Vision Extra - 21 June 2023 - Charlie Matthews

As of the start of this year Vision Extra in Adelaide has been subsumed by Peter's other Wednesday night show Focal Point.  For the time-being Vision Extra (as is being broadcast in the other states) is being podcast as well However this interview is also available in the Focal Point Podcast: https://omny.fm/shows/focal-point 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:15):
On Vision Australia Radio. This is Vision Extra with Peter Greco.

S2 (00:23):
We're going to speak about the Career Visions program, Vision
Australia and someone taking part in it is Charlie Matthews. Charlie,
great to meet you. Thanks for your time.

S3 (00:31):
It's great to meet you too. Thank you for having
me on this.

S2 (00:34):
What made you decide to join the Career Visions program?

S3 (00:37):
Well, had a few. Not necessarily bad, but a few
experiences trying to get jobs where I felt as if
I didn't really know what I was doing or what
was available to me out there. I connected with Mark Wilkie,
one of the employment consultants here, and after a couple

(00:57):
months of working with him, he suggested to me that
I join this program since it was about to start.

S2 (01:03):
It's an eight week program and you're getting towards the
end of it. Tell us a bit about the program.
What sort of things have you done and what have
you got out of it so far?

S3 (01:10):
Oh, personally, I feel like I've got a lot out
of it. What we've done is mainly administration work. Finding
out what we would like to do as work has
been a major part of it. We've had talks from
quite a few different people, from a few MPs, from
a few technology people as well as that we've had

(01:33):
a lot of help with assistive technology. Like I said
at the start of this, I use a screen reader
now and I've actually started training on how to use it.
It's not something I ever thought would happen. It was
a bit about.

S2 (01:46):
Your site situation, if you're happy to share that, because
I guess there's no good age or, you know, the
right age to be diagnosed with the vision impairment. But
you know, I guess when you got the news, it
was sort of at a time in your life when
you probably would rather be doing other things.

S3 (02:01):
Oh, absolutely. But don't mind talking about it. I'm pretty open.
My brother has the same condition. Still got macular dystrophy.
He was diagnosed roughly ten years ago, so it was
a lot earlier than my symptoms even started. I'm coming
up on my 21st birthday and I was around my

(02:24):
16th birthday when I had an appointment with an optometrist
because I was struggling to see the board at school.
She's the same lady who realised there was something wrong
with my brother's eyes. So she zoomed in on one
of the photos that she took and noticed something was
a little bit off. It wasn't what it was supposed

(02:46):
to look like. So she referred me to a specialist
in Mackay who, after I saw him a few times,
basically said he believes I have the same condition as
my brother.

S2 (02:58):
Has that been a good thing or a bad thing?
Kind of. You know, knowing what your brother's going through
is more than likely something you're going to be going
through in, you know, not not too distant future.

S3 (03:07):
Well, it's been a bit mixed, really. It's been very
relieving having someone in my life who's going through it
and is able to help me and sort of guide
me guess. But at the same time, it's quite scary.

S2 (03:24):
You say you've learnt to use a screen reader, so
tell us a bit about your site situation. How much
do you have and what about in terms of orientation
and mobility, that sort of thing?

S3 (03:35):
I don't have central vision, or at least it's very,
very bad. I don't know if anyone would understand this,
but I did a central field of view test which
measures about 10%, and I got roughly 4% left or so.
I struggle to see fine detail because Central is all

(03:58):
the very acute small things such as reading the letters
on the keys of the laptop or reading where I'm
pretty sure my name is supposed to be on the screen.
I can have a little bit of trouble identifying people
who are walking up to me or walking past me.
I actually find it really useful when people like say

(04:23):
their name as they come up to me to start talking.
Otherwise I'm sitting there like, Yes, I know you, but where? Yeah.

S2 (04:30):
What about during the during the course or during the
week time with the career visions? I'm assuming you're meeting
other people, not necessarily the same sort of eye condition,
but you know, who have been through some challenging times
and wanting to sort of get a break as far
as their career goes.

