2018-04-10 09:58:34

oh i Hate this atetude that blind people can do evreything in the world. that's not true. we can't do everything in the world. realise your limitations and work there after. if you know that you know what you can demand of people and find the easiest way that's relistic to make thigns as accessible as possible.
ethin. it's virtualy like this in the whole world, sweden, US. i'm specifically talking about people who's studdying. when they search for a job that usally invollves something like standing behind stores etc most employers will not take them just for working like 4 months. should i tell you why? that's because, as turtlapower has said, there will be so many other aplications to choos from with people who're fully able to work so why should they have a blind person in, and especially if they have to spend cash just to make the plase more accessible?
now ethin, you're educated you're 100% right. if you make a good impression and the employer thinks that you know what you're talking about, and especially if there's an advantage of having a blind person around you will get a job very easy.
This is not true however when you're studdying

2018-04-10 11:19:35

#Accomadating disabled people is not a magic cure all though. It costs a lot of money and time and did you ever thing the rest of the workforce may well resent the time and money and changes to the workplace though? That happens. Plus the time and money it costs aren't  recouped instantly, ESPECIALLY not the time aspect. Yes you may well earn back the $10,00 or whatever it is, but as far as the time goes, shutting down a factory for a week, or a store for a week, or whatever the empolyer owns, that has a far bigger impact on the business than money. That is lost sales and lost income all the while, debt is mounting up. I'm speaking from my family being involved in business practically all their lives,it isn't just a simple oh make X accessible and we'll be a bettr business....

Life don't work like that, it's again a double edged sword. That guy in a warehouse I mentioned earlier? Yeah his dad has lost customers that turned over half a million a year because they don't want to deal with his son interacting with them. Through no fault of his own that guy is seen as a liability to suppliers and customers...even if they don't directly interact with him,just the idea of it scares off certain supppliers/customers, and in an industry dominated by the big companies, you neeed all the customers and suppliers you can get...so what did his dad do? Went around to the customers and suppliers BSing he let his son go and the supppliers and customers came flooding back to him. That's one company, ine one specific industry. But it shows that at least in the flooring industry, disabled people aren't thought of that highly, which, I get it. You may scream and scream and whine and bitch and moan it's not fair, and realistically, it isn't...but these are firms that are constantly out there every single day. I got talking to one of my dad's customers the other week when he dropped by to talk to my dad who was out. I made a joke about needing a new carpet for my room, and asked if it could be done in bright colors so I could see it better. He asked if I was joking, I said I was and asked why disabled people are treated like shit.

His response was, quote.and yes, I've left out the companies. I happen to respect what the companies do and want them to carry on making flooring so my family can stay in business....

Jace, a it's like this. The guys on the and <bigger multi national firms> don't want to shut their factories down in Belgium and Holland and train the workers in five different languages and take five or six weeks to get through that, It'll kill their margins, it'll screw up <UK company> too as they buy from them. My reps deal with <Belgian firm> and they'd have to be trained in English, Flemish, Wallonie, Dutch, German and Romanian so that's easily several million Euros or their workers and multiplay that by several factories. Okay they could take the hit but they'd have to raise the prices on the rolls and raise the cuts too and that'd hurt the buyers. It's economics, they want to do business as cheap as possi/i]

That shed light on it, I get where he's coming from, if you're a business you want to spend as little cash to make as much as possible. I asked my dad about this and paraphrased what the other guy said and my dad essntially said it costs too much and there's no way in hell for his company the managers would ever actually agree to redo the office or warehouse given they are leasing the land from the city and haven't ourgith bought it. More money down the drain for planning stuff and hiring workers and shutting the office for X weeks while it's going on and pissing off the managemnt, who to be fair are not the nicest bunch of guys in the world. Actually, as a rule the flooring industry is very very cut t throat and bitchy and not for the faint of heart. Ever heard your dad go on a 45 minute explitive rant at a supplier and dropping a ton of interesting words? I have, and I get why, I get that particular supplier tried to fuck over a number of firms and then refused to own up and pay for damaging equipment, then tried to lie their way out of it.

