Access Information News, 1284 SOM Center Road, PMB 194, Mayfield Heights, OH (2026)

09/07/2026

🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #105: Interview with Stephen Theberge, Science-Fiction Author and Accessibility Tester | By Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-op
https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-08-18-2026/

In this warm, unhurried episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA talks with Stephen Theberge, a totally blind writer, software builder, and former ADA compliance tester from Attleboro, Massachusetts, about a life spent at the front edge of access technology. He traces the arc from 14 years as a residential student at the Perkins School for the Blind, through a Rhode Island College double major in computer science and English literature that began as an act of stubborn defiance after an advisor told him to switch, to running his own screen-reader business from the late 1980s until the big companies and the shift to graphical interfaces made a one-man operation impossible. Along the way he remembers punch cards and a dispatcher, a Texas Instrument computer that looked like a breadbox, the Covox Speech Thing wired to his own screen reader, and a 1992 WJAR television spot he still keeps.

The second half turns personal and practical. He describes going to the Carroll Center for the Blind in 2014 while still in denial about his vision, learning JAWS and cutting an hour of email down to five minutes, then returning after losing the rest of his sight in 2019, this time calmer, and finally learning Braille, which COVID's remote schedule gave him the time to do properly. He explains what ADA compliance testing on the MBTA actually looked like: paired with a sighted observer, riding assigned routes, checking stop announcements and ramp deployment against a checklist, and learning that the job is far more gray than black and white. He confirms he stopped that work around 2022. The conversation closes on what he'd tell someone frightened of that transition, surrender the illusion of control, stop trying to be perfect, slow down, and an open invitation to come back and talk about his four novels.

09/07/2026

🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #106: Interview with Steve Barclay, Founder and President, Canadian Assistive Technology, and Co-Host, AT Banter Podcast | By Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-op
https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-08-19-2026/

In this candid and unexpectedly personal episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA sits down with Steve Barclay, founder of Canadian Assistive Technology and co-host of the AT Banter Podcast, for a career-length walk through Canadian assistive technology. Steve begins in November 1990 as Aroga Technologies' very first employee, a bench technician repairing 40-pound CRT video magnifiers, Optacons, VersaBrailles and Prentke Romich Minspeak devices, and traces his climb to VP of Sales and Marketing and eventually part owner and chief operating officer. He then tells, in unsparing detail, how that 28-year run ended: his majority partner Grove Bennett diverted company money into a multi-level marketing scheme selling "quantum infused holograms," ran Aroga into the ground, left behind an unpaid $300,000 tax bill, fled to Australia, and left Steve facing a TD Bank fraud charge and a consumer proposal before he rebuilt from his townhouse basement on his wife's capital.

The second half turns to what he built instead. Steve explains the deliberately silly culture at Canadian Assistive Technology, the nicknames, the bulldog, the cowbells, as a working tool for meeting newly diagnosed clients who are fragile and emotional, and describes how AT Banter grew from a lunchroom idea he personally opposed into a show approaching 460 episodes that recently moved to biweekly because of open host burnout. He closes on where the business is heading: regional representatives in Saskatchewan and Ontario, a wish for French-language support, and a pivot toward senior-oriented safety technology as CCTVs and voice recognition go mainstream. His parting advice is not to go into partnership with someone holding dual citizenship, and not to get involved in a land war in Asia.

09/07/2026

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Tom Babinszki, Owner, Even Grounds
https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-20-2026/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with Tom Babinszki, owner of Even Grounds and a travel and tourism accessibility consultant, whom he first met across an exhibit table at a Kennedy Center LEAD Conference, where, as Kirk tells it, "what to my wondering hands should appear" was a 3D model of the White House, pillars and porticos and all. Babinszki was born completely blind in 1970s Hungary, where a close family member advised his parents not to take him out on the street because it would be embarrassing, and suggested that one day he might watch the geese at the end of the village. His parents decided instead that their son would have exactly the education everyone else had. A scholarship year at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia followed, then Trinity College in Hartford, then George Mason, three years directing the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Hadley School for the Blind, and some twenty-five years in digital accessibility, including teaching thousands of people at IBM.

