Introduction to the Mentoring Program

Claire Manning 0:00

Hello, my name is Claire Manning from Canberra Blind Society.

My colleague Peter Granleese and I are members of the Canberra Blind Society Mentoring Program and we would like to welcome everyone to our four part podcast series that goes with our checklist resources that are available in the Canberra Blind Society website. In podcast one, we will provide a short introduction to the mentoring program, our checklist ideas, and a couple of insights about professional development and digital accessibility. We hope you enjoy what we want to share. The mentoring program that we've developed was designed to build the knowledge and confidence of employers. We did this to increase in strength and inclusive employment opportunities, specifically for people who have a vision impairment, but also consider other people with different disabilities. 

From 2022 to 2024, we talked to a range of people to determine when it comes to securing and maintaining meaningful employment. What was working well, and what were the challenges for people who are blind or have a developing vision impairment. We spoke to people who were visually impaired organisations that employed people with different disabilities and diversity teams, trying to find ways to strengthen their inclusive employment practices, we discovered that there were three main areas where challenges had occurred, there was digital accessibility. Fortunately, with computers, things were getting a lot better, but there were still barriers and we surprisingly discovered a few along the way. There was also understanding vision impairment, lots of people do not have connections with people who are blind. 

So this was an awareness raising that we thought needed to happen, and also inclusive leadership. I'd just like to share some of the stats from our mentoring program that go along with those three areas where we identified that there was challenges, but we had some really good interactions. So after the design and development of our mentoring program, in late 2021, our team moved into the implementation stage that ran over two years, from early 2022 to early 2024, where 15 people with a disability have been employed in some way by the information, linkages and capacity building the ILC grant that was used to fund this program. They've been in paid work on part time contracts, or gained work through collaborations with several disability run organisations. We also worked closely with 20 people employed in the organisations we work with, and also looking for employment. These people all had a disability, but predominantly people with a vision impairment, and they were supported by our mentor, team and all aspects of the Mentor Program. 

We worked with 34 private and public sector organisations and they collaborated with us in a range of ways including workshops, presentations, mentor sessions, and written resources. Ten of these organisations we worked with in 2022 and 24 organisations in the following couple of years. Alongside our work with people with a vision impairment and disability. Our mentoring program built disability awareness and confidence with over 400 people who worked in the 34 organisations, both public and private, that we outlined above. Alongside our work with people with a vision impairment and or a disability, our mentoring program built awareness and confidence. In our podcast series, we will talk about three of a range of checklists that we have developed during this program. One will talk about inclusive leadership, and the other two will be recruitment and onboarding and induction. 

There are also other checklists available on our website and they include understanding vision impairment, surfaces and signage, emergency evacuation planning, understanding Braille and screen reader technology, and some good checklists and information on digital accessibility. This offers information on website audit background, a manual website audit checklist, and our user friendly guide that we developed to help with image description and alt text description. Now, we're not going to go into these other checklists in detail, but we thought we might highlight a few other points that might be helpful. 

So understanding vision impairment, for me, I've discovered a lot over the last few years, working with my team of four mentors and other people with vision impairments who were part of our program. With my sighted privilege, one of the main areas is that really the only thing people who are blind or have a vision impairment can't do is see or see well. Everything else they can do. In fact, in many areas of life, they do more than people who can see. I also found with different processes and procedures when it comes to employment, If we make it more accessible, everyone benefits and in many cases, time is saved. In the sighted world, we have a habit of doing things, the way we have always done something and we don't question if there is a better way. By investigating the world with people with different needs, you can find new and better ways of doing things. 

So that was my experience, Peter, another one of our checklists, is professional development, which talks about how most people are keen to advance their careers and that includes people with a vision impairment. When you look at this checklist, it goes through things that actually could apply to any one's team members but one of the areas that Peter you talked about was staff development and training. There were some key areas from your experience that you thought were good to highlight from this checklist.

Peter Granleese 6:06

Yes, Claire, the first thing that comes to mind is not to exclude the individual from your normal staff development program. If you have a staff development program with a staff development budget, make sure the individual gets their fair share of those funds. That's the first thing they will most likely be looking to advance their career so, they need to be included in the staff development program as well. Be sure however, when you send them away to a training program, that they have full access to the materials that might be handed out on the table or circulated in the meantime, in a format that fully accessible to them. If the program has been delivered by using PowerPoint presentations, make sure they have access to the PowerPoint presentation so they know what's going on. Ideally, of course, and this is a practice I use I used to get the person when they put over a new page I used to make them reached out to me. 

