Top Tech Tidbits (2025)

19/11/2025

🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #59: Appropriate Insurance Policies | Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-10-01-2025-c/

In this timely episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan reflects on her show's evolving format, then zeroes in on a pressing question. Do today's mainstream insurance products truly protect people with disabilities. She surveys the crowded landscape of policies, from home and condo coverage to life and fire insurance, and argues that too many offerings still lack the relevance and muscle needed to address disability-related realities. She calls for agents and companies to deepen their awareness, to design coverage that actually matches lived needs, and to meet customers where they are.

Donna situates the issue within a rapidly aging population as more people join the disability community. She urges listeners to push insurers and brokers for better protection and wonders whether targeted legislation might be required to accelerate change. She closes by inviting feedback and stories from the audience so the conversation can continue beyond the episode.

19/11/2025

When Rights Are Ignored - The CHRC's Betrayal of Canadians with Disabilities | Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
https://barrierfreecanada.org/chrc-betrayal-of-canadians-with-disabilities/

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) was created to defend the rights of all Canadians. It was meant to be a place where citizens, especially those marginalized and vulnerable, could turn when justice failed them elsewhere. Yet today, for too many Canadians with disabilities, the CHRC represents not protection, but abandonment.

19/11/2025

Apprentice ICG (The Inclusive Card Game) By Inclusive Imagination Chosen For The PAX Unplugged Rising Showcase | Dr. Kirk Adams
🔗 Learn More: https://www.inclusiveimagination.co/

📅 When: November 21-23, 2025

📍 Where
Philadelphia Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA • Featured in the official Rising Showcase exhibit.

🎉 Announcement
Inclusive Imagination®'s newest title, Apprentice ICG (Inclusive Card Game), has been selected for the national PAX Unplugged Rising Showcase — spotlighting emerging tabletop creators shaping the future of play.

🎮 What You'll Play
👉 A fast, 2-4 player deck-battler.
👉 Choose your class: Ember, Forest, Glacier, or Spirit.
👉 Cast spells, summon mythical allies, and roll for power.
👉 Race to become the chosen Apprentice.

♿ Access Built In (Universal Design)
👉 Large-print text and high-contrast artwork.
👉 Transparent UV-hardened braille on cards.
👉 QR codes linking to descriptive audio and text—bridging print + tactile literacy.
👉 Adaptive-switch-accessible digital companion app so players with physical disabilities can participate fully and equally.

🗣️ From The Creator
“Accessibility shouldn't be an afterthought—it should be part of the magic.” — Garrett Whitmyre, special educator & Founder, Inclusive Imagination® (Tacoma, WA)

🌟 Why It Matters
Inclusive Imagination® merges art, access technology, and universal design so every player — regardless of age, ability, or background — belongs at the table.

18/11/2025

How To Have A Book Tour — Rachel Kolb's Switchbacks Newsletter | Dr. Kirk Adams

🔗 Read: https://rachelrkolb.substack.com/p/how-to-have-a-book-tour
🔗 Subscribe: https://rachelrkolb.substack.com

❓ Why Read This

1️⃣ A whirlwind, coast-to-coast look at launching a debut memoir with indie bookstores and big community energy.
2️⃣ A masterclass in access-forward events: ASL-led conversations, thoughtful interpreting, and moments where hearing attendees experience being the “linguistic minority.”
3️⃣ Real talk on stamina, vulnerability, and the joy of seeing hard-won sentences land with readers.
4️⃣ Bonus: nods to national coverage (The Washington Post) and a PBS short on language access tied to Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore.

📍 Tour Snapshot

👉 Launch in Albuquerque two days after book release—packed rooms, hometown pride, major nostalgia.
👉 East Coast swing, then Northern California—full houses and great conversations.
👉 Community cameos: former teachers bringing decades-old assignments, college ASL interpreters reuniting, Gallaudet meetups, a Harvard ASL book party, a NorCal radio drop-in, a visit to Canine Companions, and even a celebratory trail ride with her Stanford equestrian coach.

📣 Upcoming Stops

👉 Haverford, PA — Haverford College • Tue, November 4, 4:30 PM ET
👉 Princeton, NJ — In conversation with Noah Buchholz, Princeton University • Fri, November 7, 4:30 PM ET
👉 Virtual — Book party with Rebecca Sanchez, hosted by NYU Center for Disability Studies • Thu, November 13, 4:00 PM ET (Zoom)

✏️ Subscribe

👉 Get the full behind-the-scenes post, photos, and future dates via Switchbacks.

