Podcast Summary:
Your next chapter starts before you set foot on campus. Join Jeff Thompson and Leighann Fuller, visually impaired service coordinator at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, for a practical conversation about making the leap from high school to college. Leighann shares her own experience navigating vision loss during her master’s program and explains why students must take the lead in requesting college accommodations. From accessible textbooks and screen reader skills to finding classrooms, doing laundry, and making dinner, this episode explores what independence really looks like. Discover how disability services, vocational rehabilitation, summer programs, and connections with other blind students can help you prepare. Parents will hear ways to support growing independence while encouraging students to speak up, solve problems, and ask for help before frustration becomes a crisis. Whether college feels exciting, intimidating, or both, Leighann’s message is clear: you can do this, and support is there for the journey.
Links of interest:
Full Transcript
{Music}
Leighann: If you are contemplating, especially more than one college or even just one to talk to the Disability Support Services office first,
I would definitely recommend checking into a summer program before you go to school to feel more prepared to be on your own.
Getting a windows computer ahead of coming to college and getting some windows training through VR to use jaws or NVDA. Because our campus is a windows campus, most of the world is a windows world, and that’s what I’ve had to tell some of my voiceover users. It’s a windows world.
Jeff: Today on Blind Abilities, we’re talking to Leighann Fuller, visually impaired coordinator at Southern University Illinois-Edwardsville. Leighann works within ACCESS, which stands for Accessible Campus Community and Equitable Student Support. She brings both professional knowledge and lived experience to her role. After having sight for much of her life, Leighann experienced significant vision loss and completed her college education as a blind or visually impaired student.
Our conversation is especially intended for high school students who are beginning to think about college. We’ll discuss how college accommodations differ from IEP, what students can expect from access or their own Office of Students with disabilities, and why learning to advocate for yourself is such an important part in preparing for college. Leighann, welcome to Blind Abilities.
Leighann: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Jeff: Leighann, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do as the visually impaired service coordinator at SIUE.
Leighann: Sure. I live in southern Illinois near Saint Louis, Missouri. My two kiddos, they are 19 and 23. Until a few years ago, I was a basically fully sighted person. I’ve always kind of had some issues my whole life but worked in a few different jobs. I have an undergrad degree in education, and I taught for a few years, and then I left that profession to stay at home with my own kiddos when they were little. And, um, got back into working in retention at the YMCA near where I live and saw the opportunity to work for student retention at the university, and I loved my time here. So I decided to start working here and never would have thought about doing this kind of work. But I experienced vision loss the end of 2023, and in working with my now boss for my own accommodations for the employee and student side, we got to know each other better, and he would talk to me about the need to offer better, dedicated support for blind and visually impaired students. And so this job didn’t even exist until September of 2025, when it was posted online for application. And, you know, he said, I really want you to apply because you have knowledge of the VR system in Illinois and how that all works. And you have the lived experience, because I want students to come to the office and have somebody who understands. They don’t have to explain the accessibility challenges and the barriers, because you already understand and you can get right to solving the problem, and we just can’t do that. It’s like they don’t tell us the things that I think they would tell you. And he, was really not wrong because students would confide in me about things and talked to me about accessibility challenges. And they’re like, well, I just didn’t think anybody here would understand. So I just never said anything. I just dealt with it. So I’m able to not only support students in that way of listening and working on accommodations and kind of I encourage self-advocacy, but sometimes you just need a staff member on an email when you’re having an issue. And so I’m able to kind of run interference with staff and faculty and explain the perspective of, I was fully sighted before. Now I’m not, and I have to navigate everything non visually and just help them to come to an understanding of what is this process like for blind and visually impaired students? They’re still capable of a lot, but they just need to go about things in a different way. And so I’m able to offer that support to instructors, to students, to staff. But as for a little bit more about me, I like to exercise. I do five K’s at least once a year with Achilles International with a guide and like listening to music, podcasts, going to musicals, all sorts of things like that.
Jeff: Yeah. That’s good. That’s a unique perspective for someone who attended college as a sighted person and then finished up as a blind, visually impaired person. And like you said, that really gives good perspective. And for the other students who are blind and visually impaired to open up to you because you’re one of them, that’s really neat.
Leighann: Yeah, it’s been, you know, walking through the vision loss was hard, but it’s been neat to see that kind of purpose come out of it and to be able to be that support for the students.
Jeff: What was the most difficult part of changing into the blind, visually impaired student from a sighted person that you experience while attending college?
Leighann: I feel really fortunate because my instructors actually made it a whole lot easier than it could have been otherwise. I approached them right away and said, hey, I know this is crazy, but I’m blind now because I’d been having these issues with my cornea for a while. And I knew at that point during the Christmas break that I was at a point of no return. It just wasn’t going to get better. And they immediately believed me. They said that we understand. We want to encourage you to go on. We will accept audio files until you get used to navigating on visually. So I was really, really, really fortunate. And so the other piece of it was I was also trying to get back to work. So I had extra incentive to scramble and learn. I had a friend, the only person I knew that was blind taught me Mac voiceover, and I’d never used a Mac before. But she said, if you get a MacBook, I can help you. And I’m like, okay, I guess I’m buying a MacBook. So I never, ever used one. So I’m learning the Mac commands. I’m learning how to use voiceover.
