CJAM 99.1 FM: 18 Years, One Microphone, and a Mission: How Cam Wells Built Canada's Longest-Running Disability Radio Program

How We Connected

On Monday, April 6th, 2026, I received an email from a man named Cameron Wells. He had just read an issue of Access Information News, our weekly publication serving over 43,000 blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, neurodivergent, and disabled professionals, educators, and enthusiasts worldwide, and he wanted to talk. Three days later, on April 9th, I was on a Zoom call with Cam, doing a short interview for his radio program on CJAM 99.1 FM in Windsor, Ontario, explaining what Access Information News is and how it got started.

What I learned during that call stopped me in my tracks. Cam Wells has been hosting and producing a nationally syndicated disability radio program called Handi-Link for 18 years. Eighteen years. And I, an engineer turned journalist, turned Publisher who has spent the last twenty-two years building what I believe to be the largest disability-focused media network in the world, had never heard of him.

That ends today. This article is my introduction of Cam Wells and Handi-Link to the Access Information News readership, and it is long overdue.

Who Cam Wells Is, And What He Survived to Get Here

Cam Wells is a Windsor, Ontario-based journalist, disability advocate, and stroke survivor. In 1995, at the age of nine, Cam suffered a massive stroke that resulted in a permanent disability. He has spoken openly about using the 1990s X-Men animated series as a meaningful part of his rehabilitation, a detail I include not for sentimentality, but because it tells you something about how Cam processes the world. He found characters who were different, who were powerful because of their differences rather than in spite of them, and he held onto that.

I want to be clear about something. Cam rejects the framing that mainstream media applies to people with disabilities, the idea that you are either bitter about your disability or you are an inspiration because of it. He calls those two poles a false choice, and he has spent his professional life building something in the space between them: what he describes as the “beautiful shades” of lived disability experience. The middle ground. The place where most people actually live.

Translation: Cam doesn’t want to be your inspiration story. He wants to be your journalist. There is a difference, and it matters.

After his stroke, Cam went on to earn four diplomas from St. Clair College in Windsor, the first in Journalism. The path was not smooth, he has spoken about initially being placed in the wrong program, being academically dismissed, and then receiving a journalism scholarship from a disability organization that allowed him to start again. He completed four programs in total. And then, basically upon graduating from Journalism, he walked into CJAM, the University of Windsor‘s campus and community radio station, and pitched a show.

That show was Handi-Link. That pitch was 18 years ago.

Handi-Link: The Show Mainstream Media Won’t Make

Handi-Link is a 29-to-30-minute weekly magazine-format radio program on CJAM 99.1 FM, airing Thursdays at 12:30 PM. Cam writes it, produces it, hosts it, and books every guest. He is co-hosted by David Robbins-Singh, known on air as “DJ Squeaky Wheelz”, who first came to CJAM during a high-school co-op placement and never left. The show explores disability life by comparing and contrasting it with able-bodied life, and it covers the full range: health, sport, policy, advocacy, art, culture, rare diseases, and the lived experiences of people who navigate the world with disabilities every single day.

The show is nationally syndicated across Canada through the NCRA Community Radio Exchange (now !earshot Distro) and has been rebroadcast on stations including CKUW 95.9 FM in Winnipeg and CHLY 101.7 FM in Nanaimo. The producer credit on the NCRA exchange is listed under “CJAM-FM Music Department.” Eighteen years of weekly episodes. Nationally distributed. One host. One co-host. One community radio station.

The Guest List Speaks for Itself

Over 18 years, Cam has interviewed Bill Nye. He has interviewed RJ Mitte. He has interviewed Gabrielle Miller, former Ontario Lieutenant Governor David Onley, Paralympic bronze medallist Joshua Kennison, and Tracy Schmitt, known as “Unstoppable Tracy.” He has interviewed cast members from Corner Gas. He has hosted representatives from the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders, the National Organization for Rare Disorders, the Disability Rights Promotion International project at York University, Easter Seals, the Amputee Coalition, and the Italian Canadian HandiCapable Association, among many others.

