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7b877f5ce4589df7b2bfe34908da74af
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Beth A. Robertson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Richard Marsolais
Location
The location of the interview
CNIB Office, Ottawa ON, Canada
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
33:04 minutes
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Richard Marsolais, 25 January 2016, CNIB Office, Ottawa, ON Office
Interview opens with Richard Marsolais giving his name, followed by Beth A. Robertson with first question:
B. Robertson: “… And when did you become involved with the CNIB?”
R. Marsolais: “ 21 years ago … as a client. I started losing my vision to retinitis pigmentosa, which is an eye condition that you’re born with… its hereditary and eventually leads to total blindness. So at that time, I decided to go to the CNIB and I started learning braille for reading, labelling and different things I might need for presentations and stuff like that. And from there, the rehab teacher introduced me to her type of work and said maybe that was a line of work I might want to look at. She took me out to some clients and I really enjoyed it and at the time I was in the travel industry and didn’t feel comfortable there anymore so … after seeing this position, I did some investigation and everything. That’s how I became what we call a specialist in independent living skills at this time. I started at CNIB as an employee in 1994. Before they were called rehabilitation teachers and now we’re called specialist in independent living skills.
B. Robertson: “And that leads to my next question. So how has your role and work at the CNIB changed over time?”
R. Marsolais: “Personally, I don’t really feel its changed a lot. I’m still serving my clients independently, in the office, at home, in the community and I’m also doing different types of groups. Some of what we’re teaching now is changed a little bit. Before, we were using Dos 5.1, which, you might be way too young to remember… [laughter]… It was before Windows. I had these big pieces of equipment like what’s called a Type and Speak and it was like a very large, huge piece of equipment. We’d use tape recorders, with old cassettes. And I was teaching more crafts and cooking groups and braille. But most of the technology we were doing was mainly keyboarding. Like, with Dos, I’m not even sure we had email. We had a bit of the internet, I think, and stuff like that. It was very basic technology. And now, we’ve all gone on to Windows and using Iphones, just like the sighted community, pretty much, trying to keep up and integrate with our peers and the rest of the community. So, like, I say, now I’m teaching the Iphone. I’ve got a Braillenote that is much smaller. I’ve got a Victor Reader, which is a Talking Book Machine. With the latest one, you can download podcasts, you can access like 3700 reading stations, you can download books, text files, record messages. That was very rare like 20 some years ago. Before, we at the CNIB when I first started had cassettes, with these big cassette players. They were huge, not portable… Well, they were portable, but they weighed maybe ten or fifteen pounds or something like that. So you didn’t carry them around too often with you. And they had fourtrack, like four cassettes, like four sided, and we’d send them through the mail. And that’s pretty much what you could do with them. Some of them would record and we had some small, hand held recorders, again with cassettes, but there was nothing like today. So we’re doing a lot more teaching of Ipads and Ipods, and Android phone, and Iphone and Victor Stream and Direct to Player where we’re just using people’s Wifi to download their book, so, a lot more focus on technology today, by all ages, by our youth, working age and our seniors. Our seniors in their 90s that are using Ipads and computers, doing Skype and email, and twitter, and all kinds of stuff. Its fantastic.”
B. Robertson: “Do you ever correspond or cooperate with any other international organizations, or offices of the CNIB outside of Canada?”
R. Marsolais: “Pretty much daily, because within our disciplines as an independent living skills specialist we have regular conference calls, national conference calls quarterly and also, in the east region, we have quarterly conference calls with our colleagues. Then, whenever possible, we go to Toronto for the National Braille conference. So, we get to see a lot of our different colleagues from our disciplines and other disciplines, plus we also see community agencies like high tech companies, we see people like itinerant teachers from the school boards. So, we get to interact regularly, and I myself, once a year for the last 4 years, I’ve been running a technology and community service tech show at City Hall. We have about 150 participants, so I’ve got all the high-tech companies, I’ve got the National Art Gallery, who are doing stimulating the senses, which you never had years ago. There wasn’t a lot of access to art galleries, museums and all that stuff, which we’re seeing a lot more of and we’re coordinating that kind of stuff. Now, we have Neil Squires Society, which is an employment program for persons with disabilities, and they’re there, which is excellent. Since I’ve been doing some work with them, they’ve been able to get Jaws System Access and Zoom Text, which are accessible software programs that you can access your computer with. There’s the Canadian Council of the Blind, there’s Get Together with Technology Group, there’s different artists who do accessible paintings and ceramics and pottery. There’s Accessible Media Inc., which is the accessible t.v. and radio station, which is on Bell and Rogers and different companies, which, again, before was never accessible. That’s only been in the last few years. So I go on T.V. and watch using described video services. So, we have all those agencies there, so its wonderful. Now I’ve dealt with the American Printing House, the Lighthouse for the Blind in California, so we deal with a lot of international and local agencies.
B. Robertson: ”When you began working with CNIB, and as you’ve continued throughout the years, how much did your work involve the use of technological aids?”