S3 (04:45):
It's honestly been amazing. It's given me the sense of
community and the sense of I'm not alone that was
really needing.

S2 (04:55):
Have you got some idea as to what you want
to do? Because I often say to people, sometimes it's
really good if you know what you don't want to
do because you can kind of cross that off and
move on to the next. Thing I do. You know
what you don't want to do? And B, do you
know what you want to do? Or maybe the other
way around? I guess I should ask. Yeah.

S3 (05:11):
I know for a fact I don't want to deal
with money like physically handling it, but what I do
want to do is a little bit out there. I've
got a deep fascination with space astronomy, astrophysics and Astrophotography.

S2 (05:29):
Where did that come from?

S3 (05:30):
Charlie Honestly, I'm not too sure. I know that as
a kid I loved just, you know, sneaking outside in
the middle of the night, laying on the grass and
looking at the sky. Yeah, but it was never something
I ever considered as a kid. I never really thought
about being an astronaut or being a scientist or any
of that much.

S2 (05:51):
Well, of course. Well, I mean, the space sort of
industry has been around for a long, long time. You know,
Man land on the moon in 1969. And there was
stuff going on before then. But there's a lot more
emphasis now on space research and sort of things that
we can learn from it as far as our future goes.
So in terms of employment opportunities, I'd say there'd be

(06:12):
a lot that could open up or that are opening up.

S3 (06:14):
Absolutely. Prior to it was a relatively small field and
it's been booming with all of the discoveries that have
been made.

S2 (06:25):
Yeah. Are you also interested in childcare or have you
worked a little bit in childcare?

S3 (06:29):
I have worked in it, yeah. It's something that for
quite a while I was very intent on doing as
a career one day running my own childcare center, but
I'm not too sure when or why. One day I
sort of just woke up and went, Does this make
me as happy as I can be?

S2 (06:49):
And that's important, isn't it? Because it's not just the money,
but it's, I guess, the fulfillment of what you do
that is really, really important.

S3 (06:55):
Absolutely.

S2 (06:56):
Just some of the components of career visions. What sort
of things have you been doing, I guess, in the
practical sense or sort of day to day stuff? Because
it's eight weeks, so it's fairly intense, I would imagine.

S3 (07:07):
Yeah, it has been pretty intense. We've done a lot
of sort of admin work like training in how to
use Word Excel, all of that in a way that's
actually efficient. And so we know what we're doing and
how to do what we need to do. I've been
creating a little shortcut, I guess, master list to help

(07:30):
everyone out with that because using the keyboard is quite easy.
With Jaws, we've done a few little workshops about what's
to be expected in the workplace, such as how we
want to be treated by an employer and what we
can do if we feel we're not being treated right.

(07:53):
We've had a few workshops on, well, what we want
to do really, and things that may help us figure
that out.

S2 (08:01):
I know you've got a sort of finishing function coming
up on the 30th of June. How do you know
what's involved with that? And then do you know what
will come after that? Have you kind of got any
ideas as to what might happen when the kind of
eight weeks is up?

S3 (08:15):
Well, I'm pretty involved with it, all of the training, organizing.
So I guess our bosses don't really have much to
do with the organization. They've asked us to do all
of it. That's contacting everyone, organizing the room for the day, organizing, catering.
It's essentially going to be a little morning tea on

(08:37):
the 30th where we get to invite everyone who funds
or supports this program. We get to talk to them
about what it's done for us, about where we're hoping
to go in our lives afterwards. I believe that there's
quite a few of the higher ups in Vision Australia

(08:59):
might be going, which has me a little nervous. I'll
be honest.

S2 (09:04):
You'll be fine, Charlie. Tell me you've been on the radio.
Might you will actually, in all seriousness. So the fact that,
you know, you're going to be meeting with some of
the people that have been supporting it and then talk
about what you've got out of it, I mean, hopefully
they're impressed and then they continue to support it. So

(09:24):
another group of cohorts can come through and get the
same benefit from it.

