CCB National Newsletter

October 2015

Announcements

++Upcoming Information to CCB Members: Please note that CCB members will be receiving some advocacy information by e-mail soon on library services and eye health and vision care. Watch your inbox for this important information.

++Get ready to vote!:

You probably already know about our upcoming federal election taking place in October. But are you prepared to cast your vote? Elections Canada has provided these key tips to ensure you’re ready:

• Make sure you’re registered.

• Go to to check, update or complete your voter registration.

• If your registration is up to date, you’ll get a voter information card soon after the election is called. It tells you when and where to vote.

• Registering in advance makes it easier and faster when you go to vote.

• Encourage others to register too!

• Check that you have the right ID.

• To vote, you’ll need to prove your identity and address.

• Check the list of accepted ID so you know what to bring when you go to vote.

• Learn about Elections Canada’s accessibility services.

• Check the Accessibility Policy and Service Offering

to find out about the tools and services available to make voting an accessible experience.

Accessible voting tools include the following:

Voting screens

The new voting screens are designed to allow more light to enter. The screens have no overhead cover, so you are able to see the ballot and instructions more clearly.

Magnifiers

If you would like to use a magnifier to help you vote, just ask the election worker at your polling place when you arrive.The magnifiers are lightweight, have an integrated light, and can make the ballot look four times bigger.

Tactile and Braille voting templates

Each polling place has a tactile and Braille voting template that you can use to mark your ballot.Your ballot fits into the template, which has Braille and embossed numbers beside each marking point. This lets you find the marking point that matches your choice of candidate.

Braille lists of candidates

On election day, each polling place will have a Braille list of candidates that you can use with the tactile and Braille voting template mentioned above.The Braille list reproduces the names of the candidates and their political affiliation in the same order as they appear on the ballot. The candidates'names have numbers that match the embossed and Braille numbers on the voting template.

Large-print lists of candidates

Each polling place has a large-print list of candidates you can take behind the voting screen to read. It looks exactly like the ballot, but it is 2.5 times bigger.The large-print list does not replace your ballot. Once you refer to the list, you will need to mark your ballot in the same way as usual.

If you need assistance at any time during the voting process, ask the election worker and let them know how they can help.

Want to learn more about this year’s election? Have questions about where or how to vote? Visit

++A Special Request from Barrier Free Canada: We would like to make an important appeal to our readers. From now until October 19, we are asking you to please help our cause by taking to social media.

We need as many of you as possible to start tweeting and retweeting. You can either make up your own tweets or retweet any tweet that you come across with the hashtag #canadiansdisabilitiesact. Or write to us at and we will be pleased to provide you with sample tweets.

Every voice and every tweet counts and it is only like this that we will convince our next Canadian Parliament to implement a Canadians Disabilities Act. Use Twitter and Facebook and let's share each other's tweets and posts!

++Results for the CCB Cribbage Tournament:

Please find the results below:

1st place - 2406 points Heather Hannett from Calgary

2nd place - 2353 points Brian McIvor from Calgary

3rd place - 2327 points Charles Clement from Edmonton

4th place - TIED 2323 points Ray Shanner from Regina + Terri Lee Skerry from Calgary

5th place - 2317 points Ron Teel from Calgary

Thanks to all the participants and volunteers.

++Congratulations!: We are extremely pleased to let the CCB community know that our National President, Louise Gillis, is the 2015 recipient of the Holly Award presented by the Halifax branch of the CNIB each year. The following is the text of the presentation to Louise at the CNIB Atlantic provinces AGM on September 22.

“In 2011, CNIB established the Holly Award as a tribute to the memory of Holly Bartlett, an extraordinary woman from Halifax who touched many people’s lives. From skydiving and horseback riding to swing dancing and rock climbing, Holly didn’t let her vision loss hold her back from living life to the fullest.

This award is presented to exceptional volunteers in Atlantic Canada who capture the spirit of Holly with their generosity, compassion and commitment in serving those who are blind or partially sighted.

The Holly Angel was created by renowned stained glass artist Sharon MacNamara. The angel was designed as a tribute to Holly, with CNIB colours – blue and green – and tactile features. Each angel is comprised of clear, DIE-CROW-ICK glass and is hand crafted from the first cut to the final finish.

