Social distancing under COVID-19 has become an inconvenience for most Australians, but for people who are blind or have low vision, socially isolating and distancing has presented a unique set of challenges.
Some of those challenges include shopping, and for students, online learning.
Melissa Fanshawe is a mathematics lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) who is writing a doctorate on the experience of students living with vision disabilities and is a trained teacher for students with vision disabilities.
The mother of four also has a 13-year-old son, Oliver, who is vision disability. Her experience of teaching her son at home and online during the COVID-19 lockdown she says has been largely positive.
‘There have certainly been issues with the transition to online learning, for example some pictures, diagrams, and videos are not accessible. You have to spend time describing those,’ said Ms Fanshawe.
‘But most things are accessible. Using software narrator programs like JAWS, NVDA, or inbuilt accessibility software, actually a lot of material is now accessible to Oliver.
Bringing learning online is proving a major challenge for the education sector in general, but for children with vision disability there are additional challenges.
‘While there are software narrator programs and Apple providing voiceover for all touchscreens, with schools going to Google Classrooms for example, there can be integration issues,’ said Karen Knight, Client Services Manager at Vision Australia.
‘As a working mum I’ve usually got a heap of driving and time commitments. To be able to access some of the support services, including education has actually been great.’
For those studying at University there are similar challenges around accessibility to the full gamut of learning resources. Ms Fanshawe has produced videos for USQ on vision disability and online learning.
‘We’ll be endeavouring to help the blind community from every age spectrum with COVID-19 through our COVID-19 resource page at https://www.visionaustralia.org/COVID19,’ said Ms Knight.