R. Marsolais: “When I first started, it was very basic. We taught keyboarding, because, to get a computer through the ministry of health, to get it partially funded, you had to have basic keyboarding skills. So we taught that. To use the talking book machine, as I said, was a big, large, grey machine that you could put a cassette in. It was seldom that you could record something with it. But that was pretty much the extent and people would have Dos-based computers, no internet, none of that kind of stuff. And then we would teach what they call the Type and Speak. And unfortunately, because its old, none of us have one to demo, but its basically, kind of like a keyboard size, and it has speech with it. So whenever you would type, it would talk to you and it was kind of like a small computer, a basic computer that you could do email and internet, and mostly used for keeping track of your files. Like, when we went to see clients, we could write our reports. So it was pretty basic. It really didn’t compare to what our peers were doing, where now, its so different. We’re right on par with a lot of what our sighted peers are doing, so we can be an integral part of our community, we can talk about a lot of the same things, you know. If you’re talking about Twitter, I can talk about Twitter. If you’re talking about Facebook, I can talk about Facebook. We can communicate at the same level now. We’re not like, 10 years behind anymore., on most things. So, really, technology today has opened more doors to education, because now you got scanners, better scanners. Schools are putting a lot of their documentation and their books onto the Net or different programs that the students with disabilities can access. You can do a lot, like I can communicate internationally with the Iphone, or Skype or different things like that, so, we’re teaching that regularly. You know, every week I’m doing different stuff on the Iphone, the Ipad, with Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, talking book services. So, there’s so much today that helps us with our employment, it opens up more job opportunities out there for us. Cause, with people that are blind or partially sighted, we have one of the highest unemployment rates amongst all peoples with disabilities.”
B. Robertson: “You seem to be leading right to the next question so well … [laughter]… My next question is about the training you gave others, in terms of training them on these technological aids that you’re speaking about.”
R. Marsolais: “Right.”
B. Robertson: “Can you describe how you went about training others in the community?”
R. Marsolais: “Past and present, you mean?”
B. Robertson: “Yeah, sure.”
R. Marsolais: “Okay, so past, a lot of it, I used to run a computer group at the CNIB. I would have maybe 4 students come in and we’d do like a 12 week keyboarding class, starting with the home row, learning each row of the letters, and then the numbers. That was a big part of what we did with technology. I’d then do a little bit with the computer. Once they graduated from the 12-week computer keyboarding class, then we’d do basic computer, opening a word document, how to save, how to close, how to make things bold, italicise, all that kind of stuff, formatting, and how to access other applications on the computer. So that was pretty much what we used to teach. And then, like I said, occasionally we’d teach the talking books, but all we’d do is set the client up, we’d give them the machine, we’d register them with a library, they’d get the tapes and we’d show them how to use them in the tape machine and that’s about it. Occasionally, we’d have some other pieces of technology like the Type and Speak, which I had, and I would do a bit of teaching of that. Again, very, very basic. How to open a file, how to save a file, pretty much that’s it. But today, oh my goodness, its hard to keep up, because with CNIB being a non-profit, they don’t have a lot of funding for training. So pretty much everything I’ve learned is on my own time or with my fellow colleagues. In my department, you’re going to meet Leona later, and then there’s also Rob whose in high tech, and we all just talk to each other regularly, plus there’s that group Get Together with Technology Group that has just taken off like wild fire, which shows you the need for technology to help keep people less isolated and empowered and independent in the community. Cause, with the new technology, plus the programs, we’re teaching people GPS programs like Blind Squared. We have a program called Look Tell, which identifies money. We have things like KFN reader, which is scanning software. There’s things to tell you if the lights are on. There’s apps to tell you what food is in your cupboards. There’s so much, they’re even apps where I can take a picture and send it to the Net and volunteers from around the world will tell me what it is that I took a picture of. Its amazing. Teaching all sorts of stuff like this. Plus, like I said earlier, Twitter, Facebook, texting, email, calendar. And a lot of its via Android phones. Most of it’s through the Iphone, the Ipad, because Apple products are the most accessible. They come with a built in screen reader and a large print program. So we’re doing a lot of that. Plus, we’re teaching still the Talking Books, to our seniors and to all ages, but the machines now are so much more complicated and more accessible because they are more multi-functional. Before, you played the cassettes, right. Now, its more multi-media. You got the CDs now, but you can also download books directly via Wifi that connects to our CELA library in Toronto. Or you can download books via a thumbdrive, a Nestie Card on the side of the machine. Its much more exciting, so we have to teach the clients all about that. Going onto the internet, and our CELA library website, we’re teaching them how to search and how to download books and the various formats. And there’s this gagdet that I have that, its like a portable talking book machine. I can download podcasts and text files for meetings. I can record any programs at a push of a button. I can download various types of talking books from different places like Book Share, CNIB and Audible.com. All kinds of different companies now. Before, we might have had a few thousand books accessible. Now, we’ve got hundreds of thousands books accessible to us. Its amazing. So we’re teaching all of this. Its endless. Anytime there’s a new technology, someone will call us and say, ‘can you teach us this?’, or ‘Oh, we learned about this app. Can you teach us this all?’ So we teach ourselves it or we call our people at the Get Together with Technology Group, which has now just sprouted out. Chapters have opened all over Canada now. We’re all communicating now with each other. We have monthly conference calls, we have monthly meetings, and there could be anywhere from 20 to 60 or more people at these meetings or on the conference calls. So exciting.”
B. Robertson: “Even the technology in the past was meant for accessibility. Would you say that technology now has become much more successful in helping people contribute as members to the society in which they live?”
