DSA assessment

[cosmolinguist]

Wrote half an essay (only 500 words! I wrote an intro and a sentence for each point I want to make and that was almost 200 words itself! but still) tonight so I don't have a lot of energy left but I wanted to note that the DSA assessment went well. It took a really long time though, almost three hours (when your most knowledgeable friend says their eleventy billion wonky impairments only required two-hour DSA sessions, you know it's a long time!).

My biggest problem now is that I went home wanting all the kit right away. Can I have that software to work on my essay (no, it's due Friday). Can I have the biiiiiig monitor? Can I have the thing that only zooms the part of the screen you need it to (I actually found out today that Blackboard has "high contrast" and "text zoom" in its settings, but when you click on them all it says is "right, you need to use your browser/OS settings to do this"! thanks and all but that doesn't work very well you bag of dicks!)

The guy made some good points, like that he recommends screenreaders not just for blindy mcblindfaces like me but people who "just" have the anxiety/depression side of things because it affects their -- our -- ability to concentrate so much and for some people it's easier to listen than to read. I know this is certainly true for me (and I know it won't be for many other people! I know lots of neurodiverse people and that can include auditory processing issues as can lots of other things) but never thought it was anything more than my eyes causing that.

He generally talked about the anxiety and depression only in terms of disrupted sleep, poor concentration, things like that. Didn't insinuate that I didn't really had it or it isn't really real or any of that shit. It was the least stigamtizing experience I've ever had talking about my mental health, I think! Really refreshing. Especially because he's an older chap with a very northern accent and stereotypes mean I'm not used to such people talking about mental health; it'd be like hearing my dad say "anxiety" or "depression" which I don't think has ever happened! But he was really matter-of-fact about it, which of course you'd hope for in his job but I've met plenty of people whose jobs should have made them good at it who are not good at this, so I expect nothing and that means I got to be pleasantly surprised.

I'm not quite done yet; the guy wants me to come back to talk to one of their suppliers about the particular kinds of software and some kind of OCR-machine that he is (and I am) sure I'll benefit from but there are different kinds and there's no way to know what will suit me without me trying them. That was going to happen tomorrow but now can't happen then; it should be on Friday, which suits me better anyway.

Comments

[strange_complex]

I'm glad to hear this went so well. I'm following your experiences with interest, because obviously my own university has similar systems, and I'm aware of them to the extent that we try to make sure the students who need them are accessing them, and that there are sometimes (e.g.) note-takers in my classes. But I don't know much about what they're like in practice from the user perspective. It sound like the overall one-word answer to that is 'patchy', like so much else in life, but it's encouraging to know that the people in charge of what specific support you get at least can be good.

[cosmolinguist]

Maria P said something similar on a recent FB whinge of mine. I think it's cool how many friends I have who are academics and interested in this sort of thing as part of their own institutions.

I'm sure there will be more updates as this kind of stuff progresses, and if you ever have any particular questions I'm always happy to try to answer.

[davidgillon]

Really glad to hear this went so well!

[cosmolinguist]

It was exhausting. I was more tired after a one-hour seminar and that yesterday than I was after my two-hour lecture/enough break to have lunch/three hours of Arabic today.

But it was worth it, so that's good.

[jesse_the_k]

Any well designed assistive tech becomes part of our bodies, so it's not surprising the experience, while rewarding, to Ames so much energy. You're interviewing new candidates for brain-mates.

[cosmolinguist]

This is such a good way to think of it. :)

[jesse_the_k]

Also, thank you for reading my mind: autocorrect mangled the sentiment "demands so much energy”

[cosmolinguist]

I am terrible with touchscreens so really good at decoding autocorrect. :)

[alatefeline]

smiley cat face

Glad that went pretty well, then...

[cosmolinguist]

Me too. And I feel like I've been complaining so much lately, it's only fair to say that not everything is all bad. :)

[cxcvi]

That's an interesting thought, about the use of screenreaders to aid concentration. I can definitely see that being useful for some people (well, as usual as modern internet and software design principles allow), and also entirely unhelpful for me (because auditory processing things). But options are good!

And this also reminds me that other assistive technology has multiple uses, not just for the subset that they were created for.

[cosmolinguist]

Yep. I'm forever saying that any accommodation developed for disabled people helps non-disabled people too. (Or people with disabilities totally unlike the one it was developed to accommodate.)