It was crazy. And I looked back at some of the papers I turned in initially because I told them, I love that you’re offering me the audio file, but I have to be able to type professional communications. So I’m going to type these papers. And they were horrendous, but they saw the potential and they knew what I was capable of before. And they understood that it might not look like it did in the beginning, because I’m getting used to proofreading and how to use a computer non-visually. But they knew that I was still a very capable student. So I realized I came to being a blind student with a little bit of privilege in that regard. But I felt like also I didn’t really have a choice except to just learn everything so I can move forward and get back to work. I mean, I guess it was hard when I look back, but I think I was learning so much at once, I couldn’t even really comprehend how difficult and challenging it really was, and how amazing it was to learn all of those things in just a few weeks.
Jeff: So you’re working at an office of Students with disabilities, but you have a unique name called ACCESS. Can you explain how that came about?
Leighann: I would love to explain that because when I heard the story, I was just really just amazed. Our director came to us in, I believe it was 20, it was 2017 or 2018. I wasn’t here at that point. And he had a student tell him, because we used to be called Disability Support Services. And he said to our director, Doctor Dominic Dorsey, disability support services is the intersection between isolation and shame. And that really stuck with our director because, he said, I wanted to remove the stigma from coming to this office, and I wanted students to realize there are all kinds of disabilities that can receive accommodations to remove barriers. And I began at that point, starting to brainstorm, how can I rebrand the office? We’re doing the same work, but how can I rebrand the office? And I can’t remember the rate of growth, but it’s been huge. But he came up with the word access. And then the trick was, okay, what does it stand for now? So he kind of developed the word access first because he wanted students to see it. As you know, I’m giving you access to the education that students that don’t have these barriers can experience. So you can experience the same education as anyone else, regardless of disability. And so then from that word, then he came up with this, it is a mouthful, Accessible Campus Community and Equitable Student Support. And he talks a lot about how, you know, there’s a fence in place and, you know, we don’t knock down the fence, but maybe a student needs a step stool to stand on to see over the fence. You know, maybe a student needs a ramp to get up to the fence to look over. But he said, we’re not removing the fence, but we’re just removing the barriers to the access. And I feel like the name just really fits what we do every day.
Jeff: If I was an 11th grade student. Hearing about ACCESS for the first time. How would you explain what the office does?
Leighann: The biggest, most important thing that I try to get across to any students before they come here is that when you are in secondary education or earlier K-12 in general, somebody else is driving that whole process for your accommodations. So you don’t really have to do anything. You might be attending IEP meetings with your parents or guardians, but somebody else is driving that whole process. But when you get here, we don’t automatically instate these accommodations that you’ve had previously. We will accept your IEP, but it’s on you to register with our office. And I tell students our website’s very well indexed. You can Google SIUE access how to apply, and it’ll come right up the whole process, but you have to do the intake form and indicate what is your disability, what accommodations are you seeking. And you can upload your documentation. But if you don’t do that, we don’t know. And we’ve actually had students in the past come from the school for the visually Impaired in Jacksonville, Illinois, and they don’t have their accommodations when they get here because they just didn’t realize that they needed to drive that process. So that’s one reason we’ve started visiting there, because we want to get across to students early before they ever show up here. You have to register. You have to provide your documentation. Because of FERPA, you know, we have to have your permission to tell your instructors about your accommodations. We don’t just get that info from your high school. You have to grant us permission to share this information. In fact, every semester they have to renew. And that’s another thing students run into. They’ll get to the spring they’ve registered for fall with us, and we send the semester request to the instructors. But then in the spring, they’re like, I can’t schedule my test in testing. Why not? Like, well, you didn’t do your semester request. So just the importance of being an active participant in the accommodation process in post-secondary ed is so very vital and important because it won’t just happen automatically.
Jeff: So they got to stay on top of it.
Leighann: Right. And we do send emails every semester. And it’s basically, unless it’s a weekend, it’s August 1st for fall accommodations, December 1st for spring and May 1st for summer accommodations. And if that day falls on a weekend, it’s the next business day. And we send out a lot of emails. But there are a lot of students who, for whatever reason, they don’t realize, oh, I have to go in and I have to check which classes because they can choose. So say you’re at an art studio and you don’t need the double time and testing. You might not send that accommodation to that instructor. You get to decide who gets what accommodation for what class, and we don’t want to take that decision and that autonomy away from the student. But it does mean they have responsibility to go in and give us that permission.
Jeff: When should a student first contact ACCESS or their disability service office, wherever they’re going to college?
Leighann: I think it is a very good idea if you are contemplating, especially more than one college or even just one, to talk to the Disability Support Services office first. I know of a student who’s at Purdue right now who actually did that. Basically, her whole thing was, I’m visiting the campus and I want to see the disability office because I want to know what support I’m going to get going into it. And I had a high school junior actually come with her parents a few months ago for that reason. She’s. That’s the approach she took. I want to talk to the disability support services first because I want to know, does somebody have my back or not? And I think we’re able to offer something pretty unique in having somebody who’s blind in this role just to, you know, like, I get this, I understand this, this is how I navigate and I can go through documents with your instructors and show them what it will and will not do with a screen reader. And it’s been amazing to be able to do that because they just don’t realize exactly what all goes into it. You know, the challenges of navigating a website and different things like that, being able to educate the faculty has been really good, and I think that’s important for students that are coming in to know that there’s somebody out here that is trying to advocate and educate on my behalf. And before I even get here, because as my boss says, we don’t want to say, oh, well, you’re here now. And what do we do? It’s we have prepared ahead of time. We have these things in place. We want you to come here. We are ready for you to come here.