Even Grounds grew out of a failure. A lifelong traveler, "my favorite smell is jet fuel," and a coin collector who bought building replicas in museum gift shops just to understand where he was standing, Babinszki hired a designer and a 3D printing company and produced models of Washington landmarks, only to find his blind friends admired them and had no wish to own fifty large buildings. Museums and schools did. The company he founded in 2023 now pairs holistic accessibility consulting with tactile 3D work for the Toledo Zoo, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera, a Kenyan school for the blind through Clovernook, and a Braille map from the 1800s remade so it could finally be touched. One small tactile map of a public restroom drew thirteen hundred LinkedIn likes against his usual fifty. His advice to listeners is the whole argument in four words: don't ever accept that something is not accessible.

09/07/2026

Call Luna. Learn Anything: Meet Derek Fine and Luna AI, Now Sponsoring Access Information News | By Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://accessinformationnews.com/meet-derek-fine-and-luna-ai/

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher for the Access Information News weekly newsletter, introduces Luna AI, the publication's newest Sponsor, and the person who built it. Luna AI is an AI tutor you reach by making an ordinary telephone call. There is no app to download, no account to create before you can hear anything, no smartphone requirement, and no screen anywhere in the process. You dial the number, or reach the same service on WhatsApp, and a tutor answers: it explains a concept out loud, asks you about it, listens to your answer in your own words, and tells you when you have it wrong. Load your own lecture notes, transcripts, PDFs or a Quizlet set into a Study Library first, and the session comes out of your material rather than out of whatever an AI happens to know. Calling is free, there is no paywall, and every caller has access to the full product, with a paid Luna AI Pro tier planned for 2027.

Di Blasi also introduces the founder, Derek Fine, a partnerships and affiliate marketer of roughly seven years at The Travel Corporation who began building Luna AI on the side in January 2026, and he is candid about what that means. The article says plainly that Luna AI is eight months old, is currently one person, and carries no published accessibility audit and no documented testing with JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver or TalkBack. It positions the product as one more way in rather than a replacement for the braille and keyboard workflows that remain the serious tools for serious study, and it notes that a fluent screen reader user reads far faster than any voice can speak. It is an introduction written the way Di Blasi says sponsorship works at Access Information News: Sponsors provide much needed support in exchange for verified, measurable reach, but they cannot buy editorial judgement.

09/07/2026

The Doors Are Open: How to Join the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion | By Dr. Kirk Adams, Publisher | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://drkirkadams.com/how-to-join-the-ccsdi/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams announces that the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion went live on September 1, 2026, opened not with a webinar or a panel but with an "Ask Us Anything" hour of questions, frustrations, ideas and lived experience. He explains what the Coalition actually is: a way for members to move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power, built on four words, Connect, Learn, Act, Together. He is direct about who it is for, which is everybody, and equally direct that disability inclusion and accessibility are not a side room in it but a dedicated space by design. Inside, he describes three things above all others: BELONG, the peer circles where saying "I am overwhelmed" is met with practical help rather than judgment; CLARITY, a trusted translation layer of plain-language briefings and expert-guided sessions; and POWER, the shared tools, cross-sector strategy and coalition-backed influence that turn isolated effort into coordinated action. In practice that means Ask the Experts office hours, a Member Lounge and Directory, a growing Resource Library, a Rapid Response Hub for the moments that will not wait, legislative and legal updates, podcasts featuring DEIAB voices, and a shared calendar of events worth your time.

