Hampshire Advocacy user group for the Blind and Partially
sighted is a small charity whose members are predominantly
Visually Impaired.
Some 80000 registered Blind and Partially Sighted people in the
UK are of working age - We prefer the use of the descriptions of
Blind and Partially sighted as they are more easily understood by
most people rather than new descriptions about severe sight
impairment now used medically. These 80000 represent 1 in 500
of the working age population.
Different eye conditions create different problems. Very few Blind
people see nothing at all; a minority can distinguish light from dark
but nothing else; the majority possess varying degrees of useful
vision. Some have no central vision; others have no side vision.
Some see everything as a vague blur; others see a patchwork of
blank and defined areas. Some see best in sunlight, others prefer
twilight. All this means that no two Blind or Partially Sighted
people who have some residual vision see the world in the same
way. Less than 5 per cent of the 80000 have no light perception.
Opportunities for the Blind and Partially sighted are sometimes
often affected by the uninformed prejudices of potential
employers. Many Blind and Partially Sighted people run their own
businesses or are in the professions, work in shops and factories.
The software for speech and magnification make word-processing
more accessible to Visually Impaired people.
Despite higher than average educational attainment only 31 per
cent of the registered Partially sighted and 17 per cent of the
registered Blind are in work.
in 1997 we did a survey of 500 major employers in Hampshire
and the Isle of Wight which revealed a wasteland for the Blind and
Partially sighted in our area. some 20% of the 500 employers
contacted replied to our questionnaire but only nine Partially
sighted people were reported by them to be employed.
we repeated our survey in the autumn of 2008 contacting 469
employers with 25 or more employees.
the response was markedly worse, with only 12% returning our
questionnaires. the number of Partially Sighted employees
reported was 11 with two completely Blind reported in this Survey.
Several major companies replied to the effect that they employ
visually Impaired people but refused to give figures, despite us
indicating that all replies would be completely confidential and that
no specific companies would be mentioned in our report. Some
companies also replied that they did not complete surveys.
the most depressing result of our survey was that, as in our
survey of 1997, a large number of companies with more than
1000 employees did not report employing any Visually Impaired
people although they did employ people of other disabilities.
it was apparent in 1997 that many employers were unaware of
how Blind and Partially sighted people coped with life in general
and in the workplace, and we arranged a seminar for the
Interested parties to try to banish this ignorance and thus improve
the opportunities for the Visually Impaired to gain Interviews and
jobs. We were pleased at that time that John Denham, our local
MP, attended and spoke at the seminar, and we are pleased that
he has continued his interest in the Visually Impaired and in
education and employment and that he is now a minister for
higher education i, skills and training in the government.
we were also informed by the relative ignorance of employers and
educational establishments to produce a DVD entitled coping with
sight loss which illustrates how the Visually Impaired cope with
everyday tasks and in the workplace contrasting the lives of a fully
Blind employee and a Partially sighted employee. This DVD is
split into short segments of a few minutes so that teachers and
employers and others can use the DVD in their awareness
training. The DVD may also be viewed online via a link from the
first paragraph in our website.