Topic: Disabilities at school and in the workplace

Audience: Department of Labour and Advanced Education for NAAW

Date: June 2, 2021

Introduction

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for National AccessAbility Week. Today I want to talk to you about disabilities, particularly visual impairment.

Did you know that Nova Scotia has a higher prevalence rate for disabilities than any other province in Canada? 30% of Nova Scotians have at least one disability, while the average for other provinces nationwide is only at 22.3%. In Nova Scotia, there are about 230,000 people ages 15 and over whose everyday activities are limited due to having a disability. It is either in the form of a vision, hearing, speech, learning, mental health, or mobility impairment or a combination of two or more.

For my talk, I’m going to focus on sight loss. I’m one of 13,000 people living with vision loss here in our province.

It would be my honor to share with you my lived experiences with vision loss by talking about my eye condition, education, career, accommodations, intersectionality, and how leaders in education and the workforce can better accommodate their clients, students, and employees who have a disability.

Body

First, I am going to tell you about my eye condition.

I have glaucoma – an incurable eye disease that can cause permanent blindness if left untreated. I had the disease since I was 14 years old. I never always took my medication on schedule when I was young because I never noticed a difference in my eyesight whenever I missed it. It resulted in further sight loss when I got older. I am also blind in one eye due to a post-surgical complication.

I was born with cataracts. I went for my first surgery at three months old to remove the lens in the back of my eye. I underwent my last surgery at nine months. These surgeries left me with low vision in both eyes with the best possible correction. I had useable vision as a child, in my teens, and in early adulthood, and I now have a reduced visual field as a result of having glaucoma. I now take my medication as scheduled and my sight is now stable.

Second, I’m going to give an overview of my education and where I plan on going with it.

After high school, I attended Cape Breton University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology in 2009. I took an eight-year break from school when I graduated and worked as an administrative assistant for several companies before returning back to school in 2018. I graduated in June 2019 with a certificate in office administration from NSCC Marconi campus. Two months later, I took a big leap and moved to Dartmouth where I attended NSCC Ivany campus to earn my advanced diploma in public relations. I graduated in August 2020. I’ll also be attending Mount Saint Vincent University this fall to work on my Master of public relations.

Now that you have a solid understanding of my educational background, I’m going to talk to you about my career as a public relations professional and how I got there.

I am a marketing and communications coordinator for DHPR Inc. and I’ve been employed with the company since February 2021. My team is amazing and I am so glad I was taken on as an employee despite having a disability. My employer saw past my differences and instead looked at my abilities, strengths, and what I could bring to the team. On the job, I have opportunities to express my creativity through writing and design. I am assigned tasks and work on them independently or with other team members. We also have virtual team meetings so being on video has helped build my confidence and I’m more comfortable being on screen with my noticeable eye impairment. This career is, for the most part, visual. You need to have at least some functional vision to carry out the design portion. However, if you have a severe impairment or are totally blind, you can tackle other duties in the profession such as public speaking, writing, event planning and implementation, strategic planning, podcasting, website work, and helping with campaigns. A person doesn’t have to have eyesight to become a communications and marketing professional.

Looking for work was a struggle, especially with a disability. When I first embarked on the “seeking employment” journey after graduating with my advanced diploma in public relations from NSCC in 2020, I wasn’t getting anywhere. Letter after letter, I continued applying for positions until finally, I was at about my 45^th email. I didn’t know what to do, so I reached out to the CNIB and was introduced to the “Come to Work” program for people with disabilities. I was psyched to learn that the program offered help to people with visual impairments.

Two incredible people helped me tremendously with my search for employment. The community outreach coordinator and the employment lead at CNIB Halifax offered helping hands when I thought all hope was lost. They taught me how to properly structure cover letters and resumes, how to tackle interviews, and how to present my disability as a strength as opposed to a weakness. I had a job interview with my current employer that following Monday and the Come to Work program helped prepare me for that interview a few days prior. It was a success and I was offered the position.

Before landing a position with DHPR, I volunteered at several organizations to share my writing with employers to share with the world. I worked with Clerisy entertainment in August 2020 and helped produce drafted content for four digital exclusives for “Eyes on the Job” featuring Chris Judge, the blind builder. I also worked as a volunteer “Letter to the Editor” writer for Guide Dog Awareness Week in September 2020 with CNIB. I wrote letters on behalf of guide dog handlers that were shared with various medium to raise awareness. I helped Guide Dog users tell their stories and express their message of the laws surrounding Guide Dogs in Canada. I helped them reach out to inform places and the general public that guide dog teams are allowed wherever the general public has access, and that includes restaurants, stores, schools, parks, public transit, cabs, hotels, and more. It was a lot of fun, and I was happy to contribute my skillsets to raise awareness of an important message.