Jeff: Mhm. Yeah. I was going to ask what would they expect to hear from a disability service office that would make them decide that this is the right one.
Leighann: I think just we do have a community here of blind students as well. We have for blind students right now and then countless with different degrees of visual impairment. And, you know, you’re not the only blind student here because I’ve been told by a lot of students, I was the only blind person I knew in school until I went to the blind school for transition. And it’s, it’s like, wow, I just to think about that and to think about not being able to regularly talk to anybody face to face, who really understands the challenges that you’re facing. I think that’s definitely something that we can offer here that not all campuses can.
Jeff: You talked about documents, having that stuff ready for accommodations, stuff. What other documents do you expect to receive from the students when they arrive or before they arrive?
Leighann: Sure. Actually, we do put provisional accommodations in place for a semester because we don’t want the inability to access documentation right away to keep somebody from receiving the accommodations. So my boss says it all the time. We really value self-reporting. We do want that documentation to back up that these are reasonable accommodations based on your diagnosis, but we’ll get a lot of different things. Like, for example, I sent in my eye doctor’s report indicating that I was legally blind and that was all they needed for my employee and student accommodations. Some students that have an IEP or 504 in high school, that’s what they give us. And we scan that in and attach that to their file. Students that receive services related to like anxiety, they may have documentation from a mental health professional. It kind of just depends on the diagnosis, but basically just for blindness or low vision and IEP, something from an eye doctor or a primary care physician indicating blindness. And especially if the if the professional has specific recommendations for materials, it’s always great to get that information too. But we do rely a lot on self-reporting. And I ask students, what works for you? You know, not everybody needs the same thing. Some people can if they’re legally blind, but they can use large print and you know what size font is good for you. So we can put the specific numbers into the accommodation so the instructors can provide what they need.
Jeff: And this is information that would be nice to get early on. Not the last. Three days before classes start.
Leighann: Yeah, we do definitely have a rush at the beginning of the year with a lot of students coming in and the first few weeks it’s, it’s pretty crazy. So it’s, I don’t know how we’re the best kept secret because we attend preview days where people come check out the university, we come to orientation days, we have access visit days. So that’s something we’re always in discussion about. How do we get the word out better? And that’s one reason I, when I started this role, I started to reach out to Missouri School for the Blind in Saint Louis because we’re right across the river from Saint Louis and to the school for the Blind in Jacksonville, Illinois. And I’ve reached out to a program up north. I’m trying to make contact with them still, but just to meet students early, you’re thinking about college. Let’s start talking about what you need to do before you start. So things are in place. And I actually had Michigan VR reach out to me about a student that wanted to come down here, and she’s here this fall. And so we were able to start that process really early with her, which was nice with her coming eight hours from home. But yeah, the biggest thing is just trying to get the information to the professionals that are currently working with students that are thinking about college. I’m in touch with the TVI in the Saint Louis area as well. So he’s talked to his students about us and how to get in touch with us. And it just seems like, I don’t know, it should be common knowledge, but I think because the accommodation process was driven by the institution until now, even parents aren’t totally sure of what do I need to do for my child? Because unless the student gets permission, we can’t talk to the parent about different aspects of the student’s education in a post-secondary institution.
Jeff: Yeah. And with the IEP, the individual education plan, it’s not really hand-holding, but you do have, you know, your teachers, your TVIs and the parents, you know, checking on your progress and kind of going through the checklist and they’re there with you all the way. But when you go to college, they don’t come with you on that. What changes? What responsibilities become the students?
Leighann: There’s definitely more responsibility on the student to provide us with documentation. And like I said, when they renew their accommodations every semester to check those boxes and tell us which instructors can we inform about which accommodations. But the other piece of it is for my students who are blind, I do. Once they register, I do send an early notification and I let the students know, hey, this is something I do. Is this okay with you? But I’ll send an early notification and it’s a note about the need to. If your class wasn’t constructed using your universal design principles, you need to start remediating now and looking at it now and the contexts that they can have on campus to get help with that. And then I attach a document of an accessible exam template. So if they’re wondering what will work with the screen reader or Braille display, a refreshable display, and what won’t. There’s an example there, and there’s another document developing an inclusive classroom for your blind student with some other hints and helpful information. Because the one thing I learned really fast after the vision loss was blindness really freaks a lot of people out if they’ve never met a blind person. And it’s assumed to be this huge, gargantuan task to make this accessible, when really there’s just some very basic things that you can do.
Leighann: Talking about what you’re writing on the board as you’re writing it, you know, like maybe you’re typing on a word document and you email that to the student, you know, just helping teachers to think out of the box with these things. But that early notification really helps because inevitably I have 4 or 5 instructors contact me and say, hey, could we meet and talk through some things because I don’t want to mess this up. So it gives them an invitation to have that dialogue with me. And can I ask the student what they can see? I’m like, well, most of us appreciate that because we don’t want you to assume we see nothing or we don’t want you to assume that we see things that we can’t see. So that that is one thing that we do. And, you know, as long as the student says, sure, please contact my instructors, you know, that would be great. And I feel like that takes a load off of them. But really, for the most part, that process is driven by the student.
