Good morning.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for giving CNIB an opportunity to speak here today.
As you mentioned, I am joined here by my colleague, Robbi Weldon, who is our program lead for peer support and leisure for eastern Ontario, and she'll be sharing this presentation with me today.
I'd like to start off with a brief overview of CNIB's history and why we are here today. We were founded in 1918. We just celebrated our 100th anniversary. We were founded by wounded war veterans who were coming back and looking for help for those who had lost significant sight through their journey serving Canada in the war.
Throughout the last 100 years, CNIB has done a number of things that have helped to fill gaps that are around societal inequities that people with sight loss face every day. Employment is the one that we have tried and tried again and have yet to succeed on.
We believe that a piece to this puzzle is really around the accessibility of our procedures, of our legislation and of our buildings, and, to Christopher's point, not just the bricks and mortar and the physical space. Our presentation here today will focus on what we mean when we say “accessible” and what this means for people with sight loss.
Today, CNIB's mission is to have a bolder, brighter future. We are an advocacy organization that is here to boost engagement in the world of work, to unleash the power of technology, and to drive achievement and equality for the next century of work that we are going to be in.
I'm going to turn it over to Robbi now to present her portion of the presentation.