18/11/2025

AI-Weekly for Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - Issue 191
https://ai-weekly.ai/newsletter-11-18-2025/

✨ The Week's News in Artificial Intelligence
A Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. Publication

Subscribers: 47,155 🔢️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.

AI-Weekly is the world's #1 online resource for current news and trends in artificial intelligence that reaches over 45,000 AI professionals, educators and enthusiasts, all over the world, each week.

17/11/2025

Accessible Archive: Your Fast Track to ADA Title II Compliance | Pneuma Solutions
https://pneumasolutions.com/accessiblearchive/

⏰ Title II compliance clocks are ticking for state and local governments. If your university, library, courthouse, agency, museum, or enterprise is sitting on years of PDFs and mixed-format files, Accessible Archive from Pneuma Solutions gives you a practical path to meet the rule without freezing your website or blowing your budget.

📂 Files are converted on request into accessible HTML, tagged PDF, MP3, Braille-ready BRF, or large print. Every job returns a validation packet you can file for audits, and outputs are designed to align with WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 and PDF/UA where feasible.

🔄️ Popular items are served instantly from cache, and whenever the remediation pipeline improves, previously accessed documents are quietly re-remediated on the next request, so your archive keeps getting better without redoing work.

🔌 Integration is simple. Point our API at your repository or DMS, choose cloud or private on-prem deployment with restricted egress, and start making measurable progress at a materially lower cost per page than manual-only approaches.

☝️ Scale to millions of pages with predictable SLAs, keep evidence for every document, and future-proof your compliance program as deadlines approach. Start with a representative 10,000-page pilot to see real numbers on cost, speed, and quality, then roll out with confidence.

❓ Want to learn more? Contact us online at: https://pneumasolutions.com/contact/ or call +1 (866) 202-0520 📱️ today!

17/11/2025

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Ssanyu Birigwa, M.S., Co-Founder, Narrative Bridge
https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-11-05-2025/

In this illuminating episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk shares how a stressful season leading the American Foundation for the Blind and pursuing his PhD led him to the healing work of guest Ssanyu Birigwa. He recalls powerful half-day sessions in New York that began with reflective writing and moved into energy practices like the hara seven-minute meditation, creating “energy bodies” with the hands, and chakra work. Those tools, which he still uses most mornings, helped him re-center, move from heaviness to lightness, and live with greater intention and body awareness.

Birigwa, co-founder of Narrative Bridge, weaves her lineage as an 80th-generation Ugandan bone healer with her roles in narrative medicine at Columbia University and research on clinician well-being. She explains her Pause Three method, gratitude, intention, forgiveness, which downshifts the nervous system in under three minutes, then shows how story, slow reflection, and deep listening build trust inside teams. The conversation connects personal healing to organizational change, reframing “wealth” as health, relationships, spirit, and material capacity leaders can actually hold. Listeners leave with a palpable invitation to pause, tell truer stories, and align values with daily practice at work.

17/11/2025

Articulate: A Deaf Memoir Of Voice — Rachel Kolb & Ecco/HarperCollins | Dr. Kirk Adams

📅 Published September 2025
🔗 Learn More: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/articulate-rachel-kolb
🔗 Order: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/articulate-rachel-kolb/1146705064
🔗 Review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/10/08/deaf-rachel-kolb-articulate-memoir-book-review/

📘 About The Book

Kolb's 304-page memoir blends luminous storytelling with cultural insight to redefine what it means to have a “voice.” It's a bilingual (ASL/English) journey that shows communication isn't just speech, it's a living, shared process across modalities.

🧠 Big Ideas & Takeaways

👉 “Articulate” ≠ just sounding clear; it's authentic expression through signing, writing, speaking, captions, and collaboration.
👉 Navigating Deaf and hearing worlds: identity, access, and the “ADA generation” perspective, what has improved and what still blocks inclusion.
👉 Resisting deficit narratives: deafness isn't something to overcome; it's a source of culture, agency, and connection.

🏆 Early Praise

👉 Starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly; widely called “required reading.”
👉 The Washington Post highlights its focus on communication rather than “loss,” and its appeal to anyone who loves language.

👤 About The Author

👉 Rachel Kolb is the first signing Deaf Rhodes Scholar (at 23), a PhD in English, and a widely published writer and speaker whose work reframes how we think about language and access.

