Learning and working online as a visually impaired interpreter (Part 1)

 By Michelle Hof, AIB

An interview with Nadia Gouy (Part I)

Have you ever wondered what it is like to work with online platforms as a visually impaired interpreter? Do you want to know how to improve accessibility for students and interpreters with a visual impairment? In this two-part interview, Nadia Gouy, a senior interpreting student at the Glendon Master of Conference Interpreting, shares with AIB member Michelle Hof her top accessibility tips for interpreting trainers and online platforms. 

In Part I, Nadia tells us of her experience as a visually impaired student of interpreting and offers guidance on how to ensure an accessible, inclusive classroom experience. Part II next week will contain accessibility tips for developers of online platforms and tools. 

Michelle Hof: We are speaking today with Nadia Gouy, a student of conference interpreting at the Glendon MCI in Toronto. Nadia and I have been working together this year on a course I teach there on interpreting technologies. Welcome, Nadia! Why don’t you start by introducing yourself?

Nadia Gouy: Thank you. I am Nadia Gouy from Morocco. I have been a translator for over 12 years and also an interpreter – mainly liaison and diplomatic interpreting for the Minister of Parliamentary Relations in Morocco – for five or six years. I also did a bit of freelance conference interpreting in Morocco. In 2017, when I arrived in Canada as a newly landed immigrant, I didn’t have a network and the luxury of choosing what to do, so I worked for the government public services here. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the MCI program went entirely online, I decided to sit the advanced entry exam (I was actually going to do it in 2018 but didn’t, for personal reasons).

MH: Why did you decide to pursue formal training? Was it because you had practical experience with interpreting and you wanted to know more about it, or was it that you had a lot of time on your hands due to Covid-19? What was the draw?

NG: This is actually something that has been lingering in my mind for years. In 2006, when I  graduated from a school of translation in Morocco, I was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and was accepted to the Middlebury Institute (MIIS). However, they didn’t offer Arabic, and so for that and a few other reasons, I ended up changing degree tracks and instead I did a master’s in international development and public administration – the world of NGOs and the like. That was really good, as what I learned through that program helped me expand my work opportunities while working as an interpreter for the ministry back in Morocco and helped me understand the conferences I worked at as an interpreter.  

MH: It sounds like an interesting profile for a conference interpreter to have, and this somewhat wandering trajectory seems to have brought you right to where you need to be right now! Which brings me to my next question: you said you joined the Glendon MCI in the year that it went fully online due to Covid-19 restrictions. Now, we haven’t said this yet, but you are student with visual impairment and this may mean that your experience with online learning might be different from that of your sighted classmates. What has your impression been of this past year of online learning at Glendon?

NG: Well, it has been very interesting, because before joining the MCI, I didn’t use Zoom. Even at work we used to hold our meetings on Teams, so moving to Zoom involved a learning curve for me, even though Zoom is very accessible. It’s a lot of things to juggle at the same time – my screen reader talking to me, the instructor talking, the chitchat going on between students in the chat box, and in the beginning I found it really annoying. I didn’t know how to stop the notifications and it was too much to juggle. There was lots going on at the same time, with so many voice feeds. But then I got used to it, I learned the shortcuts, and actually started enjoying writing and chatting while listening to the instructor and doing so much else at the same time!

MH: Well, we always talk about interpreters having to cultivate split attention, so I guess you had a bit of a head start! I sometimes think that students in an online classroom have a lot of demands on their attention. They are asked to pay attention to what the instructor is saying, they are asked to pay attention to the task, and in the world of online learning, they are often paying attention to the chat box as well. I know many of your sighted classmates have difficulties organizing their attention in such situations, and end up dedicating it either to the chat or to what is going on in the main room. Trainers often have to make a similar choice as well. Have you ever been tempted to just turn off the chat, or do you make a conscious choice to try to incorporate it into your online classroom experience?

NG: Both! It depends on my attention span, and on whether the chat is going to be useful – for instance, in your classes, I do follow the chat a lot, as students ask a lot of questions that are complementary to the main discussion. But sometimes I don’t even read the chat because it distracts me from the class, especially if we are interpreting or doing other exercises that require my attention.

MH: Did your classmates ever consider refraining from that idle chitchat, knowing that it might be drawing away some of that much needed attention for you? Sighted interpreters might take a quick glance at the chat box and decide there is nothing interesting going on there, but in your case, you have to wait until your screen reader tells you what’s being said, and then you have to decide, after you’ve heard it, whether it’s interesting or not. Did it ever change the dynamic in class, where your classmates said, “C’mon guys, Nadia has to put up with all of our nonsense, it must be really annoying, let’s hold back for her”?

