Success is not an accident
Getting involved in new projects is something I do a lot. When someone asks if I can help, or can I do something, the first word I think of is usually “yes”. Being National President of Blind Citizens NZ has increased my exposure and given me some chances. I’m not telling this story to be boastful. I’m sharing because of the consequences of taking my chances, making some opportunities, challenging a mindset or two, and the impact that a handful of people have had with relatively small acts with massive long-run effects.
Way back in 2015, the DPO Coalition needed someone to join a working group looking into disability data and evidence. Perhaps the only uninspiring thing for me was the name. You guessed it, the Disability Data and Evidence Working Group. At that time, the DPO Coalition was quite reluctant to appoint representatives who were not sitting at the DPO Coalition table. I don’t feel at all immodest in saying that I was a natural selection. I was Vice-President of Blind Citizens NZ and a statistician. As it happens, there are very few people in the statistics community who identify as disabled, and even fewer who are linked to any disabled people’s organisation (DPO).
I’m still part of that work, and it is because of my engagement with it, that Stats NZ were very aware of my interest and knowledge. Key Stats NZ staff had also seen me in action when they attended a DPO Coalition meeting, which I happened to be chairing at the time. In late May, I was asked to Chair the Independent Evaluation Panel advising the Government Statistician on the Future of Census for 2028 and beyond.
That one position for the DPO Coalition led to a few other opportunities, including the one that matters most so far.
To take up this opportunity meant several things had to be sorted out in a real hurry, not least of which was dropping to part-time at Massey. The salary saved on me was needed to pay someone else to cover teaching commitments so my students weren’t adversely affected. This had the support of my line managers at work because they could see this opportunity as recognition of my contributions to my profession. One of those people was also critical in some other employment opportunities which I will mention soon.
At the beginning of September, I was a panellist in the opening session of a series of webinars exposing the value that disabled people can bring to research if collaborations are inclusive. In preparation for that session, I was asked to prepare a short description of what I do and a little about how I do it.
Well, I teach undergraduate students, supervise postgraduate students, do research, and I do Statistical Consulting with clients all across campus. The tricky part was describing how I do it. The question really did not need me to say that I answer emails, do Zoom meetings, etc. because that’s what everyone does. They wanted me to talk about something I do which is not usual to people in my profession or perhaps something the audience doesn’t think I can do which must be an insurmountable barrier. I chose to mention that “today, I do all of my own marking”, and that “I no longer need a sighted person to read the students’ work to me”. I chose this because it is not an accident.
We were also asked what had made a difference in our lives as students and as professionals. I chose to mention two people.
One was a Mathematics lecturer. The course in question was 300-level Axiomatic Geometry. The diagrams needed in the assignment were proving difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t taken this course, because the diagrams did not use the rules of geometry we were all taught in primary school. Everyone I asked to help draw the diagrams for me, proved that the education system had successfully conditioned them all to the point that the abstract geometry of my assignment was utterly foreign and therefore impossible to draw.
I approached the lecturer and told him that I had a problem with the assignment and a potential solution. Maybe you’ve guessed it, but I told him that I couldn’t find anyone to draw the diagrams but I was prepared to tell him what I wanted drawn. I thought this was brilliant. I would not have to suffer the consequences of a person’s inability to deal with abstract rules of geometry because the lecturer was the most qualified person around and I knew he could follow my instructions. In my excitement over the genius of the solution, I wasn’t ready for him to answer, “I’ll think about it”. Maybe the disappointment I felt was written all over my face because he then said something like, “no wait, I shouldn’t have to think about it; let’s give it a go”. We did it a couple of days later, and this time I admit it, I am boasting; I nailed it. His willingness to try was all I needed.
The second noteworthy event was about the first job I obtained as a member of the academic staff. The role was called “Graduate Assistant” which meant I would have to do 180 hours of work per year doing student support jobs which the lecturers didn’t want to do for themselves.
There were five Graduate Assistants in the Department of Statistics as we were known back then. We had to do tutorials, computing labs, assignment marking, and hours in a drop-in clinic for struggling students. When my application was discussed, the fact that I could not do any marking was apparently raised at the appointment committee meeting. I learned much later which person had gone into bat for me and pointed out that the workloads could be arranged so that there was no marking for me to do. I also learned that the point was made that they could fit one Jonathan into the mix, but not two.