These experiences helped me land employment with DHPR Inc.

I will now move on to talking about assistive technology. I will share what’s out there for the sight loss community and reveal to you what I use everyday.

Frist, let’s take a look at software. People with varying levels of sight loss use Zoom text, JAWS, Kurzweil, or dragon naturally speaking.

Other accommodations include laptop computers, scanners, audiobooks and electronic textbooks, braille displays, braille notetakers, monoculars, magnifiers, electronic video magnifiers, smart pens, smartphones, and smartphone apps.

My personal favourites are Mac Books, smartphones, zoom text for windows, electronic format books with options for enlarging the font, video magnifiers, and my monocular. Being open to using accommodations for the visually impaired tremendously helped me in all areas of my life.

I have grown to love smartphones because we can purchase them at any cell phone retailer and configure the accessibility settings right out of the box. I have the magnification mode enabled on my phone and I take advantage of the built-in magnifier that works for reading lists, calendars, restaurant menus, medicine instructions, food ingredients, and small sections of writing material. I don’t use my phone at work. Instead, I use the handheld video magnifier and a large dual monitor that’s hooked up to my laptop. I’ve increased the default font size and it helps me tackle all of my design, writing, and editing work. In school, I used a CCTV at home to do large amounts of nightly readings. I prefer to read with my eyes so having text books converted into PDF also helped whenever I was on campus and didn’t have access to an electronic magnifier.

Well, I think we’ve talked enough about assistive technology. Let’s now take the time to explore the fourth topic on intersectionality.

Being a person with a visual impairment, being Indigenous, and being a woman can have its challenges. Intersectionality largely affected my ability to successfully enter the workforce.

Here’s an example. As I sent out job applications after graduating from the public relations program last year, I had a hard time getting interviews without even meeting an employer or a human resources recruiter. My first name is female and my last name, Googoo, immediately gives away my ethnic identity. It is a Mi’kmaq last name, and I have also had ill treatment from a business because of my name. I won’t disclose the employer’s identity for confidentiality purposes, but when I applied for a job with a particular company and did a follow-up to check on my application status, I was informed that my email wasn’t received and that they weren’t hiring people of minority status anyway. It made me think about all of the other emails I had sent. Did they think the same way by not giving Indigenous people a chance? They didn’t know I had disabilities. I was judged by my name and by living on a reserve. My application was racially overlooked. From there, I pulled myself back together, and continued to apply for more positions.

Now that I’ve talked to you about intersectionality, I’ll move onto my final subpoint regarding how schools and workplaces can improve on accommodating people with disabilities.

Workplaces and educational institutions need to be made aware of what’s out there in terms of accommodating people with disabilities. Our world would continue to move in the right direction if businesses and academic institutions know how to properly accommodate by knowing where to turn to depending on a person’s medical condition. When hiring someone with a disability, ask what types of accommodations they’ll need and offer to support that individual. Be a leader. Be resourceful. Be kind. Be sincere. Ask questions. If the disabled person doesn’t know where to turn, help them do some research on what organizations can help point your business and the individual in the right direction. APSEA and the CNIB are excellent sources for people with partial sightedness. You want to be a leader who cares enough to go that extra mile to make sure that your clients, students, or employees with disabilities are properly accommodated.

Last month, I had a learning strategist contact me from the Nova Scotia Community College regarding accommodations for incoming students with sight loss. I talked with her and addressed what worked for me and also mentioned other assistive devices and software that are out there for the visually impaired. I was happy to talk with her about what’s available to the blindness community. I told her that there are grants and money that students can access, and I also directed her to how these aids can be purchased.

With the right information being communicated by people with disabilities and also through organizations such as the CNIB, I believe we can continue to make our world a better place in terms of accessibility and accommodations.

Now that my speech is over, I want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to my talk. I hope you learned something about disabilities in the workplace and in academic institutions by someone who lives with vision loss and who is of Mi’kmaq decent.

In this speech, we covered my disability, education, career, accommodations, intersectionality, and how leaders in various positions of power can help better accommodate people with any disability. My advice to you is to ask students and potential employees what types of accommodations they would need to reach success. Reach out to organizations like the CNIB. They can certainly set you and the people you’re willing to work with up for future success in whichever endeavour individuals are embarking on. Keep in mind that reaching out can help make a tremendous difference in the lives of people who might be afraid or reluctant to take initiative and ask for what they need without fearing rejection or indifference.