Business Support Officer - Natasha Brake

Speaker 1 00:28

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of New Horizons, I'm Vaughn Benison, thanks once again for joining us. Just before we get into our main feature for this week's program, I did want to comment on the fact that the Hugh Jeffery Scholarships were recently announced and on behalf of the New Horizons team and New Horizons listeners, I did want to congratulate the four recipients this year. Samantha Alexander, who's doing a Bachelor of Law. Blake McGinnis, who's doing a Bachelor of Medical Science. Jessica Kendall, who is doing a Masters in Counseling. And Sydney Whip, who's doing a Bachelor of Arts in Law.

So congratulations to the four of you for winning the Hugh Jeffery Scholarships. Natasha Brake has been with Blind Citizens Australia for about six months now. We're going to hear more about her and her role as well as a number of other things with which she's involved. Natasha, thanks for joining us and welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 01:19

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 01:23

We're going to hear a little bit more about your role with Blind Citizens Australia very shortly, but firstly, tell us a little bit about you, your background and what you've done throughout your life and how you came to BCA.

Speaker 2 01:36

Yes. Well, I have actually got a bit of a history of working within blindness organisations. So people may remember me from old RVIB days and then following on from that at Vision Australia as well. So that part of my career was about 15 years. So yes, I have been around the traps, but that was a while ago. My last job was actually at the Disability Advocacy Resource Unit, or DARU as it's known. And again, I was there for quite a long time. I was there for 10 years. So yes, I started at BCA in September last year and really enjoying it.

Speaker 1 02:21

And have you been a member of BCA prior to working here?

Speaker 2 02:25

Yes, yes I have. I've been a member for quite a few years but not very active. I've been certainly getting the newsletters and things and but not really participating as much as I would have liked. It's always one of those I'd like to get involved but yeah it's hard to fit it all in sometimes.

Speaker 1 02:43

Absolutely I can relate to that and tell us a little bit about you. What do you do? What sort of things are your hobbies and what do you like to do in your spare time if you have any?

Speaker 2 02:53

Yeah, I've got too many at the moment so I am a bit of a singer with my local community choirs and I've been in two choirs for many years but it's all become too much and so I'm down to one but part of that is because I've been doing some audio production training last year with the community music training or community music community media training organization and then training up with my local radio station at 3MDR which is based in the hills outside of Melbourne and I'm going to be starting my own show soon so that's going to take up a lot of time and yeah so with the singing and the now radio I also dabble in drums so I've got a little electronic drum kit at home so I'll practice that whenever I can and yeah walking and oh lots of little bits and pieces I really also enjoy going away for the weekend to folk festivals around the state or even the country so yeah music and community are two key kind of things that I enjoy.

Speaker 1 04:08

Well, I can tell you from experience that getting involved in community broadcasting can be a lot of fun. It can be a lot of hard work too, but it's very rewarding. And it gives you the opportunity if you're doing your own program to to showcase some of the the things that you're interested in. And of course, there's always someone out there who is interested in the same things that that you're interested in. So congratulations on getting involved with that. And I'd be interested to have a chat with you perhaps on another program about how how the work with community media is going and how receptive stations have been and things like that.

Speaker 2 04:42

Yeah, and I'd be happy to talk about that because in both cases it's been a very positive experience. So with the community media organization, they've established what they're calling an audio ability program. So that's specifically targeted towards people with disability. And yeah, look, my local radio station, they've just totally embraced it. They're like, yep, whatever we can do, let's try all this. And so yeah, we'll figure it out that I will be using, I'll be taking in my own sort of my own computer and running that with my voiceover screen reader with a play out system that I have on that that plugs through their system. So yeah, it sounds all very technical, but it works. So that's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 05:31

Well, that sounds good. Where can people hear you?

Speaker 2 05:35

Well, I'm not live yet. It's imminent. It is, it's on 3MDR and my show is called Out of Sight and it's exclusively 70s music and it's available live streaming on the Community Plus Radio app and also for streaming later on the 3MDR website.

Speaker 1 05:57

Excellent. Well, I think we'll all listen out for that. Let's talk a little bit about your involvement. You said you work with blindness agencies for some 15 years and work for the DARU. What sort of work do you do?

Speaker 2 06:13

It is mostly admin based, so I started out as a bit of a sort of, sort of reception admin type role in the early days at RVIB, and then more on to more departmental type structural stuff. So quality controls, form systems, that kind of thing, and a bit of training along the line as well. So training people up in different systems, different databases, different online apps, which they weren't called back then, but that's what they call them now. Yeah, and then during my time at Daru, it was very web based and very sort of targeted towards the sector. So it was the disability advocacy sector that was our main group of people that we worked with. So it was creating resources for them to improve their practice, so best practice type training materials, forums, that kind of thing, and most of it web-based as well.

