Interview Highlight: Kent Walsdorf - Cybersecurity and screen reader safety

Kent Walsdorf from Vision Australia Assistive Technology recently spoke with Jo Smith on work he has been doing on cybersecurity and screen reader safety. Kent covers a lot of ground including what is a scam email, how screen reader users can spot them and other general cyber safety online.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:13):
Hi and welcome to this information session about cyber safety
and screen reader users and how to unmask online scams.
I'm Drew Smith and I'm joined by Kent Walsdorf from
Vision Australia. Can you tell us a little bit about
what you do at Vision Australia and the topic we
are talking about today?

S2 (00:31):
Hey Joe. Yes, thanks for having me here today. So
my name's Kent Walsdorf and I've been with Vision Australia
for about nine years now, and I am an Access
Technology Development lead, which is a very long title. But
the good thing about my role is I do a
lot of things here at Vision Australia. A lot of projects,
and I work with our Access Technology development team. So

(00:52):
with that, I am involved in technology. I'm involved with
screen readers, which we're going to talk a little bit
about today. And one of the projects that I'm spearheading
at the moment is a project around cyber safety, in
particular for the blind and low vision community. So what
we're doing over this year and next is we're providing
some webinars, interviews and audio book course, which is going

(01:13):
to be great, where users can or listeners can listen
to that on demand and also provide access to Braille
materials around cyber safety. So I'm here today to talk
about cyber safety and in particular how that will affect
or does affect screen reader users. So that's a pretty
important topic. And I thought I might just start with
just giving you some information around cyber safety and why

(01:36):
it's so important. Um, if that's okay with you. Sure.
Because it's quite interesting. This um, so I went online
and there was a report that came out from the
National Anti-scam Centre in, um, it came out in March 2025,
and in 2022, there was $3.1 billion lost in cyber
scams in Australia alone. And the good news, if there's

(01:58):
any of that, is that in 2024, that's come down
to 2 billion. So it's all about awareness. It's all
about education for people around being safe online. And there's
a breakdown of where those scams came from. So investment
scams were the number one cause for taking your money,
and that was $945 million last year. The lowest category

(02:20):
was phishing. And we're going to talk about phishing scams today.
And that was $84.5 million last year on phishing scams.
So how does that relate to what we're talking about today?
It's around screen reader users and identifying email scams. And
one thing I just want to touch on before we
move on is just what is a screen reader. So
for a person who has little functional vision or maybe blind,

(02:44):
a screen reader is a program that they can use
to interface with a digital device so they can go
on to a phone or onto a computer, and use
a screen reader to access information and to navigate that device.

S1 (02:58):
And what exactly is a scam email, and why do
they particularly tricky for screen reader users to spot?

S2 (03:04):
Yeah. So a scam email. I think we've all had
scam emails in our time. If you're online and you
use the email and use email, you would have got
a scam email along the way and are getting far
more sophisticated as the technology increases. So a scam email
is also known as a phishing email, and they are
fake messages designed to trick you into revealing your personal

(03:25):
details or sending money or clicking on dangerous links. All
of those things can be quite dangerous to you. Uh,
they often are mimicked by, um, or they mimic, uh,
organizations that you may trust. So it could be a
bank or a government service that they're trying to trick
you into giving information over because it might be your
local bank, um, and things like that. So they use

(03:45):
well known brands to gain your trust. And the important
thing here is for screen reader users in particular, spotting
these scams is particularly challenging because they rely on audio
to navigate. So just to give you an example of that,
if you were to listen to a screen reader user
pronounce the words there t h e I r or

(04:08):
pronounce the word there t h e r e. It
actually sounds the same. So how does that relate to
what we're talking about? Well, that relates by if a
email came through that was commbank and it was spelt
c o m m b a n k, it would
sound exactly the same as the real commbank name. So
it's particularly difficult for screen reader users to check spelling

(04:32):
as they listen through the email. So it's important to
know that because there are ways that you can check
these kind of emails and make sure that you're looking
out for the clues that you are not involved in
a scam.

S1 (04:44):
And what are some of the top tactics scammers use
in these emails that screen reader users should be listening
out for?