Despite being diagnosed with polio at an early age and vision loss later in life, Louise has achieved great success and has helped many others along the way. She has volunteered for Polio Nova Scotia, CNIB, and CCB. In these capacities she has worked on many projects/committees and with individuals to improve the lives of Canadians living with disabilities. Improving eye care and prevention of vision loss are major areas of her volunteer work.

Louise is the National President of the Canadian Council of the Blind and since joining CCB, she’s impacted the lives of countless individuals with vision loss – assisting eye care experts as far as China and empowering individuals with vision loss to accomplish their goals.

Louise was also once a CNIB volunteer. She coordinated fellow volunteers in Cape Breton, helped as a peer mentor, visited clients in their homes to mark appliances, and advocated on behalf of the blind community.”

Congratulations Louise and thank you for all that you do!

Submitted by:

Pat Gates, Chair, CCB Access & Awareness NS Chapter

++World Sight Day, October 8, 2015: This September, the UN will finalize a new set of development goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that will direct international development work and funding for the next 15 years. The SDGs will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were adopted in 2000 and dominated international development for the last 15 years.

The MDGs were limited in scope and ended up not having many positive effects on the lives of persons with disabilities. Fortunately, the post-2015 process has already proven to be more inclusive, with a high level of civil society input, including with the International Disability Alliance, the International Disability and Development Consortium and the World Blind Union, resulting in several direct references to persons with disabilities.

We have worked hard to ensure that eye health is a part of measuring the success of the goals’ targets and indicators. Combating eye diseases will likely become more difficult over the next 15 years, as the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that eye disease will have doubled from 1990-2020. The burden of eye disease is highest in poorer countries, with 90% of all global cases of serious vision impairment occurring in the developing world.

People who are blind or have very low vision in poorer countries are far less likely to go to school (only 10% of them do), have gainful employment (90% are unemployed) and participate in society as a full and equal citizen. All of these factors lead many blind and low vision persons to live in poverty and social isolation.

We are looking to the SDGs, and the global development community as a whole, to live up to their promises and help end this vicious cycle of poverty and isolation. In order for the SDGS to be a success and lead to positive outcomes for blind and partially sighted persons, they must include projects to prevent blindness, since 80% of all vision impairment could have been prevented, as well as work to bring increased attention to the links between disability and poor eye health, and poverty and isolation.

The World Blind Union is asking for all concerned parties, especially those in government and international development organizations, to work hard to implement the SDGs in a way that captures the robust and inclusive spirit in which they were drafted, and to no longer leave persons with disabilities out of the global development agenda.

We are also calling on governments and development organizations implementing the SDGs to ensure that they will include projects on the prevention of poor eye health, awareness raising initiatives on disability and eye health, and services that offer a continuum of care (including essential technological tools, equipment, resources, rehabilitation and medical services) to address the unique needs of those who live with low vision and blindness.

++Accessible features on new Bank Note: The Bank of Canada unveiled and issued a commemorative bank note this month at Rideau Hall to mark the historic reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

This limited-issue bank note is a variation of the existing $20 note in the Polymer series. It has all the same security features, making it easy to check and difficult to counterfeit. The differences are in the visual elements of the large window.

The three key elements to help blind and partially-sighted Canadians recognize bank note denominations by touch (tactile feature), sight (largenumerals) or electronic signal (bank note reader) are identical on the commemorative $20 note as on all the other polymer notes.

++MEMBERSHIP DUES REMINDER

Please note that all membership packages were mailed out to each Chapter Contact at the end of August.

If you did not receive the membership renewal package for your chapter, please contact Camilla immediately at 1-877-304-0968 or .

Remember the Early Bird Draw deadline is Friday, October 30, 2015 and is a chance for two chapters to win back all the dues for their chapters.

Regardless of who wins the Early Bird Draw, ALL chapters who get their membership renewals in before Monday, December 7, 2015 will receive the rebate of $5.00 per person plus $1.00 per e-mail that CCB offers every year.

++WHITE CANE WEEK ORDER REMINDER

WCW Order Forms were included in the Membership Renewal Packages that were sent to each chapter’s contact person.

To avoid shipping delays PLEASE NOTE the deadline for submitting WCW orders is Friday, December 11, 2015so that orders can be assembled and shipped in plenty of time for WCW February 7 – 13, 2016.

Please plan carefully and place your entire order at one time to avoid confusion & the extra shipping costs incurred by sending multiple packages to one chapter.

You may also use thesame form to request up to $100.00 in WCW funding support of your chapter’s WCW events.

