Category: By Donna Jodhan

Here Donna Jodhan welcomes the newest members of Air Canada’s Accessibility Advisory Committee, including newly appointed Chair Meghan Hines, Vice Chair Robert Cassius de Linval, and incoming members Ben Almond, Melanie Heroux, Yat Li, and Jim Mann, LL.D., and reflects on the three words spoken by Air Canada’s Director of Customer Accessibility, Kerianne Wilson: that everyone deserves to travel with dignity, independence, and choice. These are not buzzwords, Donna writes. They are the very words her community has been speaking, sometimes shouting, for decades, and they now carry the weight of a public commitment from a national airline.

Here, Donna J. Jodhan shares the story of a woman who did everything right and still found herself stopped by a barrier she could not control. After months of determined study, adapting inaccessible materials, and pushing forward with courage and discipline, Donna arrived for her Network+ exam ready to succeed. But instead of being given a fair chance, she was met with an exam experience that failed to account for her blindness in the way it should have. Her first attempt was not lost because of lack of preparation or commitment. It was lost because accessibility broke down at the very moment she needed it most.

Here, Donna J. Jodhan continues her account of receiving a $7,500 USD Apex Program cybersecurity scholarship, only to find herself given a stack of Word documents, no learning platform, and no human support, before running headlong into a new barrier when she tried to sit for the CompTIA Network+ exam at a Pearson VUE testing center in Canada. Despite having an accommodation letter, she was unable to proceed because the exam’s required diagrams were not provided with usable, verified descriptions, leaving the proctor unsure how to help. After Donna publicly documented the experience, she describes Apex shifting from support to pressure and intimidation, asking her to “pause distribution” of her article, framing her honesty as making them an “enemy,” and ultimately escalating the conflict rather than addressing accessibility.

Here, Donna J. Jodhan continues her account of trying to earn the CompTIA Network+ certification as a blind woman in Canada through the Apex Program and Pearson VUE. She recaps that a $7,500 USD “scholarship” from Apex turned out to be roughly 21 outdated Word documents, no LMS, and no meaningful human support, which she and her sighted business partner were forced to work around on their own. After a year of study and approved accommodations from Pearson, she still could not take the exam on October 1, 2025 because key questions relied on diagrams with no validated alt text for the reader to convey, prompting her to leave and publish Part 1 of her story. In this follow-up, she describes how Apex’s response focused on brand damage and asking her to “pause” her article rather than solving the underlying access problem, how she refused to alter a truthful published account, and how she experienced their behavior as bullying, gaslighting, and psychological pressure.

Here, Donna Jodhan recounts receiving a full $7,500 scholarship to the Apex Program—marketed as an accessible, 12-week path to CompTIA Network+ and Security+—and her early optimism turning to frustration. The login for course materials was inaccessible to her screen reader and, despite assurances, Apex appeared to lack a usable LMS; she ultimately received Word docs that were dated and error-filled, with no guidance on nonvisual study strategies. With help from her sighted colleague Aaron Di Blasi, she built AI-generated “Flash Tests” to master all 21 chapters, effectively creating the accessibility and pedagogy she expected Apex to provide.

Here, Donna Jodhan traces how Canada went from world-first talking ATMs to web journeys that still fail blind and low-vision customers where it matters most: sending and accepting e-Transfers. After more than a year of unusable e-Transfers at Canada’s top bank—and a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission—she shows how policy promises, alternate formats, and even branch innovations like BlindSquare beacons and ASL video interpretation can’t compensate for broken digital flows. Drawing on March 2025 research, she explains that automated scans only catch part of the problem; banks must test real tasks with real assistive-tech users and fix the steps that block independence and privacy.

Here Donna Jodhan announces a full transformation of her official website, a butterfly taking flight, built on the promise she made in 2012 to lead with accessibility. Partnering again with Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., under Aaron Di Blasi, PMP, she unveils a mobile-first, SEO-smart, accessibility-first redesign that turns mission into mechanism: faster paths to advocacy wins and legal resources, a consolidated hub for her podcasts (Remarkable World Commentary and the ‘Ask Donna’ series), and a forthcoming Projects section that will document decades of work, from her 2012 Charter victory and role in the 2019 Accessible Canada Act to recognitions such as the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Award.