2016-05-03 19:19:29

Doing what, though? I guarantee if you're as qualified as you say you are you'd get a better paycheck elsewhere.

2016-05-03 19:21:29

the TVI should, if they're worth anything at all, be teaching you to advocate for yourself. Even in 2002, there's no reason whatsoever why people couldn't have known when you got there that you needed materials in a format you could read, unless you didn't say something. Instead of teacher for the visually impaired, your person should have been called shelter for the visually impaired.

2016-05-03 19:21:52

well at this point a paycheck is a paycheck. National industries for the blind would have been a good starting point. Then I could have moved back closer to home and worked in the Washington DC area maybe for the light house for the blind or the big NFB place in Baltimore Maryland.

2016-05-03 19:25:19

the people at the college were not very good at the time in my opinion. I guess there is lots of room for improvement especially since the unemployment rate among blind people is 75% or more. Also at college whenever I tried advocating for myself they always just gave excuses as to why they could not provide this or that. So I quit college, got married had a kid went to lions world and succeeded, sort of.

2016-05-03 19:28:12

A paycheck is a paycheck except when it's not. Sticking a blindness organization on your resume is also a good way to guarantee mainstream companies don't hire you, at least if you happen to *be* blind. Oh, you worket at Lighthouse for the Blind? You must not be qualified to do anything serious. That's the mentality companies use.

2016-05-03 19:30:32

Clearly you were going to the absolute wrong college. And this in a country where you've got the ADA to fall back on. Ridiculous, but not surprising. Still, this is a problem you could have fixed. for reasons you may or may not have had anything to do with, you did not.

2016-05-04 10:54:56

What has happened in the past cannot be reversed, so look to the present for making amends in your life, not to the past for negativity.

Josh, the NFB wants employees who are a positive example of blindness. Due to circumstances that at least appear to be out of your control, you would not be the blindness-is-just-fine-and-life-is-normal person that they would want promoting their organisation.

If you want to get back into learning Spanish, I would recommend the Duolingo website and mobile apps which are mostly accessible. They are of very good quality and should be able to help you.

Mosen Consulting has just published a book on finding work. You can read about the book by going to www.mosen.org/work.

If you are determined about finding work, you should not be sitting at home watching television and surfing the Internet writing on such forums as this one advertising your problem to the world; you should be outside in the streets actively learning skills and looking for work.

It would not be wise to look to the future ten years from now when your son is in college as a possible time to find work. The best times of your life for finding employment will have passed you by. I am not able to speak for your son and your ex-wife's family, but I am sure that some people would regard people like you as a blind person who is unfortunately unable to join in regular society, finding stable employment and living a good life; instead--it must be said--it appears that you are at home not doing much with your life. In short, get out there and carpe diem--seize the future.

2016-05-04 16:36:02

If you haven't heard it yet, you should listen to the "Going blind sucks" podcast. It's done by a husband and wife pair. The husband is loosing his vision to RP (Retonitis Pigmentosa), the podcast is about the trials and challenges he goes through while learning how to live as a blind person. He does a lot of whining and complaining so the primary thing I get from the podcast is an example of how not to behave.

I was fortunate in that I had usable vision until I was 55 years old. At 52 my glaucoma, which was well controlled, became very aggressive, nothing I tried could control it, so by the time I was 55 I was declared legally blind. On the flip side, having had vision, I know how major a loss going blind is. Sometimes I've wondered, that if you're going to be blind, if it wouldn't be better to be blind from birth, because then you won't know how major a loss being blind is.

While I was going through rehabilitation at The Lighthouse for the Blind, I learned that unemployment among the visually impaired was around 85%, because it is very difficult, even with laws to discourage discrimination, to get employers to hire blind people. If they have a job, most blind people end up working in sheltered workshops run by people like Industries for the Blind. Unfortunately, most of these jobs are repetitive and boring, that don't require much in the way of skills and so don't pay very well.

One of the benefits my last employer included was long term disability insurance. So between that and Social Security Disability Income, my income is about double what I need to live on. So between my income and that I lost my sight late in life, I decided not to fight the high unemployment rate among blind people and retired early.

And Josh is right, It can get boring after a while, so I keep my mind busy by working on several ideas I have for audio games.

I agree with Dark, all you people that are jumping all over Josh for the way he types messages on the forums aren't helping any. You are just showing your general lack of consideration and insensitivity. These forums are not a job application or a book or a thesis paper, so what does it matter how he types. To my screen reader, Josh's message sound just fine. So unless you are using a brail display, how do you know how Josh types. To be aware that he doesn't capitalize or use punctuation, you'd have to have your screen reader configured to announce all capitals and all punctuation, or check every message letter by letter.