by the AEBC. Keenan Wellar is the co-leader and director of communications at LiveWorkPlay. And he joins us today to talk about his work in the community, but also why he wanted to get involved with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities Conference. Keenan, hello and welcome to the program. It's great to have you with us.

Kennan Wellar:
Thank you so much.

Joeita Gupta:
Keenan, tell me a little bit about LiveWorkPlay for those of us who aren't looped in.

Kennan Wellar:
Sure. Well, we're a relatively small charitable organization based in Ottawa. We started in 1995 as basically an advocacy group for people with intellectual disabilities and their families. And to make a long history short, in 1997 we started turning into a direct support organization, so actually providing services and supports. And in 2022 we find ourselves with a staff of 30 and evenly divided between support for living independently in the community in housing and just daily life, and supporting people with employment, real jobs in the community.

Joeita Gupta:
Well, you are small but mighty. I also noticed that that's not your only involvement. You are involved with something called From Presence to Citizenship. You have to tell us a little bit more about that as well.

Kennan Wellar:
Sure. Well I think that really goes back to attending Community Living Ontario conferences, which is a confederation of over a hundred agencies across Ontario. And some of us just wanted to have a more specific conversation, really a rights focus conversation about how government policy is impacting on the population and perhaps not moving as fast as some of us would like in terms of ending segregated programs and supporting more inclusive outcomes.
So we got together and formed a separate little group and called it From Presence to Citizenship, which is in honor of a perspective in the person-centered thinking community where you help people move from merely being present in communities to being valued as citizens and contributors. So we were at that since I think about 2014, and then it turned into actually hosting some large annual conferences in Toronto. We put a pause on that, same reason everybody else put a pause on conferences, but we carried on online at virtual sessions and building that community. And it's interesting because today some members of our group, which ranges all the way from at Atikokan, which is almost in Manitoba, to ourselves here in Ottawa, and all points in between, are on provincial committees that are discussing policy issues. So that's a really important development.

Joeita Gupta:
I don't want you to let the cat out of the bag as it were, but this year's conference team for International Day of Persons with Disabilities is Empowering Ourselves, Thriving in This New Reality. As a panellist, how do you intend to speak to that theme?

Kennan Wellar:
Well, first of all, it was a real honour to be included. When I was first contacted by the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, I said right away on the email, you realize I'm not a blind Canadian. And they said, yes, we want a really diverse inclusive conversation, which I thought was phenomenal. So that was a real honour. And it also goes with the theme that I want to speak to, which is a lot of initiatives, government initiatives, focused on equality and inclusion, diversity. I feel that they were established some years ago and the advancement of understanding is a little bit slow in terms of we really need to dig in more into who we're talking about when we're talking about Canadians with disabilities, because that's an extremely broad group of people. Depending on what definitions you're using, we're talking 15 to 20% of the entire population of the country.
And within that label there's people having some very different experiences, where they happen to be Indigenous and identify as having a disability, or in our case, people with intellectual disabilities and autistic persons, where if you look at issues of poverty, issues of unemployment, it's really quite more extreme or severe than what many other populations are facing. So I wanted to bring that to light, especially with our work with the federal public service on employment issues. They had a mandate for hiring 5,000 people with disabilities, which is fantastic. But something we've been working on is, well, are you going to disaggregate that data a little bit and really look at who you have now that identifies as disabled? And then based on that, are you going to focus more or less on particular populations and the need to better include them?

Joeita Gupta:
International Day of Persons with Disability rolls around once a year and we have conferences and events and all kinds of celebrations. Why do you think this day continues to be important to people with disabilities?

Kennan Wellar:
I could certainly speak to our own community. It's always paid attention to it and I think it also has a really tight connection to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and Canada becoming a ratifier back in 2009 or 10, I forget the precise process. But we actually aligned our mission, vision, and values with the convention and it's frequently a topic and helps frame those December 3rd discussions.
I think that international connection is so important. We look at the diversity of this conference alone, but then across the world, these connections being made and perhaps even strengthened as a sort of silver lining of the pandemic, because there has been so many opportunities to connect virtually and speak with people that you might not have connected with before. So I think it's a rallying point. I think among all the different, there's so many different commemorative days, but I find this one, I find there's such a focus on policy change and moving forward and it's always a chance to reset and reflect heading into a new calendar year as well.

Joeita Gupta:
That's a really good point about heading into a new calendar year. But you've done a lot of work in framing conversations about disability inclusion in terms of citizenship. And I wonder if the International Day of Persons with Disabilities ought to be framed in the same way, where we start to have conversations about people not just belonging to countries, but a global citizenry, for lack of a better word, and making sure the people with disabilities are better represented.

Kennan Wellar:
That's a wonderful comment. I don't know the exact wording, but I think that has been one of the themes in the past. I know the word citizenship shows up a lot and it means different things to different people, but I think increasingly there's just a focus on if people with disabilities aren't seeing the same types of outcomes as other citizens, and that's something you can objectively measure, whether it's poverty or employment or just their participation and influence, sometimes in the very bodies or governments that are governing their lives. We can look at that and we can see if change is moving at an appropriate pace and focus on the conditions that we need for change. So I think that is really an important element.
I'm also privileged to be involved with Inclusion International, and your comment just made me think of their work, which is again, global and focused on the convention and the rights of persons with disabilities. And that's also been great over the past couple of years. I've spent more time with them because I couldn't go to these conferences in other countries. My work is really local and it's really hard for me to leave, but it's just been such an eye-opener hearing from countries of Africa, South America. Canada is a country of abundance, but some of the most important innovations with inclusion are happening in countries with less resources.

Joeita Gupta:
Keenan, I really am excited to be able to hear from you more at the conference, as of course, I am to hear from the other panellists and speakers. Thank you so much for taking a couple of minutes out of your day to preview the conference and to preview some of what you'll be saying at the IDPD conference on December 3rd. Thanks for joining us.

Kennan Wellar:
Thank you so much.

Joeita Gupta:
That was Keenan Wellar, who is the co-leader and director of communications at LiveWorkPlay and will be one of the panelists featured at the sixth Annual International Day of Persons with Disabilities Conference. We're almost out of time on the program, but I do want to remind you to register for the conference if you would like to do so. We'll make sure that you have all of that information available in the description down below or on the AMI-audio Pulse webpage as well. This has been a really great program and I do hope you will tune into the conference itself.
If you are unable to catch the event live, which you can do either by tuning into a select cable channel or by tuning into the AMI-audio stream available on the internet. If you do happen to have other plans for Saturday December 3rd from 1:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern, you can catch the conference after the fact as well and tune into some of the speakers by looking for the AMI-audio live podcast feed where you can of course access the content and some of the speakers.
As I said though, we have to go for today, but if you have any feedback for me about The Pulse, feel free to write us on Twitter @AMIaudio and use the hashtag #PulseAMI. You can also send us an email, write to feedback@ami.ca. Give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. And don't forget to give us permission to play the audio on the program. Our technical producer is Marc Aflalo. Our videographer is Matthew McGurk, and Andy Frank is the manager of AMI-audio. I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.