Latest / Podcasts By Donna Jodhan / Remarkable World Commentary Episode #106: Interview with Steve Barclay, Founder and President, Canadian Assistive Technology, and Co-Host, AT Banter Podcast

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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #106: Interview with Steve Barclay, Founder and President, Canadian Assistive Technology, and Co-Host, AT Banter Podcast · Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

• 0:12
  Podcast Commentator: Greetings, Donna J. Jordan, LLBAP and MBA invites you to listen to her
• 0:20
  biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary.
• 0:24
  Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts,
• 0:27
  insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners.
• 0:31
  Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids,
• 0:35
  especially kids with disabilities.
• 0:38
  Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach,
• 0:42
  dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur,
• 0:45
  law graduate, and podcast commentator.
• 0:49
  She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge,
• 0:53
  skills, and expertise in access, technology and information.
• 0:58
  As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles,
• 1:02
  she just wants to make things better than possible.
• 1:07
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Remarkable World Commentary.
• 1:14
  I'm Donna J. Jordan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who sees the world mainly
• 1:21
  through sound, touch and stubborn optimism.
• 1:26
  I am a law graduate and accessibility consultant,
• 1:30
  a lifelong, sorry, an author a lifelong advocate who is a barrier
• 1:40
  buster and who also happens to be blind.
• 1:44
  You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010,
• 1:49
  I won the landmark charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its websites
• 1:55
  accessible to every Canadian, not just to safety warnings.
• 2:01
  And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen
• 2:09
  disability groups to turn equal access into federal law.
• 2:14
  And most recently, on June the 3rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late
• 2:21
  Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for tireless commitment to removing barriers.
• 2:28
  When I'm not in the courtroom or in the committee room or in a portrait studio,
• 2:34
  you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss,
• 2:38
  producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their
• 2:44
  gadgets talk back in plain language.
• 2:50
  Everything I do circles.
• 2:53
  One goal to turn accessibility from an afterthought into everyday practice.
• 3:00
  I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench,
• 3:06
  where policy meets lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.
• 3:13
  Now, before we jump into today's conversation,
• 3:18
  let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is every bit as
• 3:27
  remarkable as the world that we are trying to build.
• 3:31
  I am pleased, and I am privileged to welcome Steve Barclay,
• 3:36
  a high profile advocate, and everything else that this community
• 3:41
  really appreciates. Steve.
• 3:44
  Welcome to my show.
• 3:46
  Steve Barclay: Wow. I'm I'm I'm really flattered.
• 3:49
  That's that's the best intro I've ever had.
• 3:53
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And you didn't bribe me for it, right?
• 3:55
  Steve Barclay: No.
• 3:56
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh.
• 3:56
  Steve Barclay: Not yet. Oh, okay. I might pay
• 3:59
  you to keep going, though.
• 4:02
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Well, let's get into the question.
• 4:05
  And, Steve again. Welcome.
• 4:07
  Steve Barclay: I want.
• 4:08
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You to begin all the way back at the very beginning,
• 4:14
  because your story starts somewhere where most people never guessed.
• 4:20
  Yes. Sorry. In November of 1990, you you walked in as the very first employee
• 4:29
  of a company called Aroga.
• 4:32
  And your job was to be sitting at a bench repairing Telesensory and VTech devices.
• 4:42
  Take our listeners back there.
• 4:45
  What did assistive technology actually look and feel like in 1990.
• 4:56
  Steve Barclay: Well so the company that I was working for Aroga technologies they did low
• 5:06
  vision and blindness products. They also did augmentative communication aids for the,
• 5:11
  the nonverbal so in terms of the low vision and blindness stuff you know,
• 5:17
  we were dealing with cameras that for, for video magnification with massive CRT
• 5:27
  monitors. So like, you know.
• 5:28
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I remember that.
• 5:30
  Steve Barclay: A 20 inch monitor would weigh, you know, probably £40.
• 5:34
  And the cameras themselves, they were I don't even remember what we
• 5:38
  called the, the type of tube that they used for for the actual camera module.
• 5:43
  But they were, they were also pretty, pretty darn heavy and clunky.
• 5:49
  We we started around then to get the smaller CCTVs in with you know,
• 5:57
  like 14 inch monitors, some of them.
• 5:59
  And they were all contained in a single unit rather than being two pieces.
• 6:06
  And those as I recall, initially came from VTech.
• 6:13
  And then Telesensory started making some of their own as well of the same sort of same
• 6:18
  sort of style, but that was really the beginning of the,
• 6:21
  the all in one kind of design of a CCTV where you had a monitor in line with the camera
• 6:26
  underneath and then an X, Y table on the bottom.
• 6:29
  Wow. And repairing those things was interesting.
• 6:35
  There was a lot of fiddling about with you know,
• 6:39
  things like the, the, the yokes on the cathode ray tubes to make
• 6:43
  sure that the the image was nice, nice square and proper inside the inside the
• 6:48
  screen. And the cameras, they had their own,
• 6:53
  their own foibles and, you know, setting them up so that they would
• 6:56
  focus properly. And and a lot of that repair back then was all component level repair.
• 7:02
  So, you know, there was no board swaps like they do today.
