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Welcome to Let's get accessible, a series of interviews and discussions with students and staff around disability, accessibility and studying at Deakin University, with hosts Layla and Kia.
16 MAY 2022 · Layla, a Deakin University online student studying Bachelor of Business with a major in human Resources. Layla shares her experiences studying with retinopathy of prematurity and is completely blind in her left eye and her right is cloudy and grey.
Let’s Get Accessible. Interview 2.
Kiah: Welcome to let's Get Accessible. I'm your host, Kiah and today I'll be interviewing my cohost, Layla. So, Layla do you want to introduce yourself?
Layla: Yeah, hi my name is Layla, I'm 24 and I'm a Deakin Cloud student. I live in Brisbane and I'm studying a Bachelor of Business majoring in human resources. In my free time, I like to write, listen audiobooks in podcasts, Cook and I recently began tandem cycling.
Kiah: What kind of audiobooks do you like listening to?
Layla: At the moment, I'm really into Brandon Sanderson. I just recently finished the Mistborn series.
Kiah: I just asked for the Mistborn series for Christmas.
Layla: It is so good.
Kiah: I haven't read any of these books yet.
Layla: I recommend that, and I recommend the Skyward series as well.
Kiah: Yes, I do want to read the Skyward series as well, also a big audiobook fan. All right, so you are studying business, what do you like about studying business and what are you wanting to get out of it?
Layla: I really like how it's a mix of the soft skills and the hard skills. So there is your technical skills, like financial literacy or like management, but it's also the soft skills like teamwork and interpersonal skills and whatnot. And so I feel like those are really important to have as well. It just seems like a really practical course as well. I like how the work integrated learning, so it will improve my employability quite a bit.
Kiah: Yeah. So what kind of soft skills and transferable skills are you learning through your business course and how do you think they're going to benefit you in the future?
Layla: I think teamwork is probably the most important one. Like I've learnt how to lead teams and manage teams and also receive feedback that will help me improve in the future. But I also think the interpersonal skills that I've learned as well have been really important such as self-awareness… trying to think back to last trimester, that's really difficult. Self-awareness and whatnot I think they're really important.
Kiah: Yeah. Awesome. And can you tell me a little bit about your disability and what exactly you can see?
Layla: Yeah. So I have retinopathy of prematurity. So I was born 23 weeks premature and due to needing oxygen as a baby it caused my retinas to detach. So I'm completely blind in my left. And I say I'm blind in my right eye as well because I'm braille user and I use JAWS. So what I can see is completely nothing in my left eye. In my right eye, it's very cloudy and Gray. So I can't see color. I can see a tiny bit of like movement and shadow. Not much light, but yeah, that's pretty much what I can see.
Kiah: I honestly feel like almost every blindie I've met, the left eye is always worse. That's the case for me. As well.
Layla: Really?
Kiah: Yeah, I don't know left eyes apparently just don't like working. Well, my next question was going to be what assistant technology do you use? But you mentioned that you use JAWS. So do you want to talk a little bit about how JAWS helps you with your study?
Layla: Yeah. So in terms of assistive technology, I am a screen reader user. I primarily use JAWS and NVDA, but I also use VoiceOver on my phone and Apple Watch. Yeah. So JAWS and NVDA, they read out the screen. They help me read my textbooks or research papers. They helped me edit documents and whatnot. I also recently got a Focus 14 Braille display so I'm just trying to get better at typing with Braille. It's a little too small to read with, unfortunately, but I figured it will help with spelling names and stuff like that. Those are the assistive technologies that I use.
Kiah: So with the combination of those assistant technologies, what has worked well at Deakin in helping with your studies?
Layla: Firstly, the Disability Services, they're fantastic. I will recommend Deakin to anyone with a disability just because I personally have had really good experiences. And through those experiences, they've given me opportunities to work with Deakin on accessibility. I really like being a cloud student. I know people like, oh, I wouldn't be able to do that. I enjoy attending lectures, but I like having the option to watch the recordings or go on Zoom. I find the teachers are pretty approachable for the most part, and I love the fact that Deakin offer different alternative formats. So, like, you can have your assignment sheets as a Braille format or EPUB and whatnot, you could just have it as a way that works for you. I really wish they had it in word documents.
Kiah: Yeah, I think we all wish that. I personally find the MP3 format are really helpful. Just being able to put some headphones on and listen to something you read out to me, I find really helpful. I'll also totally agree with you about the DRC, the Disability Resource Center. They're incredibly helpful and again, highly recommend any students with a disability at Deakin to reach out to them. There's lots of accommodations. I have to disagree with you with the cloud. I see. I'm one of the students. I can't do cloud study. I absolutely hate it.
Layla: Really?
Kiah: Yeah. I look forward to being back on campus, but I need certain environments to be able to study. Personally, I do like being able to re-listen to recorded lectures, that is one thing I like.
