Interview Highlights from Vision Australia RadioComing up on June 8 Vision Australia will be holding an Open Day at our Coorparoo office in Brisbane from 10am to 2pm.
To have a chat with Sam about the day on Talking Vision you'll hear from Courtney McKee, Anish Chamoli, Mel Bligh and Vision Australia ambassador Donna Dyson.
They'll all be available to speak with visitors while also offering a range of activities and opportunities for conversations to share their lived experience of blindness or low vision.
I'm here today with an absolute star studded cast here to talk about the upcoming Vision Australia Open Day we have today Courtney McKay, Mel Bligh, Donna Dyson and Amish Kamali and it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you all to Talking Vision today. Thank you very much to you all for your time. Courtney, we'll start with you. Could you give us a bit of an overview about the open day?
Yeah, absolutely. On Saturday, the 8th of June 2024, we're hosting a day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. where we're inviting children, young people, their friends, families, their school teams and the general community to come along and learn a little bit about what we do, particularly with our children and young people here at Vision Australia in relation to our life ready approach. And this is where we're supporting children and young people to do what they need to do now, but also to prepare for their future, whatever they would like that to be, and making sure that they have a skill set that includes nine essential life skill areas that children and young people who are blind or have low vision need. In addition to the core skills that every child needs to be successful.
And Courtney, could you tell us a little bit more about your involvement in the day overall?
Yeah, so I'm coordinating the day, which means I have the wonderful privilege of working with all of the talented folks that we're about to talk to today, plus all of the wonderful pediatric therapists that I'm involved with in my team and a range of other people who are coming along, especially to support the day. Among the kinds of things that I'm involved in is supporting the teams to set up our different stations, and we have stations ranging from workshops on cooking, coding, craft, we have storytimes, we have some physical workshops which include rugby skills and self defense. I'm also doing a lot of liaising with our stallholders. So our community partners who will be in on the day. For example, we have Carers Queensland coming along to provide NDIS information. We have Goalball Queensland coming along to provide information about that sport, and we have the Queensland Academy of Sport and Uq's Para start coming along to talk about sporting opportunities in our community. For people that just want to get involved and all the way through to elite sports, that.
Sounds absolutely action packed. There a lot of things for people to look forward to, but what I'm looking forward to right now is just going around the room and having a chat to all of you and giving you a chance to sort of introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your involvement in the day. Mel, I think I'll start with you.
Hi. Yeah. So I'm a professional psychologist in the area of health. I'm doing my placement here at Vision Australia from the University of Queensland. My involvement is to support the family engagement within the open day, as well as onto the life ready platform. The Life Ready Hub is made up of engagement with families, as well as their service providers, to teach the independent skills to children. It's part of the expanded core curriculum. Um, and as Courtney mentioned, you know, there's nine areas which we've expanded into this wonderful platform. It's online, but it's interactive as well. For example, a child can listen to a podcast and they can interact with it with dancing moves, with talking. You know, the areas, um, of independence include things like how do you pack your bag for camp, that sort of thing. So we're talking about giving these skills to children from a very young age. And then as they move up through its intergenerational change that we're making, we have children that are ready to engage in employment. And yeah.
Amir, I'll go to you. Could you give us a bit of an intro? Tell us a bit about your involvement in the day and if you're comfortable, tell us a little bit about your vision condition.
