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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 16 2019, @11:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-see-what-they're-saying dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Blind people have increased opportunities, but employers' perceptions are still a barrier

More than 7.5 million Americans, or 2.4% of the population, are blind or have low vision. Some people are born with blindness or low vision, but most people acquire vision loss, often at older ages. Researchers estimate that the incidence of blindness and low vision will rise rapidly through 2050 as the population ages.

As researchers who study issues related to blindness and low vision, we are interested in how society, its institutions, businesses and individuals currently perceive members of this population and how these perceptions may influence opportunities, particularly in terms of employment.

[...] The large disparities in employment rates that have historically existed for people who are blind still exist today. The most recent data from the American Community Survey indicates that 44.2% of people who are blind are employed and 10% are unemployed. This compares to an employment rate of 77.2% and unemployment rate of 4.8% for people without disabilities.

Why does employment continue to be a challenge for so many people who are blind? It may be that perceptions about the capabilities of the population have not changed.

[...] Many employers have inaccessible job application sites, and people who are blind have filed lawsuits regarding their inability to use a screen reader to access job-related information on websites. Giving this group of people equal access to learn about and apply for any job of interest is an important first step. Employers should make all digital information related to jobs accessible, including the application process. Accessibility is not difficult, and much support is available for this effort.

In addition, employers and society in general should learn about how people who are blind can perform tasks for which sighted people rely on their vision. This is one of the best ways to change perceptions. Attending your local White Cane Day event is a great opportunity to learn about this population. Events such as this and National Disability Employment Awareness Month are important to increase awareness about the capabilities of people who are blind and the employment challenges they continue to face.


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  • (Score: 1) by saturnalia0 on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)

    by saturnalia0 (6571) on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:02PM (#907886)

    Should you go the extra mile to increase accessibility to the blind et. al? Yes. Else a lawsuit will be filled against you? No, that should not be the case in a free country.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:12PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:12PM (#907892) Homepage
      You haven't been a free country for tens of thousands of years. Have you still not learnt - you live in a society, not a country.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:11PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:11PM (#907888) Homepage
    A lot of the solutions to the low-vision problems are "make things big, and have high contrast". I remember nearly 20 years ago when I had a Mac there was a huge magnifying lens capability, and built-in screen reader too, all bundled with the OS.

    A low-vision hack I started adopting in Linux when I was on a laptop with an external monitor was to use xrandr to mirror the screen, but with up-scaling, and have the centre of the magnification follow the mouse. (So you could have the big monitor as an enormous window into part of your document on the laptop screen, or alternatively use the laptop as just a magnifying lens for your document on the big screen when you need it.) There are enough parametrisations that can be changed on the fly, it's easy to find something that works. Big monitors are *cheap* now, it's only graphics and interface designers who can now ruin it for the users now, the capability to have big bold obvious UIs right in front of your nose is there. (Remember to take eye rests though, and that applies to everyone.)

    (And the designers will ruin it, it goes with the territory. I remember reading Apple's guidelines for user interfaces where they specified a minimum contrast ratio that text should have against its background, and those very guidelines were written in a font that did not satisfy those guidelines. What technology giveth, unwitting idiots taketh away.)

    And outside the "make things more visible" side, I recommend people listen to a screenreader on a typical website, even one which is AAA accessible. It's amazing that the blind are as good at navigating as they are using it, so it superficially seems to be working. However, if you pull the blind person off the keyboard and try to drive navigation yourself you'll quickly get sick of the terrible amount of garbage that's being blurted out which is non-information bearing, and you'll realise there's a long way to go. In the words of Crocodile Dundee, you can eat it, but it tastes like shit. I occasionally ask a blind friend to verify that my webpages are not guilty of these annoyances.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:48PM (1 child)

    by Rich (945) on Wednesday October 16 2019, @03:48PM (#907906) Journal

    I've always thought, that If my company was significantly bigger than it is now (mostly just me...), and I needed a telephone operator/dispatcher, I'd employ someone blind in that position. I assume that blind people would be more effective with their more developed remaining senses where visuals are more a distraction than help. I'd make sure they are well equipped, e.g. with a braille line interface to the exchange system, to dictionaries, or have whatever other tools are needed to smoothly do the job. I also think that a blind person would be happy to have such a job where they can really shine, and do their best. Win for everyone. :)

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:50PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:50PM (#907963) Homepage Journal

      Exactly this. Employ blind people in positions where vision is not the primary sense required. I have a couple of blind acquaintances who need to process documents of various kinds on their computers. This is horribly slow, error prone - and not worth any possible salary you would ever pay them. It only sort of works because they collect disability.

      For people who are blind from a young age: Why not choose a career path that uses other senses? Telephone work. Interpreter. Musician. Food taster (don't laugh - all the big companies employ people for this). Aroma expert (perfumes, whiskies, whatever). Sure, all of those jobs use vision, but only on a secondary level.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:01PM (4 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:01PM (#907948) Journal

    A visual impairment (the criterion) doesn't necessarily mean either blind or low vision. So to jump from that to "44% of blind or low vision are working and 10% are unemployed " doesn't compute. Especially since many who are not in the work force have probably given up even though they would work if suitable employment were available.

    So the number of blind and low vision people who want to work but have either given up or can't find work as a percentage of all blind and low vision people is probably much higher.

    And many of those jobs are precarious, part time, and pay shit. Nobody goes through life with the ambition of being a telemarketer or assembling pens in a sheltered workshop a couple of days a week.

    As for web site accessibility, get rid of the JavaScript, CSS, and images, stick to HTML 1.0, and you have a site that can be navigated. It might not look all whiz-bang, but really, anyone using a screen reader or a text-only browser doesn't give a shit about that anyway. Your fancy CSS menus are a pain. And captchas - using JavaScript to load both the captcha and an image to an audio captcha is a fail.

    W3 guidelines for audio navigation are just layering more complexity atop what is really a simple problem - same as W3 has screwed up tgeir own website by removing the download to grab the whole HTML 4 spec or the CSS3 spec in favour of forcing you to stay on what has become a really shit-show site that is trying to "increase engagement " rather than let you get the information you want and get on with your tasks at hand.

    No doubt people trying to justify their jobs and empire building.

    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday October 16 2019, @06:05PM (#907949) Journal
      Sorry for the profanities , but they (W3) need to die. Same as poop emojis.
      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Wednesday October 16 2019, @07:04PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday October 16 2019, @07:04PM (#907968) Journal

        Same as poop emojis.

        That's what unicode gets ya..

        Not hiring blind people is very short sighted

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16 2019, @09:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16 2019, @09:57PM (#908019)

      As for web site accessibility, get rid of the JavaScript, CSS, and images, stick to HTML 1.0, and you have a site that can be navigated.

      click here
      here
      this website
      click here
      email
      over here
      this link
      click here

      Don't matter how simple you make it, people will do it wrong.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @03:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @03:56AM (#908160)

      A great example is the unicode website. Compare the new one: https://home.unicode.org/ [unicode.org] to the old one: http://unicode.org/main.html [unicode.org] and there is a huge difference. The information someone would actually want, code charts, the standard, TRs, proposals, etc., if on that page at all, are hidden under two full page scrolls (for me) and replaced on the front page with links to their primary revenue streams, news releases, and ways to contact them. And they pop up a stupid div to tell you about the old one because so many complained about the new one, and you need to close it before even using the new one.

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