Kia, a Deakin University student studying criminology student, is a very creative person who also has idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Kia shares her experience studying as a visually impaired student.

Let’s Get Accessible. Interview 1.

Welcome to Let’s Get Accessible, a series of interviews and discussions with students and staff around disability, accessibility and studying at Deakin University. Here are your hosts Layla and Kiah.

Layla: Today I am talking to Kiah, who is a criminology student at Deakin University. So, Kiah, can you please tell me a little bit about yourself?

Kiah: Yes. As you just mentioned, I studied criminology at Deakin. I've been at Deakin since 2019. About myself, I really enjoy being creative. I love writing music and writing fiction. I love playing video games and board games… mostly outside of my interest in criminology and things like that I'm a very creative person. Writing is one of my absolute passions. So, when I'm not studying, that's what I spend a lot of my time doing, whether it be writing music or creative writing.

Layla: You mentioned that you're a criminology student at Deakin, what do you like about what you study?

Kiah: Well I think it's very interesting. I think criminology is, it's a very interesting subject and every single time I have mentioned to someone that I'm a criminology student, pretty much the response is always, ‘oh, that's so interesting’. I really like looking at the theories of why people commit crime, but my biggest interest is how we can prevent crime and how we can go about rehabilitating people who have offended and looking at people who are offended, reminding that they are absolutely still human and need compassion and empathy. And a lot of times there are specific reasons as to why people commit crime and so rather than just looking at offenders as evil being or less than human as some people view them, I find it really interesting to look at what can we do to prevent people from going down this path? And if that prevention hasn't succeeded or they haven't been able to have intervention once they have gone down that path, what can we do to help them and rehabilitate them back into society?

Layla: So moving on to the disability side of things, can you please tell me about your disability?

Kiah: Yeah. So I have a very rare condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and its other name is pseudotumor cerebri , which is Latin for false brain tumor, because essentially what it is, is I have all the symptoms of a brain tumor without there actually being a tumor there. So essentially one of the things I experience is quite severe headaches, especially when lying down and early in the morning. And of course, other than that, there's a vision loss. So I have quite reduced peripheral vision, like tunnel vision. I'm completely blind in the bottom half of both of my eyes. And then other than that, things get generally blurry. My near vision is so much worse than my far vision. But beyond that, I've also had so I also have damage in my occipital lobe, which is the lobe that controls vision from when I was born. And I also have strabismus in my right eye and just a disconnect between my brain and my eyes, so I can actually only see out of one eye at a time. It's quite easy for me to control which eye I am looking out of these days. It never used to be, but yeah.

Layla: Wow, that's pretty interesting. So what assistive technology do you use?

Kiah: I've actually had a variety of experience with a few different assistive technologies at this stage. I've used all the major screen readers, so Windows Eyes, NVDA, JAWS, and Voiceover. With exceptions to talk back. These days I mostly use Voiceover. I'm mostly an Apple user, so obviously like Voiceover inbuilt screen reader for all Apple devices. However, I do still occasionally use JAWS and NVDA if I'm on a PC, and outside of that because I do have some remaining vision. I do like Zoom a lot on my iPad, but I can only do it for short periods of time before my eyes get very sore. And outside of that, probably one of my favorite like assistive technology kind of apps that I have is an app called Speechify, which was actually designed for Dyslexic people, but it's very useful for anyone who has any form of print disability because it essentially allows you to copy and paste textbooks into the app and it'll sort of read it out to you kind of like an audiobook and turn it into a bit of an audiobook format. So that's been super helpful. Having that application.

Layla: That's really cool and it's really good there's like apps out there that can help you. So in regards to being a student and assistive technology, what has worked well for you during your studies?

Kiah: As I just said, Speechify, having the app Speechify has made quite a difference. But outside of that, one thing that has worked well has been having like, units that don't rely purely on PDF format for readings and just giving us information throughout the unit. So having … I've had a unit in the past that used a lot actually like podcasts to give us some of that information. And being someone who has difficulty reading, that's been very helpful to be able to have an audio format available especially as PDFs aren't always accessible with screen readers. So it can become very frustrating and tiresome having to have PDFs converted.

Layla: I really wish more units would have podcasts or different forms.

Kiah: I said I had never come across anything like it until I had this unit. And interestingly enough, it was a unit about disability inclusion, so it made sense that they had all these different formats for their information, which was just so helpful.

Layla: Yeah, that's awesome. To contrast that, what has been challenging as a student with a disability.

Kiah: I think one thing that has been extra challenging other than like PDFs is having units rely on things like the Padlet format. I've had a seminar for one unit. Every seminar was almost run entirely on Padlet, and Padlet is just so difficult to navigate with a screen reader. So like other units will use it a little bit for certain things. But then when you've got a unit where the seminars and like all the activities are on Padlet. I'll be honest, I failed that unit because it was just so hard to get through it and it was so hard to pay attention and actually complete the seminars because it was so inaccessible, and unfortunately for me, that's a compulsory unit which I now have to repeat. It's a little bit scary going well, what happens again, what can I do if I have to complete this unit but it's completely run on Padlet which is just inaccessible?

Layla: Yeah, that's pretty concerning. So what is a change or improvement that you would like to see a Deakin?

Kiah: Kind of on what we've already been talking about? I just think much more variety in how information is given out, So much less reliance on things like PDS and Padlet things and incorporating more things like podcasts and videos that we can watch to get information, which is just incredibly helpful for all students, not just vision-impaired students. I think getting that more variety will make learning just a lot more accessible for everyone.

Layla: Definitely. So lastly, what would you like students and staff to know about being a student with a disability?

Kiah: I think one thing I would want people to know is we're not as rare as some people seem to think that we are. There are lots of students with disabilities at Deakin and also, like a lot of people have this attitude like, oh, you're just changing things for a small minority. You could be part of that minority at one point. Disability is a minority that you can enter at any point in your life. So to go back to telling you about my vision, I came to Deakin as a sighted student. I didn't lose my vision until halfway through my first trimester and it was completely out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. So I think that's one thing that's just really important to know is when these things might be frustrating having to make these changes to fit people who have different needs, just remember that tomorrow that could be you. Because you never know, or it could be someone that you care about and so we're all over the place and I think it's important to realize that we aren't just this tiny minority that people are just changing everything for.

Layla: Yeah, definitely. It's important to consider that. So thank you for being a part of the interview, Kiah.

Kiah: No problem. It was great chatting to you.