AccessTALK with Trish

My guest this week is Brendon D. Pooran. Brendon is the founding lawyer at PooranLaw Professional Corporation.  He is involved in all areas of the firm’s practice and regularly provides advice to individuals, families, organizations and government in the areas of: disability & human rights law; wills & estates planning; employment law, government benefits and human rights for people with disabilities; and corporate law for not-for-profit and charitable organizations.  In addition to being a lawyer, Brendon teaches Critical Disability Law at York University, is the Past-President of Community Living York South and is a founding director of PLAN Toronto.  He is also a lawyer member on the Ontario Consent and Capacity Board. PooranLaw was founded as a resource for individuals with disabilities, their families and the community organizations that support them. PooranLaw practice members are dedicated to working with individuals with disabilities and their families to ensure their social inclusion, self-actualization and long-term security. They specialize in maximizing access to financial supports such as the Ontario Disability Program (ODSP), Passport and other forms of Individualized Funding, the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) and various benefits through the income tax system.  They also facilitate innovative housing solutions and work with families to establish trusts and estate plans that ensure continued financial stability. PooranLaw firm members have received international recognition as authorities on disability issues and have spoken at hundreds of conferences and seminars on various matters relevant to the community.

My guest this week is Amy Coupal. Joining Curriculum Services Canada (CSC) in 2006, Amy soon became the CEO of Learnography and its charitable affiliate, My Class Needs Foundation, in 2009. Amy’s career has been focused on learning and development across multiple sectors and disciplines. She is passionate about creating meaningful learning opportunities that positively impact lives and communities. Prior to Learnography, she oversaw the development of multiple teacher training programs (both online and face-to-face) at the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario (LDAO). As a life-long champion of accessibility, Amy is proud of the many accessibility related learning programs at Learnography, including the free online training on the AODA called AccessForward. Her organization champions both accessible training in all of their work and has spearheaded a number of initiatives on accessibility, inclusion and diversity. Amy applies her broad education background, which includes teaching in Canada and Japan, to all national and international initiatives she oversees.  She holds a Masters of Education in Workplace and Adult Learning.

Douglas Tardif has enjoyed a long successful career as a businessman, performer, fund raiser, and as an on-line provider of self-employment expertise to the non-profit sector. His company has provided Project Management and Information Technology Consulting expertise in several sectors including Canada’s leading Trust Companies and the Southam Newspaper Group. In 1991, Doug accepted a two year consulting assignment with the Government of the Cayman Islands. His work with Immigration, Tourism, Customs, Health Services, and Cayman Airways was rewarded with contract renewals for the next ten years. Concurrent with these activities, he also worked undercover, investigating money laundering, fraud and government corruption. In late 1998, Doug was invited to join The United Nations as the International Y2K Consultant. In this capacity, he provided seminars on contingency planning and infrastructure evaluation in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Doug has appeared in a number of films, television commercials and stage productions. He has worked as a volunteer with The Heart and Stroke Foundation, Mother Theresa Orphanages, and Scouts Canada. He is the founder of The World’s Worst Oil Paintings Auction and Exhibition Inc., an outrageous fund-raising initiative that has so far generated close to a million dollars for the Canadian Paraplegic Association. In recent years, Doug has been bringing his employment and self-employment expertise to the non-profit sector as a Team Leader with Make A Change Canada. As a Business Coach working on the Business Abilities program, you’ve got to be one of the most entrepreneurial people I’ve ever met.