R. Marsolais: “Oh absolutely. Absolutely. Before, most of the internet, most websites, you were lucky if you could read anything. Most times, if you know, they’d have edit boxes. It would just say, ‘edit, edit, blank, black, graphic, graphic, graphic.’ You had no clue what was on most websites. Most ATMs, for example, we couldn’t access them. Now, I can take a pair of headphones, go plug it into the ATM and do my transactions independently. There’s large print cheques for the low vision, tap and go, so I can just tap my credit card and go. There’s so much more. They’ve got the driverless car that they’re working on. You’ve got glasses, and different other equipment, that vibrate that tell you that you’ve got an object in front of you, so you either need to turn left or right. Out of India, they’ve got the GPS shoes now that tell you to move left or right if something’s coming in at you. Its just non-stop. Day after day, we’re hearing about new technology. As persons who are partially sighted or blind, technology is now allowing us to be empowered and to be independent, to have confidence and to be safe in our environment, to get around, and to access more jobs. To go to university, because now, the special needs departments, they can scan our books, we can download different parts of our books. Departments are putting … I know at Ottawa U, five maybe ten years ago, the law department put most of their books on internet, so clients could access it. Like I heard a few years ago about Queens University, there was 11 students in the law program at one time. You couldn’t of, wouldn’t have heard of that 20, 30, 40 years ago, my gosh. You’re lucky if you had 20 students across Canada going to university, you know what I mean? Its just so empowering. We can communicate with our sighted peers on the same things. It wasn’t like, oh, I got my four track dinosaur tape recorder [laughter] … and you’re like ‘What? You have what? Okay, sure.’ Now, we can talk about the same things. We can communicate via the same devices. I can send you a text and you don’t know if I’m blind or not. So, it can even help us with disabilities, like you don’t always have to expose that you’re disabled right away and be vulnerable. You can be anonymous like other people. I’m not even trying to promote that, but I’m just saying that we can communicate at the same level. I can send you a text, I can send you an email, I can be on Whatsapp, I can use GPS just like you, you know. I can be in the car with my driver. She doesn’t get the maps a lot of times, now. I just go to Siri on my Iphone and say, ‘Siri, find directions to, wherever.’ Now, we can go to conferences and talk about the same things as everyone else does. We can get together with our friends, sighted and non-sighted at a coffee shop and talk about the same games even. Even the games out there, some of them are more accessible. Not all of them, there’s still a ways to go with that. We have our own sets of games or computer games or different programs, but there is more and more that we can access that the sighted world is accessing. There’s only about 7% of all printed material that blind and partially sighted people have access to, which is frightening. But, its still a lot better than what it was even five, ten years ago. And its only getting better, because they just did an international agreement that most countries are going to soon ratify, that will break down the barriers through all the producers of the books, so we won’t have to worry about copyright issues all the time. Each country won’t have to make 25 copies of the same book. We all can share resources, which will give us even more access to information, because that’s the key. If you don’t have information, how can you be informed? How can you make proper decisions? How can you be an integrated part of your community if you don’t have very much information. Even now the CRTC is working on making sure that TV and radio is accessible, so if you have print-outs on the bottom of the TV that they either have to read it, or there’s an extra descriptive voice reading it and like I say, there’s a descriptive TV. Now we’ve got the Apple TV, which is fully accessible, we can do Netflix. So there’s a lot that we can do as a community as a whole are working very hard at making things more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired for all kinds of reasons. Like you have strong groups like the National Foundation for the Blind in the States that are very political and are always trying to break down barriers. And you have different agencies like the CNIB and the World Blind Union who are trying to educate and advocate on our behalf as well. Plus you have private citizens advocating to all these big companies. And I think these companies are realizing that there’s many blind and partially sighted people around the world who have money. Not all of us, but there’s a lot of people out there, like, I heard something in the billions of dollars. Well, if you’re a business person, you want to access that money. Its only to their benefit that they make things accessible. And right, of course, with the American Disabilities Act, and now the Ontario Disabilities Act, and they’re working on a Canadian Disabilities Act, where some of these companies and government and all that are mandated to make things accessible.”
B. Robertson: “Well, following right up on that, based on your experience, to what extent are technological aids important for creating more accessible and inclusive spaces of learning, such as schools or universities?”
R. Marsolais: “Oh, its so important. It’s a must. We want our kids to grow up educated. We don’t want people living off disability. Living on that is like living below the poverty line. Is that a great way to have our persons with disabilities living? No, I don’t think so. So, I think its absolutely essential, and I think it’s a human right that we have access to education. When you say access to education, that doesn’t mean the same thing as you need, or somebody else sighted needs. It means that I need it in a way that I can access it, whether that’s talking books, or laptop with a screen reader, or a CCTV that gives me magnification, or something that allows me to take pictures of the overheads, or maps, or access to the accessibilities departments at universities and colleges, or itinerant teachers. Its absolutely a human right. It’s so essential. It’s a must. If we want to have young people who grow up to be an integral part of their community and be empowered, to make decisions and to attain the goals and aspirations that they have, then, it’s a no-brainer.”
B. Robertson: “And, as a part of that, so to what extent are technological aids important for creating more accessible and inclusive spaces of employment?”
R. Marsolais: “I would say the same thing. Without it, we can’t have jobs, especially in our day and age today when technology is the leading factor. We have a lot of things moving towards technology, I mean, everything is done with computers, the internet. We look at global markets. You see it in the medical fields. Doctors talking to each other around the world via Skype and computers and whatever, you know what I mean? That’s the way things are going and I’m sure as students, you probably collaborate with other students across Canada via technology, right? And that’s how we’re all communicating. Families, employees, conference calls, that’s how we do our communications via our quarterly calls, its all via technology. And its just getting more and more advanced. For us to maintain our level of employment and to compete with our fellow sighted peers, we need that technology. And, again, I really believe it’s a human right. Its not just something that should be looked at, but it should be mandated, that employers must provide that technology and that it needs to be accessible.”