Jeff: Yeah. And that’s so advocacy is something that’s huge as you transition into the college setting.
Leighann: Yeah. The fatigue of education and advocacy is real though, too, so I’m glad that I can offer to students, you know, hey, you’re not getting anywhere with this situation. Would you like me to email this instructor and cc you and try to open this conversation and set up a meeting? We had to do that with a student in a class last year, repeatedly, because there was an ongoing battle with accessibility, and the instructor seemed willing, but was also really leaning on instructional design here on campus to our ideal instructional design and learning technologies was really leaning on them to do, do the accessibility work for him. And so that was that was a rough one, but there were a lot of emails where the student would cc me and write the professor about problems that she was having, and it was good, though, to be able to show her and any other student, you know, hey, there is somebody here that’s standing behind you. We see your effort. We see that you’re doing what you can do, but the accessibility is just not there. And so let’s talk about alternatives. What can we do instead. So you can demonstrate the knowledge but in a way that works for you with jaws.
Jeff: Mhm. Yeah. It’s really important to get that communication with every professor. Each one’s going to be different. And sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s a challenge. And that’s where it develops your advocacy, which will travel with you forever.
Leighann: Exactly.
Jeff: We talked about the IEP, which is the individual education plan, but then it’s the IPP. And that’s usually comes that’s the individual plan for employment. And that usually comes through the vocational rehab for them to help support you into college. Do you ever collaborate with vocational rehab?
Leighann: All the time. So I started a job retention case for myself in, oh, early 2024. And I’m at the tail end of that. I got O and M and I received kitchen items and some items for my home and Braille instruction and a Braille display. And so I’m finally at the tail end of all the things that they’re going to do. And so in working with my counselor from VR, he’s also the counselor. A lot of students live in this general area. So he is actually their, their counselor. And so, you know, touching base with him, you know, hey, so and so’s having this or that issue, you know, could I’ve reached out to them. Hey, when you check on them, will you will you ask about this? Because maybe it’ll help if someone else does. But yeah, we talk on a regular basis about, and I know a lot about the services they offer here in Illinois through VR. And I’m able to also tell the students, hey, call your counselor and, you know, talk about this or that. And, you know, hey, I know the people at Illinois Assistive Technology program.
Leighann: Would you like me to reach out on your behalf when a student is just over it with their computer and just can’t get it to go? Like we had a student whose screen wasn’t working, and so receiving sighted assistance was impossible because there’s no screen, which he or I would be fine using a computer with no screen. But you know, other people, not so much, but just helping coordinate things. I had a student that was really resistant to learning jaws and needed to use windows for her internship. Was a voiceover user or is still a voiceover user still clinging to that MacBook, which is fine, but you know, I was able to connect her with her counselor, and so they could talk about the difficulties that the internship site and then get her connected to VR for Jaws training. And it’s just been really nice to see that coordination of services. And we’re really, really fortunate to have a very good counselor in this area. He’s definitely been the vocational rehabilitation answer book for me multiple times.
Jeff: Mhm. How does access help with accessible textbooks, exams, online learning systems, even laboratory materials?
Leighann: So we actually have a Stem center on campus. And there is a gentleman who volunteers there who has blind himself. And that’s been really, really nice. We have a student in a science lab class, an inquiry based education related science lab right now. And so he has been able to talk with the student. And they have materials like a talking tape measure and a Braille ruler. And I know they put Braille labels on the snap circuit kit that the students used in the lab. And so they’re constantly working to make those materials accessible. They got tactile graph paper for the student and wiki sticks and different tools like that. So that’s been really nice. And so the volunteer, the gentleman that volunteers in there is also able to talk to the student from. Been there, done that kind of perspective because he’s blind as well. 3d printer, they have all that kind of stuff over there. And they work with K-12 educators as well on accessibility. And they’ve also worked with a camp for deaf and hard of hearing students on campus with lab accessibility as well. So they’re, they’re a really good resource for lab type experiences for students.
Jeff: How far in advance should students ask for accessible materials? I mean, you know, they sign up for classes. They get their schedule. Time’s ticking.
Leighann: Our students with visual impairments who need either audio or screen reader compatible books, they get an accommodation of an alternative format textbook. And we actually have students that get those because there may be more low vision or just reduced vision. And there’s a lot of eye fatigue with regards to trying to read rather than being able to listen. And so that’s an accommodation they have. Once they renew their accommodations, they can go in and place an alternative format request. And so we meet that request in a couple of ways. We’ll get a word document from the publisher. A lot of times our assistant director for instructional accessibility, does those requests for all of the students that are served by alternative format texts. So sometimes it’s getting a PDF and then converting that to word, and then he’s checking through it to make sure it’s okay. And he’ll put the materials in a OneDrive folder for a student. But we also have Bookshare. So books can be assigned through Bookshare when they’re available. And a lot of students prefer that because the page numbers are the same when you’re looking at Bookshare versus a word document. So I ask all the students, would you like your materials through Bookshare that are available word. And I’ve got one student that says, no, just give me a OneDrive folder.
