Welcome to the newly launched blog for Communication Disabilities Access Canada (CDAC)!

CDAC is a national, not for profit organization that promotes human rights, accessibility and inclusion for all people who have speech and language disabilities, not caused by hearing loss.

I am Glenda Watson Hyatt, CDAC’s Social Media Coordinator and, along with fellow team members, I will be sharing CDAC updates here on a regular basis. As a brief introduction about myself, I have a significant speech impairment due to my cerebral palsy. My speech is understandable with ease by those familiar with my unique dialect and with some effort by others. When I am out and about, I keep handy my iPad with a text-to-speech app. After spending much of my life silenced, social media in the form of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other such tools has opened the world to me. Using those tools to share about an issue close to my heart – communication access – is exciting.

Without further ado, here’s what has been happening at CDAC:

We sent our September newsletter to 1,000 people across Canada and internationally. Our archived newsletters are also available for your reading pleasure.

We have been out and about with our communication access message…

On the West Coast: In early September, BC Regional Coordinator Lois Turner and I had a great meeting with staff from Accessibility and Inclusion, Healthy Communities, City of Surrey. It is extremely encouraging to have a city support and implement the work of Communication Access Now (CAN)!

In Ontario: In September, CAN’s Ontario Regional Coordinator Tracy Shepherd and team met with Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games to explore how to make these games accessible to people with communication disabilities. The team presented a number of options and will be following up with Game staff.

Tracy, along with Jess Weber and Krsytine Donato, also presented an informative session to the City of Toronto about how to make city services more accessible for people with communication disabilities. Many divisions of city programming were present, including Human Resources, Parks and Recreation, Equity and Diversity and many more. They discussed how to further roll out communication access initiatives within the city.

In Atlantic Canada: Last week, Atlantic Coordinator Debbie Maund was on the road at the New Brunswick Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists’ AGM. It was a great turn out for an early morning breakfast presentation on a Saturday. Thanks to the New Brunswick speech-language pathologists and audiologists for your participation, great questions and ideas!

To have someone speak to your city, business or organization about communication access, please contact your regional coordinator.

Let’s connect!

We love to hear from you, so make sure you connect with us: like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter or send us an email.

We look forward to sharing and connecting with you.