RO&Ming with Lil: Recent Episodes
Lil Deverell
ROaMing with Lil is for people who do their best work on street corners – orientation and mobility specialists, guide dog mobility instructors and people with low vision or blindness. It provides a forum for people to learn more about functional vision, orientation and mobility from an Australian perspective. The first season is focusing on tele-practice, and functional assessment, using the VROOM and OMO tools with clients.
Robert Yearsley is CEO of ARIA Research, which stands for Augmented Reality in Audio. ARIA is a new approach to assistive technology being developed with, and for people who are blind. ARIA uses machine learning to turn camera vision into a novel soundscape for the user to interpret during activities of daily living, including orientation and mobility. ARIA is in its early development, and the team is looking for ideas and participation from people with ultra-low vision or blindness, and from O&M specialists. There is opportunity to join in a monthly zoom conversation about assistive technology, and to join in research sessions in Sydney, in person, to test out ideas and prototypes during 2022 and 2023. Get in touch via ariaresearch.com.au
Jo Webber is a disability inclusion advisor, currently working in Kiribati and Vanuatu. For those interested in international work, Jo challenges us become dual qualified in international development so that we can work with others to create sustainable O&M services in Pacific Island countries.
Orientation is the vital O in O&M and we might assume that everyone can learn orientation, but this is not the case. How can we assess a person’s ability to learn orientation to new places? The Stuart Tactile Maps test is a table top test of spatial cognition that only takes 10 minutes to administer. Everyone does the test wearing a blindfold whether or not they have vision and the test predicts a person’s ability to use mental mapping for orientation. So where did this test come from? In this episode, I’m talking with Dr Ian Stuart about starting out as a neuropsychologist in Melbourne in the 1970s. He developed the Stuart Tactile Maps test as part of his PhD study in the 1980s, working with congenitally blind children and adults with acquired brain injury. Ian has worked with me to make the Stuart Tactile Maps test commercially available for use by O&M specialists. The instruction manual includes plenty of ideas for working with someone who has trouble with mental mapping.
Happy new year, in late February! In this first episode for 2021, I have a dream... and I’m talking with Liz Skelton, who also has a vision for an equitable and inclusive society where people, place, and planet thrive. In 2013, Liz and co-author Geoff Aigner published a book called The Australian Leadership Paradox. They identify four paradoxes in Australian leadership culture that we need to grapple with if we want to embrace positive change in the low vision and blindness sector.
Lee Stanway is a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor based in the UK who specialises in tricky dog matches. He works with people who have low vision or blindness and use a wheelchair, or need assistance with tasks around the home, or an epilepsy alert, or help to hear the doorbell, along with the guiding function of the dog.
Ben Clare is an inclusive education adviser, scholarship facilitator, and regular visitor to the Pacific Islands, having also lived in the Solomon Islands and Samoa for several years. Ben has no light perception and some spatial challenges, so he has learned to build networks and travel confidently in multiple countries using his long cane and fabulous social navigation skills. Ben is convener of the first online SPEVI conference, 18-19 January 2021.
Errol Ingram is an O&M Specialist who completed a PhD thesis in 2019 called The Lived Experience of Acquiring Life Skills with Congenital Total Blindness: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. How did Errol realise he had a PhD in him waiting to get out? And what did he discover about the life skills needed for being-in-the-never-seen-world, including orientation and mobility skills?
Joe Stephen is a blind software developer from Adelaide, now living in Tasmania. He has written an article reflecting on his experience starting at a blind primary school, then moving into mainstream secondary schools, before completing a Bachelor of Science (Computer Studies) at Flinders University. Joe suggests we need both specialist and mainstream education options. But if blind schools are a thing of the past, then we need to find other ways for blind kids to build life skills so they can transition more smoothly into adulthood.
In Orientation and Mobility practice, it is a privilege to hear and hold another person’s story as we hatch a plan of action together. But we can crash around in other people’s lives if we don’t pause to understand how our own expectations, priorities and agendas affect our relationships. Peter Bentley, spiritual director and Enneagram teacher encourages us to notice what inhibits life and what brings joy. Peter explains many ways to do our own inner work, so we can work effectively with others in building healthy relationships and healthy workplaces.
Jane Bradley is a Seeing Eye Dog Instructor and a self-confessed behaviour nerd, interested in how learning works across the species. We discuss the Enneagram personality model. The Enneagram can be used to understand our own personality type and our relationship with other types at home and in the workplace. We can gain insight into the motivations, priorities, and trigger points of colleagues. By identifying the direction of integration/health of a person’s type, we can identify circumstances and opportunities in the workplace that will help that person grow and flourish. This strategy can be applied to ourselves, and to our work with clients, colleagues, minions, and managers.