• 7:05
  You know, if you, if your computer, if your computer dies,
• 7:08
  they're going to tell you, oh, you need a new motherboard and that's
• 7:10
  going to cost you 20 gazillion dollars.
• 7:14
  Back then it was, you know, the resistor will cost you $0.05,
• 7:18
  but finding which resistor has to be replaced will take four hours.
• 7:22
  So very, very different world.
• 7:26
  We were also getting the first refreshable Braille displays back then in the versa
• 7:33
  Braille's. You know, I think I, when I started the second generation of
• 7:38
  versa. Braille's was out, which used floppy disks instead of
• 7:42
  cassette tapes.
• 7:43
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Are they still around?
• 7:45
  Steve Barclay: Versus rails. No, no. Long long gone.
• 7:49
  Yeah. They've been they've been replaced by, you know, the modern note takers like. Yeah.
• 7:53
  The, the notes and the real senses of the world.
• 7:57
  Yeah. And what else did we have back?
• 8:01
  Oh. Opticom. Opticom were huge back then.
• 8:05
  You know, there were a lot of people who did their post-secondary education reading books
• 8:10
  with a little handheld camera and a, an array of pins that they set their finger
• 8:15
  on top of. And as they ran across the text, it would render the shape of the letters on
• 8:21
  those pins, and they would feel their way through that,
• 8:24
  through that textbook.
• 8:26
  I found that absolutely remarkable that you know,
• 8:30
  people could do that in the first place because I could never,
• 8:34
  when I, you know, even when I was fixing them,
• 8:36
  I could never really make out the shapes of the letters well enough to,
• 8:40
  to read with them. But you know, I knew a couple people who put themselves
• 8:44
  through law school using those.
• 8:46
  And that's, that's quite, that's quite an impressive achievement.
• 8:51
  And then on the, on the augmentative communication side,
• 8:54
  we had products from a company called print company and they had devices that would have
• 9:03
  like 128 buttons on them and using different combinations of those buttons,
• 9:08
  you could speak with them you know, and carry on conversations in real time.
• 9:14
  They, they used a linguistic system called Minspeak where you had a bunch of symbols on
• 9:22
  the, on the buttons. And by selecting the correct symbols in order,
• 9:27
  you would have different, different words.
• 9:31
  So like an apple might represent the concept of red.
• 9:35
  It might represent the concept of food.
• 9:37
  It might represent the, the concept of round.
• 9:41
  And Depending on what button you pressed after,
• 9:44
  the apple would determine what word you were going for.
• 9:47
  And we had that same sort of device that was operated rather than being operated by
• 9:53
  buttons. It was operated by a head worn not a laser,
• 9:58
  but a an infrared emitter.
• 10:02
  And you could track across the the buttons and the little red LED would light up for
• 10:07
  whichever one you were pointing at. And if you just paused long enough on it,
• 10:10
  it would activate that button.
• 10:13
  So back in back in those days, that was, you know,
• 10:16
  revolutionary technology.
• 10:18
  It was, it was, you know, pretty, pretty cutting edge.
• 10:21
  And we watched you know, technologies come along like optical
• 10:27
  character recognition, which back back then was,
• 10:31
  was, you know, rudimentary.
• 10:32
  It would only work with certain fonts and it wasn't fabulously accurate.
• 10:37
  And now everybody's got it on their cell phone,
• 10:40
  you know, and it's, and it's pretty and it's pretty darn good.
• 10:43
  So yeah, it was a it was a long, long time ago.
• 10:45
  You know, we we used to park our dinosaurs out in front of the building and wander in
• 10:50
  and do our job and then commute home with the,
• 10:53
  with the bison. You know?
• 10:57
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Now there's something quite special about being employee number one anywhere,
• 11:04
  right? You were there before the company was really a company.
• 11:10
  What did those earliest years teach you that you still rely on today,
• 11:17
  which is more than 35 years later?
• 11:23
  Steve Barclay: Yeah. I didn't even want to be the first employee.
• 11:25
  I tried really hard not to take the job.
• 11:28
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, no.
• 11:29
  Steve Barclay: Yeah, yeah, I, I was back then for the, the three years prior to that,
• 11:35
  I'd been fixing photocopiers.
• 11:37
  I was, I was working for a company called Crosshatch Copiers here in Vancouver.
• 11:42
  And I was trained in color laser copier technology,
• 11:48
  which was brand new at the time.
• 11:50
  Yeah. And, and I, I had quit the company I was working for because I just,
• 11:56
  I couldn't deal with the management there.
• 11:59
  And I had approached Kodak who was a massive company back then.
• 12:08
  And they were one of the only ones, only other ones that had color laser
• 12:12
  technology. There was them and canon canon also had color laser,
• 12:16
  but I didn't want to work for the canon dealer because they had a reputation for
• 12:19
  being nasty as well. But Kodak, it was a union company.
• 12:24
  They paid great wages, they had great benefits.
• 12:27
  And I was told that they were going to create a position for me.
• 12:33
  I just had to wait for them to create the position.
• 12:36
  So I was waiting. My roommate got sick of seeing me sitting around and.
• 12:41
  And he actually took my, my resume in to to Aroga.
• 12:46
  They were at the time renting two rooms out of the back of a computer company called
• 12:50
  Structured Computer Systems where my roommate worked.
