Melanie Moore, an AEBC member, was recently interviewed on CBC radio concerning parenting with a disability. You can click this link to listen to this excellent interview.

One of the main points I take away from the interview is that disabled parents are faced with the default assumption that they will be unfit parents. It is only after disabled parents prove that they are capable that they are permitted to be parents. Melanie was scrutinized in ways that most parents are not, and she was permitted to leave with her child only after proving herself capable; and all of this despite the fact that it was her third child.

Are you interested in trying a new sport and challenging yourself? If so, join a dragon boat team specifically for blind and partially sighted individuals for the 2012 Dragon Boating Season.

Dragon boating is a team paddling sport with roots from the ancient southern Chinese folk ritual of contending villagers held over the past 2000 years. A dragon boat is a long canoe that seats 20 people.

A video of a blind man piloting one of Google's self-driving cars has swept across the Internet over the last couple of days. In case you missed it, the video is available with audio description here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=cdgQpa1pUUE&annotation_id=annotation_979835&feature=iv&v=peDy2st2XpQ

On March 13, the legislative committee considering Bill C11 finished its clause-by-clause review of the bill. Some forty or so amendments were proposed altogether, the majority of which came from the opposition parties. Approximately half a dozen of the amendments were directly related to the ability of people with perceptual disabilities to access copyrighted works. All but one of these amendments—the one put forward by the Conservatives—were defeated by the Conservative members of the committee.

The Federal Liberals have started an online petition regarding Bill C11. The recommendation promoted by the petition matches one of the recommendations the AEBC made in its presentation to the committee considering Bill C11 on February 27.

Here is the link to the petition, which I found very easy to fill out: https://petition.liberal.ca/user-rights-trump-digital-locks/.

And here is the related recommendation from the AEBC presentation to the committee.

Recommendation 1: Technological Protection Measures

This recent condo.ca blog post describes an innovative challenge to university students in Ontario. The "Innovative Designs for Accessibility" (IDEA) is a contest organized by the Council of Ontario Universities and the Ontario Government and includes a cash prize for the winner. The challenge is to consult with industry, government, and the disability community to identify access barriers and to come up with creative, cost-effective, and practical solutions. The winner will be announced at an event at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference in May 2012.

What follows is a call for submissions to an exhibit that will be held on the University of Alberta campus. The photographers do not need to live in Edmonton to have their photos qualify for the exhibition. I encourage anyone that is interested to submit some photos.

In Focus: Blind Photographers Challenge Visual Expectations

In Focus is an exhibition of photographs taken by blind and partially sighted individuals. This exhibition will explore the built environment. The photographs will feature urban spaces, including interior or exterior human-made places, such as buildings, streets, parks, rooms, and objects.

Call for Submissions

We are seeking blind or partially sighted individuals to submit photographs to the In Focus exhibition. 

On November 29, 2010 the Federal Court of Canada released a landmark decision concerning the rights of Canadians with disabilities to access government websites. 

Justice Kelen declared that Donna Jodhan's inability to access certain government websites is representative of a system wide failure by government departments and agencies to make their websites accessible, and that the government's failure to monitor and ensure compliance with its own accessibility standards violates the equality guarantee in the Charter. He declared that the government has a constitutional obligation to bring itself into compliance with the Charter within a "reasonable time period, such as 15 months."  If the government is not complying, Justice Kelen indicated Ms.