He then makes the ask, and it is not a request to stand on the sidelines and cheer. Founding Membership, he writes, is not early access but co-authorship: Founding Members help design the membership tiers, the codes of conduct, the governance and the very DNA of what this becomes, they carry the Founding Member designation permanently, and their founding rate never increases while their membership stays active. He gives the numbers plainly, with no small print. Founding Membership is $25.99 per month or $239.88 per year, which works out to $19.99 a month, and there is an honor-system rate for students and people who are unemployed at $15.99 per month or $119.88 per year, $9.99 a month, with no application, no paperwork and no requirement to prove that you belong. That window closes on December 31, 2026, after which standard membership is $35.99 per month or $359.88 per year. Joining takes three steps at https://community.i4sdi.org/coalition-founder, with the DEIAB Community Coalition app available for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play, and he closes with a save-the-date for the in-person Launch Celebration on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Parkview Event Space in Seattle, plus a tax-deductible GoFundMe for anyone who wants to do more. His closing argument is that the Coalition should become a joyous rebellion against fear, isolation, division and hate: RESIST, JOIN, BELONG, BUILD THE FUTURE.

09/07/2026

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cazerny Bussey, Founder, Even Though I'm Blind Foundation
https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-18-2026/

Here Dr. Kirk Adams welcomes Cazerny Bussey, founder of the Even Though I'm Blind Foundation, for a first conversation between two blind leaders who arrived at the same work from opposite directions. Kirk lost his sight at five in small farming towns in Oregon and Washington, where he was the only blind kid in every school after fourth grade. Bussey grew up in Brooklyn with low vision, active and surrounded by a large family, and lost his sight at fifteen, a sophomore at a performing-arts high school, already recording music, after a second retinal surgery took the optic nerve. He describes the moment in the exam room as a decision he had to make on the spot, and the years that followed as a run of doors opening: two and three shows a week, work alongside Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J and Chuck D, and the persistent fact that he was the only blind person in every room he entered.

That isolation is what became an organization. A love song Bussey wrote called "Even Though I'm Blind" gave the foundation its name, and research he did afterward gave it its purpose, blind college students, blind chefs, blind skiers, blind pageant winners, an entire world he had not known was there. Today the foundation runs a radio station carrying roughly forty-five independent blind artists, a podcast built on community members telling their own stories, and a curated directory of blind-owned businesses, alongside an artist showcase staged at the NFB convention in Texas. Bussey has just joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op as a sponsor of Access Information News. Kirk and Bussey trade New York geography, blindness-skills philosophy, and a shared conviction that visibility is the work, and agree to meet in New York in February.

09/07/2026

Recording: Official Launch of The Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion | ISDI | By Dr. Kirk Adams, Publisher | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://drkirkadams.com/ccsdi-launch-09-01-2026/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams shares the full recording of the September 1, 2026 public launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, the national membership community created by the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion to help people working in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power.

Board President Dr. Joseph Marth opens the hour, ISDI's co-directors, board members and community advisors each speak to why this work is personal to them, and Jacob Davidson walks through the Coalition's new home on the Circle platform. A complete transcript accompanies the video, so the event can be read at your own pace, with a screen reader or a refreshable Braille display. Founding membership is open through December 31, 2026.

09/07/2026

Meet Shari Dunn: The Voice Behind 'LEADING WITHOUT BIAS' | September 23, 2026, 9-11 AM PT | By Dr. Kirk Adams | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://i4sdi.org/workshop-4-2026/

What if some of the people with the greatest potential are the ones our systems have taught us to overlook?

On September 23, Shari Dunn joins the Northwest Diversity Learning Series for Leading Without Bias: Unleashing Creativity and Innovation Inclusively. A practical conversation about recognizing bias, challenging assumptions, and creating the conditions for more people and ideas to thrive.

And Shari doesn't come to this conversation from just one perspective.

She's an attorney, former television journalist, educator, nonprofit executive, and the Founder & CEO of ITBOM LLC, where she advises Fortune 100 companies, foundations, nonprofits, and government agencies on Applied Equity, strategy, and executive communication.

She's also the author of Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work, and her work has been featured in TIME, Fast Company, Fortune, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.

