Digital literacy

(THEME) 00:03

Annalise

Hi, I'm Annalise...

Hrisanthi

I'm Hrisanthi...

Rosie

I'm Rosie...

Christy 00:08

I'm Christy...

Honor

And I'm Honor... and we're the hosts of the podcast Literacy Legends.

?Host

As a Tasmanian, when you hear the word literacy, what springs to mind?

?Host 00:19

I bet it's the statistic that almost half of Tasmanian adults lack the literacy skills they need to get by day to day.

?Host 00:27

It's worrying,

?Host 00:28

So we wanted to know what's being done about it. Is literacy as big as a challenge, as they say it is?

?Host 00:37

Well, yes, it seems to be. But are there stories of hope? You bet there are.

?Host 00:43

We travelled Tasmania to find just some of the people who are working hard to improve these stats.

?Host

They're stories worth celebrating, of hope and progress, and their projects are making a real difference in people's lives.

?Host 01:05

Join us in this series about literacy in Tasmania.

?Host

Episode 5 - Digital Literacy.

(SOUND OF TAPPING KEYBOARD)

Rosie 01:17

I'm Rosie, and I'm the host of this episode of Literacy Legends. I'm also the founder of a digital accessibility consultancy based in the northwest coast of Tasmania. Just like buildings have access requirements, like ramps, lifts and accessible toilets, websites have accessibility requirements too, like closed captions, alternative text and color contrast. My job is to help businesses make sure their websites are easy to use for everybody. So how does literacy relate to technology? Does it help or hinder? 

Every day in my work, I see how many opportunities technology can bring and just how many doors it opens, and it's so exciting, but we also see the barriers it can cause for different people from all walks of life when it comes to growing up in the 2020s digital first information seems to be a fact of life, but what happens when you don't have access to technology. Well, you need to access it differently. And how does assistive technology support literacy and numeracy?

(MUSIC)

Darren 02:33

It's a game changer. It really is. My name's Darren Britton, and I'm the National Assistive Technology Project Officer with the Australian Disability Clearing House on Education and Training. That's quite the mouthful. ADCHET primarily works in the tertiary education sector aimed at improving inclusion and success for students with disability. 

Rosie 02:59

Can you tell us some of the most common technology and literacy barriers that students face, particularly when they're transitioning to higher education?

Darren 03:10

Look, I think the biggest and first barriers that I certainly see a lot is... purely just that transition from secondary into post secondary education, so going very much from a state funded support system where there's a lot of one-on-one support for a student, into the student now needing to be their own advocate. And what technology may have worked in the past may not work when it gets to a higher education or particularly the university setting. You know, I suppose one of the things I always tell students coming into that sector is, Be kind to yourself - this is a transition, so you may need to learn some new tools. The ones you have may still work, but they may not be as fully effective as you had in the past. 

Rosie 03:53

Yeah, that's a great response, and certainly something that I experienced personally as a disabled student going into a university setting as well. Thinking about assistive technology was sort of mentioned a little bit. How do you think assistive technology can help students access education better? 

Darren 04:14

It's a game changer, it really is - and the assistive technology helps break down some of those barriers. So you some of that tech can do some of that conversion for you and help, you know, put those into formats and into styles and ways that you can consume the information as a student more easily. You know, for instance, having something read out to you.

Rosie 04:34

Text to speech - TTS - is a technology that converts text into spoken audio.

Darren 04:40

Because I may not want to sit at the screen, and I can get fatigued, or I'm better at hearing things audibly, rather than, you know, sitting there staring at a screen, you know. So, so hearing that back, and I can play it back faster. 

(Voice sounds quickly, scanned digitally) 04:51

Darren 04:58

Or in some cases, the opposite of some students. So. I've got the audio file, but I want the text version, because I can read quicker than I can hear, because I might have some auditory processing issues that are going on, or I've got noisy environment I can't hear things, I just need to read something same thing. Captions are really useful in a whole range of situations, not just for somebody that may be hard of hearing. You're on a noisy bus, or you're listening to stuff on your commute to and from your study. So there's lots of different tools that can be used in lots of different ways.

