Hi all, I want it to know what things blind people do out of my country. how you all are doing. if studying is important for you or you don't think that study is important and what's your job. thanks

my belief is that if you're a blind person you really have to be self-employed. some unique thing you can do or music production or something, it's hard to get employment as a blind person

to me it's very important to be self-reliant and do all you can to get a job, even though it can seem hard. Important to use your skills and work hard. My belief is that just because we're blind, it doesn't mean that we can't work like everyone else. I also believe that it's the best way to change the view on blind people when it comes to getting jobs.

Count on your abilities but not on your disabilities!

Yes, I agree with the-raven and magicalKrrish.
The disability is not an obstacle to be employed.
i am from Romania and here the blind people can get job if they really wants this and are a serious.
The blind people can work here, as teacher, as therapeutmaking body massage, as informatician, as trainer, as musician, as lawyer, as simply worker in a factory for blind people and so on, the list could be continued.
It depends of the abilities and studies.
It is like for sighted people.

Hi there,
I am currently studying English language and literature. Very few blind people in my country have decided or achieved this task because there are not many services which offer you the possibility to study this subject. Learning a foreign language as a blind person may be dam hard at times if you haven't got services to make it accessible to you.
On another note, I'd like to say that if you are blind, it's not the end of the world. Many blind people, not only here, but everywhere in the world can achieve, even what a sighted won't. We are, exactly in a hierarchical position, like sighted ones. You may see them from the least to the highest position, from a shopper to a politician or scientist. We are similarly divided in that way. You can see blind people who stay at home 24 hours, to those who work as teachers, psychologists, or informaticians. The position of yours does not fall back on your disability, but very importantly does rely on your self-responsibility and awareness.
Cheers!

i don't exactly agree with the fact of blind people being the same as sighted people when it comes to employment. If 2 people come up for an interview, and one is blind and one is sighted, who's the employee going to choose? the person who is up there, a good hand with all the equipment and who can see, or the person they might have to pay for assistive tools for who has a disability? Personally, if i were in the employer's shoes, i would choose the sighted person. That is not to say that if i were to employ something i would count the fact that they are blind as a disadvantage. I also think that when people hear the word disability they think of intelectual.

That's why, I believe, it's important for blind people to get jobs, so that view on blind people maybe can change, not necessarily completely of course, but it's important not to give up. We can do what we set our minds to, if we really want it.

That only works for a blind person if you do it on your own. If you want to teach, you open a school. If you want to do IT, open a technological centre. It's just to hard to expect employers to employ blind people

well, that, too, depends on the job and on what skills that blind person has compared to others.

Pessamistic much?
I know many visually impaired people who are employed; I also know many who are not.
It all comes down to your desire, your passion and how hard your willing to work.
Self employment is great, but I can list a thousand things that can go rong with it, needing and not having $$$ would be at the top of that list.

I agree

well, in my country blind people have priority when it comes to get job, of course according to the laws. if there are two people looking for a job and one of them is blind the employer must give priority to the blind one. I don't know if this really work like that, also goverment must take sure that people with desabilities could get a job. again I don't know if that is for real and works because I'm barely starting my studies at the university the next year and I've never looked for a job so I don't know if employers comply laws.

Yeah but look at it logically! If it's a one-man job and the employers hear the word "disability," I accept and feel that the sighted person would be chosen if in any way possible

Here in the UK75% of Blind and Partially Sighted people are registered as unemployed. Unemployment is at 6.5% and never before have more people have been employed so something is going wrong somewhere. We know a lot of talented people are unemployed that use the playroom and we know if they were sighted they would never be in that situation. We also know that people can get work and we know those that found jobs did not get them easily. We also know that if it was from any other group it would be unacceptable. If you took out those that work in jobs created by organisations for the Blind then the figure would be even higher. I also know friends that have had jobs but not what they were really trained to do do but least they have a job. The good thing is there are Blind people in work but more should be done to get even more in work as society is missing out on some excellent people!

That statistic doesn't surprise me at all

and that's why it's so important that we change it

Ah, don't worry, in uK even few sighted people are employed, just cause there are many imigrants, who work for less money and don't care if they are employed or no. smile

yeah. benefit britain :D

I am studying and I am in 8th grade

I'm studying at university this year as part of my job for a blind organization. I am a community worker and my role is to put the activities together for fellow blind people to spend 2 to 3 days a month out in the community. My boss I work for is sighted and he has been real supportive in my ability to help him with this task.