Layla: Yeah, that's completely fair, because sometimes it's sort of like I want to lay in bed and do my assignment, but I’m like I shouldn't lay in bed and do my assignments.
Kiah: Yeah, no, that's totally fair. Look sometimes I'll sit in bed and do my assignments. Most of the time, if I'm not at my desk, it's not getting done and even at my desk it's just so many …. also being neurodivergent, being autistic with ADHD tendencies, like having things around me to distract me, like in my home and not being in a study environment.
Layla: Yeah, I do get distracted really easily.
Kiah: And going on the opposite end of that, what's been challenging at Deakin in regards to disability?
Layla: Teachers not understanding or not listening to requirements that you ask for. So I do have a couple of examples here. Most recently, one of my units, I asked the unit chair for an image description of a diagram, and he just sent me the image.
Kiah: I've had that. I’ve had that exact thing.
Layla: I’m like, how is this going to help me? The assignment templates were a mess, so that's fine. I do need to contact someone about that. Another experience I recently had was I got alternative assignment arrangements approved for something visual, and I could do it as text based. However, the markers, I swear they do not pay attention. To be fair, they have a certain, really short amount of time to mark assignments, but they marked me down because it wasn't like the image or whatever. So that was really frustrating.
Kiah: So you got marked down for presentation?
Layla: Yeah. I still passed, but I didn't do as good as I would have.
Kiah: I've had one assignment where that happened as well. Thankfully, I was able to reach out and be like, hey, I've had accommodations for this. Now I can totally relate and understand with that and teachers just not understanding. I once had an exam ... I'm sure a lot of people have experienced this, when I have exams, I'm put in a separate room with only a couple of other students, and obviously they had the times on the board and they were writing them off and I asked the person supervising us how much time was left and he kept saying “it's on the board, look at the board” and I'm like, I can't see.
Layla: That's ridiculous. Wow.
Kiah: And for our last question today, Leila, what would you like students and staff to know about being a student with a disability?
Layla: I really would like students and staff to have an understanding of what makes material accessible, like providing alt text for image descriptions. Maybe learning about audio descriptions even, and I guess just having a general understanding that blindness is a spectrum. Some people may only be able to see a little bit, some people may not be able to see it all. Like, it's better not to make assumptions. And I think that goes for all disabilities don't make assumptions of what people can and can't do or what their disability is like.
Kiah: Yeah, I think the idea of disability especially, I definitely see a lot with blindness being a spectrum is still something that's really misunderstood and a lot of people don't understand. I think there are still a lot of people who think of blindness as you see black, you can't see anything and that's only the case for a very small amount of blind people. Yes. And it's not the case for either of us. Again, people just don't quite have that understanding. I think it'd be really good to raise awareness around that. Yeah.
Layla: Definitely.
Kiah: That's all the questions I have for you today, Layla. Thank you very much for the interview.
Layla: Thank you for having me.
Kiah: No problem
13 MAY 2022 · Kia, a Deakin University student studying criminology student, is a very creative person who also has idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Kia shares her experience studying as a visually impaired student.
Let’s Get Accessible. Interview 1.
Welcome to Let’s Get Accessible, a series of interviews and discussions with students and staff around disability, accessibility and studying at Deakin University. Here are your hosts Layla and Kiah.
Layla: Today I am talking to Kiah, who is a criminology student at Deakin University. So, Kiah, can you please tell me a little bit about yourself?
Kiah: Yes. As you just mentioned, I studied criminology at Deakin. I've been at Deakin since 2019. About myself, I really enjoy being creative. I love writing music and writing fiction. I love playing video games and board games… mostly outside of my interest in criminology and things like that I'm a very creative person. Writing is one of my absolute passions. So, when I'm not studying, that's what I spend a lot of my time doing, whether it be writing music or creative writing.
Layla: You mentioned that you're a criminology student at Deakin, what do you like about what you study?
Kiah: Well I think it's very interesting. I think criminology is, it's a very interesting subject and every single time I have mentioned to someone that I'm a criminology student, pretty much the response is always, ‘oh, that's so interesting’. I really like looking at the theories of why people commit crime, but my biggest interest is how we can prevent crime and how we can go about rehabilitating people who have offended and looking at people who are offended, reminding that they are absolutely still human and need compassion and empathy. And a lot of times there are specific reasons as to why people commit crime and so rather than just looking at offenders as evil being or less than human as some people view them, I find it really interesting to look at what can we do to prevent people from going down this path? And if that prevention hasn't succeeded or they haven't been able to have intervention once they have gone down that path, what can we do to help them and rehabilitate them back into society?
Layla: So moving on to the disability side of things, can you please tell me about your disability?