B. Robertson: “Now, you touched on this a bit before, but just to kind of recap, so how do you think technological aids are important for reducing social barriers?”
R. Marsolais: “Now, with the technology, the way its going, I feel like a lot of the social barriers are being broken down already because we are now able to communicate at the same level as our sighted peers. Like I say, with Facebook and Twitter and podcasts and the Iphone, GPS systems, everything, we can communicate. The youth can go and be with other teenagers their own age and do the same programs that they do cause its accessible. They can go with … I can’t think of any of the names [laughter]… SnapChat, or whatever the young people use! You know, whatever is out there they’re using, so that they can be at the same level. Even recently, I went to see Star Wars because they have descriptive technology. They gave me head phones and a box. As I was able to, I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the whole show completely described. So, I could come together with you and we could still talk about the show and really relate, where before, just to listen, I might get a quarter of the show if that. So, you’d be like, ‘Oh wow, did you see that?’ And I’d be, “What? Sure. Whatever,’ [laughter], you know. And we’d just… that would put up a barrier right there because there would be so many missing links that we would just not get. Because, we’re not living in a visual world, we’re living in a blind world and things were just not accessible and described, so we couldn’t talk at the same level. Now, we can do so much and get so much description from various programs, like I said AMI and descriptive movies, and everything like that so, technologically, a lot of the barriers are coming down. Attitudinal, they’re still very high, unfortunately, but technology is starting to break some of those barriers down. I hear people say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you can do that. That’s incredible.’ Then they start communicating with us and their, like, ‘I just can’t believe this. You’re better at it than I am’ [laughter]. Its educating and informing the community that we’re there, we’ve arrived, and we can be an active, informed participant in our community and with our social networks, whether it be educationally, via employment, or just social recreation. We can be there now. You know, we still have a long way to go, but we definitely have come a long way.”
B. Robertson: “I would love for you to show me some of these technological aids you’ve been talking about.’
R. Marsolais: “Okay.”
B. Robertson: “And I see you have a few in your hand. Can you show me, first what they are and how they work?”
R. Marsolais: “So this is called a braille note taker. Its basically a computer. I can link it to my computer and do my Outlook emails, I can play music ... The main reasons I use it is to go to my clients and take notes. Its very compact, its not imposing, so I can quietly take notes at my clients, without interfering with the flow of our interview. You might be able to see there’s braille, so its liquid braille display, so these keys here are navigation keys, so they allow me to go back a line or forward a line. They allow me to have free flowing, like the text just running continuous. There’s also speech on here if I want speech. So we can use it as a teaching tool. So when we’re working with our clients, then they see this technology and it motivates them to really want to learn, maybe use it for their employment later on. I’ve had several clients, who, once they learn braille, then their employers have purchased one of these for them, so they can take notes during meetings. Its wonderful for that as well. A big part of my life. I use it pretty much daily.”
B. Robertson: “What’s it called again?”
R. Marsolais: “Its called a braille note taker. Because we have to do so much paper work on the computer, I take notes on that and then I come back and transcribe it to my computer. The next is called a talking book machine, and this one particularly is called a Victor Stream. It’s the old version, but, ah… I would have preferred to show you the new one, but I don’t have it. But you can see with just the technology. So, with this I’m taking a correspondent Spanish course and they’ve sent it by the thumb drive. Before, we didn’t have access to that, you know, access that and just put it on my talking book machine. When I go to and from work on the bus, I can just do my studies. Its amazing. I don’t know if you can hear this... ”
[Recording of a computer synthesized voice saying “Conversational Spanish 2, course number SPN106. 13. Meet your friends…”]
R. Marsolais: “So, there’s a menu key. [Recording: ‘bookshelf, talking books…’] I can do talking books [Recording: ‘other books…’]. And other books means I can just use different other agencies, different formats instead. You can do MP3, you can do Pub…. There are different ones out there. [Recording: ‘audible books…’] So, Audible books on Audible.com, you know, its like a company that’s all talking books. I can download descriptive movies where I don’t get the visuals, but I get the audio of a series or a movie, like Superman 3, or whatever. [Recording: ‘music…’] I can download whatever music I want. So I use for running on the tread mill. [Recording: ‘text files, to…’] So, text files, so I can download agendas, and stuff that I need for any kind of meeting that I’m going to. Or if I’m cooking, I can put a recipe on there, bring it to the kitchen and do my cooking [Recording: ‘notes, 141…’] And then notes, so on the side, its just a button, it says record and you just press it, and I can record a lecture at a university, I can record a show off the T.V., like on wines, or whatever it is that I want to. If I go to the doctors and he gives me another appointment, I can just save the appointment. I can keep track of peoples phone numbers and addresses on there if I want, until I get to transfer it to my Iphone, or whatever. So, it opens a world. Like, this is my lifeline, like I have everything on here. And its great because the battery life is 15 to 20 hours. So I’m going to Uruguay in two weeks and my Iphone is probably not going to last 13 hours for talking books and all that stuff, but this will last the whole trip, so its sweet. And like I say, the new one can access 3700 radio stations. Its got tons of built-in podcasts, but you can access podcasts from all around the world. Its amazing, its like… people love this gadget. Its just wonderful. And my last piece… Its getting better that a lot of our stuff we can just have on the Iphone, maybe two devices, but you know for a lot of us who are blind or partially sighted, we have ten gadgets. You know, you have one for scanning, you have one for recording, and then you have one for note taking, and then you have one for telling your money, you have one for this and that and its just drives you crazy. So, now with the new technology, a lot of it I can just have on my Iphone. You got pretty much everything right here, everything that’s on here [i.e. Victor Stream], I technically can have on here [Iphone]. I can have my talking books and podcasts, I can take notes, I can set alarms, I can do pretty much everything. I have GPS systems to get me through the city, I got the transit app like everybody else. Pretty much, I can now, instead of having ten gadgets, I can have one or two. Its like, ‘whoohoo!’ [laughter]. You know, I don’t need a walking suitcase to get around the city anymore. So, I’m just going to turn it on. Most people being so connected… I ‘m still an outdoors, get together with friends over dinner and play sports and good stuff kind of guy. [Plays voice synthesis accessibility feature on the Iphone, listing menu items…] I can hear everything and go through whatever I want. All my programs are there, double tap… That’s how easy it is. It’s great. Sometimes there are programs that are still not accessible, but at least now you can write to the companies, and say ‘Hey, you know, I was wondering if you could do this, this and that,’ and more than willing most of the companies will do it now, because it makes their program more accessible to more people. And with the speech voice over built into the Apple products, via the cloud I can connect this to the Ipad, the Iphone, the Ipad Touch, you know whatever. I can have everything connected, right. I can take pictures like everybody else. Its just so incredible. And so, we teach … I don’t know what percentage of my time, but a good percentage of my time now is just talking about the various types of apps and teaching the Iphone to our clients, and the Ipad. Like, this technology has just flourished in the last few years. Like I said, the Get Together with Technology Group, its just spread like wild fire all across Canada. Its absolutely incredible and exciting.”
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Title
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Interview with Richard Marsolais, CNIB, Ottawa Office (25 January 2016)
Subject
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An interview with Richard Marsolais, employee with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) on January 25th, 2016.
Description
An account of the resource
This interview is with Richard Marsolais, a long-time employee with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Conducted at CNIB's Ottawa office on the morning of January 25th, 2016, he reflects on his own experience working with and training others at the CNIB, as well as evolution of assistive devices for people who are blind or partially sighted in Canada.
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Interview by Beth A. Robertson, Carleton University Disabilities Research Group
Source
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Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB)
Date
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25 January 2016
Language
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English
Type
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oral / audio interview
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CNIB, Ottawa, ON Canada
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Used with permission by Richard Marsolais, the CNIB and Carleton University's Research Ethics Office.
CNIB
Interview with Richard Marsolais
Ottawa Office (25 January 2016)
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Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Beth A. Robertson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Leona Emberson
Location
The location of the interview
CNIB Ottawa Office, Ontario, Canada
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
28:40 minutes
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Interviewer: Beth Robertson
Interviewee: Leona Emberson
Leona Emberson:
My name is Leona Emberson and I am a specialist of independent living skills here at the CNIB. I have been here 10 years but I have been a client of CNIB my whole life.
My first probably true memory of being involved with the CNIB was through a summer camp that would help once a week when I was probably about to enter grade 8. It was just a weekly summer group where we got together and we did … we went to a water park and we went horseback riding … so probably my first involvement. Then after that for a period, I did have some mobility training from CNIB orientation mobility training learning how to get around my high school. And then there was really no involvement until I started working at the CNIB the Joseph Center for summer employment and then that eventually led into working here full-time. When I first started working for CNIB, it was actually a camp counselor at the summer camp I was working with clients to help them to participate in the different activities at the summer camp and working at the front office, working in the dining hall, that sort of thing. Then I transitioned into, once I finished my college education, which was as a rehabilitation instructor for the blind. I then became employed here at the Ottawa office.
I am a specialist of independent living skills. My job involved teaching people how to either gain the independence in their personal lives or regain independence or maintain it so it rather depends on the individual where they are in their life and where they are in their journey with vision loss. So, for some people if they have been vision impaired their whole life and they are learning new skills if they have just lost their sight then its learning skills in a different way. That can mean either that I am working with them in their home, working with them the office or working with them out in the community. I teach Braille. I teach some adaptive computer technology I teach cooking skills home maintenance money management whole variety of different things.
Beth Robertson:
Did you ever correspond to cooperate with any international organizations or other CNIB offices outside of Canada?
Leona Amberson:
CNIB does not have offices outside of Canada. But I have worked with an organization called World University students and they bring students from other countries into Canada to study. They do this every year and I have worked with them when they first bring their students because they bring them to Ottawa. I've worked with some of their students within the first couple of days that they arrived in Canada, just to help to provide some of the very, very preliminary skills and talk to them about what the expectations are for students with disabilities in Canada and help them to understand some of the technologies that are available to them here. Because they are quite different, of course, in Canada, the services that are available to them are quite different. I've worked with them just to start them on their journey as far as providing the first couple of touch-typing lessons, introducing them to some of the assistive technology that is available, which is often … what they have been introduced to is technology we may have used ten years ago, is what they have seen. So just to kind of show them that this is what's available, so that when they get to whatever university they are going to be studying at and they sit down to have their assessment, they at least have been exposed to what they're going to be shown so that it's not a total shock or a total … you know all of a sudden they have to make all these decisions that they've seen nothing.
