Meet Insight Gloucestershire - Using Guide and SuperNova

Frederik Wilcox (Client, Insight Gloucester): I’m Frederik John Wilcox. I was born in London. My main career has been as a vicar. It wasn’t until just after retirement then I found a shadow on my eye.

Graham Kitchen (Client, Insight Gloucester): Towards the end I would get a tramline and a pencil and there would be one line in it and then it would develop into two. They examined me and I was told I’d got macular degeneration in both eyes and also glaucoma. So when I bought a laptop, I’d never used one, so I applied then to Insight in cheltenham

Monica Fathering (Communications Officer Insight Gloucester): We are a local association that support people living with sight loss, and we can support people with access to work applications and we have a range of equipment

Emma Nolan (Tutor, Insight Gloucester): My key responsibility is to increase their confidence with using technology. They feel lost, so I try to make them first feel confident and to show them that actually losing your sight doesn’t mean losing your independence. We have people of all different ages coming in to learn Guide and to learn SuperNova.

Monica: Dolphin Guide is a very user-friendly, simple to use program. If you’ve never used a computer before but you know you want to write an email for example or print a letter, then you just press an arrow key or a number key and it will talk through the instructions.

Guide reads: “Press 2 to write a new document”

Emma: And you just, one step at a time, get to where you need to go

SuperNova reads “SuperNova control panel. Tab. Heading 1. Basic plan sponge cake”

Emma: SuperNova is a piece software which allows you to use the software you already have on your computer.

Monica: It works along side Microsoft Office.

Emma: The screen reader will read the text on the screen.

Graham: It enlarges it, it clarifies the colouring

Emma: They both allow you to email and access the Internet. Everything is going online and it just makes the user who can come as a novice or slightly experienced be able to do what everybody else can.

Graham: The other thing where we live is very remote but I can order food online.

Frederik: There’s all sorts of things you can look up. Its a very useful tool really.

Monica: I’ve seen the difference it makes. People coming in, not being able to use it. Never heard of it, are now sending emails and ‘I’m looking up this online. I’ve just done all my Christmas shopping’.

Emma: They both offer opportunities to different types of people and we haven’t yet had anybody who has come away from here saying they haven’t been able to use a computer.

Dolphin: Find organisations supporting blind and partially sighted people across the UK at sightlinedirectory.org.uk. And, discover the benefits of simple talking computing from YourDolphin.com/Guide.