Kim Marriott - Monash Assistive Technology and Society Centre

Speaker 1 00:03

With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives, 2RPH brings you AbleQuest.

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you

Speaker 1 00:18

Hello, I'm Manny Roper. Monash University in Melbourne has a well -earned reputation for innovation, and partly because of this, is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide. And innovation is what characterizes one of Monash's latest initiatives, MATS, which stands for Monash Assistive Technology and Society.

Speaker 1 00:40

The MATS Centre helps people living with disabilities to lead self -directed lives. Emerging technologies have the potential to break down many of the barriers people with disabilities face at school, university, work, and in the social sphere.

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The team at MATS make it a priority to ensure they are addressing real problems faced by real people, so they work closely with the community via partnerships. Through a variety of projects, they are advancing responsible AI software engineering from every angle.

Speaker 1 01:17

Therefore, the team assembled represents many disciplines, including education, human -centred computing, business and economics, and occupational therapy. The Centre Director is Professor Kim Marriott, Head of the Human -Centred Computing Department at Monash, who speaks with Barbara Sullivan to explain more about the MATS Centre.

Speaker 3 01:43

Hello, Professor Marriott or Kim, if I may. Thanks for joining us on AbleQuest to talk about your exciting new Assistive Technology Centre at Monash.

Speaker 2 01:51

Thank you, Barbara, so much for inviting me.

Speaker 3 01:53

And what a rollercoaster I bet you've not long had the centre up and running. And let's start with a simple explanation of exactly what the Monash Assistive Technology and Society Centre is.

Speaker 2 02:06

Okay, well thank you, Barbara. So it's the first thing in Australia with a focus on disability and assistive technology and one of the biggest in the world. So it's looking at inventing new assistive technologies to support people with disability, but also understanding the social context in which these technologies are being used and the barriers to their use.

Speaker 2 02:26

Importantly, it's looking at research, but also education and everything that we do is community led.

Speaker 3 02:33

Explain the main activities of the Centre. So it's got...

Speaker 2 02:36

three pillars. The first one is, as I said, it's very important that everything we do is community -led. So first focus is community impact. So co -design, developing new technologies, advocacy, policy, advice and submissions.

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The second pillar is research. So developing innovative assistive technologies and a particular focus is on emerging digital technologies like artificial intelligence or metagreality 3D printing wearables.

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The third pillar is education. So supporting YNASH students with disabilities. And as you're no doubt aware, there's much less participation by people with disabilities in STEM, so science, technology, engineering and maths.

Speaker 2 03:18

So we want to increase participation in STEM disciplines. And also all students at YNASH should come out with understanding your disability and the need for inclusive design.

Speaker 3 03:31

Can you just tell me what were the drivers in setting this up? What got this whole wonderfully innovative idea underway?

Speaker 2 03:39

I work in the Faculty of IT and about five years ago we set up a successful group in inclusive technology which was looking at assistive technologies that was led by Kirsten Ellis. And we recognised actually that there are lots of other researchers and educators across Monash who are also interested in assistive technology and disability, you know, from the Faculty of Arts, Education, Medicine, Business, Engineering and Design and of course also in disability support services.

Speaker 2 04:07

So we ran a series of workshops last year to collect people who were interested in setting up a centre or get them talking to one another. So the centre has been developed very much as a bottom -up activity but of course Monash has been very, very supportive of the centre and it's a recognition by Monash of the importance of addressing all of the current barriers that face people with disabilities.

Speaker 3 04:31

And it sounds like you were involved from the get go. How did you actually get involved? Was this your idea? And tell us a little bit about your specialty.

Speaker 2 04:40

About 15 years ago, I was teaching algorithms and data structures, which is to IT students. This has a lot of diagrams. And I had a blind student and that made me really realize the significant barriers that we're facing blind students starting STEM.

Speaker 2 04:56

So I started to look at this. My background is a researcher in data visualization. So I've changed direction and started to look at how you can make graphical information accessible to people who are blind or have low vision.

Speaker 2 05:10

More recently, I've been looking at how you can use new technologies like 3D printing, refreshable tactile displays, sonification or meted reality, etc. to provide blind and low vision people with better access to information that sighted people take for granted.

Speaker 3 05:27

So there was one student in your class who had low vision or was blind. Are more students with disabilities now enrolling?

Speaker 2 05:34

Look, I work with a large number of different people who are blind and low vision. We have a lot of projects in a lot of different areas and I can talk about those later, but we certainly have some students studying information technology who are blind and low vision, but not enough.

Speaker 2 05:48

So that's one of the reasons for sending up the sender. We really need to do more to encourage students who are blind and low vision to study STEM. And this sort of starts in primary and secondary school because people who are blind and low vision find it difficult to access or study mathematics and other STEM subjects because of graphical material or they're not encouraged to study these subjects.

Speaker 3 06:11

So how would you measure the success of the centre?

Speaker 2 06:14

A real world impact on the lives of people with disabilities. That'll be in a number of different ways. So we've developed technologies that are being widely used, that we better support for minor students with disabilities and hopefully across the sector, the university sector, and we'll have more students with disabilities studying and working in STEM disciplines.

Speaker 3 06:35

So it sounds as if Monash actually has a good infrastructure for supporting people with disability. Disability support services department. And you interface with this presumably.

Speaker 2 06:48

That's correct. So we look like other universities that has disability support services and so they're just absolutely partners in the centre.