• 12:52
  And he came back one day and he says, oh, you got a job interview tomorrow?
• 12:56
  I said, what? He says, yeah, I got I got you a job interview.
• 13:00
  He says, there's this little company working out of the back of our office.
• 13:04
  They rent two rooms at the back of our office, and they're looking for a service
• 13:07
  tech. And it just sounded so shady to me at the time.
• 13:10
  You know, a little company renting two rooms out of it.
• 13:14
  But I went in and I made I made no effort whatsoever.
• 13:18
  I didn't dress up. I didn't, you know, I didn't shave.
• 13:22
  I just sort of showed up.
• 13:24
  And the owners of that company, Bob and Barb,
• 13:27
  they'd been interviewing guys who had, you know,
• 13:29
  just recently graduated from Bcit and they were all coming in in three piece suits.
• 13:34
  But Bob and Barb Barbara, a couple of hippies from from Manitoba.
• 13:39
  And when when the scruffy kid came in, they went,
• 13:43
  oh, we could probably live with that one. And and they offered me the job,
• 13:47
  so I turned it down. And then Bob, who was just,
• 13:51
  he could he could sell ice to Eskimos.
• 13:53
  He he talked me into it on the phone.
• 13:57
  And, and I I started work there.
• 14:02
  But but yeah, I mean, looking, looking back you know,
• 14:08
  what, what does that teach you?
• 14:10
  It teaches you how a company grows, you know the steps that you go through,
• 14:16
  the pains that you go through and you know, now with Canadian assistive,
• 14:21
  we're, we're back to being, you know, a small company,
• 14:23
  very few employees. And we're, we're going through those very same growth
• 14:28
  pains now you know, trying to, trying to figure out how best to scale and
• 14:34
  how best to, you know, bring new staff on where you need them.
• 14:38
  And, and you know, what your, what your threshold is to trigger the next,
• 14:42
  the next step. So.
• 14:45
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow.
• 14:46
  Steve Barclay: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It's interesting now over you over your years at Aroga,
• 14:53
  right? You remove from you moved from the repair bench to vice president of sales and
• 15:02
  marketing and even to part owner and chief operating officer.
• 15:10
  That is a very long climb through every part of a business.
• 15:16
  Okay. How did seeing the industry from each of those angles change what you believed
• 15:26
  our community, our community actually needed?
• 15:34
  Steve Barclay: So the move originally I moved into, into sales because Bob and Barb realized that
• 15:41
  the guy who was sitting at the bench repairing things and testing things and
• 15:45
  making sure that they worked properly, knew,
• 15:47
  knew more about their operation than, than they did.
• 15:51
  So they, they moved me into the sales role.
• 15:54
  Because of, because of my product knowledge.
• 15:57
  And I think part part of that was the recognition that,
• 16:03
  you know, what, what our industry needs isn't salesmen.
• 16:07
  What they need is, is knowledgeable people who can,
• 16:11
  you know, meaningfully explain and train people on the technology.
• 16:18
  So you know, I just sort of grew with the company from there.
• 16:22
  And as, as we added other people, they, they sort of fell underneath me.
• 16:27
  And that's how, you know, I got the title of VP of Sales and Marketing.
• 16:33
  We eventually expanded.
• 16:34
  We. We. We first opened an office in Edmonton,
• 16:37
  Alberta with my good friend Carrie Anton.
• 16:41
  And then we, we went from there.
• 16:44
  We hired Bob sister out in Kingston, Ontario.
• 16:49
  She started doing augmentative communication products for us in Kingston.
• 16:54
  We we had a couple of attempts at opening an office in Montreal.
• 16:59
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: With.
• 17:00
  Steve Barclay: With, with mixed results.
• 17:02
  You know, it didn't it never really stuck.
• 17:06
  But but then the, the CEO part of it, that, that title came along with the
• 17:14
  acquisition of Aroga. Bob decided he was going to sell the company and he ended up
• 17:22
  selling a majority stake in the company to a fellow named Grove Bennett and.
• 17:26
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: A minority.
• 17:27
  Steve Barclay: Stake for me. So Grove became president and CEO.
• 17:32
  Sorry, I was chief operating officer, I believe CEO at that
• 17:37
  point. Yeah.
• 17:40
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh my gosh. Then in 2017, the company that you had given 28 years to
• 17:50
  was winding down. You announced publicly that you were starting something of your own.
• 17:58
  Now, Steve. That must have been a frightening and clarifying moment.
• 18:06
  Right? All at once. What did you decide right then that you wanted to do differently?
• 18:15
  Steve Barclay: Well, my my first revelation was no more business partners.
• 18:20
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: That was, that.
• 18:21
  Steve Barclay: Was a that was a key one.
• 18:25
  Yeah, I mean, that was, that was just a horrible time in my life in
• 18:28
  general. You know, Grove.
• 18:30
  Grove decided that he was going to get involved in a multi-level marketing scheme
• 18:35
  peddling. I can't, I can't make this up.
• 18:38
  Quantum infused holograms for for various health issues.
• 18:43
  It was just straight snake oil sales.
• 18:46
  But but he saw he saw dollar signs in it.
• 18:49
  And I told him I wanted nothing to do with it.
• 18:52
  And he said no, the company would be completely separate.