Beth Robertson:
How much as your work involved the use of technological aids?
Leona Amberson:
Quite a bit has changed over the last ten years. When I first started, the extent of technology that I was teaching was very desktops, computer-based, maybe a little bit of laptop computer based, where I would teach typing skills and a little bit of how to check your email, how to do some basic internet searches, use Microsoft Word, that sort of thing.
We were still using four track players. We just started introducing daisy players, which are technology specifically designed for people with vision impairments to listen to audio books, and at that time, that was sort of big technology – “Oh my gosh, I can listen to my book on a CD!” and it was, like, exciting. Mp3 style of listening to books was kind of just starting to come in for people who were visually impaired, but that was kind of the extent of it ten years ago. And now I would say a much larger portion of my training is being focused on iPhones and iPads and mp3 type of technology. How do I download my books? I don't want to wait for a CD to come in the mail I want to listen to my book, when I want to listen to it, and I want to check my email when I'm on the bus and how do I do that and how do I use my smartphone. And so, it has changed drastically because people can now use similar or the exact same technology as their family and friends and that has really changed the way that I teach and the way that my clients are learning and the way that I access the world, as well.
The training that that we offer is it's based on client’s needs and desires, so it really is based on what people want and what people need. There is still a huge range because we work with people of all ranges and abilities. For example, my day can start with a visit in a preschool, where I am working with a two-year-old on pre Braille skills. And that can still be very hands on, where we're playing with a toy cat and then we're feeling the Braille letter C and then we're feeling a tactile two-dimensional shape of a cat and making all those connections. Then, I may go into a seniors’ residence right from there and I'm teaching them how to use a daisy player. And, we may not even want to get into the concept of Wi-Fi and downloading books, because you know it's a 95 year old woman who as soon as you start to mention those letters of “Wi-Fi” and “direct to player,” and all of those concepts … that's just a little bit too much for her. So you just want to focus on “this is a book-reading machine, that we're going to put this CD in, that is kind of like a record and it will play your book for you…”
Then from there, I may go to somebody's house and spend some time on their iPhone teaching them how to use voiceover, which is software that's built into their phone – It comes right on the phone, you don't have to pay anything extra for it and, I can teach them how to use their iPhone and voiceover to check their email and how to download their books directly from the CELA library, which is the Center for Equitable Library services, that allows them to download audiobook content directly onto their phone. Which is the same phone that their family members and friends are using, the exact same technology everyone else has. They just have to use it in a slightly different way. I am teaching them how to download their books directly onto that, and that can be my day.
So, it's far ranging, from the most basics of technology, such as using a piece of paper and some puff paint to work with a two-year-old child, to a nursing home where I'm using a daisy player and a record or a CD, all the way through to an iPhone connected through Wi-Fi and downloading eBooks from a library that is in a total different end of the province. It's all ranges of the spectrum of age and abilities and technology.
Beth Robertson:
In your opinion, how has the technology to assist people changed over time?
Leona Emberson:
It has changed drastically. It’s gone from large and bulky and cumbersome to something that fits in your pocket. It's gone from having to be something that is extremely specialized and built specifically for people who are blind and visually impaired to something that is built for everyone and built to be inclusive. But, at the same time, there is still the need for something that is built specifically for people who are blind and visually impaired, such as a refreshable Braille display that allows you to connect to technology and read Braille from your smartphone. That's something that's never going to change, because the general population is never going to need that. The blind and visually impaired population will always need that because Braille will always be relevant. But that technology has become better and stronger, and now that it can connect with something mainstream, it has become better and stronger so that has changed in so many ways.
For the most part, it has changed for the better, but there are some ways that it has become more challenging. For example, because of things like digital displays and touch screens certain things have become more challenging. So it used to be that you wanted to do a recording, you could just pull out your tape recorder and easily feel the buttons and push record in no time at all. Now trying to find a digital recorder that is easy for somebody who is newly visually impaired to use … they all have digital displays, little tiny buttons. They record them in the machines memory. You have to go through a screen that you can't read to be able to use it. So the autonomy for someone to be able to use that has now been taken away. And it's incredibly hard to find something that's simple and basic and easy to use. So, although in some ways it's gotten a lot better there are some drawbacks. Think about all of the stoves that you come across. It used to be you'd walk into your house, you'd turn a knob, your oven is on. You have the coil burners. You could feel those.
Now, on some stoves, they're touch-sensitive. You run your finger across the back of some stoves and you have now accidentally turned on two burners, you've turned on the oven self-cleaning function, and your oven is locked and it's cleaning itself. Think of how complicated and a little bit scary that would be if you were blind. You now can't even use your stove. So there are advantages and there are disadvantages. Most of the disadvantages come from the designers of technology not understanding the needs of the vision-impaired population, because those things could be very easily fixed. Instead of making it touch sensitive, just from – and I don't know the actual terms for it but – just like the heat from your finger, but making it pressure sensitive, because then you can put a tactile mark on it. So just switching the way the displays are made … all of a sudden it goes from being inaccessible to accessible. And if the designers of the technology realize this and did it right from the beginning, everything could be made accessible, making sure that all buttons when you're designing these things are just a little bit bigger and have some kind of tactile mark on it. It could be easily done. So there's pros and cons. And it's just sort of a concept of universal design that just needs to be applied to everything that's being made.