Leighann: That’s what I’ve done since I got here. That’ll work. And other students are like, yes, please give me bookshare because I can get that on my phone. I can get that on the computer, I can get it anywhere. So it makes the textbooks a lot more accessible, but it’s usually not as much of a scramble in the fall as it can be in the spring. So as soon as students are registering, I’m sending out the early notification so the instructors can talk to me if they need to. And it’s like December 1st, like, get your accommodations in so we can right away get on contacting publishers and getting texts that don’t aren’t able to just access through Bookshare. So we do provide. And so some of our students use Refreshable Braille displays and VR will provide that kind of stuff. So I’ve helped a few students get connected to get those because I had a student that’s a Braille reader. She’s like, I don’t have one. Like, well, you should have one. Like, let’s fix that. So sometimes they’re just not aware of all the resources that are out there. But yeah, we do provide those alternative format textbooks for them.
Jeff: Well, that’s a great resource for the students because you may feel all alone and yet going to your access office. There you go. You get some tips and tricks. That’s a good resource for them.
Leighann: It definitely helps remove the barriers that that they experience to education. It’s like they’re bright students. And like I tell people, I’m the same person I was. I just can’t see, you know, it’s, you know, these students are the same way. Maybe they can’t access something visually, but you know that all you’ve got to do is remove that barrier and then they’re fine. And, you know, with some support because there are accessibility frustrations here and there. So sometimes somebody will land at my door frustrated with something and it’s like, sit down, let’s talk about it. You know, is this a fix it for me kind of issue, or is this a, I just need to vent and talk to somebody who understands how annoying this is. And a lot of times it’s the latter. So I’m glad that we not only provide the services and the solutions, but we can provide a space just to kind of vent and just talk about the frustrations that can there can be for us trying to access things without vision.
Jeff: Living on campus or near campus and taking classes and all that involves a lot of territory. Oh yeah. Some campuses are huge. Do you offer any support for navigation, transportation, housing, or other campus life?
Leighann: That is a really good question. We have a hall, Evergreen Hall, and it’s an upper class hall, but we offer students that have visual impairments or blindness, the accommodation of living there because it’s more central to campus. And there is a county bus that actually picks up there at a certain time of the hour, every hour, and comes to the main part of campus because sometimes students have co-occurring disabilities. And so then that’s an option if walking is a barrier for you with regards to class attendance. So there’s that. Students even from out of state can receive orientation and mobility help through blind services. In Illinois, our student from Michigan actually met with an instructor from the state of Illinois. I awesome local counselor got her connected with that, so she was able to come up before the school year started. A lot of times they help each other get around campus because they understand the challenges. Also, our campus is implementing. Um, have you heard of Nava Lens? Yeah, they kind of look like a big QR code and it’s colorful. Um, I can’t see them visually. They look like a blob to me, but I’m told they’re colorful. It’s like, oh, there’s a blob on the floor.
Jeff: So you put them on the floor, not the walls.
Leighann: So the ones for the stairs, at least in this building where access is there on the floor. And as you’re approaching, it’s telling you stairs down 20ft or whatever. And there’s one on the exit door that’s not quite at the, it’s a little bit beyond the base of the stairs, but it will pick up at 57ft. And so the neat things about the navigational codes that we’re rolling out on campus is like with a QR code. We all know how annoying those are. And you have to like point your phone exactly. And you need to really quick be able to double tap the thing that pops up that says open in chrome or whatever. And so these aren’t that way. They’re almost like a magnet and the phone just snaps to them and then gives you like we have them on the elevators, we have them on the restrooms, men’s and women’s restroom, the tornado shelter, the stairs. And we are we’ve bought some custom navigational codes, so we are slowly getting those rolled out in the dining area, which is incredibly difficult to navigate. So I’m very excited about us getting them there. But students can just use a phone and it will tell them how many feet away you are from it. And so you have an idea. And then also the dining ones have a link to the menu so students can access an accessible version of the menu for the day too, which is nice as it was actually through the system. I’m like, wait, that place has breakfast. I didn’t know that. And so just being able to offer even more access to information through, through that in addition to the navigation has been really nice.
Jeff: What I found about tools as such is that you may use them in the beginning, but after a while it gives you the confidence that you can do it right.
Leighann: And I think good orientation and mobility skills are always going to be needed. But to be able to access that information on your own without asking a random person, where is such and such is it’s an empowering thing that a lot of sighted people will never understand. Like, did I do it on my own? Well, kind of. I used help, but I did. I didn’t have to ask somebody for help. I didn’t have to yell and yell, yell into the void. Excuse me, where’s the line to go get a burger?
Jeff: That’s where that confidence keeps building.
Leighann: Yeah, for sure. And we have Braille on the soda machines. We had a student tell us we do an Ed Roberts celebration and give an award to like a faculty of staff and then a student regarding inclusion and advocacy and different things related to accessibility. But a student actually spoke and said, the first time I got my own soda on campus was when I was 21. And they put Braille on the soda machine. And I sat there and went, wow, I didn’t I. That’s something that was previously sighted person I didn’t think about. I actually don’t drink soda anymore. So it’s not a problem for me, but just her saying how excited she was to be able to go to the machine herself and to get her own Pepsi and not have to ask somebody for help because the machine was labeled.
