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Macquarie Accessibility Services

An Academic's Experience With M-CAS

In early June 2004 Associate Professor Jill McKinnon of Macquarie University's Department of Accounting and Finance received a call concerning a student she would be supervising in the coming semester of the subject Advanced Financial Reporting. Two things made this call unusual - the student had special access needs, and was using the relatively new service of M-CAS to facilitate and support his study. Associate Professor McKinnon had limited experience of working with special access needs and, until that day, was unaware of Macquarie Customised Accessibility Service. All this was about to change!

'I had no idea about Jochen, or his particular access needs, until I was contacted by Jennifer Bainbridge, one of the Educational Developers from M-CAS,' says Jill McKinnon, 'but everything worked smoothly, with M-CAS making whatever I gave them accessible.'

Advanced Financial Reporting is a fairly technical course, covering up to 15 accounting standards, with a lot of reading matter that requires a high level of detailed work each week. This involves completing major assignments and attending three-hour Master's seminars on a weekly basis as well as a final exam. Jochen, an international post-grad student at Macquarie has vision impairment and, as his Braille language is German, text conversion to English Braille is unsuitable for meeting his academic needs.

The process of customising the course content to meet Jochen's requirements began with a meeting between Jill and Jennifer. At this meeting Jennifer received the course outline and an overview of the weekly workload, extra readings, each assignment and the recommended texts. From this point M-CAS would liaise between the student and the lecturer, facilitate all material conversions and organize delivery of materials between the student and the lecturer.

From Jill's point of view her main contribution as a lecturer working with M-CAS was organising the materials. 'Organising ahead is the key. It was easiest to do Jochen's materials at the same time as whatever I was doing for the other students. For example, as I prepared the weekly assignments for the class I made a separate folder (in the computer) and dropped the completed files on to a disc. Then it was just a matter of sending the disc, with a hard copy for good measure, over to M-CAS.'

Jill also emphasizes that the sooner a lecturer knows that they will be working with a student with special access needs the better. 'It's good to make these courses available to all students,' she says,'so the more notice a lecturer receives from an institution the more lead time you have to organise and prepare materials to make this availability really work'

When it came around to exam time Jill was contacted by the University's Disability Liaison Officer regarding preparing a special exam. Once preparation was complete the exam paper was sent to M-CAS for audio conversion, enabling Jochen to sit the exam.

Jennifer Bainbridge offers M-CAS's view as to what contributed to the success of the unit for all involved. 'As well as Jochen being highly motivated Jill McKinnon was extremely organised and delivered terrific content to us that only required slight modification,' says Jennifer. 'She supplied the majority of the content in electronic format which saved a lot of time.'

Of her experience working with a student with special access needs through M-CAS Jill maintains that it was a positive experience that she would be happy to repeat. 'It was a matter of being organised in a particular way rather than it being an extra burden,' she says. 'It also helped that everyone I dealt with at M-CAS was approachable and efficient as well as easy to talk to and to work with. Nothing seems to be a trouble for them.'

For other academics that may find themselves in the same situation Jill McKinnon is encouraging. 'What I found most useful as the semester progressed was to keep in touch with M-CAS, usually as I delivered materials, so I could get feedback on how what I was delivering was working for them. In the end it just becomes a matter of process so that whatever you are working on, be it handouts or whatever, you think OK make it available now - and hand it on to M-CAS.'

Interview by Tracylee Arestides.

For further information relating to services provided for students with a disability, special access needs, handicapped access and print disability click on the link to How Does It Work or the Contact Us link.

Archived 11 May 2005

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