Celebrating Women’s Achievements: Aha! moments from Suzy and Kristie
Aha! moments can come in various forms. From small personal achievements to solid pieces of advice, to a genuine lightbulb moment. Being a woman in business can come with a multitude of aha! moments, some inspiring and positive, others may be born from frustrations that can sometimes feel like a glass ceiling or a seemingly unmovable rock.
At Helping Solutions, we love to see incredible women thriving in business and achieving their goals and do what we can to celebrate their wins, big and small. From frontline staff, to the nursing team, to our office and leadership team, there are women doing great things throughout our organisation.
Let’s take a few moments from our day to learn from Suzy and Kristie and their experiences…
Suzy’s career journey in the disability sector spans over three decades! This is hard to believe when you come to meet her and see her cheeky youthful smile. Suzy began as a ward domestic at a disability organisation and her ‘aha!’ moment came when she was quickly seconded to their nursing team, as Suzy had unwittingly made an impression on the company director with the way she showed acceptance and empathy to all the children that came through the ward, regardless of the severity of their disability.
Advice that Suzy received early on in her career, to be accepting of all cultures and beliefs, is something that she has carried forward and extended beyond these bounds to be inclusive and accepting of all individuals.
She emulates this same level of respect and empathy to all the members of her team. She notes that her favourite part of being the NDIS Operations Manager is watching her team “grow and develop in their individual roles.” Suzy has also mentioned that she loves working alongside the management team who have the same goals as her to the benefit and “inclusion of everybody we provide a service to”.
Suzy draws on inspiration from renowned author, model and activist, Waris Dirie; Nobel Peace prize winner and activist Malala Yousafzai; and the incomparable Rosa Parks, whose arrest made her an inspiration to many and subsequently prompted the dissolution of segregation in the U.S.
KRISTIE LISTER | HR Advisor, Xanadu Group
“There is no dumb question when you’re learning.” This is a piece of advice that has stuck with Kristie from the early days of her career, back when she would ask a particular manager for help, she was often met with this response. She likes to pass on the same wisdom to anyone who turns to her for support or guidance, as she likes to, in her words, ‘create a positive and enjoyable work environment’.
Kristie comes from humble beginnings, living in the Wheatbelt of WA before moving to Perth. She still enjoys the country life when she gets a chance to escape the city. Kristie fondly recalls an elderly community member of her country town talking to her high school class about inclusion, with solid resolve “diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice we make every day”. This is bang on, and so applicable in our approach to day-to-day decisions in the workplace.
Kristie has overcome many barriers in her life including homelessness, mental health and epilepsy, which is what has shaped her to the resilient and strong woman she is today. Kristie is also inspired and passionate about the Body Image Movement, a 2023 campaign launched by Taryn Brumfitt, Australian of the Year 2023, teaching individuals to embrace and accept their bodies and reject unrealistic beauty standards. So relatable Kristie!
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Thank you to these women for their vulnerability in sharing their stories, and a shout out to all the inspirational women in our organisation. These women exemplify the power of resilience, empathy, and determination, showing that no challenge is insurmountable when met with passion and purpose. Let’s continue to #InspireInclusion in all our endeavours going forward.
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“There is nothing ‘normal’ about our family, and that’s a good thing!” exclaims Vikki, mum of two boys under 6 who have received autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. “To paint a picture for you, we were at a family breakfast over the weekend. The environment was not a familiar one, as it was a house where......
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Accessibility
Accessibility modes
Epilepsy Safe Mode
Dampens color and removes blinks
This mode enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
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Cognitive Disability Mode
Helps to focus on specific content
This mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode
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This mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
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Letter Spacing
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Center Aligned
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Visually Pleasing Experience
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Accessibility Statement
helpingsolutions.com.au
October 6, 2024
Compliance status
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience,
regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level.
These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible
to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific
disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML,
adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Screen-reader and keyboard navigation
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with
screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive
a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements,
alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website.
In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels;
descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups),
and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag
for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology.
To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on
as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Disability profiles supported in our website
Epilepsy Safe Mode: this profile enables people with epilepsy to use the website safely by eliminating the risk of seizures that result from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.
Visually Impaired Mode: this mode adjusts the website for the convenience of users with visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.
Cognitive Disability Mode: this mode provides different assistive options to help users with cognitive impairments such as Dyslexia, Autism, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements of the website more easily.
ADHD Friendly Mode: this mode helps users with ADHD and Neurodevelopmental disorders to read, browse, and focus on the main website elements more easily while significantly reducing distractions.
Blindness Mode: this mode configures the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and websites must be compatible with it.
Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired): this profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
Additional UI, design, and readability adjustments
Font adjustments – users, can increase and decrease its size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.
Color adjustments – users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds, with over seven different coloring options.
Animations – person with epilepsy can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.
Content highlighting – users can choose to emphasize important elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.
Audio muting – users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.
Cognitive disorders – we utilize a search engine that is linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.
Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions.
Browser and assistive technology compatibility
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Notes, comments, and feedback
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to