Yes. So hi. So as you all know, my name is Amish. And so my role in the Open Day for Vision Australia will be getting kids involved in text based games on computer and getting them familiar with, um, programs such as Zoomtext. And so my role will be just to get them familiar with the software and sort of help them out and get them engaged in some of these educational games that they can play for all ages. I have something called congenital aniridia, and it is something that is very, very rare. And you can say it happens to 1 in 1,000,000. And just like many other disorders, it also has platforms or intensities, as you might say. So I've got the rarest. I'd of no idea. Which means that I have no iris in my eyes and my back. My eye is not developed at all, so that means that there is a lot of movement in my eye that most people will see. That's because there is a lot of rays that is coming in. So like the light rays are all coming into my eyes because there is no iris there to dilate them or filter that light. So if you ever see me, you know you'll always see what my eyes are. Just going 100 miles an hour, you know. But yeah. So it's sort of limits my vision. So I can only see up to about ten meters up to that. Everything goes a bit blurry. And in terms of reading, writing, I'm pretty okay, but I have to go up close to sort of read or write. And you know, I use zoomtext myself, and I have been using it all throughout my life with assignments and stuff like that. So yeah, that's basically a little bit about Aniridia.
I'd love to hear a little bit more about the accessible games that you're involved with, Amish. So tell us a bit about those, and also the interface that they'll be having with screen readers, alongside with Zoomtext, which you have mentioned.
Yeah. So I've got a couple of games that I'm looking into at the moment. So we will be on the day using Zoomtext and Jaws for those who are compatible with both. That's very good. Otherwise, I'll be sort of the guy that is involved more with Zoomtext side of things, and some of the games that I have here. One is called overcooked. It's sort of like a cooking game where the players must prepare and serve food under the certain time frame. It sort of includes cooperative multiplayer for family as well. That's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
You know, because we sort of want to get everybody engaged in that area. And I guess if we look at it, the pros of it sort of enhances the cooperation. Like I said, and communication skills. And it also offers a fully scalable UI and dyslexia friendly text options as well, making it accessible to most people. And some of the cons that you would say would be it can be very stressful to sort of go through due to its fast pace, may lead to frustration in younger children.
A lot of things there and a lot of fun games for people to try out, so look forward to hearing about that. But for now, Donna, I'll come to you. Could you give us a bit of an intro and tell us about your involvement in the Open Day and also your vision, if you're comfortable?
Absolutely. So, hello, my name is Donna Dyson and I am one of the national ambassadors for Vision Australia, which is a role that I take very seriously and advocate and try and role model wherever I can best practice and the enablement of folk with blind or low vision experiences. So that is my connection through to Vision Australia, who have been incredibly supportive for me from the very beginning of my sight loss journey. And I lost my sight because one day on a summer holiday, I was simply wrapping my mum's birthday gift and tying a bow. And in that millisecond I realised that I was no longer seeing the bow, but in fact just feeling it and doing it by muscle memory tying the bow. And that was because of a stroke, which I was totally unaware that was taking place. Um, because for many folk they don't actually feel strokes taking place. And I was one of those people. And then ten months later, we found out that there was a inoperable brain tumour causing that little problem. So I've had a bunch of strokes since then, and I work very closely with speech therapy and physios intensely. In fact, every day after one for months, so that my speech can return to the most optimum level and also my mobility. And after quite a few strokes, there are things that impair, you know, your mobility and whatnot. But I've tried really, really hard to ensure that I'm on my feet walking with my cane and doing the best that I can do. So yeah, that's kind of my background, I suppose, before I went blind and I'm legally blind is my status of blindness. I was a educator, so I was, uh, in my young years I was a teacher and then education leadership within schools. And then I was an academic dean of colleges. And then I wrote some of the Australian curriculum and also was a lecturer at the University of Queensland. Now my speciality or my expertise within education is literacy, which is much broader than reading books. Literacy is we speak and we read and we write and we hear. And those are four. Cesses in which we gather information. Literary information are very important. And when you go blind, you're down basically to if you learn Braille, um, you have your finger tips for your touch, to interpret your dots, to make words, to make sense of the world. But for many people, they choose technology and the ears become the most, you know, important part of gathering that information. So I transferred my skill set with, you know, incredible support with Vision Australia and Leaders for tomorrow programs and things, from being a prolifically published author as well, over to telling those stories through audio. And the way that that sort of came about was through music. And so I have a children's music label. I have three labels that are signed to MGM, and I have two of those labels are also signed to ABC, and they globally stream around the world and they are streamed by millions. The children's label is my most busy space that I work in, and that's my heart space as well, because I really wanted to make sure that I was being able to continue to offer literacy through music and or through sound, and the reason is to engage all of society who can hear into the world of literacy again. So it's stories through songs, and there's more emphasis on the story and on the development of each song as a story and a complete work. Then just a normal little, you know, let's sing a few lines and then repeat them, you know, 12 times through the song. So there is structured verses which develop the story, and then the repeat phrase, like what we find in children's picture books comes in with the chorus. So there's a structure that I really am very tightly working to, in that we have over 100 songs released on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, all the normal streaming services, and there's another seven albums waiting to come out in the next sort of over the years, they all roll out and thanks to Covid, I'm really ahead with the production. So that's a really good place to be.