tl: DR: Accomdating disabled people may not always be in a company's best interests. Continent like the <big companies>

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-04-10 16:19:24

@77, that's for that particular industry. @76, my attitude is not that of "blind people can do everything." Obviously, blind people can't "do everything." We can't drive, for instance, on our own. We can't fly ourselves into space. Obviously. But we can do *most* things, and by *most* I mean like 80-90-98 percent of things. If a company refuses to hire you, move on to the next.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-10 17:10:46

No it's not  just for that industry. You can't magically snap your fingers and suddenly 'accomdate' disabled people ina  workplace instantly. It takes time and effort and money, it takes a company taking, say, an office out of use to outfit it or being accessible, it takes, say, an IT tech pulling computers offline to make it accessible, it takes....you get the idea. It takes time. Time is something companies value more than money, you can earn money, you can't ever earn time back.

If you were an employer would you want to shut down an office for two weeks to make it accessible knowing other people work there and it'll impact your finances?

Also no, it's not just the flooring industry Ethin. Businesses are not charities. They need to make money to stay afloat, so the cheaper they can do things the better. Or rather the more they jack up prices, the better for the company in question.

Don't forget for a company it's not keeping 10% of profits. You have taxes, rents, bills, wages and all that on top of it, you only keep a small %age of your profits after everything's said and done. You don't get the full million dollars you made, the IRS gets their cut, then rents, then overheads, then wages, then utilities, then any bonuses the managers award themselves...then the rest gets put away. I'm oversimplifying it here, but that's how life is. It's not fair, no, and the nature of business ain't gonna change. Businesses always want to make as much money as possible, while spending the least amount possible. If that means not hiring dissabled people or cutting corners to save cash, so be it. Businesses do it every day.ow

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-04-10 19:21:54 (edited by Ethin 2018-04-10 19:24:15)

@79, as a matter of fact, if I did run a business, I'd happily set up appropriate accommodations for a blind person, without ever having to take the systems offline, because I'd most likely use accessible software in the first place. The time spent performing accommodation acquisition isn't that much, and most businesses don't need to take anything offline unless the accommodations are things like printers (which don't need accommodations, IMO). The average time to acquire a JAWS license, for example, is probably less than a day. The average time to install NVDA is less than 5 minutes. Some businesses do use inaccessible software, but 99 percent of the time, that same application has a usable alternative interface that is accessible without having to alter many settings, such as a command-line or web interface. And most web interfaces are accessible, and since we're heading towards that form of UI, accessibility issues and needs for accommodations that require system outages are very, very less frequent. And while a business may lose profit, the profit they lose is probably very minimal. Getting one computer accommodated, which is all that's usually necessary, costs nowhere near $10000. It costs far, far less with that, and for NVDA it costs absolutely nothing. An average professional business gets well over $10000.00 a week. So, no, I'd say the money spent performing accommodations, if there is any to spend at all, is so minimal as to be pretty much discountable. Not to mention that if a business wants the most money, it is logical to assume that hiring more employees would accomplish that goal. Furthermore, a business that wants to spend as little profit as possible might as well cease to exist, or be a one-man work force.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-10 21:35:05

@ethin: you sound like you're living in a dream world. I have no idea if you've tried to get a real job in a real multinational company in your life but it sounds like you didn't, atleast for my country. I've spoken to almost a dozen of companies who found my cv very interesting and when I told them I'm blind they told me they couldn't provide the necessary accessible software. Of course, I'm living in a country that's known for it's drawbacks in terms of almost everything caled romania, but when it comes to international corporations they should provide the same level of accessibility for everyone. As a matter of fact I'm working in the field of translation and terminology which is not a very difficult field in terms of accessibility. The main point I'm trying to prove is that they didn't even wanted to see if I could do the jobs tthat I'm certified for or not. The problem is that most employers don't even know that blind people can navigate an internet page nor do more complex tasks like creating glossaries in X-cell. Most of the employers never heard of such programs as screen readers so they tend to overestimate the costs of the implementations they would have to make for the disabled person to work in they company. I've tried everything I could think of, I even went on to completing all the employment tests before telling them that I am blind and still they said that they will surely call me at a later date which obviously they didn't. Obviously the laws of the country you're living in count very much but in a country where money is everything there's no thing that can stop companies from not hiring disabled people. Of course they'll win 25% of the salary that they must give to the disabled person, atleast this is how it's done in romania, but they think that it's a much suitable investment to employ a normal person than getting involved with all the hassle of employing a disabled person. They'll win because the disabled person in my country doesn't have to pay all the taxes such as insurance taxes but this still doesn't stop them from not hiring such people.