A toxic workplace makes people sick, and when we recognise this problem we need to do something about it. Morale spirals downwards, physical symptoms increase, mental health suffers, people leave, wounded, and the workforce is depleted. Tim Dyer, organisational consultant, shows how a cultural audit can help us evaluate what and who we’re working with in our own organisation. We can celebrate the signs of health and growth. We can also bring aspects of unhealthy culture into the light of day, but there is a cost. It takes courage, wisdom, and external support. Should I stay or should I go now?
Tim Dyer is an organisational consultant based in Tasmania. Twenty years ago, Tim came to my mums’ group and said, “If you learn a personality model – it doesn’t really matter which one – it gives you a common language to understand how people are different to each other. Then you can raise your children to be themselves, not you.” This was very good advice, not just at home, but at work too. We explore how personality models can help us understand others in the workplace.
Kassandra Maloney is a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist (COMS), living in Austin, Texas. After working at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired for 11 years, she set out solo as Allied Independence. Kassy knows what it’s like to be tied to home with two babies during early mothering, while her O&M colleagues disappeared to an International Mobility Conference in Dublin. But she’s a millennial, undaunted by technology and entrepreneurship. Kassy and her team created the International O&M Online Symposium, using their tech skills to make professional development accessible to O&M Specialists around the world.
The O&M profession in Australia is in the midst of a revolution and some O&M specialists are feeling the pinch. This is the first in a series of episodes looking more closely at the world of work. We’ll be discussing workplace health, toxicity and tools for developing resilience in a time of extraordinary change. Bruce Everett is an international change consultant with a background in business and commerce, and more recent experience in the not-for profit sector. He offers us a useful outsider’s perspective on navigating change with a growth mindset in the O&M industry.
Laura Garcia is mum to Eva, now aged 8. When she was one year old, Eva contracted herpes simplex virus, which passed the blood-brain barrier and damaged Eva’s visual cortex. The result was CVI – cortical visual impairment – with no visual response. Laura was desperate for resources that would guide her in mothering Eva. She discovered the CVI Range, which became a place of obsession for a year, and she used the CVI Range to assess Eva every month. During this time Laura learned to recognise the 10 characteristics that are described in the CVI Range, and what she could do to help her daughter learn to see. Equally important, Laura realised she was becoming too intense about the CVI Range. She needed to step back from measuring, take a breath, and weave her new learning about CVI into her everyday parenting with Eva.
Cocky Guides is a small group tour company, based in Sydney, specialising in accessible adventures for people with low vision or blindness. Why wait for people who are sight-seeing when you can try hang-gliding, go sailing or tour the wineries with other keen travellers? Buck McFarlane guides us through some accessible Australian adventures, while planning future tours to New Zealand and Tonga, with spare long canes in hand. He has inspired a possible parallel career for O&M specialists as a tour guide. If only I weren’t so good at missing planes…
Jess Timmons is an independent Orientation and Mobility (O&M) Specialist who also works as a disability support worker and access consultant in Melbourne. In 2019 she volunteered to accompany an independent consultant with low vision to Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. Kiribati (population 110,000) is a nation of coral islands straddling the equator and the international dateline. Jess describes daily life, disability, access and the challenges involved in sustainable community development through the lens of O&M.
Dr Meredith Prain is a speech pathologist who works with people who have deafblindness and she travels internationally on her own. She has low vision from Leber’s so was curious to discover her own VROOM and OMO scores. Merry rated 32/50 for functional vision and 41/50 for orientation and mobility, and she wanted to explore what she could do to push that OMO score up to 50.
This week we meet Leona Holloway from Monash University. Leona entered the world of braille transcription straight after uni and is now a passionate advocate of inclusive technologies and accessible graphics for people with low vision or blindness. She is currently developing guidelines for 3D printing so that 3D models are accessible to touch readers. She is also working with O&M specialists to create 3D printed intersections we can use to teach street crossings.
Natalia Kelly is an orthoptist from Melbourne who was captivated by cortical visual impairment (CVI) from the start of her career 17 years ago. Since then, the scope of practice for orthoptists has expanded in Australia. In her private practice, Vision Matters, Natalia does specialised work using biofeedback to reinforce eccentric viewing for reading, reducing the font size for some patients from n80 to n10! Meanwhile, her fascination with CVI continues. She delights in working with children and their families to investigate CVI, to understand the reasons for curious visual behaviours and work out how to stimulate functional vision, including during orientation and mobility.