My guest today is Janice McGurran. Janice has both private and public sector experience in the government and hydro sectors and in Human Resources at an Ontario provincial operational enterprise. She’s worked in the charitable sector as well as teaching part-time for York University/Seneca College in the Human Resources and Fire Services program. Her background also includes diverse committee experience. (WSIB, local hospital Board, PAO, IAPA and AODA) Janice has been responsible for a decrease in human rights complaints, conducting investigations and preparing reports and recommendations.  The cases she’s handled have included sensitive employee relations and human rights issues and have demonstrated the use of conflict resolution & mediation skills at bargaining and grievance sessions. Having designed and implemented successful human rights / antibullying programs, Janice has delivered numerous leadership training sessions. As well, she has significant experience dealing with modified work and accommodation issues, and hiring staff to work with vulnerable clients. She has extensive knowledge of the Human Resources function across complex groups and a passion for role modeling leadership and productivity and developing talent. Janice’s interests include not surprisingly, human rights issues, family of course, some volunteer work caring for rescue animals and most importantly, hockey - she still plays mini sticks with her grandson.

My guest today is Tim Scannell, of Warwickshire, England. Tim is the “Social Media Ambassador” for an award-winning accessibility app called “Signly”. As if by magic, Signly displays pre-recorded sign language videos on a user’s cell phone, enabling better access to written content for deaf or hard of hearing sign language users. Tim himself was born profoundly deaf because of his mother contracting German measles during her pregnancy.  He’s passionate about Building his business blog, www.CommAccess.net, developed for people who are d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing,Researching and learning about new technology that aids communication,All things football including working on and off as a football scout, andSeeing deaf people being treated with equality, particularly in the work place.  Since the age of fourteen, Tim has enjoyed visiting other countries.  After graduating from university, he continued to travel; he has a few stories to tell including saving a drowning girl in California and escaping the clutches of a kidnapper between Israel and Jordan! Tim’s role with Signly includes demonstrating the app to various clients and companies; keeping up to date with social inclusion and accessibility issues - which included attending the European Union Social Innovators Competition; promoting the app via social media and presenting at various conferences and events. Tim is clearly passionate about seeing Signly used to improve the lives of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.  His hobbies include Sky-diving, playing some sports and networking with people.

My guest this week, Joe Dale, is the Executive Director of the Ontario Disability Employment Network’s Centre for Excellence in Employment Services for People with a Disability.  The Centre for Excellence focuses on engaging and educating businesses about the benefits of hiring people with a disability and on ensuring Ontario has a strong and effective employment service delivery network. Joe is also the founder of the Rotary at Work initiative, a program focused on educating businesses about the benefits of including people with disabilities in their workforce. As a member of Former Lieutenant Governor David C. Onley’s Accessibility team, he participates on several provincial consultation teams related to policy creation and focus on disability matters. These include the Partnership Council on Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities and the Working Group on creating a Province-wide Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities. He is an internationally renowned speaker, speaking to business, governments and not-for-profits on the issue of strategic engagement of people with disabilities in the workforce.

My guest this week was Sonny Brar, who comes with over 14 years of Retail, Human Resources, Health, Safety, Energy and Environment experience. He is currently the Vice President of Member Programs and Services at Retail Council of Canada and is an honours graduate of Criminology, Justice and Public Safety from Manitoba. Along with other functions, Sonny leads and supports RCC’s HR, Health, Safety, Energy, AODA Compliance, Accessibility and Member Programs, as well as supporting multiple RCC committees, and lastly sits on the Workplace Safety and Prevention Services H&S Steering Committee and Canada’s Retail Health & Safety Committee. Sonny has also had great successes in his tenure and has been a recipient of 3 Presidential Excellence awards with Maple Leaf Foods and Toys“R”Us along with several H&S successes with his tenure at Sobeys and Ikea. Listen in as Sonny shares his vision of accessible retail for the benefit of all shoppers.

