Assistive Technology and Me: Zain's Blog

The team at Dolphin have had the pleasure of working this week with Blind in Business, to hold work experience for ten young people with vision impairments.

This work experience is held virtually, as the students go to different colleges around the country. This has the benefit of enabling us to take more students on, who met with us over MS Teams to complete work experience with our Support, Marketing and Testing departments.

As part of their experience with the marketing department, they were each asked to write a guest blog. The standard of work they produced was so high, that we are delighted to be able to publish a selection of these blogs over the course of this week. First up is Zain's blog. He talks about the impact assistive tech has on his studies and the things his future employer could do to help him in the start of his career: 

How Assistive Technology has impacted me and how businesses can adapt for people with Vision Impairment (VI) and neurodivergent needs

About me

Hi, I am Zain and I am a young VI person who is Neurodivergent. I have two conditions which impact me. These are ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and Albinism.

Albinism affects my vision as well as my appearance. This is the case as Albinism affects the Melanin levels. Those who have Albinism don’t produce any Melanin. This causes me to have fair pigmentation of my skin, hair, and eyes. The colour of my eyes is of a blueish-grey colour. My vision is impacted heavily, so much so that I can't see anyone’s face in detail within two metres.

ASD affects me socially, as I don’t get certain social cues, or sometimes the wording of things may not make sense to me. After doing my GCSEs I am currently in college, doing a BTEC course in IT and I want to pursue IT as a career.

How Assistive Tech impacts me

From the time I was in primary school to now, there has been a change in the way I work. When I was younger the the majority of the time I used a paper and pen to write things down, and I also used a physical video magnifier. Now I tend to use a laptop with the a screen magnifier. Using screen magnification software was a massive change for me, as it enabled me to be more independent as well as more efficient with the work I have done.

I enjoy using the laptop as they are more efficient, they're not bulky and clunky to use and move around. The method I found was perfect for me to work efficiently.

The only problem is that it relied on teachers to send the lessons for me to access. This was mainly good as most teachers sent the necessary resources for me to access the lessons but sometimes, it was not always possible so instead using an iPad to take pictures of the info on the interactive board. Examples of this are during maths and science, or at any time information was not on the slides I received. I also realised that using this method recently I feel the need to upgrade the way I use a magnifier. Seeing how the products are at over at Dolphin, I feel convinced using one of their products will help me massively for accessibility specifically using Supernova Magnifier speech or with the screen reader. I think using Supernova will ease my eye strain when using apps for my college work. 

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Adapting for team members who are vision impaired and/or neurodivergent

From a personal perspective, as someone who is VI and has Autism, there are some helpful ways my employer can adapt the work environment to help me focus, so they can get the best from me.

To help me manage my time and focus on the job in hand, it’s really helpful for me to have my working day broken down into a list of smaller tasks, with a timetable or a deadline for each. I prefer to have these tasks set consecutively, so I can concentrate on each one in turn. I find this helps with time management and it ensures I am not overloaded with information.  

From a VI perspective, there are some reasonable adjustments which I would ask to be put into place. These help with my physical safety, as well as my ability to work productively in a team environment. These adjustments include:

• Taping the edges of any glass doors, to help me move around the office safely
• For colleagues to provide any printed document and notes in a font size I am comfortable using – Ariel Bold in 36pt is perfect
• Approving regular breaks, which I need to reduce eye fatigue
• Remote or hybrid work would be beneficial to my productivity

To get the best from me at work, I prefer to be able to work remotely, with a flexible working pattern. This helps me manage my time and my workload better. Fewer distractions in the working environment mean I can really concentrate and focus on the task in hand. A flexible working practice also enables me to pause for daily prayers, manage the tasks set and ensure I am not overwhelmed with external influences.

I aspire to work in IT and I know that with reasonable adjustments, flexible, hybrid or remote working, my employer will get the best from me, and I can achieve all my career goals.