Simon (Host) 00:05

Welcome to this episode of the Enabled Podcast. I'm your host, simon Order. Great to have you company. On the Enabled podcast, we talk all things, all abilities, inclusion, diversity and, the most important thing, accessibility. Our goal is to bring you the stories of lived experience, the amazing projects, the trials, the tribulations and much more from the all abilities enabled community. The Enabled podcast is brought to you by the Ability Heroes Organisation.

We're sitting with Dr Scott Hollier in his office at the Centre for Accessibility Australia here in Belmont, western Australia. Scott is the CEO at the Centre for Accessibility. He specialises in the field of digital accessibility and digital inclusion. He holds a PhD in internet studies and he also holds academic positions at Edith Cowan University and the University of South Australia. He's also an invited expert for the W3C Accessible Platform Architecture as a Research Questions Task Force.

Scott has a lived experience of disability as a person who is legally blind, so he has a professional and personal understanding of the importance of accessibility. It's really good to see you again, scott. We've met a few times before and done some work before, but this is such a great opportunity to get you to tell us, tell our listeners of the Enabled podcast, a bit more about your journey. So I'm going to start off and I'm going to ask you maybe you can take us through your personal journey of being diagnosed with a vision disability and share with our listeners how that experience has shaped your perspective on life, education and, ultimately, your approach to employment.

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 02:03

So to share a little bit about my journey, I have the the condition retinitis pigmentosa and I was diagnosed when I was five. For my parents it was a difficult time. They're both now retired but were primary school teachers and so really valued the importance of education. They started to first notice that perhaps I had a vision impairment when my mum dropped a brown two cent coin on our 1970s brown vinyl floor and as a small child I'd feel around to pick up the coin instead of just reaching for it. This is one of the first things that twigged that perhaps I had a vision impairment. From there they realised I couldn't see very much at night and they went and took me to a specialist. And the first specialist said look, your son's got this eye condition. He'll go blind, there's nothing you can do and it's quite likely he'll have to go to a special school. And so, again, my parents being educators, that was a particularly hard thing to hear, and also that my employment prospects would be quite bleak. So my parents were really concerned about this because of the value of education and took me to another specialist. And the second specialist said look, we don't know what the future holds. How about we just take it as it comes. Your son still has some vision. He'll have some form of vision for some time. So let's just work with what's there and see where things go. And it's fair to say I'd never be more thankful for that second opinion going forward.

Probably one of the most important things in my journey was education, and there were two people in my life that really made a huge difference in supporting that. One was a Year 9 science teacher who noticed that when I was trying to dissect a rat in biology class, that when we had this giant magnifier with a light under it it actually really improved my handwriting because I could actually see the blue lines on the page. And so because of that, the science teacher noticed that this equipment really helped, and in the late 1980s technology and the impact of that was still evolving. So he spent a bit of time just personally looking into what might be available and, through his own initiative, connected my family to a whole variety of services, which made a huge difference. Thanks to a large part of his support, I managed to then get through high school and got to uni, did computing at Curtin University.

Things got to a little bit of a tricky start, partly because of accessibility issues and partly because I discovered the calculus was not my strong point. I wanted to travel with that hardcore maths. So at the end of that semester I got a phone call and my mum said oh, Scott, there's an associate professor, Steve Narcissel, for you on the phone. And I went oh, that's, that's probably not good news, because around campus our course coordinator was just referred to himself as Steve, or even Uncle Steve, so the fact that he was using his full title on the phone meant that something was probably not great. I hesitantly picked up the phone as a 17 year old Steven said oh look, I've got good news and bad news for you, Scott. And I went oh, what's the good news? And he said all the good news is you passed most of your subjects, but calculus didn't go so well. And he said I know there were some accessibility challenges as well, so how about we sit down together and work out what we can do to support your education? Again, thanks to him taking the time to provide that support, I was able to ultimately finish that degree and I do believe that if he hadn't intervened, it probably would have failed maths twice, would have continued running into accessibility challenges and ultimately not completed the studies and there were also some great equity staff at Curtin that provided a lot of support as well. So, again, having people at the right place at the right time made a huge difference to my ability to complete my education and that in turn, really, really helped on the employment front.