Jeff: Oh wow, good stuff. With your lived experience of being sighted and then doing school as a BVI, what skills should students be getting good at in high school as they approach college? I mean, it’s quite a jump. You might be using a Chromebook, you might be using something that the school provides and all that, but what skills do you think would most benefit students as they enter the college?
Leighann: Yeah. So you definitely addressed a big one. The Chromebooks are great, but a windows computer does work differently. So getting a windows computer ahead of coming to college and getting some windows training through VR to use Jaws or NVDA and being able to navigate. Because our campus is a windows campus, most of the world is a windows world, and that’s what I’ve had to tell some of my voiceover users. It’s a windows world, and you’ve got to learn how to navigate with a windows computer. And the Microsoft applications just don’t play as well with the Mac. And they don’t play at all with a Chromebook, as far as I’m aware, but I could be wrong on that one. But so that’s a huge one. And in the summers before college, you know, they have the opportunity, most likely through VR, to get that kind of training to develop that skill. So there’s that. And orientation and mobility is, is huge. Um, that is one barrier that students can experience. If you can’t navigate to class or you don’t feel comfortable navigating to class, you might not attend like you should. And just coming up in the summer before to explore the campus, getting some orientation and mobility through VR, but also coming up on your own with someone and navigating to those different locations and practicing that over and over. It’s like I was telling a student recently, there’s no shortcut here. Like you just have to practice and it’s an extra thing you have to do on top of all of the other stuff. But that’s how you get more comfortable and have the confidence to move about.
I know there’s a program called SOAR in Saint Louis. It’s an adaptive living resource orientation. Um, what is it? Oh it’s terrible. I don’t remember what it stands for, but it’s put on by a TVI. It’s been going for 20 years. It’s at Webster University in Saint Louis, and students come and live in the dorm for three weeks. And they learn all kinds of skills. Using a gift card, going out to a restaurant, ordering your food chef cuts so you don’t have to worry about cutting up a steak or some pasta or something. You know, just those things you can’t ask for doing different things on campus, getting orientation and mobility lessons, learning how to clean a place. I mean, just a lot of those things that a lot of sighted people don’t think about that somebody needs to know how to do when they live on their own. So those kind of programs, I feel like are really, really valuable to students. I’ve had, I think three, three students who have gone through that program. I’ve had other students that have done a transitional program through the blind school in Jacksonville. But those soft skills, I feel like, are a big barrier to some students. Um, because not everybody is afforded Audit independence when they grow up in the home. Families are a little hesitant. They’re a little worried about kiddos doing certain things as being blind. And those programs give the opportunities for students to do all of those things and to experience, how do I do this? How do I do that? Where maybe a sighted parent or guardian just doesn’t know how to teach them?
Jeff: One thing that I learned early on, I had a counselor at my college and said, you know, your email, you might want to make it a little more professional, EZJ kind of makes me think you’re laid back a little too far. And so I found out that, you know, starting to tidy up your emails into more of a professional email because that’s how you present yourself. Like you mentioned your first, papers that you did when you look back, they weren’t very good. You said, but they understood your progressing. So I think that’s a really good area to work on your formatting, work on your professionalism and look at your email name. See if it reflects who you want to be presented as.
Leighann: Yeah. And that’s something that really all students cited or I have to realize everything comes through your email when you’re here. And that is the email you need to be communicating with your instructors from, not your personal one. And I can tell you honestly, sighted students aren’t always the greatest at professional emails. I’m teaching a class that all first year students have to take. It’s an eight week course, and that’s something we talk about. How do you communicate with your professor? How do you get across that you are you maybe received a grade on something that doesn’t seem accurate? How do you ask about that? And that seems to kind of be a thing across the board. But you’re right that blind or visually impaired students have the additional barrier of, you know, how do I format this? What looks nice visually to someone? And I remember an email I sent early on, I didn’t realize I had caps lock on and I didn’t…
Jeff: You’re screaming!
Leighann: …and I look at the email because at that point, sometimes the cloudiness would dissipate some in my cornea. And I’m like, those are all capital letters. Oh no, she’s going to think I’m yelling at her. And that was to a sighted student. So I wrote her back. I’m very sorry. I have a visual impairment. I did not mean to send you an email in all caps. And she said, oh no, it’s okay. You’re good. So yeah, there’s definitely some additional barriers that being blind or visually impaired presents when it comes to professional communication.
Jeff: How about time management, managing assignments and deadlines?
Leighann: That seems to be a challenge for many, many students and even adults. But I’ve talked to students that are blind like that have been successful here. You know what works for you. What did you do? And one of the big suggestions I got was starting a word document week one, going through all of your syllabi. It takes a long time on the front end, but it’s valuable to have as you go what is due each week and just getting that all in one spot. So it’s easy to access and you can delete it once you complete it and turn it in. And then you know you’ve got everything organized, you’re not going to miss a due date. Talking about organizing things. The new blackboard. I’ve told several students go into calendar, but click due date view and then you can go hit H, go heading by heading and it’ll list every date that you have assignments and the links are right underneath each one. And you can go right to those assignments. And you can use that even to start to build your list. But always check the syllabus because there may be things on the syllabus that are not in blackboard, depending on if it’s a like a speech in class that there’s no maybe there’s not a blackboard component for it.