My guest this week is Debra Ruh, CEO of Ruh Global Communications, barrier-slayer of epic proportions and global Disability Inclusion Strategist. When told by 'experts' that her daughter Sara, who was born with Down's syndrome, would be lucky to push shopping carts at the local grocery store, Debra refused to accept this. When she told friends and family that she was going to start a for-profit that would help companies see the worth and potential in hiring disabled employees, she was met with skepticism. Debra's unshakable faith in the power of human potential and her love for her daughter led her to create TecAccess, which was an information & communications technology (ICT) accessibility firm, and most employees were technologists with disabilities. By 2011, Debra had built TecAccess into a multi-million-dollar firm, but realized that her mission was not yet complete. Convinced that "the real disability is being unable to see human potential", she went on to create Ruh Global Communications. With Ruh Global, Debra focuses on global disability inclusion, digital marketing, employability, ICT accessibility, human rights, social media marketing and implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She consults with Fortune 100 companies and nations. Including Kenya, Oman, Egypt and the Bahamas. Debra is a Global Keynote Speaker and was honored to be invited to address the United Nations General Assembly in May of 2016. Co-Founder of AXSChat (www.AXSChat.com) a twitter chat about accessibility and disability inclusion, Debra is a  recognized global influencer on social media with over 300,000+ followers on all mediums. Her global handle is @debraruh. 

My guest this week will be Warren Rupnarain, the Accessibility and Diversity Coordinator for the City of Vaughan. Leading the City’s efforts to implement accessible services and programs that support a barrier-free community, Warren provides strategic and policy advice to City departments implementing and complying with provincially mandated accessibility standards. In addition, he develops and implements workplace diversity-related strategies, programs and services to engage and support the organization’s diverse communities and stakeholders. Warren also provides support to the Vaughan Accessibility Advisory Committee and provides community outreach and liaison activities. Prior to his work for the City of Vaughan, Warren was the Accessibility Coordinator for the City of Markham, where he coordinated the City`s efforts in meeting all legislative requirements to implement best practices that ensured equity and inclusivity of people with disabilities. And before Markham, Warren was the Government Relations Advocate at March of Dimes Canada. While in this role, he appeared on Canada AM, CBC Radio, City TV, Toronto Star and various other media to raise awareness of disability and accessibility issues. He was also the lead advocate and host of “Warrens World.” During this project, he promoted accessibility and interviewed politicians to obtain opinions and support on the creation of a “Canadians with Disabilities Act.”

Meet Glenda Watson Hyatt, author, motivational speaker and a badass agitator. For Glenda, living with cerebral palsy has not meant a boring and unfulfilled life. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. She embraces the zest of life and goes for it with a “can do” attitude. An attitude that she demonstrates in her autobiography "I’ll Do It Myself" and, in her more recent book, "Emerging from the Cocoon of Silence: My Journey from Non-Verbal to Motivational Speaker". Both books are on Amazon. As a web accessibility consultant, she worked with governments, transit authorities and non-profit organizations to improve accessibility of their websites for people with disabilities; she had built a solid reputation for herself. However, even though there is still much left to do in the field, after fourteen years, she felt so burnt out, that if she had to explain the need for text descriptions of images one more time, she would surely stab her eyes out with a sharp, long pencil! Ziplining across a city block in downtown Vancouver – and surviving – gave her permission to switch her career direction and to follow her dream to become a motivational speaker, a most unlikely career path given her significant speech impairment. Using an iPad text-to-speech app to deliver her signature talk “Finding Your True Dream, The North Star for Your Life”, she motivates audiences to identify their true dream and to take action on following their personal guiding star. Glenda is also quickly becoming a strong, clear and passionate voice for Canadians with speech and language disabilities – a community that is typically silenced, overlooked and ignored, particularly when the conversation focuses on advocacy, accessibility and legislation. Listen in as Glenda shares with us her favorite, two-word response whenever barriers are at hand…

My guest this week will be Susan Picarello, Assistant Deputy Minister of the Ontario Public Service Accessibility and Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities. As such, she is leading the implementation of Access Talent: Ontario Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities as well as accessibility initiatives throughout the Ontario Public Service or OPS. During her over 24 years with the OPS, ADM Picarello has held various key senior level positions in legislative, policy and program development and operations including Cabinet Health and Education Policy.  Since 2010 Susan was the Director of the Assistive Device Program (or ADP) at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, where she led a comprehensive transformation of the Program, working with both the business and disability sectors to improve service quality while ensuring value for money for the government. Susan also has experience in the mental health field. From 2012 to 2014, concurrent with her ADP responsibilities, Susan was Director of the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Toronto. Join us and hear ADM Picarello share how Ontario plans to grow a stronger economy, and a diverse culture of acceptance by breaking down barriers to employment for people with disabilities.