One thing in terms of getting a job and I think one of the hardest things for people with disability is trying to get that first job and just about everyone I've talked to that has lived experience of disability does run into those challenges in trying to get employment, and my story was quite similar. I'd finished my uni studies but every time I would make interview I just really struggled to actually get the job and I would offer to a potential employer when I made interview that I did have a vision impairment. It wasn't as obvious at that point I could get around in the daytime without a cane, but I thought it was important personally to let future employer know that I did have this vision impairment. I do respect that for people this is a very personal decision and I fully respect people who do or don't disclose. It's important people can make that choice, but for me I really wanted to let people know that I did have this condition.

But what happened is that I would mention that people would say, well, can you drive? And I'd say no, and then ultimately that would be the end of the interview. And this happened dozens of times. There was a shortage of IT people in the mid 90s, so I'd make interview often but just couldn't quite get the job. And after this happened time and time again, I realised that it was necessary to try to figure out how to address that.

When I got another opportunity and this time it was for a help desk position I was a little bit more prepared. And when I was asked the question about driving, they said you know, you'll probably need to go and help people with their computer at their house. What are you going to do? This time it's been more prepared and I said well, look, if you need me to go anywhere, I can get a taxi, I can get a bus, someone can probably help me. But you'll never have to worry about that. I will always guarantee that I can get to that place and do the job. And not only did I actually get that job, but in those two years I was in that position, never once did I have to go anywhere, and so this is a little bit, I think, of the story of disability employment. Sometimes there's a little bit of marketing and just yeah, trying to convince that person on the other side of the table that you're capable and able to do the job. The rest of my journey all went from there.

Simon (Host) 07:23

It's clear from what you've said so far that navigating the world with a vision disability often involves unique challenges. From what you've told me in the past, that includes the seemingly simple task of stepping out of the door. Can you share some of the personal challenges you've faced in terms of accessibility and mobility and how those experiences have influenced your advocacy work for a more inclusive and accommodating society?

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 07:50

I think it's important to recognise that for people who live with experience disability, there are days where things are difficult. Unlike that famous footy mantra, sometimes failure is an option and sometimes it will take me a few goes. Some of my personal challenges is that my vision these days is very limited and I do rely heavily on cane for mobility to get around, and sometimes that is difficult and sometimes I'll run into things and sometimes that is discouraging. But it's been my experience and if I can piece together the little things, then the everyday things become possible. For example, if I can get the courage to hop into a taxi, I can try and figure out the next step when I get out of the taxi and if I'm travelling into status, I do a fair bit for my work. If I can get the courage to get into the taxi, then when I get to the airport I can tap around the airport and someone will usually scoop me up and help me get to the plane and then you solve that part of the problem and then you go on. I do find it difficult, for example, asking strangers to help me find a toilet and things like that, but if I can work through that and overcome those things. Then the big things become possible, and I've been very fortunate in my journey for that, and that's really opened up the doors for me to be able to do a lot of travel.

I've been fortunate to get to every continent. I've been fortunate to be able to do things like whitewater rafting down the Grand Canyon and climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridgee and run with the Olympic torch, and all these opportunities are really largely thanks to a lot of support around me.

I often liken it to trying to change a light bulb. You can leap to the ceiling to change a light bulb, but it's a lot easier if you use a ladder, and all through my life I've had that support under me, really allowed me to do things independently but still have that support, and so that's what really branched me into where my career is and the area of passion, which is around digital access. So to make sure that people with disability get effective access, two things need to happen. People have to have the right tools and their device of choice, and then we need to make sure things are accessible with those tools. So the content with websites, snaps and documents are created in a way that works with the tools that people use. Most of my career after university has headed in that digital access direction. That is, and that remains my passion.

Simon (Host) 10:04

You're listening to the Enabled podcast brought to you by the Ability Heroes Organisation. Today we're talking with Dr Scott Hollier about his journey of lived experience and his advocacy work for digital inclusion. I asked Scott about how advancements in technology have enhanced digital accessibility for those with a vision impairment.

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 10:27

It's a fantastic question. If we go back to the 1980s and you were blind and you wanted to have a voice read things out too, you were really limited with the personal computers of the day. The voice was very robotic. You were really really limited in what its functionality was. But what we've seen from the mid 1990s and onwards that we've seen a lot of evolution of great software. The main issue was the price.