• 18:55
  Nothing to do with. And then he took all of our money and ran it into that and ran the
• 18:59
  company straight into the ground. And then because he was a dual Australian citizenship
• 19:05
  citizen he got to run away back to Australia and avoid all responsibility for it.
• 19:11
  So not only was I suddenly out of work, but I was also left holding the bag for
• 19:18
  everything at Aroga, including, you know discovered that Grove had never paid
• 19:24
  payroll withholding tax.
• 19:25
  He'd never paid GST for a period of like 2 or 3 years.
• 19:32
  So there was there was a $300,000 tax bill with the government that that they came
• 19:37
  knocking for. My only my only option at that point was to either declare bankruptcy or do
• 19:45
  what they call a consumer proposal, which is essentially the same thing as
• 19:48
  bankruptcy, except that you're not considered bankrupt.
• 19:51
  And you can, you can still be a an officer of a company.
• 19:57
  And you basically tell them, okay, well, this is how much money I can give
• 20:01
  you. And and they have to sign off on, on whether or not they're going to accept
• 20:06
  that. And if, if they don't accept it, then the next step is you pretty much have to
• 20:10
  declare bankruptcy. But they accepted it.
• 20:12
  And so I was, I was broke, but fortunately.
• 20:17
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: My.
• 20:17
  Steve Barclay: My wife was not. So so we got the start up capital through my wife to buy our first few
• 20:26
  pieces of equipment and start all over again from the.
• 20:30
  The basement of our townhouse.
• 20:32
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Was growth ever caught and made to pay for what he had done.
• 20:38
  Steve Barclay: So. Grove. Grove and his wife, Diane, who also worked at Aroga.
• 20:42
  They vanished like. They just disappeared into the ether.
• 20:46
  They erased themselves from social media.
• 20:48
  They they had their kids erased themselves from social media.
• 20:53
  So nobody knew exactly where they were, but there was,
• 20:56
  there was one disgruntled woman who had loaned Grove a bunch of money under false
• 21:03
  pretenses, I might add.
• 21:05
  And she had very, very smartly gone on to his and Diane's
• 21:14
  Facebook profiles in anticipation that they might make a,
• 21:19
  make a run for it. And she had done screenshots of all of their friends on
• 21:25
  their friends lists.
• 21:26
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Right.
• 21:27
  Steve Barclay: And and when they disappeared, she started going through those friends to
• 21:32
  say, hey, do you know where they are? And eventually they,
• 21:36
  they found someone who was willing to say where they were.
• 21:40
  And that was when we discovered where they were in Australia.
• 21:45
  I sent a demand letter because Grove owed me about $50,000 personally.
• 21:50
  Oh. And I got a, I got a lawyer down in Australia to send it.
• 21:58
  And the day after the first, first time it was served they went to the
• 22:03
  house and whoever answered the door denied that there was anybody named Grove Bennett at
• 22:07
  that location. And then they, they sent a process server to his work and
• 22:14
  they managed to get him at at work.
• 22:17
  The very next day he declared bankruptcy in Canada.
• 22:21
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: My God.
• 22:23
  Steve Barclay: And if you declare bankruptcy in Canada, it does absolutely nothing to you in
• 22:27
  Australia. You're not you're not considered bankrupt in Australia.
• 22:31
  So he he essentially got out of all of his responsibilities in,
• 22:36
  in Canada. And gotta, gotta clean, clean go in Australia.
• 22:46
  So he didn't, he didn't get caught in, in that sense,
• 22:49
  but one day out of the blue, I got a, I got a call from a fella down in
• 22:54
  Australia saying, hey do you know this guy Grove Bennett?
• 22:59
  I go, yeah, yeah, I know him.
• 23:00
  He says, well listen, he's been part of our hockey club for a
• 23:04
  while, and we all think he's a bit of a jerk,
• 23:07
  but he's just gotten himself appointed to the Australian Olympic Committee for hockey.
• 23:14
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, no.
• 23:15
  Steve Barclay: And he had managed to convince the board to appoint him as I think it was
• 23:25
  CEO, a position that had never existed before.
• 23:27
  It had always been just a volunteer board and managed to convince them to give him $100,000
• 23:33
  salary. And so he started asking me questions about Grove.
• 23:40
  And I told him the whole story and he said, well,
• 23:43
  can you, can you send me some of that documentation about,
• 23:46
  you know, the bankruptcy and everything and the charge? Because we were we were charged
• 23:49
  with fraud. Both myself, Diane Grove, we were all charged with fraud
• 23:55
  by, by TD Bank because Grove had been filing falsified business information.
• 24:04
  And they eventually dropped the fraud charge on me because they realized that I'd never
• 24:07
  been sent to any of that information.
• 24:09
  It had come directly from Grove to them without me ever being copied on it.
• 24:15
  But but there was a, there was a civil fraud charge.
• 24:20
  So I sent, I sent that all down to him.
• 24:22
  He took it to the hockey Association.
• 24:24
  The hockey Association said they would look at it.
• 24:27
  Grove somehow convinced them that no, this is all made up.
• 24:32
  This is just a disgruntled ex-business partner who's trying to stir up trouble.
• 24:37
  And there's nothing to it.
• 24:39
  Carry on. So. So they, the the committee threatened to sue the guy
• 24:45
  who had given them the information.