My guest this week will be Supervisor, Accessibility Planning for the City of Mississauga, Diana Simpson. Diana started her career with the City of Mississauga over 21 years ago, coming from the health care sector where she worked as a Recreation Therapist for 12 years.  At the City of Mississauga, Diana was initially hired as the Recreation Analyst, Seniors – overseeing city-wide recreation services for older adults, including the Mississauga 55+ Senior Games. During this time she worked with the ‘Sauga Stroke Breakers Program (a day program for adults who had a stroke) and developed the Next Step to Active Living Program (another day program for adults with a physical disability). In 2003, Diana joined Facilities & Property Management and developed the City’s first Accessibility Plan and the Accessibility Advisory Committee (AAC).  Since then, Diana has completed 14 annual Accessibility Plans in her role as Accessibility Coordinator and most recently as Supervisor, Accessibility Planning. She’s had many notable accomplishments over the past 21 years, including the development of the Facility Accessibility Design Standards and 8 Accessibility Events, including the Abilities Awards Event held in 2014. Through her work in Facilities & Property Management, Diana has been instrumental in providing her accessibility lens on the city’s projects to ensure that the design of their facilities are considering all members of the community including those with disabilities. This attention to detail has resulted in the City being recognized for numerous accessibility awards, including most recently the Rick Hansen Foundation (RHF) - Accessible Cities Award: 2017 Circle of Excellence Inductee for Mississauga Celebration Square. Join us and hear how the City of Mississauga recently won a Rick Hansen Foundation Accessible Cities Circle of Excellence Award.

Inclusive employer, Mark Wafer owns seven Tim Hortons in Toronto. Over the last 22 years Mark and his wife Valarie have hired over 150 people with disabilities to fill meaningful and competitively-paid positions in all areas of the operation, from entry-level to logistics, production and management. They currently employ 46 people with disabilities in a workforce of 250. Mark has proven that there is a clear business case for inclusive employment. Real jobs for real pay. Mark is a co-founder of Canadian Business SenseAbility, Canada’s national strategy on disability employment. He was a member of the Federal Government’s panel on marketplace opportunities for people with disabilities, and he’s an advisor to many governments, both in Canada and internationally. A recipient of Canada’s Meritorious Service Cross as well as the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship, Mark was inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2014. Mark is also a motorsports enthusiast, race car driver and former amateur sports car champion. Listen in and hear how Mark has made history in the food service industry while he’s cultivated a company culture that is inclusive of all abilities.

Shirley Edwards, experienced caregiver, daughter and mother, has crossed countless barriers and challenged the system with confidence and success. Her story is one of hope and belief. A hope to make things right for her loved ones and a deep belief in herself.Shirley Edwards, Family Care Leader, patient advocate, system navigation, care planning for caregivers Professionally, Shirley provides training in system navigation and care planning for caregivers and health care providers. Shirley has an adult son with disabilities and hydrocephalus and is also responsible for her mother through the powers of attorney for property and personal care. Shirley has: developed Participating Families, a services information program in the disability fieldtook on her mother’s care while she started a business as a Coach to help people with health challengescreated a life care plan using a team approach for her mother’s carecreated workbook to guide others in creating care plans with and for their own loved ones Shirley is a boater in Georgian Bay. Her boat is called Balancing Act. She is also a dog lover with the best dog on the planet – a border collie swiss mountain dog cross named Lucky. And she has a husband with a very memorable name – Don Cherry. He claims to be the original, but does not work in hockey. :-)

Natasha Bridgmohan is a Mortgage Broker with Mortgage Intelligence and primary caregiver for her 93-year old grandfather. With a vision to transform the financial services sector, she and her team of expert mortgage brokers are making a significant impact – one client, one mortgage, at a time – making mortgages accessible to people of all abilities. Natasha strongly believes that this can be achieved through customer education, tailor-made mortgage solutions and superior customer service. She inspires her team to consistently meet and exceed each client’s mortgage goals and realize their home and property ownership dreams. That’s the level of customer service that she’d like to see in the home health care industry. Looking after her grandfather and grandmother, who passed away at 80, has inspired her to stand up and speak out. And speak out she does. Natasha regularly delivers educational talks on caregiving and her experience with her grandparents, the accessibility of financial assistance, and home safety awareness.

