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| Marie Hennessy, president of the Perkins School for the Blind alumni association leaves a job fair for the visually impaired with her guide dog "Azalea" and a volunteer guide, left, on the Radcliffe Yard campus in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. Despite technological advances that dramatically boost their capabilities, blind people remain largely unwanted in U.S. workplaces where about 24 percent of working-age Americans with visual disabilities hold full-time jobs. |
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
(AP) -- Back 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 jobseeker herself,
she knows firsthand the many hurdles the blind must overcome in pursuit
of full-time work.
At a job fair last month
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.
Yet blind people remain largely
unwanted in the U.S. workplace, despite technological advances that
dramatically boost their capabilities. Only about 24 percent of
working-age 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 national 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.
In the current economy, good
jobs are hard to come by for anyone, even the sighted. But the blind
face added challenges. Even employers professing interest in hiring
blind people often don't follow through out 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
national and local organizations are working hard to change the
equation, through a mix of outreach to employers, training and
counseling for jobseekers, 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 nonprofit organizations with missions related
to blindness and other disabilities.
Among
them is National Industries for the Blind, a network of 91 nonprofit
agencies which collectively employ about 6,000 blind people. It recently
conducted a survey of 400 hiring managers and human resource executives
across the U.S.
The survey found 54 percent
of hiring managers said there were few jobs at their company that blind
employees could perform, 45 percent said accommodating such workers
would require "considerable expense," 42 percent said blind employees
would need someone to help them on the job, and 34 percent 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."
Lynch and his colleagues
take heart from federal initiatives that have expanded hiring of blind
people by government agencies and federal contractors. They also are
encouraged by efforts of the U.S. Business Leadership Network, a
coalition led by several dozen major corporations seeking to boost
employment of people with disabilities, including blindness.
Another
initiative called CareerConnect, launched by the American Foundation
for the Blind, offers an array of resources and advice for blind
jobseekers, including a mentorship program to connect them with blind
people working in the professions they aspire to.
Joe
Strechay, program manager for CareerConnect, said visually impaired
people tend to be dedicated workers - less likely than others to miss a
shift or quit the job, and no more likely than others to sue in the
event of dismissal.
Among those featured on
CareerConnect's website is Jay Blake, a race car mechanic and pit crew
chief. Other role models include Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind
person to climb Mount Everest, and the late Richard Casey, the first
blind federal trial judge.
Yet a glance
through listings of prominent blind people conveys some of the
challenges faced by jobseekers. There are many famous blind musicians,
such as Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, but a dearth of notables in many
other fields. In the U.S. Congress, for example, there have been several
blind members - but none since 1941.
Numerous
blind Americans have built successful careers as advocates of the
visually impaired, but the pathway often is difficult.
Frederic
Schroeder, who served as commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services
Administration under President Bill Clinton, recalls sending out 35 job
applications after earning his master's degree in special education -
and getting not a single offer in reply.
Such
rejection can be demoralizing, says Schroeder, now a professor of
vocational rehabilitation with San Diego State University and a vice
president of the National Federation of the Blind.
"We
need to make sure blind people don't think, `Society doesn't want me,'
and stop trying," he said. "If a person gives up hope of finding a
suitable job, it's a terrible waste of human resources. It's terrible
for people to live in poverty simply because of public
misunderstanding." About 31 percent of working-age people with visual
impairments live below the poverty line, roughly double the overall
national rate, according to Cornell's Employment and Disability
Institute.
At the recent 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."
Another
jobseeker, 32-year-old Jeff Paquette, graduated in 2011 from Johnson
& Wales University in Providence, R.I., and is seeking work in the
tourism/hospitality industry.
Declared legally
blind in 2006, he has limited vision that prevents him from driving but
enables him to use public transportation on his own and to read,
sometimes with the help of a magnification option on his computer.
"I
honestly don't know from employer to employer what their perceptions of
someone like me will be," said Paquette, who carries a white cane when
he's out and about. "I have to be honest with them. I will need some
accommodation - but I'm fully capable."
At the
job fair, the only employer from the hospitality sector was Hyatt
Hotels. Their representative told Paquette to keep checking on the
company's jobs website.
This was the third
year for the event. Marianne Gilmore of the Carroll Center for the Blind
in Newton, Mass., one of the sponsors, said about 190 jobseekers
attended during the first two years, collectively garnering two
internships and perhaps a half-dozen full-time jobs.
"It has to be the right match," Gilmore said.
Even
with no job offers, Maura Mazzocca was glad she attended - saying the
face-to-face encounters and conversations about job hunting were useful.
"People are not coming here expecting to get a job," she said. "If they did, they'd be disappointed."
Mazzocca
grew up in Burlington, Mass., about 15 miles from Boston, and graduated
from Westfield State College in 1984. A series of jobs followed,
including a stint as human resources administrator with EG&G
Torque
Systems in Watertown, Mass., where she encountered the blind jobseeker.
She
began experiencing vision problems in 1990 and underwent several
operations before losing her sight in 1994. A few years of uncertainty
followed, before she learned how to read Braille and developed other
skills through the Carroll Center.
In 1999,
she landed a job with Fidelity Investments, but gave that up in 2001
after she and her husband decided to adopt a 10-year-old boy.
She
returned to the workplace in 2010, getting hired as diversity manager
at Hanscomb Air Force Base, a few miles from Burlington. After 16
months, however, she lost the job - her superiors told her she "wasn't a
good fit" and lacked sufficient managerial experience.
"I did have room for improvement - I don't think fact that I was blind had anything to do with it," Mazzocca said.
And yet she second-guessed her approach to the job.
"I
had a lot to learn - but I didn't like to ask for help," she said.
"Going forward, in my next position, I won't be afraid to ask for help
sooner."
She hopes to find work as a diversity coordinator, either for a municipality or a business.
Among
the 29 employers at the job fair were TD Bank, retailer T.J. Maxx, and
several branches of Harvard University, including the job fair's host -
the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Its human resources
director, Charles Curti, said the institute has no full-time blind
employees at present but was pleased by the outcome of two recent summer
internships for students from the Perkins School for the Blind.
In
the course of his work, Curti has learned about evolving technologies
now available to boost blind workers' capabilities. "It's an awakening
experience," he said, a reason for optimism that the bias faced by blind
jobseekers will gradually fade.
"Fifteen
years ago, when I'd talk about hiring blind people, I was stonewalled by
human-resource colleagues," he said. "Now it's a completely different
conversation. They're sold on the idea - they just need to know how to
make it work."
Behind another table was
Richard Curtis, a vice president of State Street Corp., a Boston-based
financial services company. He said State Street, with a global
workforce of many thousands, believes that openness toward hiring people
with disabilities will help it stay ahead of the competition.
Last
summer, Curtis arranged internships for two visually impaired young men
- part of an effort to learn what accommodations would be needed and
what challenges might arise for any blind employees hired in the future.
Using Excel spreadsheets and other data-retrieval systems, the interns
did research and helped provide information for company reports.
"We
tried to push them and they loved that... They don't want to be
coddled," Curtis said. "Once they're trained, for the roles we had them
do, they'd be equal in speed or accuracy to any other employee."