As an aside, one of the other four Graduate Assistants was not all that happy that she would have to do more marking. However one of the others loved the idea of doing marking and not having to deal with as many students so the work was juggled even further.
The attitude that carried the appointment committee’s favour represents an approach that looks to what a person can contribute as against what they can’t do. I’m sure we still need to convince people that we can be productive contributors if only we are given the chance to do so.
Many readers will know that I seem to have been the first blind person to get a job as a lecturer in statistics anywhere in the world. My first opportunity to be a lecturer came down to a two-horse race, and for reasons that don’t matter for this article, I came second.
By that time, I had over four and a half years proof that I could do everything lecturers were doing except marking. I interviewed really well, but the panel chose the other guy.
I was asked though, if I would consider taking a fixed-term contract as an Assistant Lecturer instead. I hadn’t even heard of such a job title, because there weren’t any around. It turned out that an Assistant Lecturer was the same as a Lecturer but on 80% of the salary. That sucked.
I could have refused, but it was obvious to me that the same someone had gone into bat for me again. I pretty quickly decided that it was not a matter of 80% v 100%. I was being offered 80% instead of nothing, 80%, and a chance to prove the panel chose the wrong candidate. I had two years to prove it.
As it happens, another position came up in our department about eighteen months later. This time there were lots more applicants. This time the panel had no wiggle room because I had totally proven my worth, and my marking had been completed courtesy of Job Support funding for a support person to read all that handwriting. It has just ticked over the twenty-year mark since I gained that permanent full-time position. The “other guy” has gone off to academic obscurity.
There are plenty of other events in my life where a person has done something that has had a profound and lasting impact. The events I chose to mention above all came about because someone or a small group of someones gave me a chance to do something new. Some of these relatively small thoughtful acts have led to much greater things. I do however need to mention how I can mark my students’ assignments today.
The finished product of what most people think of as statistics is piles of numbers in lists or tables as well as graphical displays. It’s the graphical displays that stifle many blind and low-vision people’s interest in taking courses in statistics at university. Maybe the ugly mathematics has something to answer to here too, but there are plenty of blind mathematicians out there.
The reality is though that the tabulated results and the pretty graphs are just the endpoint. In a modern world, so much of being a statistician involves thought, planning, experimentation, and talking about it.
The main way statisticians work with data is by using a programming language because the mouse-driven point-and-click, dialogue box and menus-type software are inefficient.
As it happens, I studied statistics at a time when blind people could not use Windows. I was reliant on the old DOS environment. While my classmates were quickly pointing and clicking their way around, I was learning obscure code and typing a lot. I had to learn more programming skills than my immediate peers.
In the last ten years, I have removed all interaction with the point-and-click software still used by some of my colleagues. When their software of choice gets its latest cosmetic facelift, they have to re-write all their notes. I only have to re-run the programs I wrote years ago. Today, I am amongst the most efficient of my colleagues because I made more forward-looking decisions.
What is truly beneficial to me, and to any blind person forced to take courses in statistics, is that the way I process my programs leads to output documents that are in stock standard HTML. That’s right, my output is effectively a web document. My screen reader reads this content very well, perhaps better than the same content would be read in any other standard format.
What’s even better though, is that because this is now the modern practice for 21st century statisticians, it is also what we have to teach our students.
To prove to me that they’ve learned how to do statistical work properly, my students now need to give me the code they wrote and the final document they created. Their original work is plain text which works well with my screen reader, and my Braille display, as does the final output HTML document. Sure, I can’t see the graphs they created, but I can see the code they used to make their graphs. If I don’t understand their code, I can put it into ChatGPT to get an explanation.
I’m also interested in understanding how good ChatGPT is in giving me a description of the actual image. ChatGPT is the latest tool I have worked with as part of the research component of my day job.
Over the years, I’ve looked into a host of ways to help a blind person understand their data or the tools needed to succeed in mathematics or statistics courses at university. Primarily because I need to be able to do this to do my job. This is why I said that it is no accident that today I can do my own marking without sighted support.