Lloyd Pollock, a trail-blazer, brought accessible transportation to Toronto 26 years ago now. He just happens to be a man living with post polio syndrome. With 10 years of experience managing a taxi company, and training drivers for the school board on how to handle students using wheelchairs, Lloyd was well acquainted with transporting people with special needs. It was a natural fit when he was approached by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation in ’87 about developing a wheelchair accessible taxi service. He left his job in management to drive taxi as due diligence while he researched a plan to meet the Ministry’s needs. Dignity Transportation put it’s first wheelchair accessible taxi on the road in 1991. Since then, Dignity has grown a fleet of accessible cabs and Lloyd has had the privilege of transporting of all people, Stephen Hawking. He’s also had the opportunity to showcase Dignity’s fleet to international audiences. As an extension of his passion for accessible transportation, Lloyd served on the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (or AODA) Accessible Transportation Standards Development Committee. Wow, that was a mouthful; but so was the job – all in all 2 years to be precise. Join us as Lloyd shares the accessibility struggles and successes he’s had through-out his journey to becoming the Father of Accessible Transportation in South Central Ontario.

Armed with a Bachelor of Commerce, Martin found his first niche and passion selling real estate in South Africa. He became one of Johannesburg’s top 5 real estate brokers employing 40 real estate agents for over a quarter of a century. Then in 1999, not knowing a single person, Martin immigrated to Toronto with his family. He was the first licensee to sign up with the factor known as Liquid Capital and sold his very successful business to his licensors in 2005. From there, Martin built Money on Tap Inc, acting as a professional Finance Resource Consultant.  He represents 10 different forms of business and personal finance such as Factoring of Accounts Receivable, Purchase Order Funding, Merchant Cash Advances, Small Business Loans, and personal secured and unsecured loans. Since January 2014 Martin has been back in his favourite activity – using a team of professionals to enable Low Down Payment and bruised credit prospects to buy Houses, Town Houses and Condos through his newest business - Home to Own or (H2O) for short. Martin is a family man with 5 children and many grandchildren.  He is an avid golfer, reads, fishes, flies kites, travels extensively, swims every week and is deeply religious. His youngest, Miri, although healthy, has Downs Syndrome.  She is quite bright and Martin admits that he seldom beats her at games. Being the exceptional parent advocate that he is, Martin got Miri a job at the Kosher Sobeys in Thornhill so she can walk to work from her mother’s home, 2 blocks away.  She occasionally calls Martin for a lift to work when needed, very apologetically.  Miri also attends DANI (Developing And Nurturing Independence) a program for adults with developmental disabilities.

Angela Browne is born and educated in Ontario with post-secondary studies in business, sociology and law.Her professional experience includes teaching and course coordination at Brock University in criminology/corrections and serving as Executive Director of a mental health advocacy agency in the 90’s,  She went on to a variety of policy and project-based contracts for various provincial government ministries, and eventually moved into federal policy work by the late 1990’s. Angela also started her legal advocacy practice in the 1990’s and became licensed as a Paralegal in 2007,  She continues to participate in a variety of community agency programs, such as providing training for a job coaching program on labour and human rights law.Having been on the AODA Standards Development Committee for Employment, Angela clearly has a passion for employment rights and inclusive practices.  Currently operating a full-service paralegal firm focusing on administrative, employment, human rights and disability law, she can be found at LegalAdvocacy.ca