So yeah, I really like the websites as a way of communicating information, which is a bit different to a sort of social media around engagement. But yeah, it's a great way of just keeping things in a nice publicly available space that everyone can access and hopefully learn something as well.

Speaker 1 07:43

And tell us how that translates to your work with BCA, what's your role and what sort of things have kind of, I guess, led you to this role.

Speaker 2 07:53

Yeah, so it's a combination of, yes, being part of the blindness community again and also the admin. So my position is the business support officer and it's with the projects team. So the main project is the Eye to the Future team, which is probably your listeners are pretty aware of what that's about. It's all about inclusive employment and accessible employment. So that's the main project, but we run a lot and it's so many smaller projects along the way. So it's supporting all of those. So things like the current audio production course that Steve and Jolly will be running this year and also things like the Hugh Jeffery Scholarship that ran earlier this year. So it's any of those kinds of projects, just doing all of the support in the background for those.

Speaker 1 08:50

And of course that's really important because it's the background work that often is the bedrock to making these projects and these campaigns extremely successful. What for you? You've been in the role now for almost six months. What for you are some of the highlights to working with BCA?

Speaker 2 09:09

I think the highlight is that the organization itself, I really like that grassroots feel it's a membership organization. So everything that we're doing, you know, I'm a vision impaired person and making sure that what we're providing is for people with vision loss. So yeah, it's just really that, that idea of just it's worthwhile, it's great to be connected in really good things that BCA run the whole sort of peer connect the informed sessions. Yeah, it's just really fun to be here right at the source if you like.

Speaker 1 09:48

Would you say that there are some challenges to working in an organization like BCA that you hadn't perhaps thought of when you started?

Speaker 2 09:57

Look, I think the challenges are common across all community sector organisations. It's you want to do more. You always want to do more big ideas, but unfortunately, you know, a bit light on in the funds department. So yeah, we're always scrabbling for funds and, you know, finding the money just to be able to do the things we really want to do. So that is a challenge. And that does affect the programs we can offer. And yeah, that's that's definitely a challenge. And, you know, technology is an ongoing challenge. It's always changing. And quite often, accessibility is always last on the list. And so, yeah, finding systems that work for everybody on different platforms with different access needs.

It's more and more challenging as things are supposedly getting easier and more accessible. It always seems to create new access issues. So yeah, that's another challenge as well.

Speaker 1 10:59

Yeah, I find that really interesting that, you know, we've been talking for 30 years now about the paperless office. And we have yet to see that eventuate, but we're getting closer and closer with every generation of changed technology. And yet the more that changes, the more advocacy we have to do around accessibility for technology, websites and other things like that. And it's almost like, you know, two steps forward and one and seven, eight steps backwards.

Speaker 2 11:27

Yeah, it really is. And things like audio, you know, we love audio as blind and vision impaired people. And that's often forgotten. Even though, yes, the whole sort of podcast revolution has been great. And there is more than ever, you know, talking books available. But then it's other things like, you just get the usual barriers with websites where things don't read out with your screen reader or the colors are so terrible that you can't read it. So yeah, look, on we go, advocating for the next 30 years.

Speaker 1 12:04

Yeah. And I think, you know, to, to follow up on, on your comment, I think that one of the key things that I am very concerned about is that as much as audio is very much beloved by blind people all over the world, there are very few blind people actually creating audio. There are a number, but, you know, there's not as many blind and vision impaired people as, as they could be. And I'm really keen to see this audio production program, as you say, that Steven Jolly is running and proved very successful and to increase the number of blind and vision impaired people creating audio.

But the other thing we need to see is more options for people being able to access the technology and the equipment that they need to be able to use to, to create that audio. There are some very accessible audio production tools out there, and there are more coming all the time. But, you know, we need to see an environment where people can just pick up and learn a piece of audio production software in the same way that a sighted person can. And at the moment, we're not really there. But, you know, who knows, something might come out, come out of the woodwork in very short time.

Speaker 2 13:16

And I totally agree. Like, given the experiences that I've had in the course last year and trying to connect in with my studio, with my radio station, that's exactly the barrier. It's working out. You've got to find the systems that can actually work across those different technologies. You know, the accessible technologies as well as the mainstream platforms. It's a real challenge.

Speaker 1 13:42

And no doubt if you call BCA on 1800 033 660 1800 033 660 you will speak to Natasha in the fullness of time. Otherwise you could email BCA at bca.org.au and get in touch that way... BCA at BCA - dot - org - dot - AU. I'm Vaughan Benison, do take care, I'll talk to you again next week.