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Stephen King

2018-04-10 23:44:36

@mastodont, I did in fact try applying for a job. I was rejected not because I was blind but because they had someone more qualified apply before me. (Then again, I was happy for the rejection because I wasn't interested in the job anyway.) My points, however, still do stand.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-11 02:43:08

Ah, but do you know for sure that the other applicant was more qualified than you, or are you just sugarcoating it to soften the blow of not getting hired?

I'm sorry, but I find your sweeping generalizations and blanket statements to be distasteful. If you are arrogant enough to presume that 99% of businesses would hire a blind person, which you stated in a previous post, surely you thought you were qualified enough to ace that job interview, right?

But, even if we take that little tidbit off the table, several of the most recent posts to this topic have expressed the hurdles that blind job seekers face much more eloquently than I ever could have. And, as much as I would love it if companies would allow NVDA, or any open source software, on their networks, the reality is that it usually doesn't work that way. It's JAWS all the way, because that screen reader is what the government is most likely to fund. Also, there's a lot of fearmongering and distrust around the open source movement in general, which means that only trusted applications are often allowed on a company's network, even if other, less cumbersome, and less costly options exist.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-11 16:04:13

ethin, post 83 and 81 got it right.
and if 99% hires blind people which is just plain bullshit by the way. may i see proof of that? any statisticks that you can use to back up your facts?
would a painting company hire blind people? No most likelly not because, how can a blind person paint when he doesn't see collors and a spot that he has missed?
tell me how that would work out. how about driving. can blind people work as taxi drivers? Pilots? Traindrivers? no, of corse they can't. Do you know why? it's because they are blind. so there a huge number of your claim just blew away because there are many companys in the world that does this for your claim that 99% can hire people to be true. big_smile

2018-04-11 18:38:50

@sito, while posts 83 and 81 are right, and my claim might've been majorly off, you basically restated what I already said. I said, more than once, in more than one post, that blind people obviously won't get hired for driving jobs. Painting, however, has already been accomplished by visual artists like Sergej Popolsin, a Russian painter who lost his eyesight in 1990 due to a serious head injury. Wikipedia says that "The artist is now living and working in Vienna, Austria, is showing his paintings at successful exhibitions in a various of European countries and has a website." If that's not enough for you, Eşref Armağan is another blind painter. Arthur Ellis is a visual artist who lost his sight due to meningitis, and he now represents his visual hallucinations as a result of his sightlessness compounded by Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The article I got this information from, here, also states:

The book Drawing and the Blind: Perceptions to Touch, by Jonathan Harchick, focuses on the ways in which the blind, both young and old, can perceive pictures and 3D objects. According to Harchick, visually impaired people are able to feel a 3D object and then create a drawing of the object that can be easily recognized by a sighted individual. Harchick likens the drawings of the average blind-since-birth person to those of a sighted child. He notices that blind children are much more willing to attempt to draw than blind adults who have no prior experience. Kennedy discusses the fact that the blind can perceive a drawing made of raised lines, as well as 3D objects that have shape and form.

So, yes, I think that, given enough time, and given the proper motivation, blind people are able to do what sited people can do, possibly excluding driving and piloting of aircraft (though autonomous vehicles, while beyond any average persons income at the moment, are still around, and most likely will resolving this issue as well). Whether employers choose to see this is a different story.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-13 02:55:18

