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