In this warm and encouraging episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan, herself a blind advocate and chess lover, sits down with Voldi Gailans, Chairman of the UK’s Braille Chess Association, in a conversation that doubles as an invitation. Voldi traces his lifelong relationship with the game: first meeting the pieces as a boy at a Latvian social club, learning the moves on a pegged tactile board at boarding school with no strategy to guide him, and finding formal coaching only late in life, an experience that fuels his mission to spare today’s beginners those lost years. Along the way he dismantles the “mystique” that chess is only for clever people, explains how much richer the game becomes once you learn ideas rather than just moves, and reflects on patience, resilience, and learning to lose gracefully as lessons that carry straight over into life.
Leave a CommentMonth: July 2026
🎙️ Listen to this Podcast. In this warm and candid episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan sits down with her own family…
Leave a CommentIn this instructive episode of Remarkable World Commentary, the second July installment, and an edition of her recurring “Ask Advocate Donna” segment, host Donna J. Jodhan turns listener questions and stories into a hands-on lesson in everyday advocacy. She opens with a favorite quotation about speaking and listening so others love to do both, then runs a word game contrasting paired terms: passion (being animated and taking action) versus compassion (understanding, sympathy, and empathy, a quieter, silent agreement), and care (proactive) versus concern (reactive).
Leave a CommentIn this candid episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan returns to a long-standing pet peeve Aow accessible is online learning? And argues that while online learning has made real progress, there is still a lot more to do. She points beyond exams to registration forms, learning materials, and learning management systems that remain inaccessible to people who are blind or visually impaired or who have cognitive challenges. On online exams specifically, she highlights diagrams and images that go undescribed, screen readers that aren’t compatible with the testing software, and readers, scribes, or proctors sent in cold without understanding what they’re reading. She also flags the shortage of trainers and instructors who can teach blind and low-vision users how to combine a screen reader or ZoomText with online forms.
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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #100: Interview with Frank Smith, National Coordinator of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS)
In this milestone 100th episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan speaks with Frank Smith, the founding National Coordinator of the National Educational Association of Disabled Students, as he approaches retirement after a 40-year career. Frank traces NEADS from its beginnings, a Carleton journalism student who befriended disabled peers in Glengarry House residence, wrote a federal grant application, and helped convene the founding national conference at Ottawa’s Westin Hotel in July 1986, organized entirely by mail and telephone before the internet. He describes what post-secondary study was like for disabled students then: sprawling inaccessible campuses, books on tape that took far longer to get through, ASL interpreters instead of captioning, little recognition of learning disabilities or autism, and mental health supports he calls simply not good. He points to Jennison Asuncion, Anthony Tibbs and many others as proof that students with disabilities, given accessible education, go on to full careers.