I list these names and organizations deliberately. From my vantage point as a Publisher, the quality and range of a program’s guest list tells you something that no amount of self-promotion can replicate. It tells you who trusts the show enough to appear on it. When Bill Nye says yes to your interview request, you are not running a hobby. You are running a program that has earned credibility through sustained, professional work over a very long period of time.

“Disability Is Not a Hat”

Cam’s editorial philosophy is grounded in a single, powerful idea: the mainstream media gets disability wrong. It defaults to two modes, pity or inspiration, and ignores the vast, complex, human reality that exists between those poles. Handi-Link was built to occupy that middle ground. It treats disability not as a special interest topic to be handled delicately, but as a dimension of life that deserves the same depth, rigor, and normalcy that any other subject receives.

In his own training materials, a 30-slide guide he developed called the CJAM Disability Interviews Guide, designed to teach new CJAM volunteers how to interview guests with disabilities, Cam captures this philosophy in a line I have not been able to stop thinking about since I read it: “Disability is not a hat.” People don’t take it off when the interview ends. They don’t take it off when they go home. And the media that covers them should not treat it as though they do.

From my vantage point as a publisher who has spent decades building publications that serve the BLV and PWD communities, I can tell you: that sentence is worth more than most mission statements I have read in this industry.

Beyond the Microphone, The Work Most People Don’t See

If all Cam Wells had done was host Handi-Link for 18 years, that alone would earn a place in this publication. But the radio show is not the full picture.

The NCRA disAbilities Handbook

Cam served as one of two Editorial Committee Chairs, alongside Stephane Bertrand of CKUT-FM, for the National Campus and Community Radio Association‘s disAbilities Handbook: A Guide to Radio Accessibility, published around 2013. His involvement began after he helped host an accessibility panel at an NCRA Ontario regional conference in Kingston in 2009, following the 2009 NCRA conference in Montreal where the handbook project was first discussed. The handbook covers physical accessibility for radio stations, ramps, spacing, signage, emergency procedures, as well as assistive technology and software, accessible website standards, respectful disability language, inclusive training practices, and hiring practices. This is national-level policy work for the Canadian community radio sector.

Cam went on to contribute again in 2019 when the NCRA secured funding from Employment and Social Development Canada for the “Empowering Voices” project, which updated the handbook and distributed $50,000 in micro-grants, ranging from $500 to $8,000, to help community radio stations improve their physical and operational accessibility.

His CJAM co-host David Robbins-Singh also served on the handbook’s Editorial Committee. Two CJAM volunteers, shaping national accessibility standards for an entire broadcasting sector. From a community radio station running on a student levy.

The Accessible Diversity Course

Cam has developed an 18-chapter course called Accessible Diversity, built around eight areas of interest: Recognition, Owning Truth, Fact vs. Fiction, Lived Experience, Types of Disabilities, Creativity, Balanced History, and True Inclusion. The course spans disability law (competence, criminal justice, funding law, employment law), disability relationships (friends, family, coworkers, employers, romantic partners), culture and disability, acquired disabilities, myths of disability, the adaptable world, disability and the media, disability philosophy (including what Cam identifies as the Equality, Entitlement, Victim’s, and Balanced models), poverty and disability, rare disorders, disability achievements, accessible academics, rules of interaction, dealing with diagnosis, and the many roles of advocacy. Assessment is practical, students demonstrate understanding through observational studies, communications to advocates, and proposals to improve disability systems. The course was profiled in Tec. Shoreline News.

ICHA and Rare Disease Research

Cam also works for the Italian Canadian HandiCapable Association in Windsor-Essex County, an organization providing sports and recreation programming for persons with disabilities. He describes this as one of his primary roles in the disability community. Separately, he consults the National Organization for Rare Disorders on an almost weekly basis for his show research, a detail that speaks to the depth and seriousness with which he approaches his editorial preparation.

CJAM 99.1 FM, The Station That Made It Possible

Handi-Link did not emerge from a well-funded national broadcaster. It emerged from CJAM 99.1 FM, a non-profit campus and community radio station based at the University of Windsor, broadcasting to the Windsor-Detroit corridor on a 2,084-watt FM signal. The station exists to provide music and information programming not offered by mainstream commercial media and to serve communities, including disability, multicultural, feminist, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQ+ groups, that are under-represented or maligned by mainstream outlets.

