Starting an Internet Radio Station by and for People living with Blindness
January 27, 2014
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Melanie Taddeo, at the age of 21, suffered a massive stroke that left her completely paralyzed on her left side and legally blind. She founded Connect4Life, www.connect4life.ca, to provide programs that promote independence for people with disabilities. Jerry Ford who grew up in a small full-of-promise city in Ontario. At the age of 28 his storybook life was severely affected by the onset of multiple sclerosis. They talk about their lives, careers, their challenges and their work. They explain the status of Connect4Life, how it raises the funds it needs, how it will set up Voices4Ability Radio, www.voices4ability.com, and what services it will provide for people living with blindness. They discuss building support, obtaining the necessary technology, getting publicity, and achieving financial sustainability for it. They explain how far along they are at the end of January 2014, and where they intend to be at the end of January 2015, and say who will benefit from these achievements.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
