Access Through Action

02/06/2026

Acoustics and your deaf child — the things that actually matter.

Hard floors, high ceilings, and bare walls don't just echo. They actively compete with every word your child is trying to hear.

Here's what makes the biggest difference:

🔹 Rugs on hard floors — the single highest-impact change. Even one large rug in the main living area reduces reverberation noticeably.

🔹 Soft furnishings — couches, cushions, curtains. They absorb sound. Hard surfaces reflect it. The more reflective the room, the harder your child's auditory system is working just to separate speech from noise.

🔹 Talk with them, not across the room — face-to-face at close distance beats a perfect acoustic room every time. Position matters more than distance.

🔹 Turn off competing background noise — TV on in another room, dishwasher running, fan overhead. These aren't neutral. They're signal killers.

🔹 Quiet the kitchen — extractor fans are loud. So are benchtops. If the kitchen is where your family talks, it's where your child is working hardest.

None of this requires renovation. It requires attention.
Your child's listening environment is something you can actually change.

29/05/2026

🧠 Just thinking out loud — "Ozempic Ear" and a hypothesis I can't stop turning over
There's been growing chatter in health communities about people on Ozempic, Wegovy and similar GLP-1 medications experiencing ear symptoms — tinnitus, muffled hearing, ear fullness, and pressure. It's been loosely coined "Ozempic ear" and while it's not yet an official side effect, the reports are significant enough that researchers are starting to pay attention.
I've been reading the emerging research and I want to share a hypothesis — and I want to be really clear, I am not a medical professional. This is me, someone who spends a lot of time in the hearing and access space, connecting dots that I think are worth a conversation.
Here's what I think might be happening:
These medications cause rapid weight loss. That weight loss includes fat tissue around the Eustachian tubes — the tiny channels that connect your middle ear to your throat and regulate ear pressure. Lose that cushioning quickly and those tubes can become structurally compromised. We already see this happen after bariatric surgery.
At the same time, GERD and reflux are among the most strongly reported side effects of GLP-1 medications — across every drug in the class. And here's where it gets interesting: there's solid existing research showing that laryngopharyngeal reflux (silent reflux) can travel up to the throat, inflame the Eustachian tube openings, and cause exactly the kind of ear symptoms people are reporting — pressure, fullness, tinnitus, even hearing loss.
So my hypothesis is a two-hit model:
👉 Weight loss strips the structural support from the Eustachian tubes
👉 Reflux then inflames those already-compromised tubes
👉 The result is middle ear pressure disruption and the hearing changes people are experiencing.
This isn't me diagnosing anyone or telling anyone what to do. It's me saying — if you're on a GLP-1 medication and you're noticing ear changes, please mention it to your GP or ENT. And if you have pre-existing silent reflux, that context matters.
The research is young. The conversation is just starting. But I think these dots are worth connecting.
👂 Not medical advice. Always consult your treating health professional.

14/05/2026

The Cost of Self-Advocacy

There is a moment that happens in environments more than anyone documents.

A child has already said what they need. Clearly. Through the right channels. In the right meetings.

Sometimes more than once, or repeated by a trusted person.
Nothing changes.
So the child reacts. They push back, shut down, disengage, or say something in a space they should never have had to say in a space. And in that moment, the conversation changes. It is no longer about the access that was not provided. It is about the child's behaviour. Their attitude. Their ability to cope.

The access failure disappears from the record. The child's response to it does not.
This is what the cost of self-advocacy actually looks like. It is not just exhausting. It is reframing. A child who was failed by a system becomes a child who is struggling. A child who was right becomes a child who is difficult. Ability gets questioned where access should be. And the child learns something they should never have to learn.
That speaking up changes nothing except how they are perceived.

I've learnt that Self-advocacy is not a skill you can teach a child in isolation. It only works when the adults around them are consistent, when provisions are upheld without the child having to fight for them in real time, and when a child's silence is not mistaken for agreement.
When those conditions are not in place, asking a child to self-advocate is not empowerment. It is exposure.

14/05/2026

When the Child Is in Control

We talk a lot about hearing technology. Which device. Which microphone. Which settings.

We talk much less about who is in control of it.

A child who is handed technology they do not understand, cannot explain, and has no say in using is not being given access. They are being managed.

There is a significant difference between the two.
When a child understands their own technology, something shifts. They can tell a peer how it works. They can decide when to use it and when they do not need it. They can fix before needing to speak up when something is not working instead of sitting quietly in a classroom that does not make sense to them. They move from being facilitated, to being capable.