• 24:48
  So he calls me back and he says, listen, I can't pursue this any further.
• 24:52
  You know, I got a family. I'm afraid of what can happen,
• 24:54
  even though I don't think they can really do anything to me.
• 24:57
  But would you talk to my friend Sandy, who's a reporter?
• 25:01
  So. So I got to I got to talk to Sandy, the reporter.
• 25:04
  I can't remember his last name off the top of my head now. But Sandy ran a story in a,
• 25:10
  in an online news service about it.
• 25:15
  And then that story got picked up by channel nine News in Australia and the channel nine
• 25:22
  news article when it hit, when it hit the airwaves that got grove
• 25:28
  tossed from the from the Olympic Committee.
• 25:32
  So, so he did, he did have a little bit of karmic payback there,
• 25:36
  I guess. But yeah, if you, if you Google channel nine news and Grove
• 25:42
  Bennett, you will, you will find that video.
• 25:44
  It's pretty funny because they, they caught up to him at the tennis club he
• 25:47
  was working at. And he locked himself in a building and hid behind a kitchen bench to
• 25:52
  try and avoid their questions.
• 25:57
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I think we we don't you know, I think our listeners,
• 26:01
  I know I'm not aware of, of, of what you just shared with us,
• 26:04
  but, you know, we did know that Grove had run away to Australia.
• 26:09
  I had met his wife die once or twice.
• 26:12
  I really liked her.
• 26:14
  Steve Barclay: Yeah, she was a charmer.
• 26:15
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, I didn't like him.
• 26:17
  He made a pass at me one time and I thought, why don't you just get out and leave me
• 26:21
  alone, you know? Yeah, yeah,
• 26:25
  I know. Yeah.
• 26:27
  Steve Barclay: He was, he was quite a piece of work.
• 26:29
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I bet. And I hope he never sets foot in
• 26:31
  Canada again. Right?
• 26:33
  Steve Barclay: Yeah, indeed. I don't know if he ever will, because one of the guys that he borrowed a
• 26:37
  lot of money from owns a gravel pit.
• 26:39
  And I don't think he mess with guys who own gravel pits.
• 26:42
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, no you don't. He would probably toss you
• 26:45
  into the pit, right?
• 26:46
  Steve Barclay: Yep.
• 26:48
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Now you did not start Canadian assistive technology on your own,
• 26:56
  right? Ryan Fleury and Rob, let me see, I hope
• 27:02
  I mean, is that.
• 27:03
  Steve Barclay: No, no. Yeah.
• 27:04
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Mino came with you and anyone who has spent five minutes around.
• 27:12
  Your company knows about the nicknames, the Bulldog,
• 27:17
  and the general refusal to take yourself too seriously.
• 27:23
  Tell us about the culture that you have deliberately built and why does this matter
• 27:31
  in this particular industry?
• 27:36
  Steve Barclay: Gosh. I'm just generally a silly person, I would say.
• 27:40
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh. You're not.
• 27:42
  Steve Barclay: But well, just just pour a couple of drinks into me and you'll find out.
• 27:48
  But Rob and Ryan and I we we always had a good time together.
• 27:55
  We, we always enjoyed working together, you know,
• 27:58
  we, we'd started the at banter podcast back then as well.
• 28:02
  Back, back in the days.
• 28:05
  So we were, you know, we were always kind of a lighthearted crew.
• 28:10
  But I think I, you know, we, we deal with people who are going through
• 28:15
  a pretty broad range of life experiences.
• 28:18
  And oftentimes our first contact with a new client is somebody who's been recently
• 28:24
  diagnosed with something that is affecting their lives in a very negative way.
• 28:31
  And, and they're, they're fragile, they're emotional.
• 28:36
  And it's, it's a lot easier to engage with them if you do it in a lighthearted fashion.
• 28:44
  You know, you let them know that you're, you know,
• 28:47
  you're, you're an ally, you're, you're not just somebody there to,
• 28:51
  you know, flog a product on them and send them on their way.
• 28:54
  So, you know, I, I just think that, you know,
• 28:57
  having a good sense of humor and a sense of empathy is incredibly important in the kind
• 29:03
  of work that we're doing.
• 29:05
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I agree. And, and I've had the great experience of having had two podcast
• 29:10
  interviews with with you guys, and I really enjoyed it.
• 29:14
  I thought it was this was a unique type of podcast,
• 29:17
  you know? I really enjoyed it.
• 29:22
  Now, the a T banter podcast actually came first and not long.
• 29:30
  Sorry. You launched it in May 2000 to 16 while you were all still at Aroga.
• 29:40
  What made three people in the assistive technology business decide what the need will
• 29:50
  needed from them was a podcast.
• 29:53
  Steve Barclay: You know, there, there was a lot of talk back then in the 20 tens about podcasting.
• 30:00
  And it seemed one of those things where everybody was starting to do their own
• 30:05
  podcast. Yes. And, you know, the, the cost of entry to doing a podcast
• 30:10
  wasn't that expensive.
• 30:12
  You know, you needed a computer, you needed some microphones, you know, maybe
• 30:15
  an audio mixer and somebody who's willing to sit down and take the time to edit it.
