Radio Broadcasting as a Professional Career for People with Blindness
July 23, 2013
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Peter Whitaker is the president and owner of the radio station The Haze FM. He talks about his life with blindness and describes the technology he uses for reading. He describes the radio station, and its broadcasting and its audiences. He describes his work as its president and owner. He discusses the work required to keep the station on the air and its audiences growing. He talks about work in broadcasting and career opportunities for people living with blindness. He says what he thinks of an internet broadcasting service, like his and Family Caregivers Unite, offering training in internet broadcasting for people living with blindness. He says what more things that he wants to do and what more he would like to see done by the broadcasting industry generally to increase help for people living with blindness to get good jobs in technology-related fields like broadcasting. He shares his message to children, teenagers and adults living with blindness.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