Rosie 05:27

Yeah, I absolutely agree. It just blows my mind and makes me so excited about the future. One thing to add with that, I would like to ask you about what specific technologies you see students who might be struggling with literacy more using in sort of educational settings?

Darren 05:50

Look, the main stays that have been around for a long time are probably things like Read and Write Gold.

(Recorded voice)  05:55

Read and Write is a literacy support tool that offers help with everyday tasks like reading text out loud, understanding unfamiliar words, researching assignments and proofing written work. 

Darren 06:06

There's, you know, a lot of the, I suppose, text to speech converters that will help with that auditory processing so I can see it and will I highlight it and follow along while it reads it to me at the same time. Look, and there's a range of those that are out now, but one of those that's been around for a long time is, you know, program called Text allowed that could do that, yeah. And then there's the opposite, you know, things like drag and dictate that's been around, you know, for I can speak rather than type, although that's now, that's now built into Microsoft Office. 

So, you know, things are changing. Some of those, what we considered, you know, separate technologies are now being built into the main stream technologies. And I think, look, that's part of that, because they're just useful. They're useful to everybody. Some of these assistive technologies are just becoming useful technologies - whether you have a disability or not, they can save time for a whole range of information. We've all got busy lives, etc. 

Rosie 06:56

Hey, Siri, spell literacy, literacy,

Siri voice 07:00

Literacy... L, I, T, E, R, A, C, Y.

Darren 07:07

And there's also look, there's, there's a massive range. And I've seen students eyes just light up, you know, or, you know, they've always get excited when you can demonstrate some of the browser plugins that are available in browser extensions that, again, can simplify the text that's on a web page. Can get rid of all the ads and all the other guff, and as I call it, get rid of all the rubbish which is around the outside, and just give you the main content, which can really help with some literacy and concentrating. And there's ones where you can just change the font of the web page automatically to a font that you like, or for every website comes in that font that you prefer, you know, so you don't have to strain to read certain typefaces, etc, which may be an issue.

Others that just, you know, reduce the glare that's on screen. Look there's that's a massive thing. And for most students, I say, we'll introduce you to where to find these and how to find them, and then go and have a play you know, and work out what you know what works for you in that space. So it's really about, as I said, the students you know going on their journey and and building up their toolbox of assistive tech that works for them in different situations. Be kind to yourself. Take some time to adjust to these tools and work out what works for you. Here's a range of them that we think may work. Here's a range that you know, typically might support a certain condition or a disability, but you need to go and play and find out how they work. We can show you. We can introduce you to those tools, etc. 

But self discovery is always a wonderful thing. What would you like something to do? What sorts of barrier you're having at the moment? You know, don't think about what I only can do because of the tech I've got just think about what would you want your tech to do if you magically had a bit of technology that could do X? And it might be, I would love it to... summarise information for me, put it into plain English. I would also like it to help me with pronunciation. 

Siri voice

Sound it out. Break down the word technology into its individual sounds. Tech plus No, plus a, plus G, say these sounds out loud, exaggerating them at first.

Darren 09:09

And the technology can do those things. It may not be the tech that you're using, but there's another piece of tech that can do that. So I learn a lot from the students as well. You know, have regular meetings for students and go, What are you using? And they'll come up with an app that they've now got on the phone. Never heard of it, and just go it does what it does these things. Since when did this... miracle happen? And getting used to those tools and using some of those tools isn't a reflection on where you're at in your educational journey, because that's lifelong learning, really. Having some of these tools will assist you beyond education 

I recall somebody in leadership at one of the universities was talking about GrammarLink, for instance, and the fact that they use GrammarLink as they're talking a lot of students do, and they're quite open about that. They said, because I'm really bad with spelling. I'm really bad at spelling grammar. I always have been. I'm sure I'm undiagnosed with something. Okay, but the fact that I use this tool doesn't stop me from doing my job or why I'm employed. It doesn't mean I'm a risk to the institution. I'm in a high position in leadership. I do my job and I do my job well - but this tool helps me do my job, you know. 

