Accessibility Made Simple

As an assessor, trainer or professional working in assistive technology, how many times have you heard those words from your clients?

Especially your clients who are older, losing or have lost their vision, and weren’t terribly tech savvy to begin with. It’s frustrating to learn new skills, specifically computing skills. Then, pile on the fact that typically, in addition to learning basic computing skills, they have to learn to use assistive technology separately, as an add-on. It’s the perfect storm that keeps new users underneath the threshold of success. GuideConnect is a game-changer for those clients.

We spoke with Irene Sheffield, who told us about her father, Michael.

“Dad has macular degeneration and his eyesight has degenerated severely over the last 3 years, and he has been completely blind for the last 2 years. Life has been extremely hard for Dad as he used to be a black cab driver and very independent.

As the Owner Operator of a Management Consultancy across the UK and Ireland, Colin Phelan has spent a successful and uninterrupted 35 years in business.

We asked him about his career and the part that Assistive Technology, specifically Dolphin Supernova, has played.

How long have you used Dolphin Supernova?

It became apparent in the mid 90’s that as my eyesight was deteriorating, alongside the introduction of desktop computers in the workplace, I was going to have to find a long-term solution to enable me to continue to develop my career.

Julie Duffy is the Visual Impairment Officer for Portsmouth Library Service, part of Portsmouth City Council (and works closely with the Sensory Impairment and Deaf Services team). Julie runs the visually impaired phone advice line and provides help and guidance on any aspect of vision impairment. Julie has been at Portsmouth CC since 2001 and is completely blind. Many of the people Julie advises are elderly, new to sight loss and nervous of technology. Julie is thrilled to be able to confidently recommend a simple computer solution for email, internet and typing documents.

Do your learners struggle to access the curriculum? Would the students and pupils you support benefit from accessible textbooks? Do they struggle with reading print materials? Do you need talking eBook editions of textbooks?

RNIB Bookshare and the EasyReader app can help.

Sign up today for the next in our series of short 'Lunch & Learn webinars' that are designed for educators with a busy schedule!

This 20 minute webinar will introduce you to the free EasyReader app, that not only enables you to easily deliver accessible materials to your students, but also empowers you to deploy the perfect reading accommodation to their devices!

We are delighted to have another guest blog, this time by Roger Wilson-Hinds, founder of the Georgiephone app. Roger, who has been blind since birth, describes what he sees and suggests simple ways to maximise minimal vision.

Roger says “what I see depends as much on my brain as my eye defect. My brain constantly makes the best guess about what I see. The smallest visual clue can be enough for me to guess or know what I am looking at. I get tired looking – it’s hard work with so few clues and so much effort. And I get tired quickly when trying to sort the detail, especially with reading print and close work”.

We have an informative Guest Blog today by Naomi Dainty, Marketing Manager of Deafblind UK. Naomi writes:

A lady once came up to our stand at a low vision event. She had sight impairments and was wearing two hearing aids, indicating to that she was hard of hearing. She saw that we were representing Deafblind UK and said to me “wouldn’t it be awful to be deafblind, those poor people!” What she didn’t realise was that she herself was actually one of nearly 400,000 deafblind people in the UK.

Ruth lives on the Isle of Wight with two grown-up children. Her sight condition is cone-rod dystrophy. Ruth first noticed a deterioration in her central vision when she was just 9. She stayed in mainstream education though, as she says “I just struggled through and used my friends”.

Ruth was registered blind in 1998 and believes that because the deterioration was so gradual, she simply adapted and was able to manage well.