What I have watched happen when that shift occurs:

Peers stop assuming and start understanding.
The child stops waiting for an adult to solve the problem.

The question "can you hear me?" asked in front of the class stops being necessary
Behaviour that looked like hostility dissolves, because the environment finally makes sense and Connection in the classroom filters out to the playground and beyond.

A child who is in control of their own access is not dependent on a teacher or adult remembering, a system working, or an adult making the right call in the moment. They are participating in their own life. That is not a technology outcome. That is a capacity outcome.

The device matters. But who owns it, understands it, and has the confidence to use it on their own terms matters more.

Access goes beyond hearing technology, we must place Person first.

08/05/2026

The best accessibility tools.

They're the ones that can be modelled, practised, and transferred. The goal is always that the student grows into independence, not dependence.
I want to talk about two built-in tools that don't get nearly enough credit: text-to-speech and typing with audio feedback. Both are already sitting inside the devices most students have. Both are underused. And both, when introduced well, can genuinely shift outcomes.

Text-to-speech and why the speed setting matters most
When a deaf or hard of hearing student reads along while listening to text being read aloud, something shifts.

The effort of decoding words on a page gets shared with the audio. That frees up cognitive space, and freed-up space is where comprehension actually happens.
The part that gets missed most often is the speed setting.

Slowing the reading rate creates a natural brake. It gives the brain time to process what was just heard before the next sentence arrives. This matters especially for students who are strong, fast decoders, and many deaf and hard of hearing students are. Speed can quietly mask a comprehension gap. The student rushes through on fluency, reaches the end of a passage, and has retained very little.
A support person reading aloud can achieve the same effect, but it requires careful judgement:
Too slow feels patronising and disrupts the natural rhythm of language,
Too fast closes the processing window before it has had time to work.
The right pace gives the auditory loop enough space to do its job
A well-set text-to-speech voice does this without negotiation and without social complexity. Most importantly, it does it without the student needing another person in the room.
That is the goal. Model it together first, then transfer it. The student learns what their best speed feels like, and eventually they set it themselves.
Typing with audio feedback and how it builds language from the inside out
Deaf and hard of hearing students often miss words in context. A sentence heard incompletely lands incompletely, and what gets stored is a fragment rather than the whole. Over time this affects not just comprehension but the ability to construct language, to write a summarised sentence, to answer an exam question in the form it requires.
Many of these students can describe. They can give examples. They can demonstrate understanding in conversation. The compressed, summarised form that exams and formal writing demand is often where the gap shows up, not because the knowledge is absent but because the language form is harder to access.
Typing with text-to-speech feedback creates a loop that builds this capacity:
As the student types, the tool reads back what they have written
They hear their own language, summarised and constructed, in real time
The repetition builds vocabulary recall and sentence awareness together
The student gets auditory access to the language they are producing, which reinforces both structure and meaning simultaneously
This is not a shortcut. It is a strategy that builds capacity over time rather than substituting for it.
The principle underneath both tools
The tools that make a lasting difference are never the ones that do the most for a student in the moment. They are the ones the student can eventually pick up and use themselves, that become part of how they work rather than a service delivered to them.
Built-in accessibility tools, used intentionally, are exactly that:
They are on every device
They cost nothing
They can be adjusted, personalised, and practised until they are genuinely the student's own
The goal is not a support person calibrating the right speed every time, or a specialist in the room for every task. The goal is a student who knows what they need, knows how to set it, and can walk into any environment and access it themselves.
That is what independence actually looks like.

15/04/2026

🌟 Big things are happening at Access Through Action!
We are currently updating our website to better reflect the niche, independent services we provide — bridging the gap between clinical recommendations and real life access for people with disability, their families and carers.
Our refreshed services include:
✅ Assistive Technology Assessment & Advice
✅ Assistive Technology Mentoring
✅ Independent Access & Review Consultation

We specialise in communication access, Deaf and hard of hearing profiles, and complex or co-occurring diagnoses — bringing lived experience and formal expertise to every person we work with.
Bear with us while we make things even better! In the meantime feel free to reach out directly — we'd love to hear from you. 😊

24/03/2026

Caption with Intention
Something exciting just landed in the accessibility world, and I want to talk about why it matters beyond the cinema.