CJAM has been operating in one form or another since the 1970s. It began as a “Music Appreciation Society” at Assumption College in the 1940s, formalized as CSRW (Canada Student Radio Windsor) in 1977 as a carrier-current AM station at 660 kHz, launched on FM at 91.5 in November 1983, the first song aired was “Ghost Town” by The Specials”, and moved to 99.1 FM in October 2009 after a CRTC-approved frequency change due to interference from WUOM-FM 91.7 in Ann Arbor. In July 2021, CJAM became available on the iHeartRadio app and through voice assistants, extending its reach well beyond the FM signal.

The station runs on approximately three paid staff members and a large volunteer base. Its student levy has not been increased since 1980, described in station materials as one of Ontario’s lowest campus and community radio levies. And yet, CJAM has produced alumni who went on to shape Canadian media at the national level: Joe Bowen, the Toronto Maple Leafs play-by-play broadcaster; Anna Maria Tremonti, former host of CBC’s The Current; Hodan Nalayeh, the Somali-Canadian media executive; and Seán Cullen of Corky and the Juice Pigs.

That is the environment in which Cam Wells has operated for 18 years. A volunteer programmer at a community radio station, producing nationally syndicated content on a shoestring. I want Access Information News readers to understand what that means, because it tells you everything about Cam’s commitment. He did not build Handi-Link because someone gave him resources. He built it because the work needed to be done.

A Limitation Worth Naming

In the interest of thoroughness: Cam Wells does not have a large digital footprint. He does not maintain a personal website. He does not publish a blog or a newsletter. His primary mode of output is audio, the radio show, which means that a significant portion of his 18 years of work is not indexed, not searchable, and not easily discoverable by the very audiences who would benefit most from it. Archived episodes exist on the NCRA Community Radio Exchange legacy site and through !earshot Distro, but they are not centralized in a way that makes them accessible to people outside the Canadian community radio ecosystem.

This is, in my view, the single biggest gap in Cam’s reach, and it is one that a partnership with Access Information News can begin to address.

What This Means for Access Information News Readers

You now know a name you should have known years ago. Cam Wells has been doing the work, the real, sustained, unglamorous, 18-years-and-counting work, of building a nationally syndicated disability radio program from inside a community radio station in Windsor, Ontario. He has trained volunteers on how to interview people with disabilities without reducing them to stereotypes. He has co-authored national accessibility standards for an entire broadcasting sector. He has designed an 18-chapter curriculum on disability that covers more ground than most university programs I have seen. And he has done all of this while working at the Italian Canadian HandiCapable Association, consulting with NORD on rare diseases almost every week, and producing a 29-to-30-minute show every single Thursday for the better part of two decades.

Here is what I am asking you to do.

Listen to Handi-Link. You can find it through the CJAM 99.1 FM web stream, the iHeartRadio app, or the !earshot Distro syndication archive.
If you are an organization that serves BLV or PWD communities in Canada or the United States, consider reaching out to Cam as a media contact, his email is wellscameron@hotmail.com.
If you have a story that deserves to be told on air, Cam is the kind of journalist who will tell it right.
If you work in community or campus radio, seek out the NCRA disAbilities Handbook that Cam helped write. It is one of the most practical accessibility resources the sector has produced.

For our part, Access Information News will be carrying Handi-Link content and information going forward for the benefit of our readers. This is a content partnership, not a commercial arrangement. There is no sponsorship. There is no financial relationship. I am recommending Cam Wells and his work because I have vetted it, I believe in it, and I believe our readers deserve to know about it.

Eighteen years. One microphone. A community radio station running on a student levy that hasn’t been raised since 1980. And a man who decided, upon graduating journalism school, that the world needed a radio show about disability that treated disabled people like people.

It did. It still does. And now you know where to find it.

Cheers,

” The greatest barrier to accessibility is indifference. “

Aaron Di Blasi, PMP
Engineer, Educator, Advocate, Publisher & Journalist
President & Sr. PMP, Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd., PR Director: AT-Newswire, Publisher: AI-Weekly, Top Tech Tidbits, Access Information News, Title II Today

Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd.
President, Sr. Project Management Professional (2006 — Present)
Innovative ideas. Solutions that perform.