Diane Mulligan, recipient of an OBE for services
to disabled people, talks to Go ON Gold.
I currently work for a German NGO in international
development and disability, and we use the
internet all the time to communicate with
each other. As somebody with a disability
myself, I find it really useful and easy to
access. I use a piece of software that's
called Illuminate, or Blackboard Collaborate,
and it's a piece of software for online
conferencing. We work in 90 different countries,
with a range of people with different impairments,
but I can use this online conferencing technology,
essentially to communicate and have meetings
with, write documents and discuss -- just
as we are now, face-to-face -- but online.
This piece of software uses a really low bandwidth
and it's accessible for all people. So,
two of my colleagues in my Brussels office
are blind, and they use this with their screenreaders,
easily. I have another colleague who's deaf,
and I can use closed captioning, real-time,
and I can also record, so that people who
miss it can engage again. Ironically, it was
my 82-year-old father who introduced me to
Illuminate. He's doing a Spanish degree
with The Open University, and he said "Illuminate,
Illuminate -- why aren't you using this
brilliant piece of online conferencing?"
So I looked into it and now we use it routinely,
and I probably use it for four or five hours
a day. I think the main barriers that people
face are resource barriers and access barriers.
So, somebody may not have access to the internet,
they may not have this because they can't
afford it, or because they are too frightened
of the kind of things that they might not
think that they are able to do. But as I said,
I'm using this piece of software, which
is low broadband, with people in very low
income countries, and people with very little
use of the internet, and if we can help people
digitally connect and be online, then that's
the main barrier to overcome. The next is
just people's own confidence, really, to
engage and use these new technologies, but
if my 82-year-old dad can do it, I reckon
anyone can.