Tech Ability — Weeks 4& 5
Galloways Society for The Blind
1. Challenges
It is easy to forget that participants have more than just Tech Ability in their lives. What happens in people’s personal lives will affect how they progress. In our first project meeting last Friday, we discussed how important it was to be flexible as progress is not always linear and one person’s achievement does not have to look the same as another’s. As they say being unique is better than being perfect.
2. Participants and hardware
What has come across from participants is enthusiasm — many can’t wait to get started. Eleven participants now have their tablets and all eleven have had their Week Zero set up and introduction from Andrew. All can use/move a cursor, are aware and can use fonts to enlarge text and know about using voice recognition. Great start.
Graham, our digital partner has training sessions booked in this week with 5 participants. One participant even asked for a recurring meeting… same time… same day… each week. This is good to hear as it shows a commitment to complete all aspects of the course. For a couple of participants it has been difficult to turn on the device independently, as they have been unable to feel or press down sufficiently with their fingertips. This can happen particularly if sight loss is due to diabetic retinopathy. However we are investigating ways to overcome this, including applying self-adhesive bumpons. (For examples see https://shop.rnib.org.uk/mixed-pack-of-bump-dots-2624). One participant asked a family member to set up the tablet before the training session.
With these 5 participants, Graham will be covering Week 1 of the training: communication. This will involve a recap on how to access and write an email; zoom including joining instructions, mute and unmuting, video on and off and microphone settings as well as accessing Galloway’s website. Graham will be booking in more one to ones this week and next.
3. Surveys
We found some interesting snippets from the Baseline surveys last week, as to why participants have not used digital before :
‘Lack of low vision. I assumed that a tablet would not be accessible to me as I wouldn’t be able to see it.’
‘I am not confident enough and frightened of making a mistake. I also hear a lot of bad things about the internet.’
‘I have never used any technology before. People have told me I should try.’
‘I need further access to training.’
‘I have never been interested. I have a mobile phone but only use it for phone calls.’
These comments will help us review our user need statements as we progress through the project. We are reviewing our baseline survey with each participant halfway through the training, so more updates to follow.
4. External Communications
Andrew updated us as he is participating in a round table discussion on digital accessibility hosted by Catalyst. This is to be held on Tuesday 9th March with Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet , Andrew Coleman from Galloway’s and Rizwana Khan from ProjectFunction. Separate to this Natalie, our Communications Coordinator is hoping to do a blog at some point… we just need to decide on the theme.