1️⃣ Why This Matters For Leaders, Educators, And Builders
2️⃣ Rethink accessibility as communication design (not just compliance).
3️⃣ Equip teams to work across modalities (ASL, captions, interpreters, clear writing).
4️⃣ Build products, classrooms, and workplaces where more people can fully participate.

17/11/2025

From Fireside Chat to Actionable Intelligence: How Russell Investments' Disability+ ARG Is Advancing Disability Inclusion | Dr. Kirk Adams and Stacey Messer
https://drkirkadams.com/fireside-russell-investments-disability-arg-10-22-2025/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams distills a lively fireside chat and happy hour with Russell Investments' nine-month-old Disability+ Associate Resource Group into a practical operating model for disability inclusion. Anchored in the social model, and the clarifying distinction between impairment and disability, he translates lived experience into leadership behaviors and introduces seven concrete plays with 30/60/90-day starters, from making disability visible in DEI governance and simplifying accommodations to accessible-by-default tech and manager enablement. The piece also features moderator Stacey Messer's perspective, noting strong engagement and why the impairment-versus-disability framing resonated.

Adams closes the loop with measurement and momentum: a disability-inclusive scorecard (representation, promotions, retention, time-to-accommodate, accessibility defects, and employee experience by disability status), quarterly reviews in DEI governance, and a rapid feedback loop between Disability+ and Product/Tech/Workplace teams. The article ends with a lightweight call to action, the five-minute habit of learning and sharing, that converts curiosity into competence and competence into culture, underscoring inclusion as a strategic advantage rather than a slogan.

17/11/2025

🎙️ Remarkable World Commentary Episode #53: Interview with David Baker, Associate Counsel, Labour & Employment Law and Human Rights Law Groups, Ross & McBride LLP | Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
https://donnajodhan.com/rwc-10-21-2025/

In this wide-ranging episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna J. Jodhan welcomes “Charter-challenge champion” David Baker for a candid tour of modern equality law's past, present, and future. Baker recalls the phone call that launched Donna's landmark case and traces his own origin story, from launching Canada's first legal aid clinic inside a psychiatric hospital as a law student, to early public-interest work with Ralph Nader, to the coalition-building that helped entrench disability in Ontario's Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter. He explains how his graduate work informed early Section 15 strategy, demystifies the shift from formal to substantive equality with a simple “stairs vs. access” example, and describes today's CRPD-inspired “inclusive model of equality,” noting he has just filed a first Canadian case grounded in it.

The conversation then moves from principles to precedent: Baker outlines the duty to accommodate (and where it fails), revisits Eldridge's requirement for sign-language interpretation in healthcare and how that standard spread through the courts, and returns to the Jodhan ruling, where WCAG 2.0 framed “equal access,” the appeal removed judicial oversight, and, in his telling, federal compliance lapsed. He describes new litigation aimed at bringing all federal ICT, not just websites, up to the European 301 549 accessibility standard after a bill to adopt it died, even floating contempt proceedings, and closes by flagging AI as a fast-moving front for disability discrimination and sketching an emerging, international legal strategy to meet it.

17/11/2025

Access Information News for Monday, November 17, 2025 - Volume 1041
https://accessinformationnews.com/ain2025/11172025/

♿️ The Week's News in Access Information
A Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. Publication

Access Information News. The world's #1 online resource for current news and trends in access information.

Subscribers: 41,696 🔢️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.
Social Media: 193,327 🔢️ readers were sent this issue via social media, courtesy of the PWD Media Distribution Co-Op.

17/11/2025

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Vanessa Abraham, Speech Language Pathologist
https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-23-2025/

In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with speech-language pathologist, author, and ICU survivor Vanessa Abraham to trace her extraordinary arc from clinician to patient and back again. Abraham recounts the rare Guillain-Barré variant that left her paralyzed and voiceless, the disorientation and aftermath of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, and the painstaking work of reclaiming speech, swallowing, mobility, and identity. She explains why she wrote Speechless, to humanize the critical-care experience, and makes a compelling case that communication access in the ICU is a basic right, not a luxury.

The conversation moves from story to strategy: how lived experience reshaped her practice, how she founded A Neu Healing Therapy to bring neuro-rehabilitation innovations to survivors, and what clinicians, hospital leaders, and families can do now, build trauma-informed teams, ensure reliable ways for non-speaking patients to be heard, and measure recovery by dignity as well as function. Throughout, Dr. Adams draws out practical takeaways and a wider systems lens, leaving listeners with both hope and a concrete roadmap for more humane, effective care.

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