ALT But barriers for disabled people start even before they get into the newsroom. For example, several journalists have spoken out about the difficulties of passing shorthand when disabled. In 2017 Kyle Gunn, a student with cerebral palsy, had to fight to be even allowed onto a journalism diploma, after initially being told he would automatically fail if he was unable to pass shorthand. Even for Kate Pounds, who made headlines after passing her 100wpm exam in 2020, said that despite extensive support from her tutors, there were no ‘accessible resources’ readily available for blind journalists. We reached out to Kate at the start of our investigation in 2020. Speaking to Journo Resources at the time, Kate said: “There were no resources at hand to visually impaired students like me. I was lucky enough to have a school and department that really encouraged me. After a few weeks of research, someone from the Royal National Institute of Blind People phoned me to say they found this old shorth

ALT It was no longer in circulation, and there was no guidance on how it worked, nor practice exercises. It was just symbols and meanings, and I learned shorthand out of a book that hardly anyone else understood. “You were very much on your own with it. Accommodations like this book work wonders and they helped me pass first time, but if I struggled with any of the grammar of modern shorthand rules, nobody could support me, because nobody else could read it. There was no way to measure my progress beyond what I could tell them, and it surprised me to learn there were no accessible resources for it.”