L to R – ARTA Staff: Amanda Shaw, Kristine Willis, Daniel Mulloy, and Lisa Sissons; Parkinson Association
of Alberta: Wendy Porter, Client Services Manager; TW Insurance (corporate sponsor of the ARTCF):
Laurie Bauer; ARTCF Directors: Gordon Cumming, Maxine Anderson, Helen Neufeld, and Graham Sewell.
Alberta. After the presentation, one resident,
who had attended a previous presentation in
November, approached us. She told us that —
at eighty-nine years old and diagnosed with
age-related macular degeneration (AMD) — the
November presentation had changed her life.
The presentation had made her aware of the
many services and programming offered by the
CNIB Foundation, and as a result, she had joined
a CNIB teleconference peer support group for
seniors where she learned different ways to make
her iPad accessible for her vision loss so that she
could start using it again. After a discussion on the
challenges she was still having in reading online
articles on her iPad, we used the demo iPad we
have at our public education booth to show her
how to use VoiceOver on the device. She was so
excited to be given the opportunity to read again
— albeit to be read to — that she immediately
navigated to an online article she had been
wanting to read but was not able to until now.
As her AMD progressively takes her sight,
her grief of vision loss has been overcome with
the excitement she has in registering for more
48 | arta.net
CNIB Foundation programs and by knowing that
she is not alone in her sight-loss journey.
As we look forward to further possibilities of
partnership, we know that the CNIB would
welcome any ARTA member who would like to
volunteer and contribute to similar stories of
success for other seniors.
In other news, we were pleased to have the
opportunity to make a $25,000 renewal of our
support of the Parkinson Association of Alberta at
the ARTA retreat in May. This marks our continued
commitment to fund the three Alberta Retired
Teachers Charitable Foundation tele-support
groups, which enable those impacted to talk with
others across Alberta about living with Parkinson’s
disease and Parkinson’s plus syndromes.
The picture above also enables us to introduce
those who work on your behalf to make the
foundation a success. Thank you for your continued
support. If you wish to contribute go to
arta.net/advocacy/artcf/give or phone 1-855-
212-2400. ●