Hi,
I wholeheartedly disagree with a few of the comments put here.
'you really have to be self-employed. some unique thing you can do or music production or something, it's hard to get employment as a blind person'
It is saddening that music is still considered as one of the primary occupational activities a visually impaired person must or can pursue. The situation has really changed, particularly in developed countries like where you come from, Ireland, and also where I come from, India.
Some intriguing occupations and professions completely visually impaired people have taken up include law, literature, mathematics, science and technology, aerobics teacher, chartered accountancy and finance, psychology, etc. Maths and science, for instance, has become much more accessible than it used to be. Once, on a get together kind of meet for visually impaired children and parents, on seeing my laptop, some parents of visually impaired children if I hadn't already dropped the Mathematics and Science subject, and my prompt answer was a No. In fact, my aspiration and ambition is to pursue Computer Science, and join the IT and technology stream. Today, disability has become an impediment only in certain fields, which too is trying to be mitigated to the maximum extent possible,and I would say the sky is the limit. I know a visually impaired Indian (Kartik Sawhney) who began winning distinguished ranks in national and international competitive examinations, in subjects such as language and literature, cyber, mathematics, science and is even a trained classical singer. In his twelfth grade, he topped India in the disabilities category, and since the Indian Institute of Technology denied him admission due to disability, he applied and cracked his way into the prestigious Stanford University in the United States. A few months ago, he has now got an internship with Microsoft, and works there.
Then again, there are less adventurous yet successful stories of other visually impaired people, such as bhavesh Bhatia, who lost his mother at an early age, cand with very little vision remaining, began making candles and selling them on the road. He met a woman whom he
went on to love and marry, and his candle making business also has prospered to becoming a multi-million company, being awarded the Best Self Employed Disabled Person by India's President, with his candle making business having customers like wealthy Indian firms including Reliance Industries, ranbaxy Volini, etc. And of course along with all this, being a gifted athlete and sportsman, winning in national and international Paralympics in short put, discuss throw, javelin throw, etc.
Such stories are endless, and employment goes only to those who passionately strive for it.
If you think that because of lack of awareness and in some cases exclusionary attitude of employers and their dubiousness of the capabilities of persons with disabilities will hamper our job and employment opportunities, and thus we should stick to something like music and be done with it, I feel you are highly mistaken. We must prove what we can and cannot do, and our conviction and determination will drive us into our dreams. This may sound slightly filmy or unrealistic, but the above stories are to prove just that point.
'i don't exactly agree with the fact of blind people being the same as sighted people when it comes to employment.'
Of course, a disabled person certainly needs to go that extra mile to convince the employer of his skill set. The employer needs to be introduced and oriented to the assistive technology he will require on the computer, the parts of his job he may require adaptive tools for, and the slightly modified yet feasible methodologies he might need to deploy to work efficiently. But once the employer is convinced, it should probably all come down to the actual skill sets of the two interviewees.
'If 2 people come up for an interview, and one is blind and one is sighted, who's the employee going to choose? the person who is up there, a good hand with all the equipment and who can see, or the person they might have to pay for assistive tools for who has a disability?'
The one who is more capable and efficient at the given work. Well, considering the advent of free and open source technology like NVDA, there doesn't seem to be anything that the employer needs to pay for. I also don't see how a sighted person is better at all equipment and not a visually impaired, specific examples appreciated.
'That only works for a blind person if you do it on your own. If you want to teach, you open a school. If you want to do IT, open a technological centre. It's just to hard to expect employers to employ blind people'
It isn't hard at all. I thought teaching was a profession currently many visually impaired people indulge in? I know of many, many visually impaired Indians in teaching, some in language, others music, and a few in mathematics and science (let me know if examples are required). Also, don't tell me that there are no visually impaired people working in the world's biggest IT giants, may it be Google, Apple, Microsoft or whatever else.
'Yeah but look at it logically! If it's a one-man job and the employers hear the word "disability," I accept and feel that the sighted person would be chosen if in any way possible'
That consternation of an employee with a disability that fills the employer is what needs to be changed, and that will change only with our persistent efforts by emerging in unexplored and unentered fields.
If there is this problem of lack of sufficient awareness, we cannot simply ignore it and try to find something that works, which is bound to be something perhaps not even in our interest or talents, or something that is much more meagre and mediocre an opportunity. We need to address that problem by spreading awareness in whatever small or big way we can, and plough our way into what we aspire to do.
Very few things are not doable today, but most can be achieved with some adaptations and some perseverence.
Best Regards,
Bhavya Shah
P.S. I am Bhavya Shah, an eight grader school student. All my above comments and thoughts are based on my regular reading of various success stories and issues that I read daily about visually impaired persons, through related e-mail lists.