Caption with Intention is a new dynamic captioning system recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of an emerging industry standard in cinematic accessibility.

It was co-designed with the Chicago Hearing Society by a designer with two deaf parents, and it shows.

What makes it different?

Captions that:
🎨 Show who's speaking, through colour coding by speaker
⏱️ Sync in real time, words appear as they're spoken
📣 Visualise intonation, showing how dialogue is delivered, not just what was said

That last one is the game changer. And here's why I think it matters far beyond the movie theatre.
Intonation isn't decoration. It's meaning.
A flat transcript tells you the words. Intonation tells you whether something is a question or a statement, sarcasm or sincerity, excitement or exhaustion. For hearing people, this is absorbed unconsciously through sound. For deaf and hard of hearing learners, especially children, those cues are often simply... missing.

When captions show intonation visually, something shifts. It's not just better access to content. It's modelling language as it actually works, in real context and in real time.

For students building literacy, for children with late-identified hearing loss, for anyone learning to read emotional and communicative nuance, this kind of captioning isn't a nice-to-have. It's a language learning tool.
I'd love to see this move well beyond the cinema into classrooms, therapy settings, and everyday streaming.

👉 Check out the demo reel and learn more at

Discover Caption with Intention, a revolutionary caption design system enhancing the viewing experience for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community. Transform captions with synchronized text, speaker identification, and intonation cues to improve accessibility and engagement.

01/03/2026

Access isn’t just about equipment.
It’s about connection, Confidence and Participation.

At Access Through Action, we work alongside families to identify barriers that are often overlooked in classrooms, homes, workplaces, and community spaces and turn them into practical, achievable solutions.

Connected access means:
✔ The right assistive technology
✔ The right environment
✔ The right support team
✔ The right understanding

When these pieces align, progress happens.

If something feels “not quite right” with your child’s access or participation, trust that instinct.

Reach out. Let’s look at it together.

23/02/2026

It's a breath of fresh air to see the Australian government and TAFE QLD, doing research into TAFE health and community pathways.
We look forward to contributing through our exposed lived experience, understanding of solutions requiring co-design and the greatest barrier we have faced through lack of coordinated support planning and identified system failure. Equitable and or a neutral enrollment process must be understood as the first step, currently in our experience schools are uploading ILP's with TAFE applications, believing it's mandated and constitutes being a part of a students school file. To give clarity no a students ILP should not be stored with the students main school file and should be privacy protected. Secondly no the ILP is not mandated, the DOE do not have a consent step in their policy nor does signing a TAFE/RTO school application form by any means consent. Equitable enrollment consideration can't be met on a first in best dressed basis, particularly if transition support or school don't understand who is responsible for what norr do Frontline TAFE workers directing calls or booking apoointments. It needs to be clearly understood when a student enrols in EVET as a part of their HSC pathway it is not a transfer of responsibily. The RTO like and education provider must ensure curriculum is accessible but the school remains responsible for student as an enrolled student of the school and share responsibility including duty of care, safety considerations and also upholding the students needs of support. This is due to the DOE at least in NSW purchasing courses (not services including disability support)

The above finds schools inappropriately guiding families to RTOS to seek out their own support and RTOS directing families back to schools. The difference is if the student remains enrolled at a school the school is responsible to support information access, enrollment support etc but this is not occurring in our experiences, as we believe many students are not being considered from the outset. If I was the person deciding on approved applications and the KPI is based of successful completion, and I have one application with and one application without an ILP that does not speak directly to access needs apposed to support that does not relate to RTO responsibilty it's a no brainier as to set a student up for success and complete course the student is at risk due to lack of coordinated planning and understood responsibilities.

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Submit your applied research idea by 16 March 2026 to advance disability support training with $1.4M from the TAFE Centre of Excellence Health Care and Support.

17/02/2026

BREAKING NEWS!! - Disability-led campaigning delivers major win for students with CP in NSW.

“This is a huge moment for our CPActive community. This is what true co-design looks like – and it works,” Sophie said

“For too long, students with disabilities have had to fight just to get a fair go in their exams. And they’ve had to fight over and over again for the same thing every time a new set of exams rolls round.”

“The new guidelines will reduce the stress facing students with disabilities and their families during what is already an intense time in their senior years,” Sophie said.

After years of disability-led advocacy by young people with cerebral palsy, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) has released new exam provision guidelines that will make the HSC fairer and more accessible for students with disability.