Saj - Senior market research assistant at the Leeds hub

This week’s podcast is a bit different to the previous two, having switched Ali and Ben for Saj. You can listen to the full podcast here:

Saj works for Viewpoint in the Leeds office where all the employees are partially sighted or blind. The Leeds office was set up in conjunction with the RNIB, which stands for Royal National Institute of Blind people. An acronym I forget many times in the podcast.  

In the podcast we focus on Saj’s experience at Viewpoint and in the workplace generally, as someone who is blind. Saj started at Viewpoint in 2013 (a full 10 years ago) through an apprenticeship in coordination with the RNIB. So, he’s very well placed to give us a good idea of the general goings on in the office.

We start off by talking about the adaptions needed for Saj and other employees to do their jobs. And the main adaption is a piece of text to speech software that reads whats on his computer screen to him so he can then relay questions to customers on the other side of the phone. And that might sound a bit confusing, it did to me! But Saj talks about how he (and others) got used to having the robotic text to speech synthesiser in one ear, and the customer and phone earpiece in the other.

We lead on from this talking about Saj’s work history, and his experience with other companies. And it wasn’t very positive. We mention in the podcast that a lot of his first-hand experiences are potentially out of date now (or so we’d hope) but he talks about other businesses not being able to make adaptions for him. And how this essentially kept him out of the labour market.

I did look up unemployment numbers for blind and partially sighted people and it makes for stark reading.

Only 27% of working age blind or partially sighted people are in work [3], compared to 51% of disabled people and 75% of the general population [4]

Only 40% of employers are confident their recruitment processes are accessible to blind or partially sighted people [5]

90% of employers state that it would be “difficult” or “impossible” to employ a visually impaired person [3]

[3] Slade, Edwards and White (2017). Employment status and sightloss. RNIB

[4] ONS Labour market data (April 2021).

[5] Roberts, S, C Heaver, K Hill, J Rennison, B Stafford, N Howat, G Kelly, S Krishnan, P Tapp and Thomas (2004), Disability in the Workplace: Employers’ and Service Providers’ responses to the Disability Discrimination Act in 2003 and preparation for 2004 changes, DWP, report No 2002

The big number in those stats is that just 27% of partially sighted or blind people are in work. Which is madness to me. We discuss it in the podcast. There are obviously some jobs that are impossible or much harder for someone to do without sight. But some jobs, like Viewpoint, can be done with minor adjustments, and no impact to the customer.

Have a listen to episode number 3 and give us your thoughts on what we talk about.