Sight impairments vary dramatically from person to person, from condition to condition. It’s not all or nothing as some people assume. In fact,
When you see someone with a white cane, but looking at their phone, it’s not that odd. It may be because the ground blurs beneath them as they move, or their lack of peripheral vision which makes it dangerous for them to travel without a mobility aid (like a white cane or guide dog). Their phone screen may have a magnifier on it, or a screen reader, or is the only thing they can see when they focus on it – to the exclusion of all else.
[Creidt: Facebook/Wendell Hussey]
That’s how I live my life. I don’t have much peripheral vision and, let’s face it, I don’t have much distance vision either. But I can see a screen with magnification software and can spot a misplaced comma with the best of them. Editorial work requires little acuity (ability to see detail). It’s all text on a page – high contrast and easily made accessible. Emails are a breeze for the visually impaired.
I’m not special either. I know a publisher at Elsevier registered as severely visually impaired, like me. I know Senior Software Developers in banks and places like Ocado. I know a junior doctor who can canulate a baby faster than those with 20/20 vision and a GP in London – both with albinism. There is a Society of Visually Impaired Lawyers. There are scores of visually impaired people with PhDs doing incredible research, working with vast amounts of data and cells in petri dishes (I’m not exaggerating).
75% of working-age people with registered visual impairments are unemployed and the employment rate for blind and partially sighted people is the same as it was in 1991. There has been no overall change in a generation [2].
I rarely tell authors that I’m visually impaired, if ever. I worry it would compromise their trust in me. I do think I rely on my disability being invisible. Masking is often attributed to people with autism trying to fit into a neurotypical society, but I have a lot in common with these stories. I make do and I get worn out. I try not to use a cane, even if it’s a good idea and would be the safest option.
When I started as an editorial assistant at Cambridge University Press, I was just asked what I needed and I got it. It was easy with no fuss. None of my managers or teammates have had a problem with my disability. They mainly know about my lack of vision because I co-chair the Disability and Neurodiversity Staff Network and I know more about accessibility.
People like me are considered the exception, we ‘are not really disabled’. We often throw off that label because ‘we are capable’ and we are ‘able’ to be independent. We are not literally ‘disabled’, semantically meaning ‘doesn’t work’ in other contexts; when an alarm is ‘disabled’, for instance.
But I am disabled, and I do go to conferences around the world to convince academics to write books for Cambridge University Press & Assessment. People like me work every day. We aren’t exceptions – we’ve just not been held back by the world around us. We’ve been surrounded by people who understand a disability isn’t the be all and end all.
I would encourage anyone to hire disabled people – they have solutions beyond what you can imagine. It is no more taxing than hiring an able person. We all have our complexities. Give that person in the interview a chance, even if you can’t imagine doing that job without sight. They may be the best person you ever hired.
When you see a person with glasses and yet using a white cane, that person may have some sight but is sensible enough to use a cane anyway. If we gave more disabled people a chance, we may be able to improve those dire statistics around disability and visual impairment.
Connect with Emily on LinkedIn.
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Emily Watton is a commissioning editor for psychology books at Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s academic books division. She is a co-chair and founder of the organisation’s Disability and Neurodiversity Staff Network, and a member of their Academic Accessibility Programme. She gives talks to other organisations on disability inclusion in the workplace and inclusive best practices, when she isn’t playing goalball for her local club.