[bunnypip]

I am so glad this was a positive experience. I hope you feel less exhausted by it soon and that you get (metaphorically) shiny and (actually) useful things :)

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. I'm not usually so impatient, but when all my weeks have numbers and so much needs to be done each week, it seems an outrage that I have to muddle along for any longer. :)

[barakta]

I'm going to equivocate and go back on myself a bit perhaps - more than 140 chars helps as does perhaps being a bit more awake... Great to read about your experience. I wonder if I wrote mine up, should look.

I'm wondering if your assessment took so long cos they allowed extra time for you as a partially sighted person, and also with the anxiety - if not for you as you, but you as you might have needed. I'm not an assessor by training or experience but I'm wondering if one of the things which can take someone with visual impairments longer is 'exploring stuff' so the three hours may have allowed for you to look at stuff at a more calm pace that and anxiety so yuo didn't run out of time or had time to talk at your own pace? I think while exhausting I'd prefer 3 hours than rushed and I have had students rushed.. But yeah... warning might have been nice! It sounds like they're not going to do what I call a "dyslexia 101" which is where everyone's assessment comes out looking the same and you can basically tell they've copied and pasted the report too. I am guessing you'll get a report written FOR you albeit with bullshit wording for SFE but it'll be YOURS and be as personalised as this shit gets which is almost as valuable as the equipment in many ways if you choose to let it be.

Also I suspect in my case 2 hours might have been possible cos I knew what I was talking about cos I'm a disability adviser with a tech interest and I knew my assessor, so we were able to skip a bunch of the "careful showing you the equipment options" stuff. She was able to say "do you want an X" and we discussed it, and she said do you X type of software A or B and discussed it, whereas a newbie would have needed showing software A and software B which my assessor knew I didn't need... not sure how she'd have assessed me as a complete newbie to the game actually... Also it was by then my third DSA Needs assessment albeit 17 and 19 years after my first two...

As it was, my assessor had been trying to send me to her tech colleague and I had said "nah, I want you" cos she was a physio in a past life and cos she wasn't a rude person she hadn't looked at my hands closely when we'd met professionally before so while she knew I had hand impairments she didn't know the details. In the assessment it was appropriate and important for her to assess my hands and utterly bolloxed shoulder and she realise why I'd asked for her and was like "aaaah I seeee". I have a fabulous functional assessment which is a bit OTT for DSA but useful for DWP bashing and the ergo stuff is what I'd never have asked for and which Yvonne said "you totes should have, so go on" so I have... Height Adjustable Dessssssk which is amazing. I made the right decision and it worked well.

So I hope this makes a bit more sense. It does sound like your man was lovely. What was his name btw? I wonder if I know him. If it was Access Summit then they have an EXCELLENT reputation, it's where I had my first assessment in 1996 with Simon Bloor himself who I think set it up back in the day... Nice man, he's retired now I think but I came across him professionally when I used to do obnoxious things like add fields to online DSA forms and upload them to the assessor wikis so everyone could share them. There's a lot of partially sighted assessors and disability advisers who really valued them cos I made am as accessible as I could and it meant they could do the forms with students -- which is why I was making the damned things accessible in the first place. JFDI... :)

[jesse_the_k]

AT is my fandom, so thanks for sharing this story.

Also, I'm a former access organizer for cons, and I'd welcome access to your journal. Your BiCon post about change was outstanding--my home con has just been through a total tornado of it, and I wish I had distributed your piece to all the concom

[cosmolinguist]

I only know Jesse from DW, but I do think you two would have a lot in common. :)

[cosmolinguist]

I am guessing you'll get a report written FOR you albeit with bullshit wording for SFE but it'll be YOURS and be as personalised as this shit gets which is almost as valuable as the equipment in many ways if you choose to let it be.

It did seem that way from what Alan (I'll look up his surname, but he's called Alan :D) showed me at the end. And it's a good point that it'll be useful for DWP etc., though I know they aren't allowing "aids and appliances" to count for anything any more! *rollseyes*

Oh, it's Alan Standerwick. And you're right, he did show me all the software, a bit of Dragon, a couple of different kinds of magnification/screenreader combos (one of which he'd just downloaded himself so needed a bit of faffing with, too), Notetalker, some kind of mind-mapping software that he's in love with himself... He also made sure to go and fetch things to show me what he was talking about -- different color-contraast combinations for keyboards (so I could pick the one he thought I wouldn't pick :D ), etc.

[sfred]

I hope you get the stuff you need.

[cosmolinguist]

I am confident I will; he was talking about it like it's already a done deal. I just need two hundred quid of my student loan to go toward the laptop, which means I need my student loan to actually appear... Done some more work today on getting that to happen, long after it already should've, of course!