Disability Narratives
Institutional Support: Human resources, Occupational Health, IT support, and Unions
Interview excerpt: Mary applied to Access to Work for technological support to assist her research.
© Disability NarrativesI got a very big grant from Access to Work at the end of the first year. And that included a standing up desk, which I - So I work standing up, most of the time. And it also included various other gadgets. But the main thing, which was very expensive, is called a Pearl Camera, which you use with Open Book software. And this was really liberating in a number of ways. Because firstly it means that I could send a support worker to do research, and they can capture text using the special camera. And I can then recreate the texts in my office. The first time the support worker did that, I almost cried.
That's what I work on. So that was a lovely moment. So it captures text visually in that way. But you can also use it to convert text to speech. It's slightly cumbersome to use the technology. It's not as seamless as you would imagine. I had to have a lot of training. So that was slightly annoying, that first year, getting - learning how to use it. But that, that has been great. Yeah. Really, really helpful.