Many people who are blind or have low vision would be familiar with the Jaws screen reader, for example, or Zoom text to magnify the screen. Also, there's things like high contrast themes available. So there's some great technology that's been around in its largely current type of form since the 1990s, but it was really expensive, and it used to be the case that the software was about the same price as the computer itself, and so this made it really prohibitive for people, especially on low income, to be able to get some of these great tools. And while today a lot of those tools are still available, what's fantastic now is that, as a legally blind person, if I want to have my computer talk to me or I want to zoom in on the screen or I want to have a high contrast theme. These things are all built in now.

So, whether it's Windows or Mac, or an iPhone or iPad, android, these great accessibility tools are just largely out of the box, and so the organisation I lead with, Centre for Accessibility Australia, we have a help desk resource on our website to give people a hand to get access to those features, because, although the commercial products are still there and there are, in some scenarios, benefits to those the fact that you can just use a computer or just grab a phone and you don't need the blind phone, you can just grab a standard phone off the shelf from a store and the accessibility features are built in and works. I think that's the biggest and probably the most exciting thing that's happened in recent times, as I was saying before, to get accessibility right, we need the two sides of the coin, one to make sure that people have the right tools and a device of choice, and for the most part, we're largely there now. So then the attention turns to making sure our content works with them.

Simon (Host) 12:26

Digital technology is definitely democratised accessibility and inclusion far more than it was before. The world went digital, and I'll stay on the digital theme for a second, because this is how we met in the realm of digital accessibility. You know web content inclusivity is very crucial. Can you shed light on how the WCAG and I'll just for our listeners say WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, can you shed some light on how that standard has played a role in making online content more accessible for people with various abilities?

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 13:02

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG as we tend to call it is absolutely critical to making sure that that content is accessible and that other side of the coin making sure our content works really does. Keep coming back to the WCAG standard. So the WCAG standard has 13 key guidelines to support a variety of different disabilities in making our content accessible Things like making sure there's alternative text for images, captions on video, making sure that we don't have things flash on the screen too rapidly that could trigger a seizure, things along those lines and the standard really makes a huge difference if designers and developers follow the WCAG standard with their website, developing their apps and also documents. Even though it's called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it does apply to apps and documents too. If people do those things, then people with disability can really effectively use that content.

So we're really strong advocates for WCAG to be implemented. It's a particularly exciting time at the moment when it comes to WCAG, because recently we had a update to the WCAG standard version 2.2 is out now and because that is a relatively recent development, we've seen some improvements around the guidance, particularly around supporting people with cognitive disability. So we've really entered an exciting time where there's more we can do to make sure our content's accessible, and certainly if there's any designer or developer out there, or even just a content producer with a document that is trying to make things accessible, check out that WCAG, wcag standard and you can do a lot to make your content accessible.

Simon (Host) 14:35

I get a lot of questions about website auditing, document auditing for inclusion and accessibility. Could you share some practical tips and tricks for content creators?

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 14:46

The Centre for Accessibility Australia that I lead, we have some really good resources at accessibilityorgau and I also have an auditing team. There's 11 of our staff, seven of which have a disability. The common things that the team often refer to me try to check your work for accessibility. So, built into Word, many people know that there's a spell check there but don't realise. Just a few icons along there is a check accessibility button. So that's a really good tip. It doesn't check everything, but it's a great place to start. So if you're using Word or PowerPoint or Excel also Adobe Acrobat there are accessibility checkers built in. So absolutely use those checkers and that can be really helpful.

Be aware of making your links descriptive. So, for example, people often use things like click here or read more, and that's a bit tricky because if you're using a screen reader in your land on a link that just says click here, people go click here to what, what's that link going to do? So if we make that link really nice and descriptive, then that can make a huge difference. And there's also accessibility checkers that you can put into your web browser. So there's a great one called WAVE WAVE. You can install that in Chrome as an extension.

So if you want to check web pages, then there's some great tools. Again, they don't check everything, but there's a really good place to start. One of the other things that our team reports on is that people often forget to put captions in videos. So if you can do that, then it provides great support to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. So there's just a few tips, and they tie back to the Workag standard. That can really make a difference, and we do have a bigger resource around digital access and how to get going with it on our website. So if you are interested in more information, check out accessibilityorgau.

Simon (Host) 16:31

Thank you very much for talking to us today. Some great tips there and some really fantastic insights into what you're doing, your journey and the Center for Accessibility. Absolute pleasure to have you on the Enabled Podcast.

Dr Scott Hollier (Guest) 16:44

Thanks so much for having me.