S3 (09:29):
I really hope so. This program has honestly, it's done
a lot for me. It's probably changed my life a
bit because before I came into this I was quite depressed.
I was doing nothing and now I feel like I
have a purpose. I have some sort of direction and
I have a community behind me.

S2 (09:50):
It's a very powerful message, isn't it?

S4 (09:52):
Yeah.

S3 (09:53):
So if I can do anything that will help this
program run and will help it be funded, then I'm
definitely going to do it.

S2 (10:00):
I know it's a little bit off topic, but you know,
often when we hear. The unemployment figures released and 3.6% unemployed,
you know, virtually full employment. I find that frustrating because
I know people, particularly with disabilities, but people in general
that can't find work and they're trying as hard as
they might. So I'm not sure that those figures that

(10:21):
are totally accurate in terms of really being representative, how
difficult it is for people to get to employment and
maybe we sort of touched on getting fulfilling employment as
well rather than just doing something because there's a job
out there because they want to answer money but actually
doing something that's meaningful to them.

S3 (10:37):
Yeah, it's likely. It's quite skewed. I know one of
the other trainees has applied for probably over 300, 400
jobs in the last year or so and heard nothing back.
And I know from my own personal experience that you
can be applying all day, every day and you won't

(11:00):
get much as a result because.

S2 (11:02):
At least you'd like to know why you didn't get
the job. Then you've got something to work on. I mean,
hearing nothing is. I mean, that's sort of no news
is terrible news, isn't it, really? If you don't know
what you can be doing to improve yourself, then where
do you go to?

S3 (11:15):
Yeah, it's quite disheartening. It makes you not want to
bother with it anymore. Something that's been really great about
this program is, for example, having about 4 or 5
different people look over my resume for me and help
me with it.

S2 (11:30):
And obviously it's a much better resume than it was
eight weeks ago.

S3 (11:34):
Oh, definitely.

S2 (11:35):
Which is obviously something that will be very, very important
as far as future career opportunities go. Have you discussed
much earlier about, you know, when in an interview process,
do you let your prospective employer know that you have
a vision impairment? Does that come up much in discussions?

S3 (11:52):
We've actually talked about that quite a bit. My personal
view of it is I would prefer to tell them
before I even go to the interview, if I send
them an email just saying hi, confirming my interview appointment
this day at this time, I would like to let
you know I have low vision. If they reply, I

(12:14):
can sort of make a quick judgment on whether or
not it's a place that will be accepting of me.

S2 (12:21):
That's a good point, isn't it? That is a great point.
I guess if they've said yes, we'd like to meet
you for an interview. They're kind of been impressed up
until now. So I guess then it's up to you to,
during the interview, perhaps demonstrate the fact that you can
do the job even. Yeah. Even though. But with the
vision impairment, you can still do the job probably better
than the person that might have come after you who's

(12:43):
got the vision.

S3 (12:45):
Yeah, I don't put it in my resume, but if
I'm tailing a cover letter, then I will be able
to put the I have a visual impairment. I've built
these skills as a result to help me overcome the
challenges and it seems to be quite good based off
of the feedback I've got.

S2 (13:05):
I've enjoyed talking to you. Good luck. Thank you for
giving us a bit of a snapshot of what career
vision is. Good luck to the next lot of intakes
and I wish you well with whatever you choose to do.
I'm sure you'd be a fine asset to any organization.

S3 (13:18):
Thank you so much, Peter. I've really enjoyed talking to
you and I hope I get to talk to you again.

S4 (13:22):
Well, it's a it's a diet.

S3 (13:25):
Fantastic.

S2 (13:26):
That's Charlie Matthews. They're one of the participants in Australia's
Career Visions program. That is it for the program. If
you've missed some of them, if you'd like to hear
it again, you can search for an extra on the
iTunes store on Spotify or your favorite podcast service.