NG: I never really brought it up. At the start of term, when I attended the induction session, I logged in on my phone and it was a mess, because my phone just kept reading out everything and I thought “This is going to be hell on earth! I am not going to survive!” And I thought that if it were to continue like that, I would have to bring it up. But then I started using my computer, where I have the choice of ignoring the chat completely or just checking it occasionally, and so I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to limit people’s choices, it felt like too much to ask. Yes, I need to read everything to get the information I need, but at the same time, I have gotten used to it in many ways, so now I just scroll down quickly to what I need to read. 

MH: So you can scan as well and pick out what’s most important? 

NG: Yes.

MH: Did your experience with other online conferencing platforms like Teams help you with that, or was this a new skill set that you had to learn?

NG: I had to learn it at Glendon, because at work we didn’t have side chats. 

MH: Now I want to ask you for some tips. As trainers of interpreters, we sometimes work with students with visual impairment, either in person or online. I have worked with you and other blind students at Glendon over the years and we do receive guidance for that, but it’s not every day that we get to ask the students themselves. So what are the main things that are really important for instructors to keep in mind when working with you in a classroom?

NG: I would like to start by saying that all my Glendon instructors have been really careful with this – for instance, they take care to read out their PowerPoints. They don’t just say “this here” or “that there”, as I have had to deal with in other learning situations – this is my third master’s degree, so I’ve been in school for a long time and seen a bit of everything! And I think Glendon’s is the most accessible program I have attended, all in all. 

But I did have some unpleasant experiences with invited guests. In one of my courses, there were a few guest speakers, and nobody told them beforehand that there would be a visually impaired student. I still remember one presentation on accounting – thankfully, I had taken a graduate course on accounting so I knew what it was about – but still, I just needed the speaker to explain what he was referring to, because he just kept saying “this and that, this and that…”. I kept asking him in the chat to refrain from doing so, but he wasn’t reading the chat, nor did he see my raised hand. So one of my classmates had to step in and explain what I needed him to know.

MH: That’s a good point. Guest speakers or visiting professors need to be told there will be someone with different requirements at the lecture, and they also need to be given the guidance on best practice – for instance, don’t say “this” and “that”, always describe what is on the PowerPoint, don’t just assume everybody has had a look at it, and so on. We will have to keep that in mind at Glendon. It just becomes second nature to do these things because we work with you on a regular basis, so we forget that others may not know it. It’s the lack of communication that gives rise to these uncomfortable situations for all involved.

NG: Another thing has to do with exercises involving interpretation with text, that is, sight translation of a text straight of the page. It’s very complicated for me to do as a user of a screen reader. We did a lot of that on one of my courses. I really tried my best, but the instructor thought that my processing was too slow. I did explain once that I was using a screen reader, but I didn’t want him to think I was seeking a pretext. So instead of insisting, I just let him think that it was me trying to find the right word and not that I was being slowed down by my screen reader. Mostly, when I am slow, it’s because I can’t read ahead.

MH: So your screen reader was holding you back. Were any accommodations made for that? A few years ago, we were told we could give visually impaired students the full text in advance of such an exercise so they could scan it with their screen reader. 

NG: No, I got it at the same time as the others. I don’t mind, it’s just that you need to understand that I am going to take longer, obviously.

MH: So, another tip would be that there are particular exercises that trainers need to know are going to feel different for you working through a screen reader.

NG: Yes. Also, if any materials are going to be used in class, they need to be sent beforehand and in an accessible format: PowerPoint presentations, or documents in .pdf format, etc. If I get a .pdf at the last minute, it will take time to convert – especially if it’s in Arabic! Those are very hard to convert.

MH: Screen readers work best with .doc format, right?

NG: Screen readers can actually work with some .pdf  files. There are two types of .pdfs. Some are accessible because they are scanned documents, not images, and these are fine. Others are scanned images and they need to be run through OCR software to be converted to text. In English, that is pretty easy and I can do it in a split second. But in Arabic, it’s complicated. Just generally, .pdf files are pretty horrible for Arabic. In one of my classes, we had to go over some UN documentation and I couldn’t do the exercise because my screen reader couldn’t read the Arabic written in the .pdf. 

MH: So the problem is with the document format? And if you get it in advance, you aren’t struggling during class time with converting files and having to adapt on the fly. You need extra lead time to prepare class materials.

NG: Exactly. 

MH: Those are some very good tips! And they are in line with the guidance we receive at Glendon on working with visually impaired students. It’s good to get it from the horse’s mouth, to hear that these things really do make a difference for you. We try at Glendon to make sure that visually impaired students have the same sort of access as other students and it’s heartening to hear that it has that effect.

NG: Truly, that is the case.

And that’s the end of Part I on fostering accessibility in training. Please check in next week for Nadia’s accessibility tips for developers of online platforms and tools for interpreters.