Beth Robertson:
To follow-up with that, how have changes to technological aids influenced shaped or change the lives of persons where blind or partially sighted at CNIB or elsewhere?
Leona Emberson:
In many ways it has allowed us – and I'm going to say us because I myself am visually impaired – it's allowed us to sort of advance ourselves as far as employment, in many ways.
The computer technology has made it so that I don't have to have someone sitting beside me in my office reading me all kinds of materials. I can sit down at my computer and I can read it myself, as long as it's accessible from the beginning. I can be much more independent in my job. I can obtain information because I can keep up to date with news and what's happening in the world. I can stay relevant in my field because I can read journals. I can access all that information, that in the past I wouldn't have been able to access or I would have had to access through sighted assistance.
So I can be much more independent. We can be much more independent. So it's given a level of independence that previously wasn't available. But there are still those gaps, which mostly come into play when the people who are designing the technology just don't think of universal design or don't understand when designing a website that they need to think of that from the beginning. Or don't understand when they're sending out a document, that it needs to be done from an accessible point right from the beginning.
Beth Robertson:
Based on your experience, to what extent are technological aids important for creating more accessible and inclusive spaces of employment?
Leona Emberson:
Hugely important, and really not that expensive. For somebody who doesn’t have a vision impairment, you’re going to buy your employee a computer anyway. The computer is already there, and the software itself really is not that expensive… Once the software is purchased, it is there on the computer, as long as the person knows how to use it. That is what has really opened doors. Having the accessible technology means that you can do a job independently that previously you would have had to have somebody reading you information or even jobs that perhaps you wouldn't have been able to do before because you wouldn't have been able to do the research, or you wouldn't have been able to access the information required. Now you're able to do all of the things independently that that you would not have been able to do before.
Beth Robertson:
Based on your experience, to what extent our technological aids important for creating more accessible and inclusive spaces of learning, such as schools or universities?
Leona Emberson:
I think that the same sort of theory applies as soon as the students have access to technology, the more independence they are able to have –to a certain extent. I think there needs to be some caution in there, specifically when it comes to Braille. Often technologies are being used to replace Braille mistakenly. If technology is used side by side with Braille, as a tool, it can be great. But what is sometimes happening is that instead of investing in a child learning Braille, which … Braille provides literacy skills, so reading Braille is equivalent to learning print. So when you learn Braille, you learn how to spell, you learn sentence structure, you are learning where punctuation goes. You're learning all of your grammar skills. Sometimes what happens is technologies are introduced too soon, and a child will switch to auditory. So, they will start listening to books instead of actually reading a book. They then will switch from learning how to spell words, because they aren't actually physically reading anymore. And then they lose some of those literacy skills or they don't develop them as strongly as a sighted peer might because they aren't actually looking at a computer screen. They're just listening to a computer screen, or they're just listening to a book being read to them. So there has to be some level of caution in an education system as to when and how technology is used. If you're using technology with a Braille display, so you're still reading Braille while you're using your technology, then that is a great way to use technology alongside Braille. But it has to be used properly and in the right way to make sure that a student is getting all of the proper information that they need.
Technology can mean that a student is able to keep up with their classmates. It can also mean that in atmosphere where … Braille-reading students, if they are working with a teacher who doesn't know Braille, if they are writing in Braille on a braille keyboard and then it comes up on a screen in print, that means that their sighted teacher now knows what they're writing. That's a great use of technology, as long as the student is still reading in Braille. The technology also means that they can get more information faster. So instead of having to wait for it to go off to a transcriber, or be sent off to a special place to be put in large print, or to be put in audio, or to be put in, whatever your format approach might be. Your teacher can just send it to you like email, and you get it instantaneously, so you can keep up faster. So it is a huge improvement to learn at a speed in which you can learn with your classmates.
Beth Robertson:
As a way of following up on that, how do you think technological aids are important for reducing social barriers?
Leona Emberson:
I think that the biggest thing that we see, that I've observed most recently, is with smartphones. For me personally, what I noticed was, as soon as I got my smartphone and I was able to finally text – because I was way late on the bandwagon, when it came to being able to text with my friends. I had a cell phone and I could kind of send a text, but I couldn't read anything anyone sent back to me. So it was kind of pointless, because I'd send something, and then people would text back and I'd have to pull a magnifier out of my purse… I would have to make sure that I wasn't actually outside because I couldn't read it when I was outside. I had to be in a dark space and I only kind of got half of what they wrote to me, and it just it was pointless. So when I got my smartphone and I could actually read a text, all of a sudden I was included in more conversations than I had been. So instead of just getting the information at the end of the week, when everyone else had already been discussing it for a whole week and I kind of got the quick synopsis, I was actually being included in the moment, which is how life works now.
In the past, you'd get together for coffee and everyone would kind of catch up on the week. But I was finding that everyone was already caught up and nobody was quite giving me all of the details. I was kind of getting, like, just a quick sort of snippet and kind of going, “wait a minute, but how did that happen, what happened before that?” And I was really missing out on a lot of things. So once I got my smartphone and I was kind of getting in the loop on a daily basis with what was going on… It really, really changed my world socially because… I mean, not like my friends were purposely excluding me, but it’s just I wasn't fitting in with the way that they were organizing their social world. I was also able to go for those quick coffee gatherings, because nobody called each other anymore. So when they were going past my house, they'd actually send a text and say, “hey I'm close by -- want to go for a coffee?” But for some reason, no one ever thought to call and say that. But as soon as I could text, all of a sudden those things are happening. And I noticed that slowly that was happening with my other vision-impaired friends as well, once they were able to get in on this whole texting business.