S2 (04:51):
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go online. Actually there's an
act now stay secure. And this is where I've got
my information from. And this is from the Department of
Home Affairs providing this information. So there are some key
areas that you need to listen out for. So one
of them is scammers will use urgency and fear. So
you know immediate action required right now and get you

(05:12):
to act without thinking about it. I think more and
more nowadays people are becoming more aware about that. But
the key message there is just slow down and make
sure you verify through an official contact. So for example,
if you got something from Commbank that asks you to
input details, don't do that. Ring the bank or go
onto their website and check it out that way. That's really,
really important. They often have prizes or will say things

(05:36):
like there's a refund or an unexpected payment. Enter your
details now to get that. That's also a very common one.
They will impersonate trusted organisations. So we talked a little
bit about that. So typically you might see this from
government websites the Australia Post or Telstra, those kinds of
big organisations because they have a lot of clients. So
that's where they sort of target those people. There's also

(05:58):
generic or odd greetings that come through as well. So
this is one of the key markers that you can
help to identify. So if it's if the email sort
of starts off like Dear user or dear Valued customer,
that's something to think about because often those emails will
actually use your real name. So it's just a bit
of a red flag there. It doesn't mean that it's
completely fake, but it's just a red flag to kind

(06:18):
of check and just take your time with with that email.
The last one, which is really important for everyone is
unexpected attachments. So if an email comes through and there
might be a fake invoice or a shipping notice, or
more importantly, if there's something that gets downloaded to your
device and you install it, that can be a real problem,
because that can install what we call malware. And malware

(06:42):
is almost like a virus that can infect your computer,
or they can track what you're viewing and what you're
typing into your computer. So it's really important just with
any email that comes through, if you don't know where
that's coming from, take your time and just confirm it
with either that organisation itself or if you don't think
it's related to you, delete it.

S1 (07:00):
So for screen reader users specifically, how can they safely
check sender email addresses and where links actually lead to
without putting themselves at risk?

S2 (07:10):
So the important thing with emails is that display names
can be faked. And what I mean by that is
that if an email comes into your inbox, it can
actually read as, say, from Amazon, but it's the actual
email address that's important. So you might see in your
inbox on your email Amazon okay, that's legitimate. It's not.

(07:31):
The important part is the actual email address. And that's
what you need to focus on. So to do that
with a screen reader, it's really important that you are
reading that email address letter by letter. That's actually the
only way that you can tell whether it's a real
email address or a fake one. And again, as we mentioned,
commbank with an extra M will sound exactly the same

(07:52):
as commbank spelt correctly. So you need to actually go
through with a screen reader and identify each letter going through.
So check the email itself. It's a big one. The
other one with screen reader users is that they'll often,
or some will be Braille users as well. And that's
a really nice way to also be able to read
the email address so you can pull the email up

(08:13):
on Braille and read it character by character. And this
can help catch those typos and those hidden little hyphens
and things like that. The other thing is, don't click
on the link. You can actually copy the link out
and paste it into a plain text editor. Now, if
you don't know what that means, it's basically a separate
program that if you copy that link into that program,

(08:34):
you can again read the email character by character. Now
that might be like, I don't even know what that
means or I don't know how to do that. What
I will say is that we do have access technology
specialists that can help walk through these steps and show
you the tools of using your screen reader to be
able to read character by character, or copy the email
into those text editor programs. So that's often available through

(08:55):
Vision Australia. And the last one is verify links and
make sure they match the official site. So again, if
you get an email and it's asking for information, just
check with the domain names coming from. So make sure
it's like at Commbank or whatever it might be. And
that matches up to the actual organization. It's really, really important.

(09:16):
And again, if you need any advice on this, the website,
which is the Department of Home Affairs website. Act now,
stay secure. Has all of this information on there for you.

S1 (09:27):
So beyond recognizing scams, what are some general cyber security
actions everyone, specifically screen reader users can take to stay
safer online?

S2 (09:37):
I think one of the important things is make sure
you're trained in how to use the screen reader properly.
So knowing how to check character by character, knowing how
to select an email address and copy that into a
text editor. Those things are really, really important to be
able to do. And then it's just the things that
everyone else needs to do as well. Just take it slow,
so check everything that comes your way thoroughly. You don't

(10:00):
need to act right away. You can take your time.
Call the organization itself if you're unsure. Get levelled up
on scams and how they are evolving. Levelled up as
a term that my kids use nowadays, but it basically
means become educated on where the scams are coming from
and how they're happening, because they are moving quickly. So
back in the days, we used to be able to
identify scams with spelling errors and those kinds of things.

(10:22):
That's becoming less and less easy to do because the
scammers are using more sophisticated tools to make sure the
emails are correct. So understand what's happening out. There is
a big part of knowing how to stay secure and safe.
And we also have at Vision Australia tools for you
to access. So we've got some upcoming webinars that I'll
be presenting. One will be in October, and we'll be

(10:44):
promoting that through our social channels and through our blog.
And that will be looking at cyber safety and security
specifically for the blind and low vision community. And there's
also the resources out there. Again, the Act Now Stay
Secure website is really important. One. And also interviews like
this will be forming hopefully some more of these throughout
the year.

S1 (11:02):
Well thank you Ken for joining us for this information
session about cyber safety for screen reader users and how
to unmask online scams.

S2 (11:10):
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.