• 30:20
  So it, it came apart. It came about as a, as a lunchroom conversation.
• 30:26
  And it was I, it was either Rob or Ryan who came up with the idea.
• 30:29
  I, I can't remember, I think they both may claim equal credit for it at this point,
• 30:35
  but but I was the, I was the holdout.
• 30:38
  I, I was like, oh God, no, you everybody and their dog's doing a
• 30:42
  podcast. We don't need to do a podcast.
• 30:44
  But originally what we had envisioned was doing a podcast that just talked about
• 30:50
  technology that was just about, you know, the products that we sold and,
• 30:53
  you know, what they did for people and so forth.
• 30:56
  And after doing that a couple of times, we realized,
• 31:00
  you know, that in and of itself is pretty boring,
• 31:03
  pretty repetitive, and not all that interesting.
• 31:06
  So we started to focus more around people's stories and what other people were doing,
• 31:10
  what the community was doing, you know, what,
• 31:13
  what sort of remarkable things were happening out there.
• 31:15
  And and that seems to have really gained some traction.
• 31:19
  You know, we have listeners all over the world now. And I don't know how true it is.
• 31:26
  I got an email from some company that claims to be a podcast rating agency,
• 31:30
  and they rated us as the top rated disability podcast in Canada last year.
• 31:35
  I don't know. I don't know if that's true or not because I,
• 31:38
  I don't know how they determine these things. It looks more to me like somebody who's just
• 31:42
  trying to sell a badge to to podcasts.
• 31:45
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But yeah, but.
• 31:48
  Steve Barclay: It's one of the things about podcasts, you just never know how many people are
• 31:51
  listening to you because it's always spread amongst multiple platforms.
• 31:54
  You know, somebody will, somebody will do it on,
• 31:56
  you know, iTunes, somebody else will, you know,
• 31:59
  do it on podbean. You never get to collect all the numbers for how many people are
• 32:04
  listening. So we really have no idea what our listenership is now.
• 32:10
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But you've enjoyed it, right?
• 32:11
  And you've had lots and lots of fun
• 32:14
  doing it, right.
• 32:15
  Steve Barclay: Oh for sure. And we've, we've met all kinds of,
• 32:17
  you know, really interesting people through it as well and learned about,
• 32:20
  you know, some, some really neat initiatives that you know,
• 32:25
  different, different things that are being developed. And you know,
• 32:29
  I'm just scrolling back through, through episodes here.
• 32:32
  I, I don't, I don't do all of them.
• 32:34
  I, I, I often miss things because I'm out on the road.
• 32:37
  But yeah. Yeah. You know, we've yeah, we've had some great people on
• 32:42
  the, on the podcast and talking about some, some great products and some,
• 32:46
  you know, charities that they work with or things that they're doing,
• 32:49
  you know, like blind travelers who travel independently all over the world.
• 32:53
  And gosh you know, we've, we've interviewed a blind marathon runner.
• 33:02
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Wow.
• 33:04
  Steve Barclay: And just, you know, all kinds of people doing all kinds of things that,
• 33:10
  you know, their teachers probably told them at some point in their life they were never
• 33:14
  going to be able to do. And there they
• 33:16
  are doing it. So.
• 33:17
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. I think one thing and I'd like to approach you offline is I'm trying to launch
• 33:26
  this accessible travel podcast and I'm hoping that we could have a little chat offline
• 33:33
  about you becoming an endorser or a participant.
• 33:37
  It's called from curb to curb in Canada.
• 33:40
  I'm just now starting it up so we can talk about that later,
• 33:44
  but clocks starting to wind down.
• 33:46
  And I have to ask you about the tone of that show because it is unlike most disability
• 33:54
  media, there are cow bells.
• 33:57
  There are sound boards.
• 33:59
  There are long running arguments about food.
• 34:05
  That is a deliberate choice, isn't it?
• 34:08
  What are you pushing back against?
• 34:13
  Steve Barclay: Well, that's that's just the banter part of it, right? That's just this is the kind of
• 34:17
  stuff that Rob and Ryan and I have been doing to each other for years is,
• 34:20
  you know, having, you know, nonsensical conversations about Rob's
• 34:24
  fascination for Chef Boyardee mini ravioli or,
• 34:28
  you know Ryan Ryan's fascination for different flavors of Oreos or,
• 34:34
  you know, so it's yeah, it's just been ongoing.
• 34:37
  You know, the cowbell came about because there was that Saturday Night Live episode of
• 34:42
  where they're playing Don't Fear the Reaper. And Christopher Walken is pretending to be a
• 34:47
  a music producer, and Will Ferrell starts hitting a cowbell.
• 34:51
  So no, no, no, we need, we need more cowbell.
• 34:54
  So that that's where the cowbell came from.
• 34:59
  And yeah, it's just again, it just falls back to the fact that we,
• 35:03
  we tend to be fairly silly people in our day to day lives.
• 35:07
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, I think the title 80 banter really,
• 35:11
  really suits you
• 35:12
  guys. It does.
• 35:13
  Steve Barclay: Yeah, yeah. We've, we've often had discussions about changing the name of.
• 35:17
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No, no, no.
• 35:18
  Steve Barclay: The podcast. But yeah.
• 35:20
  It's never come to pass because we've never come up with anything better.
