July 30 - London, ON

We connect with other people in so many different ways. Around eight or nine years ago, while taking a distance education course through Athabasca University I made a connection with Suzanne. We were both enrolled in a course which required a collaborative assignment.  Suzanne lived in London.  The other student in our group, Bev, was living in Italy, and I was at home in Alberta. The assignment called for research on universal design and exemplified the concept of distance education.

Initially I had decided to withhold the condition of my vision impairment.  I didn’t want to be treated any differently by fellow students. I wanted to be no more and no less than others in the class – a name and a course participant. I wanted to be evaluated only by what I could contribute to class discussions done on the Internet and by the quality of any assignments that needed to be completed. However, it was during the course of the collaborative assignment that I mentioned above, that I decided that I needed to come clean – at the very least to Bev and Suzanne. For example, I struggled with Power Point, diagrams, and illustrations when they weren’t accessible by the audible screen reading program on my computer. From my personal experience as a visually impaired distance education student, there was much that I could offer to our assignment. I began to feel the need not just to educate myself, but to further the understanding of other students and professors as I continued with my studies.

It was nearly three years following the Universal Design collaboration, that Bev, Suzanne and I had a chance to meet in person. Bev had moved back to Toronto and Lyle and I were coming to London to visit our daughter. It was great to meet the others face to face for the first time. Over the years, Suzanne and I have kept in touch and I was super pleased when she was able to join the White Cane Connections walk in London today.

Thanks to Athabasca University for facilitating this connection, to Cherry and Shannon from the London CNIB office for their support, and to the London Free Press for the media coverage.

Tomorrow we are headed to Niagara Falls and we’ll meet outside the Table Rock Restaurant which is across the road from the top of the falls.

The picture below shows Suzanne and myself on a bench in Victoria Park.