Katie's Story

Katie’s bright dress and confidence are the first things that stand out when we meet on Callaghan campus. But it’s her Guide Dog Sadie that captures everyone’s attention; a DO NOT PAT sign on her back alerting people to her working dog status. Currently completing a PhD on how to help large organisations engage in disability inclusive planning and practice, Katie is also a staff member of the University of Newcastle, taking on a role in the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion team in 2022. In this role, Katie coordinates the Disability Confidence Training program amongst other things – some content from which she’s sharing with us during her photoshoot. It’s clear she’s passionate about disability inclusion and well-placed to educate others, having lived as a blind person from birth.

Speaking about what drove her to enrol in a doctorate, she tells:

I think when you are a disabled person and you experience barriers to participation and inclusion everywhere you turn, whether they’re environmental issues or attitudinal barriers, it makes you very curious about how to change those things.

In school, “chronically behind” and “feeling isolated”, Katie shares that her experience as a young person was “a product of not really having access to inclusive education, like it was always tacked on”. Katie adds that she gave up learning Braille at the age of 10, a consequence of regularly being isolated from other children to learn the code and use her ‘noisy’ equipment. She’s since returned to learning and using Braille as an adult, but the memory makes her angry.

In high school, not able to keep up with her schoolwork and unhappy with what was proposed for her senior years – Years 11 and 12 being spread out over four years – Katie decided to leave at 17 and soon enrolled in Newstep. Having encountered brochures for pathways programs at the University of Newcastle in her school library plus having a brother who’d completed Newstep a few years prior, Katie knew she had an alternative way into university. Reflecting on her move from school into an enabling program, Katie was positive: “The [school] system wasn’t really set up to be universally accessible, so I needed a lot of adjustments … [but] Newstep was set up so differently … all I needed was lecturers to send me their PowerPoints beforehand and I’d be able to keep up.” While completing Newstep, Katie took up Braille lessons again and taught herself how to use screen reading software enabling her to use a computer non-visually. Using the appropriate assistive technology, Katie was able to maintain a full-time study load.

Katie also shared that the pathways lecturers had belief in her, “which was really important … at that time”. Talking about what she learnt in academic literacy classes during the program, Katie laughs: “I don’t know how people do university without it … they taught us how to write paragraphs, how to structure essays properly, it’s stuff I never learnt at school.”

Completing Newstep in 2009 at Ourimbah and enrolling into a Bachelor of Social Science at Callaghan the following year, Katie has gone from strength to strength. With a career now focused on advocating for a more inclusive society, including through her work as a sessional academic, Katie would be an asset in any workplace but we’re lucky to have her at our university, and Sadie of course.

Story by Jo Hanley

Photos by Visual Communication Design student, Kristen Zahra

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