Kiah: Yeah. So I have a very rare condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and its other name is pseudotumor cerebri , which is Latin for false brain tumor, because essentially what it is, is I have all the symptoms of a brain tumor without there actually being a tumor there. So essentially one of the things I experience is quite severe headaches, especially when lying down and early in the morning. And of course, other than that, there's a vision loss. So I have quite reduced peripheral vision, like tunnel vision. I'm completely blind in the bottom half of both of my eyes. And then other than that, things get generally blurry. My near vision is so much worse than my far vision. But beyond that, I've also had so I also have damage in my occipital lobe, which is the lobe that controls vision from when I was born. And I also have strabismus in my right eye and just a disconnect between my brain and my eyes, so I can actually only see out of one eye at a time. It's quite easy for me to control which eye I am looking out of these days. It never used to be, but yeah.
Layla: Wow, that's pretty interesting. So what assistive technology do you use?
Kiah: I've actually had a variety of experience with a few different assistive technologies at this stage. I've used all the major screen readers, so Windows Eyes, NVDA, JAWS, and Voiceover. With exceptions to talk back. These days I mostly use Voiceover. I'm mostly an Apple user, so obviously like Voiceover inbuilt screen reader for all Apple devices. However, I do still occasionally use JAWS and NVDA if I'm on a PC, and outside of that because I do have some remaining vision. I do like Zoom a lot on my iPad, but I can only do it for short periods of time before my eyes get very sore. And outside of that, probably one of my favorite like assistive technology kind of apps that I have is an app called Speechify, which was actually designed for Dyslexic people, but it's very useful for anyone who has any form of print disability because it essentially allows you to copy and paste textbooks into the app and it'll sort of read it out to you kind of like an audiobook and turn it into a bit of an audiobook format. So that's been super helpful. Having that application.
Layla: That's really cool and it's really good there's like apps out there that can help you. So in regards to being a student and assistive technology, what has worked well for you during your studies?
Kiah: As I just said, Speechify, having the app Speechify has made quite a difference. But outside of that, one thing that has worked well has been having like, units that don't rely purely on PDF format for readings and just giving us information throughout the unit. So having … I've had a unit in the past that used a lot actually like podcasts to give us some of that information. And being someone who has difficulty reading, that's been very helpful to be able to have an audio format available especially as PDFs aren't always accessible with screen readers. So it can become very frustrating and tiresome having to have PDFs converted.
Layla: I really wish more units would have podcasts or different forms.
Kiah: I said I had never come across anything like it until I had this unit. And interestingly enough, it was a unit about disability inclusion, so it made sense that they had all these different formats for their information, which was just so helpful.
Layla: Yeah, that's awesome. To contrast that, what has been challenging as a student with a disability.
Kiah: I think one thing that has been extra challenging other than like PDFs is having units rely on things like the Padlet format. I've had a seminar for one unit. Every seminar was almost run entirely on Padlet, and Padlet is just so difficult to navigate with a screen reader. So like other units will use it a little bit for certain things. But then when you've got a unit where the seminars and like all the activities are on Padlet. I'll be honest, I failed that unit because it was just so hard to get through it and it was so hard to pay attention and actually complete the seminars because it was so inaccessible, and unfortunately for me, that's a compulsory unit which I now have to repeat. It's a little bit scary going well, what happens again, what can I do if I have to complete this unit but it's completely run on Padlet which is just inaccessible?
Layla: Yeah, that's pretty concerning. So what is a change or improvement that you would like to see a Deakin?
Kiah: Kind of on what we've already been talking about? I just think much more variety in how information is given out, So much less reliance on things like PDS and Padlet things and incorporating more things like podcasts and videos that we can watch to get information, which is just incredibly helpful for all students, not just vision-impaired students. I think getting that more variety will make learning just a lot more accessible for everyone.
Layla: Definitely. So lastly, what would you like students and staff to know about being a student with a disability?
Kiah: I think one thing I would want people to know is we're not as rare as some people seem to think that we are. There are lots of students with disabilities at Deakin and also, like a lot of people have this attitude like, oh, you're just changing things for a small minority. You could be part of that minority at one point. Disability is a minority that you can enter at any point in your life. So to go back to telling you about my vision, I came to Deakin as a sighted student. I didn't lose my vision until halfway through my first trimester and it was completely out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. So I think that's one thing that's just really important to know is when these things might be frustrating having to make these changes to fit people who have different needs, just remember that tomorrow that could be you. Because you never know, or it could be someone that you care about and so we're all over the place and I think it's important to realize that we aren't just this tiny minority that people are just changing everything for.
Layla: Yeah, definitely. It's important to consider that. So thank you for being a part of the interview, Kiah.
Kiah: No problem. It was great chatting to you.
Welcome to Let's get accessible, a series of interviews and discussions with students and staff around disability, accessibility and studying at Deakin University, with hosts Layla and Kia.
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