Alana Bogart is an O&M specialist from Canada who now works for Blind Low Vision New Zealand. Alana takes us on a journey into the snow-bound villages and islands of British Columbia at minus 25 degrees, where she worked with First Nations people. She learned to call a cane a stick, fall down safely in the snow, and look out for bears. In Christchurch, she found some clients were more interested in learning long cane skills after the earthquakes – it seems that independent travel skills are handy in a crisis!
This episode, we’re talking with Darren Moyle, an O&M Specialist who works for Vision Australia in Melbourne. Darren has a passion for integrating sport and technology into O&M programs. He loves working with kids and he has just become a dad himself. Darren describes some of his Aha! moments in training as an O&M specialist 9 years ago, the things he finds life-giving about the job, and his own use of technology in navigating public transport and travel while working in Melbourne suburbia as an O&M specialist who has low vision. Darren is on the professional development committee for the OMAA, so we are spruiking the forthcoming OMAA Online Symposium on 22 September.
Today we meet Bronwen Scott and Heidi Zec. Bronwen is an independent Orientation and Mobility Specialist and Heidi is the mother of Luka, a delightful two year old with cortical visual impairment. They have worked together with Luka for the past 18 months to help develop his functional vision in the context of daily routines. This year Bronwen and Heidi have joined forces to create the CVI Community Australia. This online group connects and supports parents and professionals who are navigating the world of CVI. Heidi and Bronwen remind us that CVI is different to ordinary low vision. It is tricky to simulate, but in CVI we have that rare opportunity to be part of developing a child’s vision and preventing avoidable blindness. We have a lot to learn about CVI, and we need to start as soon as possible.
Four years ago, traveling independently in inner city Melbourne, Ross de Vent scored VROOM 14/50 for his functional vision (Fragments), and OMO 33/50 for his functional mobility (Capable). Ross now lives on the fringe of metropolitan Melbourne and has been in COVID isolation with his household and guide dog for the past 4 months. Today, we found that Ross’ vision and mobility scores have both dropped to VROOM 6/50 (Fifty shades of grey) and OMO 28/50 (Cautious), despite his clinical vision remaining stable. The drop in VROOM rating suggests that it not worth looking when there is nothing new to look at in the COVID cave, and the OMO score captured the gloom and limited life-space of COVID restrictions. During this time, Ross has valued frequent contact with his support worker, Josh Glover, in tackling technology challenges and making some big life decisions. Ross prompts us to rethink the relative importance of independent mobility when also wanting to stay COVID-safe, connect with people to dispel the gloom, and save some energy for professional commitments.
Lisa Petrie is an Habilitation Specialist with Guide Dogs UK, based in Scotland. Lisa enjoys working with children who have complex needs, and she also manages O&M services for adults, children and young people (CYP). Lisa and her teams have been piloting the VROOM and OMO functional assessment tools with all ages. In 2018, we tested out the VROOM and OMO tools assessing the functional vision and mobility skills of two year old boys, Theo and Luke. They both have CVI – cerebral visual impairment – and travel in a manual wheelchair. In this episode, we get an update on these wee bairns, and Lisa’s perspective on the VROOM and OMO tools for children with multiple disabilities.
Diana Grobler works in northern New South Wales, serving orientation and mobility clients across a large region. She has many older clients with macular degeneration who love to chat. Diana is a relative newbie in the O&M field, but she has done 12 or 13 VROOM and OMO assessments this year, both face to face and via tele-practice. Diana shares with us some of her Aha! moments, and questions that have arisen while using the VROOM and OMO tools during COVID restrictions.
In Episode 5 we did a did a VROOM and OMO assessment with Erica Tandori, who scored 29/50 for her functional vision and 39/50 for her functional mobility. Erica chooses not to use a mobility aid most of the time, relying on her peripheral vision and fabulous mental mapping skills to maintain her orientation and her safety on familiar routes like the public transport trip to work. But Erica likes to take an arm when walking in less familiar places. This frees up her vision to look around and enjoy what she sees. The co-rating conversation with Erica has raised questions about comparisons and precision in using the VROOM and OMO tools, and some varied opinions about the mobility aids we might recommend for someone with mid-range low vision.