Leading Without Bias: Unleashing Creativity and Innovation Inclusively

Wednesday, September 23, 2026, 9 am to 11 am Pacific

Virtual on Zoom

REGISTER HERE: https://i4sdi.org/workshop-4-2026/

Past participants have called Shari:

“The best speaker we have had so far.”

“Validating” with tools to advocate for themselves and others.

And a speaker whose insights are “directly applicable to our work.”

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

Define competency checking and identify where it enters everyday leadership decisions — hiring, assignments, feedback, credit, and airtime.

Explain how biased decision patterns suppress creativity and innovation on a team, and describe that mechanism to a peer.
Analyze one decision or process they personally own using an Applied Equity lens, naming the criteria in use and who those criteria advantage.

Use at least one non-shaming move to interrupt bias in a live conversation.

Add the Applied Equity lens skill to your toolkit. Save your spot now!

As part of the NW Diversity Learning Series, this workshop is approved for 2 SHRM PDCs and HRCI Recertification Credits.

09/07/2026

It Started With Braille on a Bath Sponge: Welcome, Jeremy Grandstaff and The Inspiration Foundation | By Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher, Access Information News | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://accessinformationnews.com/welcome-jeremy-grandstaff-and-the-inspiration-foundation/

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher for the Access Information News weekly newsletter, welcomes Jeremy Grandstaff and The Inspiration Foundation as the publication's newest sponsor, and traces the unlikely path that brought them there. It begins on a supermarket shelf, with the working Braille printed on Cleanlogic's bath and body packaging, a feature that required moving an entire product line off plastic and onto paper, and one that exists because of Beatriz "Bea" Shapiro, who lost her sight to retinitis pigmentosa at about age seven and spent her career training blind people to use adaptive technology and placing them into jobs. Her son Isaac Shapiro and his business partner Mike Ghesser built Cleanlogic around that idea in 2006, and run an American production floor in Audubon, Pennsylvania staffed substantially by people with disabilities under a program they call Purchase To Employ. Di Blasi is careful to separate what is independently documented, the Overbrook School for the Blind hires, the twenty-nine jobs brought back from overseas, the reported wages and benefits, the NBC News coverage, and Pennsylvania's 2025 Governor's Achievement Award, from the share-of-workforce percentages the company reports about itself.

The second half of the article turns to the nonprofit Isaac and Mike founded alongside the company, and to the first executive director it has hired in twenty years. Grandstaff is blind, holds two degrees from Bowling Green State University, spent two decades in organizational development, wrote the strategic plan for Bike Cleveland, and gave a 2025 TEDx talk titled "A Blind Man's Path to Opportunity." His goal is to raise disability employment by ten percent over five years, built on two pipelines: better-prepared candidates funded by the Foundation's technology grants, and employers who actively hire, promote and retain disabled staff, the last of which, Di Blasi notes, is where most corporate disability initiatives quietly fail. Di Blasi also states plainly how the introductions happened, crediting Dr. Kirk Adams twice over, discloses that the Driven By Purpose Podcast co-hosted by Shapiro, Ghesser and former TMZ executive producer Evan Rosenblum has sponsored the newsletter since November 2025, and explains what a sponsorship buys in both directions.

09/07/2026

The Innovative Impact Newsletter By Dr. Kirk Adams for Monday, September 7, 2026 - Issue 118 | By Dr. Kirk Adams, Publisher | Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-Op
https://drkirkadams.com/newsletter-09-07-2026/

💡 Practical Strategies for Workplace Inclusion and Leadership
A Dr. Kirk Adams Publication

Subscribers: 6,812 🔢️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.

Social Media: 199,512 🔢️ readers were sent this issue via social media. Courtesy of the PWD Media Co-op.

The Innovative Impact Newsletter By Dr. Kirk Adams. The world's leading business strategy and workplace inclusion newsletter.

The Innovative Impact Newsletter By Dr. Kirk Adams is the world's leading business strategy and workplace inclusion newsletter that reaches over 6,000 corporate executives, HR professionals, policymakers, disability advocates, and business leaders all over the world, each month.

Access Information News

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request