Here's to my friends with disabilities

I spent some time this week being a reporter for a blind curling championship for our accessible tv cahnnel here in Canada.
Find out more at
http://www.ami.ca/
Spent lots of time with lots of strong and positive people who have disabilities.  Some other reporters who are blind, curlers who are blind.  And tomorrow, am going to the university radio station here to work on using the equipment and recording with a friend who is partially sighted and another one who is blind, uses a wheelchair, and has limited use of her hands.  We are not super human. We are not sub-human.  We are living our lives to the fullest.  We are showing the world that we are here, living full and active lives, demanding equal access to all aspects of life, figuring things out with skill and humour.  Here's to that!  Together we can make the world a more accessible place for us all!

Great things about being blind. Using my ipod right out of the box.

It might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Since I was very small, I would go into bookstores and wish I could buy books like everyone else. Up until very recently I would be sad in bookstores and libraries. It was like books were calling out to me but I couldn't read them. I had to wait for them to be put in alternative format. I had to wait for someone to read to me. And even when people read to me, they read as much or as little as they wanted. Not as much or as little as I wanted. The power was not in my hands and I hungered for information. I longed to just walk in and buy a book. Last weekend, I bought an ipod touch. Apple makes the ipod touch, ipad, and iphone accessible right out of the box with voiceover. Voiceover reads the touch screen elements. I went to ibooks and downloaded free folktales there. Then, I bought the books I loved as a kid. The lord of the rings and the hobbit. Of course, I loved all books but loved them so much and couldn't have my own copies. And so, there they were on my ipod and I could read them. I just need to be able to afford a braille display to pair with it and I can read them in braille. Yesterday a friend helped me with some things about the ipod when I was stuck. She has an ipad. She is sighted but we could compare aps, notes, and talk about this on an equal footing. Access technology up until now was something you had to buy extra, you had to add on and hope a product worked.
I hope this is just the beginning of accessibility for me right out of the box. I deserve it.