Orientation and Mobility (O&M) textbooks talk about indoor and outdoor travel skills. Outdoor places are usually classified according to their purpose or zoning – residential, semi-business and business environments, petrol stations and shopping centres. However, environmental purpose doesn’t necessarily tell us about complexity. It can be easier to cross at the traffic lights in the city than an uncontrolled residential road. The O&M Environmental Complexity Scale provides a way to think about the aspects of complexity that matter to clients. We can use it to rough-sort any environment in the world into one of six levels without getting bogged down in the details. Podcast pals, Jo Anson-Smith, Amy McKibbins, Tayler McBrien and Zoe Gephart join me again to talk about choosing environments for VROOM and OMO assessments using the O&M Environmental Complexity Scale.
Mel Stephens is an independent 26 year old, horse-loving train tragic with no light perception and an addiction to cruises. Mel was a research participant in the Bionic Vision Australia project in 2013, so she was there at the inception and birth of the VROOM and OMO functional assessment tools. We have now done four VROOM and OMO ratings with Mel over a seven year period. The VROOM tool captured her decline from low vision to blindness from Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis. The OMO tool captured her dip in energy while living in the big smoke, then a return of energy as she moved to Mildura in country Victoria. In the process, she has become a valued research collaborator. This was helped by the fact that Mel lived independently in Lil’s back yard bungalow for a while, where we talked about research under the clothesline.
In this episode, Jo Anson-Smith, an orientation and mobility specialist from Newcastle, reports the VROOM and OMO scores for the client she assessed through tele-practice a few weeks ago. Let’s call him Ken. We also revisit Erica Tandori’s VROOM and OMO results from last episode. I explain how we can interpret these results in 10 point categories, with F words for VROOM categories and C words for OMO categories. Jo explains some of her decision-making challenges in using these assessment tools, and we explore the implications of mid-range low vision – the Formwork category – where Ken and Erica see linear structures and outlines, but no internal detail. To cane or not to cane? …that is the question!
Erica Tandori is a visual artist with two kids, a cat, a hole in the backyard, a doctorate, a university job, and Stargardt’s Disease. This juvenile form of macular degeneration means that Erica has trouble seeing what she is looking at directly, but her peripheral vision is still useful. Erica describes it as colourful, soft and blurry like “living in a Monet painting,” with the occasional visual hallucination to keep her guessing. Erica has not had orientation and mobility training, but she was interested in doing a VROOM and OMO assessment via interview. We discussed the environments where Erica typically travels, choosing to compare Level 3 on the O&M Environmental Complexity Scale – the area around her home – with Level 6 – bus and train travel to work, with uncontrolled road crossings and navigating bus bays at uni. Erica scored OMO 39/50 for her functional orientation and mobility skills and VROOM 29/50 for functional vision during travel.
Jo Anson-Smith is a dual qualified Occupational Therapist/Orientation and Mobility (O&M) Specialist working in Newcastle, Australia. When we talked with Jo in Episode 2, she was exploring tele-practice with occupational therapy clients, but she hadn’t yet made the leap into O&M tele-practice. In this episode we talk with Jo about teaching the long cane to a man with intellectual disability, via Zoom. Then Jo describes her first VROOM and OMO functional assessment with a client, via FaceTime – how she prepared, the technology she used, what worked well, and some scoring questions that arose: what if we don't or can't assess in a dynamic environment?
This episode introduces VROOM and OMO – two functional assessment tools created by an O&M specialist who loves ridiculous acronyms. VROOM stands for vision-related outcomes in orientation and mobility, and OMO stands for orientation and mobility outcomes. These are constructivist (not objective or subjective) assessment tools designed to co-rate a client’s functional vision and mobility, giving each a score out of 50. We meet Ewa Borkowski from Guide Dogs NSW/ACT, whose team is using the VROOM and OMO tools during ordinary O&M assessment. This includes working from the COVID cave.
This podcast is recorded in the time of Coronavirus lockdown, when Orientation and Mobility (O&M) specialists are fast needing to learn about tele-practice. We meet four O&M specialists from Guide Dogs NSW/ACT who are venturing into the brave new world of O&M tele-practice: Amy McKibbins, Zoë Gephart, Tayler McBrien, and Jo Anson-Smith
This episode introduces ROaMing with Lil. It describes the role of an Orientation and Mobility Specialist, and a profession that does its best work on street corners! ROaMing with Lil is intended to provide a forum for people to learn more about functional vision, and orientation and mobility practice from an Australian perspective. It offers professional development for O&M specialists and guide dog mobility instructors worldwide.