NCBI – working for people with sight loss
Insider Narratives
Report 4: Employment and Vision Impairment: An Outline of Issues
Shirley Spendlove
Preface
The Archive Project
Many people enjoy reading biographies and autobiographies, not only to find out more about a particular person that they admire or are interested in, but also in the expectation of learning something that they can apply to themselves about how other people react to, deal with and make sense of life’s experiences.
As a start to the development of such an understanding of the impact of vision impairment, NCBI has begun to collect first hand accounts that will form an Archive specializing in material about life for partially sighted and blind peoplein the Republic of Ireland. We have plenty of statistical profiles of the population of vision impaired people as a whole but what we lack is insight into the way specific circumstances and events link together in the life of individuals to shape the opportunities and difficulties with which they are presented.
As part of this Archive Project we have already completed reports on the experience of education, parenting and leisure activities by vision impaired individuals and summary reports on these topics are available on line and in hard copy. The distinctive quality of these reports is the voice of vision impaired people themselves forming the basis of any judgments or interpretations and it is this focus on vision impaired people speaking for themselves that will continue to be the central feature of this series of reports.
It is hoped that this broad biographical approach will help not only NCBI, but also health, education and other professional and voluntary services identify, resource and respond to these individuals’ expressed needs as located in the wider context of lives that involve families, friends and other agencies.
Gordon Dryden
Series Editor
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Current employment situation
(i) The significance of individual barriers
2. Social and Environmental Barriers to Employment
(i)Educational attainment
(ii) Employer attitudes and understanding
(iii) Awareness of support and training
(iv) Low expectation by others
(v) Family and friends
(vi) Benefits Trap
(vii) Transport
3. What support is being received by individuals?
(i) Careers Guidance, Job Interview Skills and Work Experience
(ii) Support, Aids and Adaptations
4. Lack of a comprehensive strategy
5. Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
This fourth publication is based on recorded interviews in 2011 of 18 people drawn from three counties in the Republic of Ireland representing rural, suburban, urban and city, all of whom have some contact with NCBI regional and national centres and who were interviewed specifically with regard to their employment experiences. Eight of these interviewees are female and ten male, covering an age range from early twenties to early sixties. These interviews are supplemented by material from previous interviews carried out for the Archive Project’s three previous publications, Profiles in Educations, Profiles in Parenting and Profiles in Social and Leisure Activities.
It is hoped that some of the key issues identified in the first hand accounts of the NCBI interviewees as barriers to participation in employment will help to inform the work of government agencies, employers and disability organisations and, perhaps most importantly, the implementation of the Disability Act (2005).
Employment provides financial capital that allows individuals to fully participate in society and to acquire the material goods that can have an impact on both living standards and quality of life. Employment is also a fundamental and enriching part of the lives of the majority of the population. It requires interaction with others and can provide a sense of validation, feelings of self-worth and a sense of status. Individuals are often judged by their degree of career success, and to be viewed as hard working is considered a positive quality.
Despite the many recognised advantages of employment, a high proportion of people with disabilities are not benefitting from it. Research has shown that, “thosereporting a longstanding/chronic illness or disability that hampered them in their daily activities or restricted the kind of work they could do had a significantly reduced probability of labour force participation.” [1]
Children wouldn’t be the area that I want to go down, the area that I want is disability but even with disability I can’t do that either because direct care disability requires lifting and doing cleaning and all that, health and safety would prevent me doing that. Then the administration side, all advertising is that you carry a full, clean drivers licence – can’t do that either, so you’re in a catch 22 and no government agency or no company is going to want to employ me plus a driver.Children wouldn’t be the area that I want to go down, the area that I want is disability but even with disability I can’t do that either because direct care disability requires lifting and doing cleaning and all that, health and safety would prevent me doing that. Then the administration side, all advertising is that you carry a full, clean drivers licence – can’t do that either, so you’re in a catch 22 and no government agency or no company is going to want to employ me plus a driver.my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;
“I went to do a degree in social care and my life kind of stops after that point.
I went to do a degree in social care and my life kind of stops after that point.
…I went to do a degree in social care and my life kind of stops after that point…my degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it…I can’t get a job in the area I…all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed.” (Interviewee E3, Female, 30+). . I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. . I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed.
This Report considers some of the main issues concerning the employment of people with disabilities in Ireland, and in particular, what the position is for people with vision impairments. Much of what we know comes from statistical data collected through the Census and Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS). Less is currently known about the individual employment experiences of people with vision impairments and the views of those who have either been unable to find work or have chosen not to join the labour force.
I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. . I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. . I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. . I can’t get a job in the area I… all my friends that I went to college with, they’re all sighted mind you, but they’re all care workers, social workers, managers of training centres, and I’m still where I was, kind of back undergraduate in 2006, unemployed. I went to do a degree in social care and my life kind of stops after that point.