So certainly, yeah.
A world is all about children. I have served children and worked with children, which is my heart space, and I believe just this incredible calling upon my life to do so, to do that. And it's a gift to be able to continue to do that, post my sight loss, and to be able to do it in such a significant way that I know that it reaches children sighted and not sighted all around the world. And that's a far greater reach than what I could probably be able to do as a lecturer at a university where we're teaching teachers how to teach. And then those teachers go out to the schools, and that's a pretty broad reach. But maybe my sight loss has been a blessing to be able to reach absolutely millions of children around the world. And I will never see them. I will never know them. I will never meet them. But I know they're there because of our statistics, and I have to wake up with a purpose and know that this is an incredible blessing and a privilege to be able to, uh, serve children in this way. Now, very different to the way that I previously did it. And I grieve my profession greatly, but this is a different way of serving. And so I'm really honored to be able to share some of that music at this wonderful gathering on June the 8th in my hometown of Brisbane, which is lovely with this wonderful team. And Courtney's guidance and leadership within the children's services is phenomenal. So I'm really excited to be able to work with this team and yeah, showcase some of the music for the little people. It'll be wonderful. And their families Bodykits is something that that's a children's label is Spotty Kites. It's something that is very much tailored for families, carers, supporters, etc. it's not just for children, it's a very educated. It's a very holistic kind of approach. So this will be wonderful to be able to share and join in the de.
Donna, thank you so much for sharing your story and the amazing things that you have been involved with and continue to be involved with going into the future. And you know, how long have you been a Vision Australia ambassador now? How many years would it be?
Oh wow. Courtney, can you remember I.
Think about three years.
Maybe I'd be actually, no, I reckon it's longer than that, Courtney, because that was even three years ago was the where the carols. Now we're just. We've lost time, haven't we, with Covid? Um. That's right. I think it was around 2015, 2016 I suppose was when I eight years became that.
Yeah. Oh wow. That's that's incredible.
And eight years I think it is now.
And have you always had a really keen interest in music and song and you know, telling a story through that side of things?
