Good morning. If you had to describe a dance to someone who couldn’t see it, what would you say? That idea is the jumping-off point of a new ballet production that explores vision loss, offering a different perspective on performance. More on that below, plus Air Canada interruptions and detained Canadian questions. But first:

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• The province of Ontario orders public servants back to the office five days a week starting in 2026
• Russian President Vladimir Putin praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as the two leaders prepared for the U.S.–Russia summit in Alaska

Hi, I’m Graham Isador, The Globe’s Healthy Living Reporter. I have a degenerative eye disease called keratoconus. In the past five years, the condition has progressed to the point where I’ve had to change how I work. My vision loss means some tasks take more time than they used to. Others, I’ve had to give up on entirely. And while adapting to those issues can be a challenge, the hardest thing is usually explaining that I need help at all.

My experience with keratoconus doesn’t fit into people’s concept of vision loss. Surgeries that were supposed to stop the disease from progressing were botched. Glasses don’t help with my sight. Neither do contacts. Still, compared with a legally blind person, I see a lot. So much so that some people fail to recognize my vision – or lack thereof – is a problem at all.

Practically, that means every time I need some modification to do my work, it also requires a detailed explanation of a condition I feel deeply insecure about. Before joining The Globe and Mail full time, I wrote a number of articles about the frustration of that experience, big swings attempting to communicate all of the nuances of what vision loss feels like. It’s some of my most-read writing. People tell me it’s helped them get a better grasp on the spectrum of disability – feedback that was important to me.

That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to Devon Healey’s show Rainbow on Mars, currently on stage in Toronto. Healey, an academic and playwright, teamed up with choreographer Rob Binet to create a ballet catered to blind and low-vision audiences.

The process brought up a lot of big, philosophical questions. If you’re describing dance to someone who can’t see, is it more important to focus on what the movements look like or the feelings they’re trying to communicate? Should it feel more like math or poetry?

One of the goals of the project is to expand people’s definition of what living with sight loss means. If you’re no longer centring a visual perspective, what kind of creative possibilities are out there?

Working with the dancers was a dream experience for Healey. “Suddenly it wasn’t just the surface of what it looked like, but how it felt,” she told me. “It wasn’t just filling people in on what was happening. It was an offer to come into this world of blindness together.”

In the spirit of the show, I wondered whether there was a way to move beyond words on a computer screen. Working with Globe and Mail visual journalist Timothy Moore, we tried to capture the feel and tone of Rainbow on Mars by marrying some of the text to multimedia elements. The hope is that it’s a different “in” for readers than a typical article. You can see the visual experience here.

According to a 2022 survey from Statistics Canada, eight million Canadians live with a disability. I’ve been trying to find new ways to tell their stories. The Rainbow on Mars article is part of that project.

I’ve also launched The Globe and Mail’s Accessibility Profiles, Q and A conversations with leaders in access across the country. If you or someone you know would be a fit for the series, please feel free to reach out to me at gisador@globeandmail.com.

Flight attendants interrupted an Air Canada news conference yesterday, as both sides blamed each other for stalling talks. Meanwhile, flight cancellations and uncertainty are upending summer travel plans. More than 100,000 passengers a day are expected to see their travel plans disrupted ahead of a Saturday strike deadline.