On this Episode of Dining with Donna, Donna Jodhan sits down with Renée Rentmeester, the creator and executive producer of The Cooking Without Looking TV Show, for a lively conversation about food, accessibility, and changing how the world understands blindness. Renée shares her path from an early start in television to a long media career and entrepreneurial work, then explains what moved her to create a show that highlights blind and visually impaired cooks as capable, creative, and completely “everyday,” without pity or stereotypes. Together, Donna and Renée talk about building a welcoming space where guests can be honest about vision loss while keeping the tone upbeat, practical, and empowering.
Leave a CommentMonth: January 2026
In this empowering episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan introduces a new monthly “Ask Advocate Donna” segment, folding in the spirit of her earlier Ask Donna Advocacy in Action podcast, designed to help listeners become stronger, more confident, and more independent advocates. She opens with a quote about speaking so others love to listen, and listening so others love to speak, then kicks off a quick “word game” that challenges listeners to reflect on an advocate’s mindset: “act now” vs. “put off,” and “accessibility” vs. “expediency.”
Leave a CommentIn this sobering episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan kicks off 2026 with a hard question, who needs to take responsibility when an exam is promised to be accessible, but turns out not to be. She recounts her experience after months of intense preparation for a CompTIA Network+ / cybersecurity exam, funded through a scholarship, only to arrive on exam day and face a system that was poorly structured for accessibility, paired with a proctor/reader who couldn’t properly interpret key parts of the test, leaving her no real choice but to forfeit the exam.
Leave a Comment
Remarkable World Commentary Episode #72: Interview with Robin East, IT Analyst / Accessibility Specialist, Canada Revenue Agency
In this wide-ranging episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan sits down with her longtime friend, mentor, and fellow “barrier buster” Robin East for a candid conversation about advocacy, law, and the lived reality of navigating inaccessible systems. East traces his path back to Saskatchewan, describing how he became legally blind in 1982 at age 22 and how the struggle to access basic information, like textbooks and timely research, sparked his lifelong push for equal access. From there, he reflects on his 2007 tenure as national president of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians and explains why he insisted on a “rights-holder” approach (not “stakeholders”), including coalition-building across blindness organizations and backing Jodhan’s landmark Charter challenge on inaccessible federal websites, an outcome he says proved that systemic change can be forced when communities organize and persist.