But yeah, it adds a challenge. And, you know, students like I’m having trouble waking up on time and it’s like, okay, well, we’ve got to set multiple alarms and we need to put the phone across the room and you need to have it up as high as you can. So just little things like that, because some students aren’t used to managing that part of their lives on their own too. It’s just all kind of an aspect of time management and organization, figuring out what works. And, you know, I tell them, I’m happy to sit and talk to you about just the life stuff, you know, that gets in the way. And our laundry system used to require a QR code, and the blind students are like, hello, we can’t do our laundry. Now that they decided to switch everything over and my boss said, I don’t know why we don’t talk to the ACCESS office first before we implement something, because then we’re remediating. But we were able to get that feature removed from a few machines. We marked them. These are the only machines accessible to certain members of our community,
please refrain from using them. Then we remove the barrier of the laundry. But even basic things like laundry. And that was one reason my director created this role, because you are literally talking to every campus department, because there are unique needs for students who are blind and visually impaired. So I regularly talk to housing, dining staff that’s at the residence hall where my students are asking her to, hey, can you check on so and so? They haven’t, they didn’t go to class, you know, can you knock on a door for me and, uh, admissions, you know, even, you know, they’ve contacted me and had me to look at the accessibility of their new application when they switched it over. And it’s just so important to be in touch with everyone, because I don’t want students to come to a department and then the person’s like, well, I don’t know what to do with you. Yeah, that kind of goes off the time management thing, I guess, but it’s just all kind of related. There’s just so many aspects to coming to school, being organized, being able to access the things that assist you.
Jeff: I think another thing comes into play is some people are really proud of what they’re doing and everything, and they don’t want to ask for help. But before a problem becomes a crisis, they have to learn how to ask for help. Do you get that at your office?
Leighann: Yeah, I think a lot of students have just in fact, somebody told me it was communicated to her a long time ago that you just get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, and you just have to deal with stuff not being accessible. And I’m like, no, no, no, that’s not how this works. You know, that’s, that’s not how this is supposed to work. It’s not. Like I had a student, on the syllabi or in PDF, and I can’t read them. Like it is a reasonable accommodation to ask your instructor, could you please send this to me in a word doc format? And you know, that’s one thing. In the early notification, I say like a word document is the preferred format for most people, but sometimes those things get overlooked. And so instead of just putting up with it and maybe not having access to the syllabus to be able to see what you need, you know, it’s okay to ask for that to be in a different format. It’s not unreasonable. But I do find that sometimes I hear about issues way after the fact that’s getting better. The more I keep saying, if we don’t know about the problem, we can’t help you find a solution. You know, you don’t have to just live with this. It is a reasonable thing for you to get something in a format you need. And sometimes I offer an example from work.
You know, they’ll send something in a team’s message and it’s, hey, would you please send that to me in an email? It’s then I can file it away a little easier. It’ll always be there. Um, you know, different little things like that. And it’s usually not a big deal. People just don’t know what they don’t know. So if you don’t ask and you don’t make the instructor aware that this is a barrier, they won’t know. And sometimes students will operate on the assumption of, well, they’re doing this, so they must not want to accommodate me, when in reality, I’ve actually had instructors say, I don’t want to let the student down, but I don’t know what to do. You know, how do I how do I do this? How do I do that? Like I give my students a quiz and I put up a word document on the projection screen and they just do it on their own paper. What do I do for this blind student? Like, can you email him the word doc? Oh, well, yeah, I didn’t think of that. So sometimes it’s just a sighted person. Like, I never thought about all of the things that that we use until I needed to use them myself. So a lot of times it’s just a matter of telling someone and then they say, oh my goodness, I didn’t think about that.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s great that they have a resource to go to for that. I didn’t always have that. But, you know, staying on top of it is probably the biggest thing that self-advocacy and everything. It’s a challenge. Like you mentioned before, it’s a challenge to stay on top of everything. But the more you do, I think the more you’re actually blazing a trail for other students who are coming along. And hopefully you get there when you already went through it and they’ll be more familiar with and not so, like you said, freaked out about a blind student being in their classroom.
Leighann: I know I want to put in that initial notification. Do not panic, because I feel like there was one instructor and she was panicking in the meeting and she said, I have anxiety on a good day and I just don’t want to mess this up. And it’s like, well, we can work with that. You know, you obviously want to do right by the student. So, you know, that’s one big step out of the way. And I had an instructor tell me once I’ve been resistant to do this only because I’m afraid I won’t do the right thing. And a lot of times being afraid of messing up keeps people from doing anything. And that’s definitely not what we want.
Jeff: Mhm. What advice would you give to parents? You know, they’re sending their child off to college and, you know, whether they’re sighted or blind, I’m sure parents want to be there to hold their hand a little bit, you know, or something like that. But what advice would you give to parents and how to help them without doing everything for them?
Leighann: I don’t have a blind child, so in a way, I feel I feel the comparison to having my sighted children is not really the same. But my oldest went to school here and lived at home, but my youngest went away to school. And so not being able to be there and wondering how are they doing? What’s going on? All of that is, is a lot. Even if you have a sighted student. But I guess I would say, you know, especially here, like we have the benefit of having a community of blind students and, you know, they have friends who get it. They have people that will help them walk through the process. And then, you know, they have our office as well. And one of our new students that started, I set up a meeting with her the first week, you know, how are things going? You know, are you experiencing any barriers? And she’s like, I’ve never had instructors ask me what I need and tell me, if you don’t have what you need, let me know. And I’m like, well, if that changes, you know, and you want us to help advocate for you, please let us know. There are resources here for students that are blind or visually impaired. Now they have to avail themselves of the resources. We provide the same resources and assistance to everybody.
