SPEVI Conference - Ben Clare (part 2)

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John Simpson 0:33
Hello and welcome to New Horizons. I'm John Simpson, thanks for joining us. Last week, we spoke with Ben Claire, Vice President and Secretary of SPEVI - South Pacific educators in vision impairment, and we ran out of time, so Ben has kindly joined us again for this week's program. Welcome back, Ben. Thank you. Great to be back. So you ran three streams for most of the conference, three separate areas to live and and the online stream. Yes, any particular highlights out of those, those sessions, Ben?

Ben Clare 1:08
My personal interest, I guess, is definitely in in our Pacific so we had a whole session dedicated to the Pacific Islands, and we had our presenters from the Pacific talking about what they're doing in the vision education space. So that was great. That was of particular interest. But I really enjoyed all the presentations around Braille. So we talked... one of the announcements that really came out of the conference was the launch of SPEVI's statement on Braille, which was a collaboration with various organisations, including the South Australian School for the vision impaired Australian Braille Authority and SPEVI, among others. 

And it really emphasises the importance of Braille and its ongoing relevance as an educational tool and otherwise, and that's now on our SPEVI website, so people can feel free to read that. It's at spv.net part of the reason why we did this Braille statement too was to ensure that Braille is continuing to be provided for learners in school. We think that it will be, but there is certainly a drop in the number of specialist teacher vision out there at the moment, especially in Australia. And we want to, you know, re emphasise that that Braille knowledge is something that is is, you know, a must, really, for people who are blind. So that's sort of the stance that we've taken on that.

John Simpson 2:54
Ben, I wonder, and I guess the two go hand in hand, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on whether the downturn in the number of students using Braille is a matter of not having the expertise out there to teach Braille, or is it more at the policy level With the state government organisations and larger independent organisations?

Ben Clare 3:23
That's a really good question. I think just from what I haven't done any sort of formal research on this, from what I hear from a lot of a lot of people, is there's a reluctance to teach Braille, because there's a lot of you know, obviously there's a lot of technology out there now, and some people are starting to say, well, how relevant is Braille with this emerging technology, fortunately, and I think that even, even just in very recent years, it's there's starting to be a bit of pushback on that. And I think partly that's because Braille is so incorporated into modern technologies. 

I mean, you've got Braille displays, and of course, you know iPhones and Android phones allow people to type in Braille on them, so Braille is really still relevant. And I think you know, the argument that was was starting to emerge around that is Braille still relevant because of this technology is starting to wane, but, yeah, I do still think that there is a lack of Braille teachers out there that is contributing to, you know the lack of Braille availability, but yeah, hopefully we're on the turn with that, and especially with this emerging technology.

John Simpson 4:51
Now you of course, took the opportunity to promote Braille more broadly on the Thursday after the conference. Tell us about the Braille awareness event.

Ben Clare 5:03
So this was quite exciting. It was quite a casual way to really showcase Braille to the general public. So we were fortunate to get sponsorship Brisbane City Council to to hold the event in post office square, which is the right in the center of Brisbane. So Braille house and a couple of organisations that have a presence in Queensland set up stalls, and we had a big marquee there, with a few of us actually producing Braille. And we had Perkins Braillers, Slayton styluses. We also had Braille displays so that we could, we could showcase, you know, I guess the more modern side to Braille production and Braille reading. 

And what we attempted to do, as well as, of course, celebrate the 200th anniversary of Braille, was that with Brisbane being the host of the 2032, Paralympic Games, we really wanted to we saw it as an introduction to an accessible Brisbane. So the council really embraced that sort of tagline. And the people that from the council that came to the event, really said, Oh, this is a great now we're gonna, we're gonna really use this as a kickoff to our, you know, let's make Brisbane accessible for the for the Paralympic Games. So that was great that we could incorporate it into, you know, into a wider, you know, sphere there. And it was great. 