Look, I've always loved music, Serm, but it wasn't something that I was actively pursuing. I was a very busy educator and academic. And I was always interested in multimedia. I suppose I'd had a radio program called Books Alive for many years, and that was as a teacher when I was a young teacher. That was really important to me, because there were children for whom you would send home school readers and library books, and you knew that some of those homes didn't actually have books in their home for children to engage with, nor were there active parenting processes in place with some of these families whereby they would take their children to, you know, engage in a literary experience like a library or a show or, you know, these kinds of things. So I suppose that I had used the medium of radio to reach those children for story time so that they were having more stories in their life than what were available just through their schooling. But that was, you know, something, I suppose, in the connection with multimedia, it certainly it wasn't anything. I was in studios doing that I wasn't in studios recording music. So it was a very much I loved music and I wanted to explore it. But Sam, look, you know what happened when I went blind, I had to I had a fall the first few days after being blind on my steps, and I was told to sit down and not kind of move until the mobility team got to me and taught me how to use a cane. So I sat at the piano and mathematically worked it out. And that's how music really became the reason why I became a melody maker. Not just the lyricist, I suppose. And then I forged those two things together and practiced like crazy, and came up with something that I could potentially go forward with, and that took a couple of years. So that was 2012. I went blind and around sort of 2013, 2012, 2013, I just spent a lot of time at a piano and guitar. I had been able to play the guitar very basically before I went blind. And so look, I actually think it was a necessity because I had really been a little overwhelmed as to what I could go forward with. I mean, you know, when you are an academic, you got to read and you've got to mark kids assignments and you've got to, you know, you need your eyes. And it's really crazy hard doing that blind these days a little easier because things are, you know, all on computers and there's more accessibility. But in when I went blind, people were still writing their assignments by hand in the context of their examinations. Yeah. So assignments. Sorry. They were, of course, you know, sort of processed on the computer, but certainly in a examination situation, which I would have to mark, they were by hand. So it was just a very difficult thing to be able to do anything in my profession. Also, the legality of running a school or being an education, leadership and being in a playground where you couldn't see the kids interact, there is a danger in that and there is a litigation risk. So I didn't want to be put in that position. So I basically chose to withdraw from the whole field. But necessity as well, I kind of needed to and then gather what I could do and work out how I could go forward. And music writing became. My ears worked, my brain worked, my eyes didn't, and my body wasn't working so well after the stroke. So, you know, I just did what I could do. And also working on the piano certainly helped my hands after the stroke as well. So it was a great physiotherapy thing as well. Yeah. So that's sort of how I stumbled into it. So I suppose, Donna.
I could talk to you for hours. Like, I'd love to have you back on the program on Talking Vision down the track. So I will certainly keep in touch with and have many more chats. There's so many questions I'd love to ask you, but for the time being, I think I'll go back to Courtney to wrap up. Courtney, if you could just give us the basic details of the open day and how can people find out a little bit more about it if they need to register all those sort of things?
Yeah, absolutely. And just in summing up to the involvement of Mel and Mission Donna. So Mel, as she mentioned, will be on our sign up station enabling parents families to sign up for our Life Ready hub alongside Trish. Amish will be on our World domination station, supporting kids to get involved in accessible gaming and other people who might be interested there, too. And Donna will be both up on stage with spotty kites and also in our story station doing a reading for us and a mission. Donna will be, as I will be wandering about the site wearing a badge that says mentor, ask me about my career. And that's an invitation to parents, families, educators, members of the public to learn a lot more about what is possible for people who are blind or have low vision, and certainly little people and young adults too, who might be interested in considering lots of different career options for themselves. So the day, just as a reminder, is on Saturday, the 8th of June 2024 at our Coop Guru site in Brisbane. So that's 373 Old Cleveland Road, Kopuru just to note that our parking area will. Will actually be occupied with things like our stage for our live music, our outdoor seating area, our coffee and snack van, our sausage sizzle and a number of community partner stalls. So there won't be any parking on site. So anybody who'd like to attend on the day can come via the 204 bus, which arrives right at our front door or just across the road. They can also get dropped off by taxis and rideshare at the rear entrance to our site, which is the very end of Talbot Street in Cubaroo. So if you ask your driver to bring you to the very end of Talbot Street in Cubaroo, that's our rear entrance and we'll have some guides there to guide you onto the site. And of course, there's lots of parking in the local area like Talbot Street, Leicester Street and also Cooper Square has some really great parking available. And if you'd like to register for the day, you can go on to Vision Australia's website at Vision Australia. Org and we have an event there. If you go to our events section and look for VA Open Day in Cubaroo, that's where you'll be able to find out more about the day itself and to register. Or you could simply email children and young people QLD at Vision Australia. Org and I'll say that one more time it's children and young people QLD or one word at Vision Australia or one word.org.
I've been speaking today with Courtney McKay, Mel Bligh and Ishmael and Donna Dyson all involved in the upcoming Vision Australia Open Day taking place in Brisbane at the corporate office on the 8th of June.