And I ask students to think about that themselves. This is assisting you to do this. We don't want the tools that does it for us, you know, and that's that risk with academic integrity, we want something can work with us and with students. So when you find those tools that assist you in doing that, they're the ones that you'll stick with, because they work.

Rosie 10:33

Brilliant. I love that story. Thanks so much sharing.

(MUSIC)

Honor 10:39

So Rosie, how did the interview with Darren go? 

Rosie 10:42

Yeah, the interview went really well. I really enjoyed talking to Darren and talking about experiences in university and all the exciting assistive technology that's coming out. Has me thinking about lots of different things and the future.

Honor 10:57

Yeah, and did it make you think about some of the challenges you faced when you were using assistive technology?

Rosie 11:05

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely had me reflecting on my time at university and some of the challenges that I faced, including using a text to speech tool, and what that's like, using it on an inaccessible PDF, where the PDF is just an image and you can't read it with your software that you want to read it with. And so some of the ways that I would work around it, is I would put it in a OCR software, which is optical character recognition software. I'd run it through that, which would generate me a Word document. Then I would format that, and then I would finally be able to read it with my assistive technology. And there's so there's just so much extra work that comes with it.

Honor 11:48

What's some other examples of challenges that you faced?

Rosie 11:52

Yeah, so other challenges include just the way that maybe people perceive your disability, or the way that you might use technology, it can look different than what they've ever seen before as well. And so explaining a lot of the time, having to explain, you know, what my disability is, or the way that I access things that takes a lot of a mental toll as well. And I don't think often we consider that as well. And then when we can look at all the other things that we might be dealing with when we're going through that transition phase of becoming an adult and learning how to do everything that you need to do to be an adult, and applying for Centrelink, or applying for different things, or getting your Medicare card for the first time, all those sorts of things require you to be able to use the internet and be able to access digital tools. 

I mean, if you haven't learned those things, or you're doing it for the first time, it can be a really big challenge, and even more so if you have a disability and you use assistive technology. 

Honor 12:53

So what would it have meant to you if you didn't have access to this technology?

Rosie 13:01

It's a difficult one, because I think for me, access to the technology has developed over time, as I've become more in tune to what is actually helpful for me, and also as I've removed a lot of the shame that I felt about using the technology and from my peers and the people I've talked to, there is a lot of shame around using assistive technology and using mobility aids and things like that. And so the more I use those assistive technologies, the better it became for me. And so there was a time where I wasn't using anything, and it made it really difficult for me and really inaccessible for me.

Honor 13:43

How do you think increased access to and understanding of technology shapes the future success of young people?

Rosie 13:54

I think improved access to technology means that young people have improved access to every area of life, we're seeing more and more that the technology is just a way of life now, and that can be really difficult for people with lower digital literacy or people with lower access to technology, and it's becoming so important to us, it's becoming more accessible for a lot of people, which is really exciting. And I think something that Darren said is that, you know, technology is just going to be a part of life, and so we do need to bring people on that journey. 

And if we can bring people on that journey with assistive technology as well, so that everyone gets to come on that journey, and people aren't left behind. Then that's what I'm... really excited about.

Honor 14:49

So what's the flip side, if we don't invest in assistive technology and making it accessible and making it... available to everyone? Or what's the risk?

Rosie 15:03

Well, the risk is the status quo. People with disabilities continue to be left behind. Discrimination continues, and I want to be moving forward. I don't want discrimination to continue for myself, personally, for my community, my peers. You know, I want us to be able to equally access everything, be able to access the latest technology, you know, be able to buy the newest thing and be able to access it immediately. That's what I'm excited about. And... you know, there's other complexities to that for sure, but the baseline should be accessible, because it makes it better for everyone. 

Honor 15:47

Thank you so much, Rosie - and well done on the podcast episode, it's really fantastic. 

Rosie

Thanks, Honor.

(MUSIC THEME)

?Host 15:56

We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land that we recorded this podcast on, the [?Padua] and [?Pakna] peoples in Lutruwita, Tasmania. We also acknowledge disabled First Nations people. Literacy Legends is hosted by [names], and produced by Honor Marino. It was developed in cooperation with Powerd Media and Print Radio Tasmania.

(MUSIC ENDS)