I recently had a discussion with friends overseas regarding employment of people who are blind in the United States. My friends asked about the types of jobs people are doing, what accommodations make work easier, and what makes it difficult for people to find employment. These are all good questions, and I recognized that in my friends’ perspective people who are blind and who live in the United States are at a great advantage. It is true in many ways. People who are blind in the United States have access to education, training, and technology that are not available in some other areas of the world. I also know from discussions with people who live in other areas of the world that there are blind people who would prefer to live in their own country because they feel their opportunities are greater.
I tried to express to my friends that their perspective is extremely valid but there is also great need for change in the United States regarding employment and people who are blind. We spoke over an Internet connection that broke up periodically, and it was difficult to communicate all that we wanted to say to each other. I do not have permission or proper words to tell their story. I hope that one day I will be able to share links to it as a follow-up to this post. For today, I can share mine; and I hope that it will be a resource both to America and as an answer to some of their questions.
My study of blindness and employment begins with an examination of what blind people were doing in the United States 100 years ago. The only education that was available to a child who was blind was provided in a school for the blind. Braille was written manually, using a hand-held device called a slate and a stylus, with which a person punched each dot one at a time. There was no way for a person who was blind to read print independently, though people were taught to type in inkprint on a machine in order to communicate in writing with sighted readers.
In this time, blind people were most often employed as craftspeople, making handcrafted items which they sold to earn their living. Some were employed as salespeople, musicians and piano tuners, and teachers in schools for the blind. A few were employed as ministers, braille transcribers, politicians, and lawyers. In the early 1900s it was rare for a person who was blind to complete a university degree. Those who did were sstill often treated like children in the community. My research indicates that the unemployment rate at this time was 70 per cent.
Today a majority of children who are blind in the United States attend public school with sighted peers. They learn to use technology at an early age, including braille notetaking devices, screen reading software, and braille displays. Screen reading software provides access to many mainstream applications, including popular software such as Microsoft Office. Scanners with optical character recognition software, including Iphone apps, allow people who are blind to read print independently.
It is common for people who are blind to attend college. Many complete graduate degrees and work in fields associated with their degrees: teaching, law, psychology, social work, engineering, biology, medicine and health care, music and art, business, etc. Others work in supportive roles such as call centers, secretarial work, etc. There is a list of types of jobs that blind people can do from the Chicago Lighthouse. Edward C. Bell and Natalia M. Mino reported in 2015 in their article, Employment Outcomes for Visually Impaired Adults, that the employment rate among blind adults (those holding jobs) was 37.5 per cent with men earning higher wages than women. They also reported that higher education levels tended to result in better employment outcomes.
I have asked myself why the outcome rate is practically the same as it was 100 years ago when so much new technology is available and blind people have so much better education and so many more career options than we once did. I have a doctoral degree. I spent several years seeking employment between the time when I completed my undergraduate degree and the time when I started work on my Master’s degree. I observed some things about the state of entry-level jobs in the United States that help me to understand the problem.
Less skilled jobs tend to be the ones where people are required to hold driver’s licenses (and to drive as part of the job). Many of these jobs, such as call center work, have been automated or sent overseas because employers can pay less for overseas labor. People who are blind who lack higher education have fewer employment opportunities available that are accessible; so they remain unemployed unless or until companies create opportunities for them–or until they can create opportunities for themselves.
The American Foundation for the Blind provides a discussion of statistics. The discussion regarding statistics should be read with several things in mind:
- Many people experience visual impairment that does not meet criteria for legal blindness. These people experience serious stigmatization in the job search and difficulty in certain aspects of work-related matters, most notably the requirement to drive in order to perform certain types o fjobs.
- Many people who are of working age experience so much difficulty in finding work that they give up. These people are classified in research as not looking for work, though often they would work if given a fair opportunity. If these individuals were represented as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be significantly higher.
- Many people who lose their vision must exit the work force in order to learn new skills in order to re-enter the work force with new skills and, possibly, new careers. These individuals are also not classified as unemployed due to the fact that they are undergoing training.
We keep trying to improve the situation. We give people training in how to live and work with blindness. We educate them in a career field that is interesting to them and compatible with their talents and abilities. We develop new technology that makes it possible to access workplace software. We talk to employers about how blind people do things. We pass laws prohibiting discrimination based on disability. Most recently, journalists and others have been trying to help employers to understand that the hardships blind people face actually make them better employees. None of these things work alone. They all must go together. A blind person who has worked hard to prepare him/herself for a career needs an open-minded employer and technology that will make it possible to get the job done.
My friends asked about what resources were available for people with disabilities and for employers. Below are a few–there are many more. I hope these will give anyone reading an idea of what is available. I should also say that many job seekers with disabilities use mainstream job search sites to find jobs and apply at company’s human resources pages without looking for disability-specific resources.
I am a person with a disability who found my jobs through mainstream sites and networking. I also often say that a person often does all the right things in the job search and does not get the job. Sometimes it is related to discrimination and sometimes not. Humility is knowing when it is and when it isn’t. Self-care is knowing that it always hurts and needs to heal, even while we continue to seek employment.
Resources for Job Seekers
AFB’s CareerConnect provides information for job seekers about careers, how to prepare a resume, how to prepare for an interview or disclose a disability to an employer, and the opportunity to network with mentors who are working in the field in which one is interested in working.
Perkins school for the Blind provides similar resources as well as a job fair online where people can search for places to apply for jobs.
Resources for Employers
Mississipi State University provides information for businesses about how to help employees who are experiencing vision loss, videos of people who are blind at work, information about myths concerning blindness and work, legal requirements of hiring people who are blind in the United States, types of accommodations, and articles about blind professionals.
Perkins School for the Blind provides guides to workplace accommodations, information about interviewing legalities and etiquette, an ebook about inclusion in the workplace, a guide to recruiting employees with disabilities, guidance on determining the need for accessibility improvements, and more.
VisionAware provides employers with practical considerations in hiring a visually impaired employee. These might better be called tips–people who are blind don’t simply want a company to consider doing these things but rather to do them.
Ed Henkler writes to employers about the importance of hiring people who are blind in his article, Employment of Blind; Actions, Not Words. This article contains several links to related articles that can help employers to understand how people who are blind live and work.
News Articles
Blind Employees Offer Employers Valuable Workplace Skills. This article is from HR Executive. Instead of talking to employers about legal requirements, the author talks about the struggle that Kirk Adams experienced in finding employment, why he brought value to the American Foundation for the Blind as a leader, and how the experiences of other blind people make them valuable to other employers. This is a new way to approach employers who often think of blindness as a risk or burden on their companies.
Workplace Prejudice Keeps Blind People Out of Employment. This article is about the experience of prejudice in Denmark. The narratives are fairly consistent with the experiences of blind people in the United States.
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Comprehensive and fascinating. Thank you.
Great article, Sarah. One cannot over-emphasize your personal initiative, determination and self-motivation in achieving all that you have so far in life! You have created and discovered so many ways to further your education and employment! Not everyone, whether blind or sighted, will succeed in these areas as you have because they are not motivated to do so. May God continue to guide and bless you.