• 35:25
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And now you are approaching 460 episodes, and you recently moved the show from
• 35:35
  every week to every two weeks, right?
• 35:38
  Steve Barclay: Yeah.
• 35:39
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Quite openly because of host burnout.
• 35:43
  I think that honesty is worth passing on.
• 35:48
  What have you learned about the sustaining advocacy work over the long haul without
• 35:56
  burning yourself out.
• 35:59
  Steve Barclay: Well, you've you've got to do it at your own pace,
• 36:02
  you know. Yeah. A lot of people will throw themselves into something and just keep doing
• 36:08
  it out of a sense of obligation and and that's where the burnout comes in.
• 36:16
  You know, if you're, if you're not, if you're not loving what you're doing,
• 36:19
  you, you've got to kind of step back and take a look at it and say,
• 36:22
  well, you know what, what do I like about this? And what don't I like about this?
• 36:26
  And we just, we just hit the point where doing it every single week,
• 36:30
  you know, I, I can't do it every single week.
• 36:32
  I've got. You know, I've got places to go, people to see.
• 36:35
  But so it was really, it was falling to Ryan and Rob more and more.
• 36:40
  And, and Liz when, when we brought this on.
• 36:44
  But yeah, it the fewer people you have to spread it out across,
• 36:50
  the harder it becomes.
• 36:51
  And Ryan and Rob have been doing the heavy lifting the entire time.
• 36:57
  So, you know, it's they're, they're they're very deserving of,
• 37:04
  of their break. And I doubt we'll ever, ever go back to a weekly podcast.
• 37:10
  I think we'll. Probably stick with the bi weekly format because that's a lot easier to
• 37:14
  do. The other thing is you got to get a guest every week.
• 37:18
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I know. Tell me. About it.
• 37:19
  Yeah.
• 37:19
  Steve Barclay: Yeah. And, and you know, you can rack your brain and never come up
• 37:24
  with anybody. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden you'll get five emails and
• 37:28
  four of them will look like, hey, these could be good guests.
• 37:31
  But so it's yeah, it's, it's tough when you're,
• 37:35
  when you're trying to pull it off every single week.
• 37:39
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. But you know what? You have sustained it better for,
• 37:42
  you know, for years. And, you know, and now,
• 37:45
  you know, you, you're probably going to be turning into something else.
• 37:50
  And that's Unless one of my final questions to you today.
• 37:53
  What is your future looking like?
• 37:55
  Where are you going? What are you dreaming of?
• 38:00
  Steve Barclay: I really really dreaming of having a profitable company at some point.
• 38:08
  That would be really good. I often, I often tell people I'm on the freedom 99
• 38:12
  plan. I my, my, my likelihood of retirement at this point is pretty much nil.
• 38:19
  So you're going to have to put up with me for a few more years.
• 38:23
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But gladly. Yeah.
• 38:25
  Steve Barclay: But no, you know, I, I want to, I want to kind of get this company back to
• 38:32
  the same sort of position that Aroga was in where we had,
• 38:36
  you know, more regional representatives. And we're slowly getting there. You know, we've,
• 38:39
  we've added Ryan Lippert, she's doing work for us in in Saskatchewan.
• 38:47
  She also works for Nelles, the the accessible library.
• 38:51
  System. Steven Ricci, since he was let go from Cnib,
• 38:57
  has been giving us a hand in in Ontario.
• 38:59
  And he might, he might come on as a more active participant in the.
• 39:04
  Next. Little bit. But I think he's still he's still weighing,
• 39:07
  you know, he's he's got grandkids
• 39:09
  now and he's, you.
• 39:10
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Know.
• 39:10
  Steve Barclay: He's got his cabin and, you know, he's, he's sort of,
• 39:14
  I think, weighing his options and what, which direction he wants to go right now.
• 39:18
  But he's, he's been very good for introducing us to people out there,
• 39:21
  which has been very nice.
• 39:24
  But yeah, I'd love to have, you know, some, some representation in,
• 39:28
  in Ontario. It would be, it would be great to have you know,
• 39:33
  somebody on board who could help us develop the the French speaking side of things
• 39:38
  because we are right now entirely in English company.
• 39:41
  You know. We, we, we. Brag that we're Canadian assistive technology.
• 39:44
  But we're just kind of most.
• 39:46
  Most of Canada, assistive technology, you know,
• 39:49
  every every interaction I have with anyone in Quebec is always done by via Google
• 39:53
  Translate these days.
• 39:55
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, okay.
• 39:56
  Steve Barclay: So it'd be nice to be able to provide, you know,
• 39:59
  technical support in French and you know, sales support in French as well.
• 40:05
  So yeah, I mean, but again, you know, going back to the beginning,
• 40:08
  it's, it's baby steps, you know, you've gotta,
• 40:11
  you've got to figure out, you know, what your,
• 40:13
  what your metric is to trigger the next, you know,
• 40:16
  bit of expansion. So over the last while, really what we've been doing is just sort of
• 40:21
  focusing in on breadth of product and trying to expand out,
• 40:26
  you know, what our, what our product offerings are because, you know,
• 40:29
  a lot of, a lot of the things that were the traditional fuelers of the assistive
• 40:33
  technology industry, the, the CCTVs.
• 40:36
  And those. Sorts of things.
