At the corner of Yonge and St. Clair in midtown Toronto sits a storefront that has set the area abuzz since it set up shop a few months ago. The CNIB Community Hub is the first of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and it’s making this neighbourhood one of the most accessible in the city.

The Hub embodies many of things people said they wanted to see from the CNIB, says Suzanne Decary, director of operations in the GTA, including an accessible downtown location that’s right on the transit line, improved access to education and employment, opportunities to connect as a community and greater availability and access to technology.

It’s just the beginning, adds Decary, explaining they hope to take their learnings and expand into the broader community. “The needs outside Toronto are just as vast and access to programming is even more limited.” Plans include building a place in the Peel region, which has the second highest number of CNIB clients in the region. “We also aim to form stronger and closer working relationships with community agencies throughout the entire GTA to better serve and support the community.”

A welcoming space for those with sight loss

The two-storey Hub is a bright, warm and welcoming space that offers anyone with sight loss the opportunity to develop new skills and enjoy the support of others. As soon as you walk through the doors, a huge mural depicting a tree with hands in the place of leaves greets you. Titled Helping Hands, the artwork by Kate Ramos is a tribute to all those who made the Hub possible. A mural on the opposite wall, Smashing Barriers by artist Leyland Adams, is a powerful story in and of itself, portraying people overcoming their limitations.

The building also has beacons that contain audio information about the space (more on them later) which allows for independent indoor navigation, tactile way-finding strips for cane users, and mobile furniture that can easily be moved to make way for activities such as yoga, parents’ support groups, music jams and Toastmasters meetings. “The Hub exists to support the needs of the community, and in the nine months since the doors opened, the response has been tremendous,” says Decary.

I received a Hub tour on a particularly auspicious day – the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) had just announced that the subway station in the neighbourhood took a big step toward improving accessibility. In partnership with the CNIB, they installed beacons in various parts of the subway. Leveraging the Blindsquare app and its indoor navigation technology, these innovative support systems provide verbal descriptions of the physical environment, including obstacles and fare gates, to help users navigate the floor plan.

A tremendous coup for CNIB, the subway pilot was part of a larger project run by the Hub called ShopTalk. Led by Shane Laurnitus, CNIB’s lead of accessible technology, the team encouraged shops in the area to install beacons in their space. So far, 150 beacons have been installed, thanks to their efforts, each one programmed with directions and descriptions of points of interest in that particular shopfront.

Upstairs at the Hub, you’ll also find two virtual reality screens. Used to simulate environments like an outdoor streetscape — with its parked cars, crosswalks, barking dogs etc. — the point is to help someone who loses their vision remain independent in a world that can otherwise feel scary, explains Laurnitus. “Once they are comfortable, they can go with their mobility instructor to get from point A to B; it’s easier to learn when you’re less fearful.” The screens are a brand-new addition to the Hub and they expect to eventually add a subway platform or perhaps a workplace scene to their other options.

A focus on career support

When not working on navigation technology, the Hub is focused on several other projects, many of them geared at career support. The time was ripe, says Tina Sarkar-Thompson, project manager, career support program development. “Based on data we gathered, 63% of working age Canadians that are blind or partially sighted are unemployed,” she explains. “And that’s not for a lack of education or having some work experience. For a number of years, we’ve been hearing our clients ask us if we could do something to move that needle.”

Not wanting to replicate programs that are working well, the first step was to partner with organizations running those initiatives, helping to make them more accessible. They then designed career workshops on things like networking, nonverbal communication and other areas that can prove particularly useful to a blind or partially sighted job seeker. This past January they piloted a series of pre-employment workshops, which attracted a fair number of participants.

There’s also the “internship/returnship” program. Geared at someone with work experience who’s looking to either transition into a new career or to re-enter the workforce after being out for a while, the goal is to offer increased career opportunities. Working with corporate partners —currently six are officially on board with more in talks — the current pilot project involves an intern swap, whereby a CNIB client gets experience at a company while a corporate intern joins the Hub for six months.

And they’re organizing a mentorship program for those new to the world of work. “We want to set these people up for success,” says Sarkar-Thompson. They’re in the process of hiring six interns for an internship that will include a bootcamp that will teach the tools for success, including notetaking, receiving feedback and goal setting. The mentors will be chosen from a pool of emerging leaders who want to up their supervisory experience, ensuring a win-win situation for everyone.

Other programs include employer education outreach and advocacy as well as an employment retention program for people who have newly acquired vision loss or experienced a sudden change in vision. The goal is to help them hold onto their job and carry out their responsibilities in an empowered and successful way.

Encouraging honest conversations

Part of their work at the Hub involves encouraging and supporting honest conversations about what it’s like to work with people who are blind or partially sighted. “It’s really about busting myths,” shares Sarkar-Thompson. Most prevalent is the belief that because you can’t see very well, or at all, you can’t do the job. “They can do the same job, they may just have to do it a bit differently,” she says, adding with a smile that driving a bus is probably an exception to that rule.

In fact, with the proper accommodations – such as a screen reader, large print programs, handheld magnifiers etc. — most jobs are doable.

There’s also a misperception that these accommodations are expensive, but they need not be. So many are already built into existing systems and technology, explains Laurnitus, who conducts training out of the Hub on portable technology and computers. Screen Preview can describe a room, for example, while another program scans documents and reads them aloud. Windows has zoom and speech features. And the iPhone can use Voiceover and Screen Reader to make everything accessible.

Employers often lack understanding, says Sarkar-Thompson. “They don’t know what they don’t know.” Urging employers not to be afraid to ask questions is one of the lessons she imparts in their employer outreach program. Once they find out about an employee’s accessibility needs, employers are then advised to ask them about the accommodations they require. “We hope to give people the space to ask those questions that they may think are taboo.”

It’s not a question of empathy, it comes down to education and understanding that someone who’s blind or partially sighted can do the same job with same results, she stresses. It’s about opening up one’s mind, realizing that, other than the vision piece, there’s no difference between a person who is blind and the sighted person. “If anything, the former may be a greater problem-solver because they have had to solve problems creatively.”

Sarkar-Thompson adds that the onus is on the employee to share their situation and make their requests. “The person with vision loss needs to be able to say, “this is what I need’.” If clients struggle with that, it may be a result of a related myth that is all-too-common among CNIB clients, many of whom approach Sarkar-Thompson with the question: “What do people like me do?” Her response is always loud and clear: ‘What are your interests? What do you want to do?”

Though their training provides the language and tools to help clients take their next steps, each one needs to believe in their own possibilities and to speak for themselves. “Our role is teaching our clients to empower themselves, to speak up, it’s like teaching someone to fish versus doing it for them.”

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is president of Elle Communications and Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of SEE Change Magazine and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.

Please note: While we ensure that all links and email addresses are accurate at their publishing date, the quick-changing nature of the web means that some links to other websites and email addresses may no longer be accurate.