my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;my degree is getting further and further away, I graduated in 2006 so the degree is getting further and further away to get a job out of it;
1. Current employment situation
Overall, the percentage of individuals with vision impairment who are in employment is much smaller than the percentage in employment for the total population. Data collected for the National Disability Survey 2006 shows that of 6500 people of working age describing themselves as having a seeing disability, just under a quarter (23.9%) were working for payment or profit; in the same yearover two thirds of the general population aged 15 to 64 were in employment (68.6%). Theemployment figure for the total population has fallen since 2006 to 60.1% in 2010, but is still markedly higher than the employment rate for people with seeing disabilities.[2]
Out of the 1,600 adults with seeing disabilities in employment, almost half work in the public sector,43.8% work in the private sector, 9.6%are involved in a job scheme, 3.4%are in supportedemployment and 2.8%are employed in shelteredworkshops. 0.5% report other forms of employment. [3]
Inequality between people with and without disabilities has been shown to continue once an individual enters the work force. Findings reported in ‘Disability and Social Inclusion’ (2005) suggested that, amongst men, the impact of disability is felt through lower levels of earnings; unfortunately there were insufficient sample numbers to calculate for women. [4] It was also noted that this did not take into account possible indirect factors such as level of education and time spent in the workforce which, in the past, has often been lower for people with disabilities. As a result, employees with disabilities could find themselves at an even greater disadvantage. The issue of workplace inequality needs to be considered within future employment policy and must not be forgotten in the battle to increase employment rates.
Two thirds (66.2%) of individuals with seeing disabilities report having had to leave work due to reasons related to their disability, highlighting the significant impact of vision impairment on many people’s ability to work. Yet this does not mean these individuals will never be in a position to return to the workplace. The challenge for NCBI and other disability organisations is to promote flexible working environments which enable individuals to return to employment as quickly as possible.
Research has identified a correlation between length of absence from work and the likelihood of return. [5]In light of this and in view ofthe high percentage of individuals forced to leave work for reasons related to their disability, a key issuefor any employment policy is how to minimise the amount of time individuals spend outside of the labour force after experiencing the onset of vision impairment.
The remainder of this Report considers some of the main individual, environmental, and attitudinal barriers identified in the literature and by Archive intervieweesthat prevent people from joining or remaining in the labour force.
(i) The significance of individual barriers
The existing literature on employment and disability identifies individual or internal barriers that can prevent an individual from entering or remaining in employment. To some extent these are practical, functional barriers and can be especially marked for the individual who acquires a vision impairment in mid or late career and whosecareer has been very successful. It is almost inevitable that at some stage they will view their disability as a barrier. Archive interviewee E18, however, regarded his new circumstances as a challenge:
“In 2005 my wife had noticed that, as I was driving, I was really struggling to see signs and things, so I went to the opticians. Generally I had gone every couple of years to have my eyes tested because working on a keyboard… sitting in front of a screen six to eight hours a day you should be aware of your eyes, so I went to Spec Savers and… he spent about ten minutes looking into one eye and after he put the light back on he called my wife in and said that he thought we should get to the eye and ear hospital immediately, it was haemorrhaging from the retina, both eyes. We go to the eye and ear and they start immediately, there and then, lasers trying to cauterise the haemorrhaging, and did a blood test and they found diabetes type two…They did steroid injections, they did a vitrectomy and there was a detachment of the retina in the left eye and that was pretty bad… The good news with the eyes is after all the work that has been done, stability, after sixteen operations, was reached; they’re still damaged irretrievably and I still need visual aids and that sort of thing but they stopped the deterioration… That’s the good news, the bad news is of course I can’t drive, there’s a huge loss of independence there. I can use a PC with zoom text and things like that and I do help the NCBI, I do run these Dolphin computer clubs for them, and also I’ve done training for them for partially sighted people, just simple stuff. That was one of the things I did do again in 2006, I did a basic teaching qualification; I did that just before the eyes really made it impossible to read the blackboard…that does give me a formal teaching qualification… I also started to write training courses, essentially at first that was a means of testing the usability of my on-line help systems I’d written. I’d get people to read it and test them on that, and it really started from there… I do other things now; I do lectures on railway history and early electrical supply… (Interviewee E18, Male, 60+)
Often, however, the individual perspective is a reflection by the individual on their experience of other people’s attitudes but such experiences do have a cumulative impact on the individual’s self esteem.
“…there’s times you get down, times through work…some people used to make me feel…but I stood up to them and reversed things and it’s all worked out in my favour now that people can see I can do these things…they all think I’m doing too much, but I want to prove that I can do it and always could do it… I have a great belief that there is an ability in every disability, you just get on with it because if you’re not going to do it, no-one else can do it for you…. It was practically through my disability that everything worked out here for me because of the course and then I had to come in here and I had to work, I had to prove myself that I could do it as well as everybody else because I was getting the same salary as everybody else, I had to prove myself that I could do the same work. I don’t play the disability card; if anybody asks I would tell them but I’ve worked with some people for over a year and a half and I actually had to tell them that I was visually impaired…” (Interviewee E7, Female, 40+)
Despite having a degree, Archive Interviewee E3 voiced her frustrations:
“…you couldn’t go to the Equality Authority and say I can’t get a job because I’ve got a disability; where does it say that in writing, where does it say you’re not allowed in here because you’ve got a disability?, that’s not told; you’re told, ‘oh we can’t take you on’, or ‘there’s no work’, there’s no this or there’s no that…There’s only one positive, when I get my laptop back from Y I’ll get the thing sent, is that the girl in the physical sensory said send us your CV, tell us a bit about yourself and we’ll see what we can do. And that was the first time that somebody actually sat down and said,“right, yep, we’ll see what we can do for you”, instead of, “Well we don’t really have anything and it’s time constraints and confidentiality and …”; that they actually said yes…again I might not get anything out of it but still, somebody is willing to listen to me which is something that doesn’t happen that often.