Danielle: Using technology for greater independence

Meet the lovely Danielle

Back in 2023, Danielle accessed support from Chris, one of our fantastic Digital Enablement Officers, who supported her to be able to use technology to access things in both her work and personal life more independently.

Danielle has had Ocular Albinism since childhood and is registered Sight impaired. She works as an art teacher in a school, but her vision deteriorated and she struggled more at work as a result.

Danielle had long cane training from the Rehabilitation Officer at the Bury Blind Society and became more confident with her mobility both at work and at home.

Danielle wanted some technology advice to support her at work and in her personal life. Chris completed a digital assessment with her and this has enabled her to find the solutions that are suitable for her and ultimately restore her independence.

Work

First, Chris introduced Danielle to solutions for work. This included software for Windows (ZoomText and Supernova), as well as built-in Windows accessibility features.

She practised using the dictation feature for writing Word documents and emails, and felt it was a really good solution that would save her time.

She uses an iPad at work, so Chris introduced the built-in accessibility features of the iPad, in particular the Speak Screen function. Speak Screen speaks the content from the iPad scree when you swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen, providing you have the feature switched on. This was a new feature to her which she thought would be really useful.

Personal life

Danielle uses her Android phone for lots of tasks. Chris downloaded some apps that would enable her to read letters and printed text, have text from the screen read to her, and make calls, send text messages and emails just using her voice.

Danielle used to love reading for leisure, but she started to find this difficult. Chris demonstrated a range of Digital Video Magnifiers. Danielle was impressed with one of the Large CCTVs which would be useful for her to read letters, newspapers, and books. We were able to donate one of these for her to use at home.

Thank you so much for all of your time. It has been very useful. There were lots of things I had heard about and tried in the past and it has been good to revisit them and see new things to help me.

It was useful to see how using dictation could be useful for things at work and at home.

Thank you for the CCTV. I used to love reading books, so it will be great to be able to use the magnifier for that and for reading newspapers again.

Danielle

Months on from us donating the CCTV to her, she couldn’t be more pleased, finding plenty of uses for it.

The CCTV has been invaluable. Not only has it helped me with things from work, but it has helped with a lot of things at home as well.

I have been able to read books to my young son and it has even been helpful for me doing my nails. Thanks again I really appreciate it.

Danielle