In the Province of Ontario, Canada, the twentieth anniversary of legislation that was supposed to make the province fully accessible by 2025 came and went in January with Ontario being nowhere near fully accessible for people who have a disability. Over in France, with disability groups protesting in Paris on the eve of the twentieth…
Podcasts
You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D is the Ontario Disability Employment Network’s podcast, launched in 2020.
Our show season runs from April to November.
Each episode we bring you insightful conversations with expert guests that explore from all the angles, the power of disability inclusion in business…in employment…in education…and in our communities…and why disability is an important part of the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility conversation.
Curious about how we came up with that name? The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) business conversation still too often focuses on gender and ethnicity only. Disability is left out or is an afterthought. We believe that you can’t really have inclusion without including disability in the conversation. Hence, You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D.
The podcast is co-hosted by Amy Widdows, ODEN’s new CEO, and Dean Askin, our Communications Strategist. Amy stepped in as the new co-host starting in 2025, with Season 6.
Jeannette Campbell, ODEN’s previous CEO, co-hosted the podcast for five seasons (Episodes 1 to 30).
You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D is hosted on Podbean, and available wherever you download your favourite podcasts.
Production staff
Executive Producer/Co-Host — Amy Widdows
Executive Producer/Co-Host (Seasons 1 to 5, Episodes 1 to 30) — Jeannette Campbell
Producer — Sue Dafoe
Associate Producer/Co-Host — Dean Askin
Audio Production — Dean Askin
In our first episode of the 2025 season, we’re jumping right into the controversial fray of things. We’re tackling a timely topic that’s literally dividing people and an entire country. There’s been a lot of controversy, destructive action…and destructive conversation on social media about diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. This episode is part one…
We’ve made discovering out podcast easier! Now you have two ways to check out episodes of You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D: Browse through the podcast archive to learn about the topic of and guests on each episode; or Listen to, download and share multiple episodes from seasons one to five with the embedded…
The newcomer community in Canada is huge. In 2022, the country welcomed 431,645 new permanent residents — the largest number in one year — in Canadian history. The last time Canada welcomed that many newcomers was over a century ago, in 1913. There was a time when almost all immigrants to Canada came from Europe….
You can’t explore intersectionality without talking about disability among Canada’s Aboriginal people — the Inuit and First Nations. An estimated 30% of Canada’s Indigenous population, or 420,000 people, live with a disability or functional limitation. So just what is the perception and definition of disability in the Inuit and First Nation cultures and communities? How…
The World Health Organization points out that for people who have a disability, negative attitudes about disability is one of the most common barriers to participation and inclusion — in the broader community and society in general — that they face. But what about the intersection of disability, including attitudes and perceptions about it, with…
In North America, the disability inclusion conversation — the fight for equity — has been going on for over 50 years. In Canada — more specifically, in the province of Ontario — the name David C. Onley is synonymous with championing disability inclusion in employment, and accessibility. He was the first working television journalist in…
Advertising and disability. There’s a lot of both in North America. Eight per cent of the population in both the U.S. and Canada have a disability. In the U.S. that’s about 87 million people. In Canada, about eight million people. In the U.S., there’s an average of about eight minutes of television ads every hour…
There are over 1.2 million employer businesses in Canada. And almost 98% of them are small businesses, which employ about 5.7 million people. But surveys have shown that over half the small businesses in Canada have never hired someone who has a disability. They’ve never made the disability-inclusive hiring journey. In Episode 25 — the…
If you’ve ever looked for a stock photo portraying disability to use in a blog post or on a website page, you might find yourself thinking they all look the same; they all look contrived; and they don’t authentically portray disability in all its diversity. How disability is broadly viewed and perceived, can depend on…