Mélange Accessibility for All Magazine January 2021 | Page 8

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Kelly MacDonald of Kelly and Company

Kelly MacDonald loves to laugh . He loves sports and is a good listener . He was born with the genetic disease , Retinitis Pigmentosa ( RP ) and since childhood , was told his vision would not improve . He learned Braille and gets around with a cane .

Kelly ’ s effervescent persona can be experienced on Canada ’ s Accessible Media , Inc . With his co-host , Ramya Amuthan , he thrills his audience for two hours on weekdays , from 2:00 pm EST with bouts of humour , educational episodes , health , lifestyle and entertainment pieces during his daily audio show , Kelly and Company broadcasted on AMI-audio .

MÉLANGE : Tell us a bit about yourself KELLY : I ’ m Kelly MacDonald , host of Kelly and Company . I have been a producer for two decades at Accessible Media Inc . I went into radio because I wanted to be the kind of person that could get a job at a mainstream radio station , proving that disabled people do get those kinds of jobs .

3 Seasons . A lot of the things I did were very challenging . For a sighted person , it would be fine but for a blind person it would be hard . But I didn ’ t think that . Instead , I thought oh my goodness , I need to spend more time in the gymnasium , or I need to figure certain things out more , rather than thinking being blind is the issue .

That is what we wanted to make people who could see , understand , and what I felt was , I didn ’ t have to be good at everything . Now , there are times I certainly don ’ t want to embarrass myself constantly on TV or make it a farce either , because there are blind people who certainly can navigate this , or can climb that and can do all sorts of great , amazing things that they are really good at that they work hard to do , extreme sports kinds of things , or mountain climbing , for instance . There are blind people surfing out there . There are so many different things . So , Blind Sighted was Kelly ’ s experiences .