Finding a way through misconceptions
Despite some advances, blind job seekers still face many obstacles
CA MBR IDGE, M ass.
— In the late 1980s, when Maura Mazzocca was a human resources administrator with a Boston-area firm, a blind man showed up to apply for a job. Today, she remembers the encounter ruefully.
“What I kept thinking about was, ‘How can this man work in a manufacturing company?’ ” Mazzocca recalled, saying she looked past his abilities and saw only his disability.
“I wish now I’d given him a chance.”
That reflectiveness is heartfelt. Mazzocca lost her own eyesight in 1994 through complications related to diabetes. Now as a job seeker herself, she knows the many hurdles the blind must overcome in pursuit of full-time work.
At a job fair last fall for blind and low-vision people, there she was going table to table, with a sighted volunteer by her side. Some of the other 80 jobseekers carried white canes, a few had guide dogs.
Like the rest, Mazzocca was greeted with firm handshakes and encouraging words — but none of the employers she spoke with had job openings matching her interests and qualifications.
The venue was the former Radcliffe College gymnasium where Helen Keller exercised en route to becoming the first deaf/blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree in 1904. Over the ensuing decades, Keller helped increase public awareness of blindness and empathy for those affected by it.
Despite technological advances that dramatically boost their capabilities only about 24 per cent of workingage Americans with visual disabilities had full-time jobs as of 2011, according to Cornell University’s Employment and Disability Institute.
“There’s a lot of stigma, a lot of obstacles,” said Mazzocca, 51. “It comes down to educating employers … It’s going to take a really long time, if ever, for them to see us for who we are and what we bring to the table.”
What they bring, according to advocates for the blind, is a strong work ethic, plus deeper-than-average loyalty to their employers. That’s in addition to whatever talents and training they bring, just like any other applicant.
Even employers professing interest in hiring blind people often don’t follow throughout of concern that they might be a bit slower with key tasks or require assistance that could be burdensome.
In some cases, said Mazzocca, who has held professional jobs since she lost her sight, “They’re thinking, ‘What if I have to fire them? Will they sue me?’ ”
Many organizations are working hard to change the equation, through a mix of outreach to employers, training and counselling for job seekers, and support for technological development. Though sometimes costly, there are now myriad devices and technologies that can convert computer text or printed pages into braille or spoken words.
Still, the steadiest sources of jobs for many blind people are non-profit organizations with missions related to blindness and other disabilities.
National Industries for the Blind, a U.S. network of 91 non-profit agencies which collectively employ about 6,000 blind people, recently conducted a survey of 400 hiring managers and human resource executives across the country.
The survey found 54 per cent of hiring managers said there were few jobs at their company that blind employees could perform, 45 per cent said accommodating such workers would require “considerable expense,” 42 per cent said blind employees would need someone to help them on the job, and 34 per cent said they were more likely to have work-related accidents than sighted employees.
“We’re having to deal with lots of misconceptions and myths,” said Kevin Lynch, CEO of National Industries for the Blind. “From that standpoint, the study was clearly disappointing, but it gives us the opportunity to find a way forward.”
At the fall job fair, freelance writer John Christie, 57, said he sometimes struggles to keep up his spirits while pursuing a full-time job.
“When I apply for something, I never hear back,” he said, suggesting that he was disadvantaged by a resume listing numerous articles related to blindness.
“Sometimes I’m optimistic, sometimes I’m frustrated,” he said. “It depends on the day. Sometimes you get burned out.”