Category: Remarkable World Commentary

In this candid and unusually raw episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan hands the microphone to her friend, associate and longtime collaborator Aaron Di Blasi for what he calls a “reverse grilling”, a date-by-date walk through her two-year attempt to sit the CompTIA Network+ exam as a blind candidate. Beginning with the $7,500 Apex Program scholarship awarded in November 2024, they trace a scholarship that turned out to be 21 typo-riddled Word documents with no learning platform and no human support; a first exam abandoned in October 2025 when the reader said “I don’t know what to do here”; the articles Donna published and the scholarship Apex withdrew because of them, telling her “you’ve made us the enemy”; the CNIB stepping in twice; and a second exam in May 2026 where the diagrams were still undescribed, the reader and recorder were one person, and her printed results had to be read aloud to her by a friend in the parking lot.

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.

🎙️ Listen to this Podcast. In this warm and candid episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan sits down with her own family…

In 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).

In 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.

In this illuminating episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna Jodhan sits down with Gail Sinclair, a lawyer who recently retired after more than three decades with the Department of Justice, and who years earlier was lead counsel for the Government of Canada on the opposite side of Donna’s landmark accessibility case. Gail traces her path into law (a large, rule-bound family; a degree in both civil and common law, in both French and English) and her career representing the public interest on constitutional questions, from the same-sex marriage reference to electoral and democratic rights.

In this instructive episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan presents her recurring “Ask Advocate Donna” segment, opening with two reflective word-game pairings she invites listeners to ponder: defensive versus offensive, and sympathy versus empathy. She resists treating either as an either-or choice, arguing that a seasoned advocate must learn when each posture or response is appropriate rather than committing to one. She frames the whole episode with her guiding ethos, borrowed in spirit from a “let’s make it better than possible” sentiment, that advocacy means refusing to settle for merely acceptable outcomes.

In this impassioned episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan turns her attention to a question that recurs throughout the world of advocacy: who is being left behind? She identifies three groups bearing the brunt of rapid technological change, seniors who often cannot afford up-to-date devices or keep pace with shifting tools, persons with disabilities who are shut out by apps and websites built without accessibility features, and the technically challenged who never grew up with technology and now struggle to keep up. Donna argues that inaccessible apps and websites are not a neutral inconvenience but an active form of exclusion, and she presses companies to actually sit down with these communities to understand why they feel left out, reminding her audience that seniors in particular are bread-and-butter consumers too easily ignored.

In this forward-looking episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna welcomes back Dr. Alan Chase, founder of the EYE Retreat, a one-week intensive summer program now in its 19th year, hosted at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in North Carolina, for an update on what’s cooking for the 2026 cohort. Alan walks listeners through how a weekend gathering of about 15 students has grown into a packed week-and-a-half program serving roughly 40 students this summer with a waiting list, staffed entirely by volunteers and funded principally by the Lions Club and the Delta Gamma Foundation. He breaks down the camp’s two parallel tracks, a college track that takes students from choosing a school, picking a major, and learning self-advocacy through navigating course catalogs, accommodations, and campus resources, to a final personal-roadmap presentation; and an entrepreneurship track that walks students from generating a business idea, through fine-tuning, business-plan development, and a Shark-Tank-style investor pitch by the end of the week, alongside the dorm-suite living arrangement of four students sharing two rooms and one bathroom that doubles as a real-world classroom in communication, scheduling, and social problem-solving.

In this deeply nostalgic episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna welcomes Paul Gareau, retired Executive Director of the Montreal Association for the Blind (MAB) and architect of the 2006 MAB-Mackay merger that became today’s Lethbridge-Layton-Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, for a conversation tracing his thirty-year journey from Loyola sociology graduate, to University of Toronto Master of Social Work scholarship student, to the lone social worker for 1,800 students at a Sherbrooke high school, and on into the leadership rooms of one of Canada’s most beloved disability-services institutions. Paul walks listeners through residential life at the Penfield Reception Centre, his Concordia Diploma in Institutional Administration earned in night classes while running MAB full-time, and the remarkable breadth of services under his stewardship, from the low-vision clinic, talking-book library, and Gilman Residence to the Philip E. Layton School, the technical-aids boutique, the Employment Integration Program, the Braille production unit, and a service of more than 300 volunteers.