I think if you just encourage your student to advocate for themselves, to ask for those reasonable accommodations, especially here, know that your student is able to live in a community with some blind students. And that’s not to segregate, but it’s more just you have people here who really understand, like our blind students share an apartment space with students that are sighted. It’s, it’s not like they’re all in the same apartment or anything, but they’re in the same residence hall. So we have the codes in there and, you know, your student can learn to navigate independently. And it’s, there’s going to be some bumps. And I told a student the other day, I, if I told you, you will never get lost on this campus again, I would be lying because I will get disoriented. But, you know, just not giving up talking to people who understand, you know, we have people here who want to assist. My boss has even gotten on Microsoft Teams calls on video with a student that got turned around when it snowed. And he’s like, okay, you know, pan around with your camera. And he was able to help her get to class from the office. So there are people here who really care. And I know at other universities as well, and they can’t do it all for you.
You know, just if they ask for help, I know here they’ll receive the help as long as they ask and engage in the process, they’ll be fine. Like I had one parent say, I feel better about sending her eight hours away because you’re going to check on her. And I was like, absolutely, I’m going to check on her. And like, the dining area is hard to navigate. And so the students will help each other out with that area as well. And I’m hoping once we get those navigational codes, that’ll be even better. And then students can feel like, hey, I can do this by myself, but we are thinking about your kiddos before they get here. And it’s not going to be a, oh my goodness, your blind student wants to come here. And now what do we do? It’s we are ready for you. We want your blind student to come, kiddo, to come here. We want you to feel comfortable with them coming here. We want you to come and visit and check us out and sit down and talk with us. We are not panicking at all. I am treated like any other employee in this office. They have just as high of expectations for me as everyone else, and that’s how we approach our blind students as well.
Jeff: What would you say to a blind student that is excited about college, but frightened by the independence and additional responsibilities?
Leighann: Yeah, that is a lot all at once. I would definitely recommend checking into a summer program before you go to school to feel more prepared to be on your own. That’ll give you kind of a trial run for three weeks, and you’ll get an idea of what difficulties you might encounter. But in the absence of that, I learned very fast that I had to do stuff scared, and that anything worth doing is going to make you a little uncomfortable. You will adjust. You will get used to it. We visited the blind school and they said, well, how far of a walk is it to go get food? And the student with me said, oh, like maybe ten minutes. And he’s like, oh my gosh, ten minutes. And she’s like, it’s not that big of a deal. You know, you know, um, it will feel like a lot at first. And that’s why that piece of coming up in the summer and doing O and M when the campus is more empty to build your confidence, navigating around is going to be really, really important. And, um, we work all summer in this office. There’s staff here, so people are happy to meet with you, talk with you over the summer. There’s no reason to start any more overwhelmed than any other student would be, when you can definitely be up here as much as you need in the summer checking things out. There are students and staff who will help with things like using the laundry system and things like that.
I would just say there’s no reason to feel overwhelmed because we have lots of staff, students that want to see you succeed and are willing to share their tips and tricks with you.
Last spring, we actually had the Illinois Assistive Technology Program come out and do a cooking class with the students because I had a few students say, I’ll never learn how to cook. I’m like, oh yes, you will. So they’re, they’re VR customers. So they have that benefit through the state of Illinois. So we had them come out and bring an induction burner. Talk about knife skills. The kids made a pasta dinner together. It was for students. And there are people here who want to learn the same things that you’re learning, or they already know how to do them, and they’re happy to share that information with you. And it is a little scary, but I guess you just need to think about what kind of life do you want and what are your goals. College isn’t for everybody, but it can be for anybody who wants to come. And you just have to keep in mind what you really want in the end. And the goal for most of us is to live a good life and to be as independent as possible. And this is a really good place to learn that because there are some guardrails with regards to accessibility that you won’t always find everywhere.
Jeff: Mhm. Finally, if a blind or low vision student listening to this takes just one thing from it, what do you hope it will be?
Leighann: Oh, what I hope it will be is that you can do this. I feel like if I could, halfway through my master’s program, pivot and do everything as a blind person, and now my program is fully online. So the navigation piece wasn’t as big, but I did have to come in-person to work every day. And that was scary at first. But I feel like if I can do it, anybody can do it. It’s possible, there are resources. College is something that if you choose to come to college, it’s within your reach and it’s within your ability to be able to do it as long as you have the right resources. And we’re happy to provide those resources to you.
Jeff: That’s great. I think this is a great informational podcast episode that I think a lot of high school students can take from because you don’t know what you don’t know. And this gives them a good peek into their future of what they might be experiencing in coming up. So Leighann, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on here and share with us what you do at your campus. But it’s pretty much at a lot of campuses that have student services for students with disabilities. So thank you very much.
Leighann: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Jeff: For more podcasts with a Blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com. And if you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions. Give us a call at (612) 367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. I want to thank you for listening and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.