RO&Ming with Lil

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.