Speaker 3 06:58

So for something like this to succeed the center, you must rely on good partnerships, stable partnerships, and good relations with all the various departments because you've named several that are involved.

Speaker 3 07:10

Who are your partners, external partners?

Speaker 2 07:12

So look, we've had projects with Victorian Department of Education, specifically with SVRC, Roundtable for Print Disability, Next Sense, See Differently, Guide Dogs, Spevy, Vision Australia, Lion Citizens Australia, Wallara, Urella, Bendigo Art Gallery, Tennis Australia, Parks Victoria, Microsoft.

Speaker 2 07:36

Really, we have a large number of partners.

Speaker 3 07:39

It takes a lot to manage partnerships successfully. How do you do it?

Speaker 2 07:47

Okay, so I should be really clear. I should have said this before but the center we have about a hundred people have indicated interest in joining the center and I have an assistant director Louisa Willoughby from arts and we have pillar leads We have a large number of people all of who are really working together to make sure that this center is successful So it's not like I'm the only person doing this.

Speaker 2 08:11

It's been driven by all of us

Speaker 3 08:13

except that you're pulling it all together and you've got to stay right across it. Do you still have your departmental responsibilities and are you still teaching?

Speaker 2 08:23

That's a good question. Look, I was head of department, so I was head of the humans and computing department up until the end of last year. My term has had finished, which was for sure at its timing because it means that I can now spend a lot more time leading the centre.

Speaker 2 08:38

I have some teaching, but that teaching is well aligned with the centre. So I'm teaching, or teaching into professional practice and teaching IT students about inclusion and diversity.

Speaker 3 08:50

We talked about the community earlier on in the conversation. How do you stay connected with the community? Because you said you're community led and it's very important to make sure that whatever you're doing is practical for people in their everyday lives.

Speaker 2 09:05

We have very good connections with the community organisations. I talked about our projects in partnership with those organisations. For each of those projects, we have expert advisory groups. We are in the process of creating an expert advisory group for the Centre.

Speaker 2 09:21

We recruit people with lived experience of disability and with the Centre, we're about to create friends of maths and partners of maths. So the friends of maths will be for individuals who want to find out more about the Centre and stay in touch and we encourage people to join that and partners of maths for organisations who want to work with the Centre.

Speaker 3 09:41

And it keeps you as an academic and a researcher really working on emerging technologies keeps you grounded and and.

Speaker 2 09:50

Absolutely. I mean look, University of Research is academics. We can sometimes go off and investigate things that actually may not have as much practical benefit as other things and it's really important to make sure that what we're doing is grounded in real -world needs.

Speaker 3 10:08

I've read on your website about working with the Bendigo Gallery Art Gallery. Tell me about that project.

Speaker 2 10:14

Yes, so that's led by Matt Butler and a few years ago the Bendigo Art Gallery approached us. As you know, Bendigo Art Gallery, you know, it's a major regional gallery. They have wonderful exhibitions and it's a really important part of the Bendigo community.

Speaker 2 10:30

And they realised, and we realised because we work with Vision Australia there and talk to blind and low vision people in the Bendigo community that the blind and low vision people were feeling sort of left out because all their friends were going along to the Bendigo Art Gallery seeing the latest exhibition, talking about it, you know, being very proud of it and people who were blind or low vision were not able to do that and couldn't really access the exhibitions.

Speaker 2 10:56

Over the last couple of years we've worked with the Bendigo Art Gallery to make their exhibitions more accessible. In particular, we worked on the Briss and Delvers exhibition and also on the Mary Quant fashion revolutionary exhibition to provide access using a mix of tactile, audio and large dioramas and things like that to provide access to a multimodal experience.

Speaker 3 11:23

Well this must be fairly cutting edge from a gallery perspective is it?

Speaker 2 11:27

It certainly is, but around the world, galleries are realising that really they're excluding a large portion of the community. And so around the world, there's interest by galleries in trying to make their collections more accessible.

Speaker 2 11:42

So, Bindi goes at the forefront, but it is really galleries around the world are realising it in Australia as well.

Speaker 3 11:47

Is there a particular project that you would like to work on that you're starting to focus on?

Speaker 2 11:52

Yes, look, there's one that's very dear to my heart at the moment. We're just working with various education departments around Australia with blindness and eye vision organisations, and that's to increase accessibility for mathematics in secondary school for students who have blind and eye vision.

Speaker 3 12:08

Interesting. So Kim, what is the best way for people who are interested to contact Matt's?

Speaker 2 12:16

Look, the easiest way is look at our website. There's a contact maps email address there, and you can either search for Monash and Maps, and I think it comes up about second link, or you can go to monash .edu slash maps, M -A -T -S.

Speaker 3 12:36

Kim that's extremely interesting and I look forward to hearing more about various projects along the way. Good luck with your first year of operation and it's going to make a big difference to the lives of people with disabilities in Australia, I know.

Speaker 2 12:50

Thank you.

Speaker 3 12:58

I've just had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Kim Marriott, head of Human Centred Computing at Monash University. Recently, Kim has been appointed to head the team at MATS, or Monash Assistive Technology and Society.

Speaker 3 13:14

And don't forget, AbleQuest programs are all available as podcasts on the 2RPH website www .2rph .org .au or via your favourite podcast channels. Thanks for tuning in to AbleQuest today.

Speaker 1 13:37

You have just been listening to AbleQuest, a program that looks at developments in assistive technology. From Barbara Sullivan and Manny Roper, thank you for listening and goodbye to our next program.