Hi. As the subject says, I will tell you about my studies. I am studying the law and this year I will finish the university studies. I was fascinated by this domain since I was 15 or something like that, and was my free choice. I fill that I am capable to be a lawyer or prosecutor and I will try the best.

Here in the United States, the unemployment rate of legally blind people is roughly seventy five percent, with a higher percentage of Braille readers being counted as employed vurses the non-Braille readers. Unfortunately, even though statistics are showing that blind people who have the ability to read Braille are more likely to gain employment regardless of education level, the trend here in this country is to deny blind people Braille education in favor of teaching them computer assistive technology.

As a Braille reader myself, I currently work as a lead generator for a heating and cooling company in Costco warehouse stores and have to use both my Braille skills and my computer skills to fulfill the responsibilities of the job.

Oh, sadly, brail is being abolished these days, few people, and I mean a very small number of people use brail in my country after graduating from primary school. This, being said, every institution responsible for the blind will be rather happy to provide audio books instead of brail ones. Also, many blind students like me are steadily learning how to use a computer, normally with jaws and PDF/Microsoft word format books. So this gets easier and easier. Every blind person that is graduated from a special school is supposed to know brail here, but I believe this does not play a significant role in the employment rate of blind people, since hardly anybody in my place, and I think everywhere else knows what the brail is.
Speaking of unemployment rate of blind people in my country, I think the number of hired ones is nearly inconsiderable. You should be a new born “Einstein” to get a job as a blind people here. I know this is very sad to hear, but it is as true as my words are.

braillekid, good point there. I would add that for employers to favor a blind candidate to a similarly qualified sighted one, they want to see the unique value that the blind applicant can add. The cost for buying a screen reader is no longer a determining factor at least in the United States, rather, the negative perception and the lack of education around how a blind person work remain a major barrier. For example, a big portion of the public still think we need to use a human reader to read electronic document to us, and we need voice recognition software to dictate to the computer. Given so many still think our cane is to support us upright, without it we would collapse to the floor, I'd understand why they don't consider us suitable for the job in question ;-)
The job market is competitive, sometimes there are more valid reasons than simply discrimination for an employer to choose a sighted person over a blind one. So echoing the-raven's point, it's up to us not to give up, and to become and stay competitive. The first consideration in my opinion is to choose a career that has relatively lower barrier. For example, if the work only requires Microsoft Office or an internet browser, it would be much easier for us to be competitive than an alternative one that needs many specialized custom software that might or might not be accessible. Therefore internship is a great idea for students who are considering a particular job or company, during which we can get a sense if this is really what we want and what we can be equally productive. It also allows the employer to get to know us as a real, unique person, rather than the generic, vague concept of a blind person.
Of course passion plays a big role in selecting a career. If we love what we do, we will be more motivated to seek creative ways to get around the barrier.
Blind people around the world work in many different industries. Self-employed or working for an employer all depend on the opportunities coming to us, and our personality regarding to how much risk and responsibilities we are willing to shoulder.
The bottom line is that we need to be positive. Stats are against us, true, that 70% or 75% blind people are unemployed, but 25% or 30% is still a quite large number, no?

Hello all, i am just wondering whether these stasticsstatistics are on blind people only or also visually impaired, the difference is everything. And Omthetechnowizard i have researched this previously and it seems that in india the culture is totally different when it comes to blind people. Not all that much has to be considered, blind people are basically equals in india, but i think it depends on your region. Just to add something to that, "A developed country like ireland"? that's debatable. :D

Stats in the US are about the legally blind group, including some with limited usable vision. Don't know the exact definition, but it should be on the internet.

In short; studying or working in Iraq is hard for now

I know: we must work hard to see the results, but if we worked hard we will see consequences in Iraq.

Anyway

My gratitude.

Sajad.

i want study coumputer