This human is like 20, blind, going to law school...but has almost no concept of how to use a laptop. Cut and paste was afairly new concept to her even! When done with her laptop she'd just close it and then not know that her batteyr was basically done. So many fundamental concepts just completely pass her by. Literally never seen this before in someone so young and its absolutely horifying.
@bermudianbrit There are so many young people, blind and sighted, who don’t know how to use a computer. when my sighted niece gave college a try, I had to show her how to use Windows.
@bermudianbrit Has this student spent a lot of time using smartphones/tablets instead? I work in UK Higher Education disability support and see increasing numbers of blind students who can't operate a Windows machine, but can use an iphone or ipad but don't realise those won't get them through university/employment.
@NatalyaD yeah basically that. I've told her she either learns windows and preferably JAWS or she's never becoming a lawyer
@bermudianbrit Wise. She's going to have to become shithot fast otherwise she won't be as fast as her sighted counterparts and will lose out on opportunities on top of presumed-lack-of-blind-competence.
I blame the schools for discovering iPads and using teaching assistants for everything rather than using accessible materials and teaching kiddo how to use/adapt/navigate.
Doesn't help Disabled Students Allowances (DSA) training is deskilled and often teaches them numpty skills only.
@bermudianbrit I have to explain to students that they need to know the official way to do stuff when a system is accessible, and then the 6 or 7 options for if the system is not optimally accessible but they should still be able to use JAWS skills to get round it, which is boring, hard work and burdens them but is the reality we live in.
Fighting for basic accessibility is extremely difficult as I know from being the frequent "Hi, I can't read that cos contrast fail" pest at work.
@bermudianbrit One of my blind students got some sighted JAWS trainer who was clearly on page 2 of the textbook and only taught them some basic MS Word commands and told them they were fully trained on JAWS now. Getting updated training from someone decent is almost impossible and involves dealing with a large rip off company called Capita who are currently taking 4 weeks to do updates for disabled students on top of 3 weeks for government dept approval. If nothing goes wrong or gets muddled.
@NatalyaD @bermudianbrit Reminds me of the instructor I had when a charity gave me my first computer. She thought I wouldn't be able to use a screen reader when installing something because setup programs tell you to close all running applications. I learnt more on my own following the JAWS basic training tapes.
@KaraLG84 I think in the day the training tapes were created because access to 1:1 human training was hard. Do you know if JAWS still comes with any equivalent of the tapes from the developer or if people need to search online for those kinds of thing? @bermudianbrit
@NatalyaD @bermudianbrit I believe it does, yeah.
@KaraLG84 Cool, I am going to be pushing my students to be more proactive where I can. I can hold them to high standards and aspirations but I can't do the work for them to be blind in this world.
@bermudianbrit
@bermudianbrit Admittedly I was somewhat of a technophobe in my early life, but my parents and teachers made damn sure I got the assistive tech training I needed and now I can't imagine living without it let alone working or going to school. how did this kid get through college? she won't go far in her law practice without computer knowledge, and as a paralegal I know I wouldn't want to work for someone so inept.
@dotsonapage In the UK law school (what we'd call a law degree or 'reading law') is an undergraduate degree, they don't qualify to practice, if they want to practice, law students do a second type of postgrad law course afterwards for that.
School and 16-18 school or college education only gets funding if support costs £6,000 a year or more so easier to get a teaching assistant to baby the blind students than pay for and train them on good use of tech.
@NatalyaD @bermudianbrit thanks for the explanation. not super familiar with higher ed in the UK aside from your college is our high school and kids go for their A Levels in various subjects when they're 16 or so, and I owe all that knowledge to British TV.
@dotsonapage UK system is confusing cos England and Wales is different to Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England some schools go to 16 and some 18, so some stay at school and some go to a separate college as well as A-levels there's vocational courses which lead to university too. Scotland does standard grades and highers at slightly different ages and Scottish degrees are 4 years as standard not 3.
Pre university a lot of babying to get grades up for funding.
@bermudianbrit Sadly with some of the posts I see on blind groups on Facebook I'm not really surprised about this.