So I knew what was there and most presenters are quite helpful and quite an amenable they're. Also in the case of the old brainstorming exercise, now I know this has changed since my day. I go back to the old butchers paper on the easel day when you sit down to yell things out and coordinate right and up as quick as you couldn't. You had a list at the end of the day and you sort of got lost what was going up what wasn't. Sighted people could see what was going up but I had to pull him up from time to time to ask what was up there and what we're looking at. I'm not sure how brainstorming exercise conducted these days. I don't I know butchers paper is sometimes used but I know that in the days of technology, a lot of things are online. So things might be a bit different.

Claire Manning 7:59

One of the points from your list there Peter that really rang true to me was yeah, the brainstorming sessions during zoom, there's online databases, and they're just as hectic as when it was on butchers paper. I'm not sure if there as helpful, but what I find with what you've said it sort of builds into what I said earlier, with regards to people reading it out, is actually helpful to everyone. Because sometimes the person who's in charge with the pen and the butchers paper, writes something up and if you don't do that check in, they might have written something out that you said, and they've missed the paraphrased you and it wasn't exactly what you mean anyway. So I think, again, some of these things that we ask people to do, actually ends up helping everyone. The other thing that I would probably add to that is to get the person who's facilitating the training, to potentially call the person with a vision impairment to ask them what they need. They're the ones experienced with their training. 

It also reminded me of a story of someone else that we've spoken to, which comes to your point, people with a vision impairment need to be included, not excluded and this was someone who was losing their vision. And they were doing their job quite competently. And they had been doing that for a few years. So they wanted to learn new technologies. And when they went to their supervisor, who was the only one who knew that they were losing their sight, said, Oh, look, it's not worth training you because you're going to have no sight and so you're not going to be able to help. This person has gone on to be a real advocate and expert when it comes to digital accessibility. So that organisation really actually lost a really valuable employer.

Peter Granleese 9:39

She trained the trainers.

Claire Manning 9:40

Yeah, that's right. Exactly. So it is just, yeah, it's just bizarre, but they went on to have a whole different career. So for them, they didn't feel like they lost but that organisation certainly lost. The other one with regards to professional development is computer program updates, really being aware that you've got to support your staff through all levels. And there is an extra layer of knowing what you need to do with regards to technology, making sure that the screen reader technology fits with the new role and that they have access to it and if there's any training, but also, just the day to day, online tools are being updated, that people are trained in that as well. So we talked a bit about the computers there, I suppose the digital accessibility information is really helpful that we've put together and we've had people in various roles in the organisations we've worked with, look at what we've put together, and they've added their bits with regards to it. 

So we would say get experts who work with people with lived experience to test your website platforms. In regards to digital accessibility. What we have discovered in recent weeks as the language in this area is potentially wrong, we call it a website audit. However, getting accessibility involved early in the process means you'll save money and time in the long run. An audit sort of implies to do it at the end, which is when things can be more costly. But if if you have someone involved, who's an expert with regards to digital accessibility in the early days of website development, you'll find that it will be beneficial to everyone involved. And lastly, we created a list with regard to alt text and image description. It's a user friendly checklist that just encourages everyone to have a go at describing images. One of the things that the screen reader technology does on websites, is it picks up images there. But if there's no description, or alt text, it just goes image. 

Now, not every person who has a vision impairment needs to know exactly all the intricacies of what the image represents. But they do need to know what's going on. It's about being fair that they know everything that's going on. One of our mentors heard someone say something that they thought was really significant in this space, that we suggest to everyone when it comes to describing an image or doing alt text that they become a radio announcer. And they describe what they see to an audience that can't see. And that's everyone when they're listening to the radio. The beauty of this is the audience can't see so you have to describe it clearly. But it's a radio show. So you have to keep it succinct. I'm not that good at image description because I like to tell a full story, but this one definitely guides me. 

So my final thoughts for our podcast series and our checklists. We hope our checklists proved to be helpful. My key recommendation is to get people with lived experience involved in improving inclusion and accessibility in all workplaces. The strength of this program is all our team provided a great deal of information from a range of different both personal and professional life experiences to all the discussions we had as a team but we also had with all the organisations we work with. This proved to be extremely helpful for those we've worked with over the last few years. We are hopeful in the months and years to come. Our work will mean existing preconceptions will be less, and workplaces will improve accessibility for all candidates, and there will be more people embrace with other expertise who have a vision impairment. 

We'd like to thank all the organisations and individuals who worked with us over the last few years, as well as sharing our support lived experiences, ideas and suggestions for building more inclusive and accessible workplaces. Our mentor team has also learned a great deal from everyone who participated. A final thank you goes to art sound FM who have supported Peter Granleese and I so well in creating our podcasts. We would both like to thank Peter Monahan and Chris Deacon. For all the guidance and expertise in the creation of this resource. Peter Granleese, I would totally new to this process and had lots to learn. We're really pleased with the outcomes of this collaboration and thankful at the way art sound FM turned out informal discussions into an information sharing approach, we hope many will find helpful. Thank you.