PLEASE SEND ONLY ONE ORDER PER CHAPTER

++White Cane Safety Day: The white cane is recognized across the world as the international symbol of blindness and mobility, and that is why the World Blind Union (WBU) has chosen to focus on the issue of silent cars and their effects on mobility for blind and low-vision persons for White Cane Safety Day on October 15, 2015.

Shared spaces are becoming increasingly common in our communities, where pedestrians, vehicles and cyclists use the same space for transit. This increased complexity can make mobility more difficult for persons who have low-vision and blindness, especially when combined with newer technologies that make vehicles quieter, and therefore less detectable. When traveling at speeds under 20 kilometers an hour, hybrid and electric vehicles are essentially silent and many blind and low-vision persons depend on vehicle noise to know when it is safe to cross roads. Silent cars also pose a significant risk for all pedestrians, sighted and non-sighted, as quiet cars are 40% more likely than audible cars to be involved in a collision with a pedestrian.

The WBU wholeheartedly supports new, cleaner technologies for vehicles, including hybrid and electric cars, which are better for the environment. However, the dangers posed by hybrid and electric vehicles are real and serious for blind and low-vision pedestrians all over the world. New technologies must be designed and manufactured in a way that takes blind and partially-sighted persons’ needs into account, as called for by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its principles of universal and inclusive design.

For the past several years, the UN has been working to address the hazards posed by quiet vehicles. The World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) and its subsidiary, the Working Party on Noise (GRB), as well as the Quiet Road Transport Vehicles Informal Working Group (QRTV), are the three UN bodies involved in the regulation process. The QRTV originally set-out to develop a global technical regulation for a mandatory Audible Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS). Unfortunately, this working group’s mandate has been narrowed and it is now moving towards a standard that would only apply in certain countries, not including countries such as the USA and China. We are disappointed by this move away from a global regulation.

The WBU fully supports a global standard for an AVAS that will: 1) ensure that an alert device is loud enough to provide adequate warning about the presence and movement of hybrid and electric vehicles; 2) prohibit a pause switch that would enable the driver to turn off the alert device whenever he or she finds the sound annoying; and 3) require that the quiet vehicle emit an alert sound while stationary, such as when stopped at a traffic light.

The WBU calls on all governments and regulators to support a global technical standard that reflects the QRTV’s original mandate. WBU members, and all other likeminded stakeholders, can contact their WP.29 members and encourage them to insist that our concerns be incorporated into any final international regulation. For more information on the WP.29 and its members, follow this link: /introduction.html. The World Blind Union (WBU) also has a Position Statement on this issue (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.), which highlights the need for an AVAS in order to keep blind and low-vision pedestrians, alongside all other pedestrians, safe and fully mobile in all cities and communities across the globe.

++In Memory…..

The Board of Directors and staff of CCB would like to express our deepest condolences to Sandra Poirier, National Board member from PEI, in the loss of her mother, Beatrice MacKinnn Poirier at age 95 on September 15, 2015.

In the News

++Blind photographer:I was declared legally blind 14 years ago, at the age of 40. I lost my driver's license and my social work position, for which I had earned a bachelor's and master's. It was my chosen profession, and I didn't give it up lightly. When it disappeared, so did some of my confidence and sense of identity. What was I to call myself if not a social worker?

I ended up becoming a photographer.The words "legally blind photographer" don't sound like they should exist together. Indeed, until recently I didn't think this path was available to me. I'd always loved taking pictures, ever since I was a little girl, snapping shots of my family and pets with the Kodak and Polaroid cameras my mother always had around.

But I was born with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive blinding disease that deteriorates the retinas over time. And with retinitis pigmentosa comes night blindness, which meant I couldn't see in a darkroom to use the chemicals and develop photos, nor could I read the settings on a camera to shoot manually — all major problems in the era before digital photography. So as a teenager I decided, regretfully, to put my love of photography in a box and leave it alone.

I didn't feel bitter about it. It was just another adjustment I had to make given the vision problem I had.

My condition didn't deter me from enjoying photography in my mind. I read about photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams, and daydreamed about the kind of pictures I would make if I could — not family snapshots with a disposable camera, but those on the fine art, creative side of photography. Maybe a mountain, or a snow-covered field, or an unusually shaped tree. Definitely landscapes, because I'd grown up with rural scenery all around me.