• 40:38
  Those are all becoming very much mainstream
• 40:40
  now. You know, they're.
• 40:41
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Yeah.
• 40:42
  Steve Barclay: People are using their cell phones as video magnifiers a lot more.
• 40:45
  Instead of, you. Know, buying dedicated devices.
• 40:48
  So, you know, we're watching parts of the market that are just sort of dropping off.
• 40:52
  You know, we don't sell a lot of voice recognition technology anymore because that's
• 40:55
  built into everything now.
• 40:57
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Yeah.
• 40:58
  Steve Barclay: You know, and I don't know if there will ever be a time where the,
• 41:01
  the screen readers on the mainstream products become robust enough to,
• 41:05
  to take out the, you know, the specialized screen reader manufacturers.
• 41:09
  But that would be another thing that could, you know,
• 41:13
  with, with AI, you know, it's possible that that could happen.
• 41:17
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, yes.
• 41:18
  Steve Barclay: So yeah, it's it's, it's an always evolving landscape.
• 41:22
  So we've really kind of started doing more things that are senior oriented you know,
• 41:29
  things for home safety for seniors.
• 41:33
  You know, things like, you know. Automatic lights that come on when
• 41:36
  somebody gets out of bed so that they lower the risk of falling or you know,
• 41:40
  clocks for people with dementia that have video calling capabilities.
• 41:44
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:45
  Steve Barclay: You know, different, different things like that that were really outside of the standard
• 41:50
  assistive technology field, but are necessary for,
• 41:54
  you know, an aging population.
• 41:56
  So, so we're just, we're just evolving as, as required,
• 42:01
  I guess. And You know, it's it's an interesting landscape right now
• 42:06
  because everything is changing so quickly.
• 42:09
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: It is, it is. What? Give us your one minute word of advice as a closing you know,
• 42:19
  thing for this podcast.
• 42:21
  What, what words of wisdom and advice would you give to anyone even like myself?
• 42:27
  You know, I'm always looking for opportunities.
• 42:30
  You got any words of wisdom for us?
• 42:33
  Steve Barclay: Yeah. Never, never go into a partnership with somebody with dual citizenship growth.
• 42:37
  Yeah. Oh it's funny. Since that happened.
• 42:42
  I've heard so many stories of people who had business partners with dual citizenship,
• 42:47
  and the same story happens over and over again.
• 42:52
  Our laws, when it comes to pursuing people who do stuff in Canada and then run off to
• 42:57
  another country are extremely weak.
• 43:01
  So it's it's something that that happens over and over again and it,
• 43:07
  and it will continue to happen over and over again until they they make some changes.
• 43:11
  So that's, that's my best piece of advice.
• 43:14
  Aside from that don't, don't get involved in a land war in Asia.
• 43:18
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay.
• 43:19
  Steve Barclay: Yeah.
• 43:21
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I think Chris Chamberlain suffered a similar type of,
• 43:25
  of downfall to you. I don't know the whole story,
• 43:28
  but definitely frontier computing had
• 43:31
  to fold, right?
• 43:33
  Steve Barclay: Yeah. He he had an accountant that was embezzling from him.
• 43:37
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:38
  Steve Barclay: Yeah, yeah, I believe you.
• 43:39
  I believe you recovered some of it, but I doubt he got everything back.
• 43:46
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I know I lost over $50,000 from these guys who were supposed to develop something for,
• 43:51
  you know, the Cnib never paid me a darn penny.
• 43:55
  And they're Canadian. They live up the street from me.
• 43:59
  Steve Barclay: Oh, really? Yeah. You could.
• 44:01
  You could flatten their tires.
• 44:04
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You want. To come and help me. Out? Absolutely.
• 44:08
  It it has been a pleasure.
• 44:11
  I mean, I've enjoyed this interview and learning about 80 banter and,
• 44:15
  you know when you have a moment.
• 44:18
  I'd like to talk to you about my own camp retreat initiative if you're interested.
• 44:24
  Steve Barclay: Oh, for sure.
• 44:25
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, and I'd like you to be a participant in the Accessible Travel podcast.
• 44:31
  I think you have a lot to offer.
• 44:33
  Steve Barclay: Oh, I've, I've, I think I've got something even better for you,
• 44:36
  but we could talk about that offline.
• 44:37
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Yeah. All right.
• 44:40
  So thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 44:43
  I wish you the very best for the rest of the summer.
• 44:46
  And whenever you're ready to talk, let me know.
• 44:49
  I'm presently in the Caribbean visiting my mom.
• 44:52
  Steve Barclay: Oh. Very nice.
• 44:53
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yeah. I won't be back in Canada till September the 14th,
• 44:57
  but I have, you know, Zoom connections.
• 44:59
  And whenever you're ready, let me know.
• 45:02
  Steve Barclay: All righty. That sounds good.
• 45:04
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay, Steve, you take care and keep on going.
• 45:08
  Steve Barclay: I will keep plugging away at it.
• 45:10
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Thanks again, and we'll talk soon.
• 45:14
  Steve Barclay: All right. You take. Care.
• 45:15
  Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Yeah. Bye, Steve.
• 45:16
  Bye bye. Bye.
• 45:21
  Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donna@gmail.com.
• 45:27
  Until next time.