Workwise, it also changed once I was able to start using a phone for work and get email on my work phone. All of that time that I spend in between client visits on a bus… Hey, I can actually send emails and keep on track of emails in that 40 minutes that I'm spending sitting on a bus in transit. I'm actually using as proper time. I'm not just wasting it. So all of these little bits of time that were kind of unaccounted for all of a sudden had a purpose. And I find that what's happening for all of my friends. All of a sudden you're being more included in social circles. All of a sudden we can sit in on conversations because, you know, we can listen to the podcast more easily. All of a sudden, we were reading more news articles than we had in the past because we can actually access them. And we can access them not just when we get home at 9 o'clock at night or at 7 o'clock at night. Whatever time it is, we can access them any time of the day. So it really is changing the way that we're able to fit in with the world.
Beth Robertson:
Thank you Leona. Now I see you brought some objects with you. Would you mind showing us what they are and how they work?
Leona Emberson:
So what I brought with me… I brought a couple of different ones that are all the same thing, just different shapes and sizes – they are slates and a stylus. So this one is the slate. It's a metal object that has two sides to it and a hinge on one end that kind of opens up. And the one side has six rows of, I think it's 28 little metal Braille cells, and the other side has the same amount of rows of Braille cells, but they are holes. Then I have the stylus in my hand and it is a wooden stylus. So it has a wooden knob that you hold on to and then a metal pointy bit. What you do is, you lie the slate on its side and you slide the paper in – it's kind of a little alligator mouth – you snap it shut. So this is kind of how people used to write Braille before the [mechanical] Brailler even existed, which is that large sort of clunky thing that you carry around. Or some people still do use this [slate and stylus] because you can carry it around in your purse. It's the easiest way to take notes if you go to a meeting. The tricky bit is you have to write backwards, so from right to left, because you're punching the holes from the back.
Beth Robertson:
When you're thinking about technologies like this one, and some other more recent technologies, how would you say ease of use has changed over time?
Leona Emberson:
Ease of use has greatly changed because this is obviously slow and … I mean it fits in your purse nicely, because you can get little tiny ones, so it's great because it can be quite compact… But it's slow, its hard to fix mistakes. Because you have to write backwards, anyone with any kind of learning disability just ends up with a jumbled mess. Like, myself, I always get my D's and B's, and F’s and J’s all inside-out and backwards because they're mirror images in Braille. Then you have to write them backwards… yeah it turns into disaster. Having technology where you can, you know, more easily write things, correct mistakes, and have voice coming back to you at the same time as you are writing in Braille, and you can actually read it at the same time such as the electronic Braille display – I think Richard showed you his Braille note. It makes it so much easier. But again, on the flip side of that, a lot of people don't know how to use a slate and stylus anymore. So if they don't have technology with them and people don't carry a slate and stylus … And, you can, as I said, you can get smaller ones that just work with little cue cards, so it is a great thing to carry in your purse with you or your backpack… You can just pull it out so you can jot down somebody's phone number… But people don't know how to use them anymore, so it's kind of that – which side of the fence are you on. Where people don't know how to use it, so they don't have the resource, where it can sometimes be the easiest and best solution because it's the simplest. But, of course, for taking down a whole big college lecture, this is a little bit of a pain, compared to what is available now, which is great.
Beth Robertson:
In your experience and your opinion, what do you think is one of the most important technologies out there for reducing social barriers or enabling and empowering people?
Leona Emberson:
I'm going to have to say smartphone, just because of the versatility. You can, you know, I have a Braille display that attaches to my smartphone. I have a talking GPS for my smartphone, so I can use it to help get from place to place. I use it to read my books … My Braille display hooks up to it, so I can actually use it to read Braille. I can use it to take notes. I can use it for email. If I needed to, I could use it for everything that I need it to. It's not always the best solution for everything, but it can serve for almost everything that I need it to. And there's new apps coming out all the time. There's even specifically different apps that are designed for people who are blind or visually impaired.
I got stuck in a building once where I needed to find a doctor's office. And there was nobody else that I could find, and the elevator buttons weren't Braille and none of the offices had Braille labels and they weren't even large enough print that I could read them. So there's an app called “Be My Eyes” and it connects you with sighted volunteers. So I called somebody up and they read the elevator [buttons] to me and they read all of the office labels and helped me find the office I was looking for, so how great is that! And I wasn't even late!
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Leona Emberson, CNIB, Ottawa Office (25 January 2016)
Subject
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An interview with Leona Emberson at the CNIB office in Ottawa on 25 January 2016.
Description
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An interview with Leona Emberson, an employee with the Canadian Institute for the Blind (CNIB) at their Ottawa office. She reflects on her own experiences working with and training others at the CNIB, as well as the evolution of assistive technologies for people who are blind or partially sighted in Canada.
Creator
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Interview by Beth A. Robertson, Carleton University's Disabilities Research Group
Source
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Canadian Institute for the Blind (CNIB)
Date
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25 January 2016
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Used by permission from the Leona Emberson, the CNIB and Carleton University's Research and Ethics Office.
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oral / audio interview
Language
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English
Coverage
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Ottawa, ON
CNIB
Interview with Leona Emberson
Ottawa Office (25 January 2016)