EnableLink

The Canadian Abilities Foundation’s online disability resource continues to grow. If you are a new visitor to EnableLink, you are among hundreds who joined our online community recently to raise our number of monthly visitors to over 19,000 - our highest number ever. EnableLink is receiving over 280,000 hits per month. That translates into almost 10,000 hits a day! Judging from the number of hits, the most popular section of the site is the message boards. The Injured Workers board is the most popular, with over 250 messages currently posted.

THE ENABLELINKER

Our first issue of our e-zine, The EnableLinker, went out in the month of April to over 4,000 recipients. This short newsletter provides links to important disability-related information, including upcoming events across the country, and classified ads. We were excited by how well it was received. As one reader wrote, "Great job on the EnableLinker. I enjoyed it very much! Very informative!" If you are interested in receiving the EnableLinker, please send a message to sub@enablelink.org. You will be included in our next monthly mailing.

UPCOMING CHATS

On Wednesday, June 12, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. (EST), a chat on "Parenting with a Disability" will be hosted by the Parenting with a Disability Network (PDN). The aim of PDN is to help families develop unique solutions to parenting challenges by providing opportunities for education, information sharing, networking and peer support. During this chat, you will meet others facing similar joys and challenges and you will be able to discuss your experiences, hopes and fears in a non-threatening, anonymous environment.

One participant recently wrote to us, "I think having chats on disability issues is a great idea... I hope that there are more chats held and that more people join in, as the more information we share, the stronger we become." We look forward to chatting with you!

Each month we will focus on a different chat topic and announce it in the EnableLinker. If you have ideas about a chat you would like to host or participate in, contact info@enablelink.org with your ideas.

CIAP UPDATE
Have you visited the online Community Information Access Project (CIAP) lately? There are 40 Ontario communities currently profiled. To date, with the help of 175 volunteers, we have gathered accessibility information on over 700 business or services in these communities. The CIAP project, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship, will soon be completed. The accessibility information will remain posted on EnableLink. And, with the knowledge gleaned through this project, we are planning a Canadian version - Access Guide Canada. If you can recommend an accessible business or service anywhere in Canada, e-mail the contact information to acg@enablelink.org.

CONTEST WINNERS
As we celebrated the 50th issue of ABILITIES magazine in the spring, we hosted a contest in the pages of the magazine and on Enablelink, where we hid scrambled letters for a secret message: "I’ve got ABILITIES." However, many people who found and unscrambled the letters came up with "give to ABILITIES" - which, admittedly, has a nice ring! We accepted these entries as well. Congratulations to the seven winners, listed on page 61.