And of course, we were, again, we had the dotted beats performers attracting a lot of attention, so that brought a lot of people over. And yeah, it was, it was a really great event, despite the heat. It was, it was a very hot day, but yeah, it was. It was well worth doing. And yeah, so hopefully there'll be more at those events in the future.

John Simpson 7:02
I want to come back to the program for a minute Ben, because I was particularly pleased to see that there was a focus on education needs for people who are deaf, blind. Is that a fast developing area within SPEVI?

Ben Clare 7:18
Look, it actually is, and it's something we've been wanting to do for a long time as an organisation, as a group. So we really have a trying very hard to be representative of the deafblind community, both Well really, with teachers, parents and people with lived experience. So one of the things SPEVI does throughout the year is we have community of practice events that involve the deafblind community. So whether they're whether they are presenters, we have parents, teachers, researchers and others who... join these are usually held about every three months or so, and they, we really then tried to be representative of the deafblind community through those events, and of course, that culminated in in representation at the biennial conference. 

So yeah, I think it's an area that has been for one of the better word neglected, because it's, it's no malice behind that. It's really just that there were very few deaf, blind educators around, and very it was very difficult to locate people who were deaf, blind in the community. So for that reason, really, there was not a lot of representation. But it's... really picking up now that we do have these community of practice events and representation of the conference. So that was, yeah, it's a big plus. I think, yeah.

John Simpson 8:50
Does SPEVI have an understanding of the numbers of education age, people in Australia who need support for both hearing and vision loss?

Ben Clare 9:06
As an organisation, probably not, but there may be individuals within within SPEVI who would have a better understanding of that, or who may be attempting to gather that sort of data. We do have researchers working in the deafblind space that may be, yeah, as I said, working to establish that, but it's not something that's widely known. I would think at this stage, we haven't published any papers on that specifically. But yeah, we do have people who are, I guess, capable of, who would be interested in, you know, pursuing that area of research. So it is an important area, and it would be good to to have definitive figures on that.

John Simpson 9:54
Yes, so being a great conference, by the sounds of, right? But of course, conferences are often the start of things, rather than the combination. What comes next for SPEVI?

Ben Clare 10:09
Well, I think one thing will is a great endorsement of our existing community and practice events. So as I mentioned, we we do work in the deafblind space. We have parents groups. We even have a group now of people who are studying to become vision support teachers. So, you know, they get together. So that was quite well enforced, I think, as a result of the conference. So we'll certainly move that ahead. We had the announcement of the Braille statement, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes. 

They're working with next since who, of course, are expanding the online, unified... English Braille course, there's a new feature that's allowing people to test their competency through quizzes, and we're also looking at introducing a Braille music component, which we think will be a world first. So there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes around that, and I think spavies in quite a strong space. I think it was prior to the conference. But I think post conference now it's strength. And there's certainly a place, I think, for SPEVI in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, we have very good co presidents of SPEVI in Australia and New Zealand who are really steering things, you know, in quite a strong direction. 

So I think, you know, and of course, we work alongside organisations and associations - you know, Lions, Citizens Australia is certainly a major contributor in knowledge and otherwise to SPEVI. You know, we had so many partners that worked with us to bring the conference together, and I think that will continue beyond that. So yeah, quite a quite a exciting picture ahead, I think.

John Simpson 12:11
That's... great, and it's been great to learn from someone who was so directly involved, not only in putting the conference together, but presenting there. We'll certainly look for an opportunity in the future, Ben, to talk with you about your work in the Pacific region, because I know that that's a major passion of yours, and something that you've achieved a fair amount of success with. But as always, time has beaten us with this program. So thank you for joining us for New Horizons, and thank you on behalf of our listeners for all of the work that you and the others involved with SPEVI doing. 

My guest this week in New Horizons has been the Vice President and Secretary of South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment, better known as SPEVI. And if you want to contact Blind Citizens Australia, you can do so by the phone on 1800 033 660 - 1, 800 zero, double three, double six, zero... or email, bca@bca.org.au - BCA at BCA dot org dot AU. Thanks for joining us this week. I'm John Simpson.

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