I think everyone should be careful about uncited statistics that are casually thrown around. It's not just about this subject, but in general, people are often far too quick to swing the odds in their favor without researching things first, making bold and grandiose claims which never quite seem to hit their mark. It really pisses me off. It's sort of like the 70% unemployment rate among the blind, which, incidentally, made the 99% of businesses are willing to hire blind people statement downright laughable, if we are to believe that 70% statistic which has been floating around for forever and a day. Yes, it is true that blind people are passed over for jobs that they are qualified for, but that 70% has been static for as long as I can remember. Nothing stays the same for that long, especially not when we're talking about human behavior. I'd like to see actual, quantifiable data, backed up by solid research about these types of topics, but I don't think it will ever happen.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-15 20:42:14

Well, I did about one minute of research and found this.
http://work.chron.com/high-rate-unemplo … 14312.html

thanks,
Michael

2018-04-16 17:30:12

Ethin wrote:

(1) that person did excellent on both the application and interview, but the company does not consider that person suitable for the job;
(2) the person failed somewhere in either or both the application or interview, or even failed a particular test, such as dress, first impressions, or appearance; or
(3) The person is simply too lazy and is using the excuse that jobs are hard to get to make it look like they can't get one to make it seem like their hard to get when it really isn't.
Now, I will not exclude the fourth, though unspoken, possibility of location or law; that is, the person is either in a location where, indeed, getting jobs because of a disability makes finding jobs difficult, or you are in a country where laws prohibit those with disabilities from getting jobs (though I can't imagine such a country). In that case, Sito's opinion then becomes fact, though, as I said, I can't imagine such a country.

I've believed for a long time now that discrimination has less to do with the high unemployment rate among blind people than our movers and shakers are willing to admit. We focus so often on a "broken system" or a "discriminatory system," and fail to account for the other pitfalls in finding a job. How many of us, as users of speech synthesis, tend to not spell well? How many of us don't have average social skills? And how many of us simply aren't qualified?

Like it or not, we live in a credential-based society, where one's success in professional job settings depends heavily on their degrees earned at university. How many of us tapped out of university at the first signs of accessibility challenges, or simply haven't bothered to try going to post-secondary education because we have heard other people mention how inaccessible it is, and thus discouraged ourselves?

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Nemeth Braille Code. It was developed by the late Dr. Nemeth, in a time when many of the technologies that we have today didn't exist. Yet, he was teaching sighted people Calculus--and this was a time when discrimination against disabled people was even higher than it is today. He succeeded because he never said no; he never said "I can't."

So, should we all be Nemeth Jr's? Certainly not. Instead, we should recognize that discrimination is a challenge, nothing more. We as blind people have the power to turn around our unemployment rate, if we just tried a little harder. Yes, we can complain about how it's totally unfair that we have to go that extra step to prove ourselves. But if you say that to me, you're preaching to the choir. For me to get where I am it was anything except for easy. I just persisted, and eventually I achieved what I wanted to achieve. We all can do the same thing. But, the moment we say "I can't," is when we've lost the opportunity.

"or you are in a country where laws prohibit those with disabilities from getting jobs": I agree here that I doubt a country will explicitly say that disabled people can't get jobs; but, keep in mind that in Western societies we have laws going the other way, and that's why it might be easier to find work here than elsewhere. So, yes, unless a country expressly forbids disabled people to work, we as disabled people are merely faced with the challenge of discrimination and must struggle until we overcome it.

2018-04-16 19:02:47 (edited by defender 2018-04-17 13:56:18)

Agreed with Munawar, I was about to say the same thing, but he put it much better and he's got the experience to back it up.
It's not all about the system, though I still think it's a big part, people respect someone who tries twice as hard as the next guy in pretty much any situation, and someone who is highly qualified is easier to justify as a risk.
Still, this unrealistically rosy outlook of Ethin's is also well, absurd.
I can't fathom what's so difficult to understand about an employer just not wanting the headache, because they don't know better. People's applications get rejected for far less on a daily basis... Superficial appearance separate from hygiene or appropriateness, a voice or nervous tick that the interviewer doesn't like, an unwillingness to stay around for several (extra) hours working on a project with no pay at home or accept a significantly lower than average salary for the position, lack of money (not talking about major det here either) and allot more. And in most places it's easy peazy to claim that it was for a different reason, which is costly and time consuming to fight in court.
This is social reality, employers are also humans, a portion of them are shitty people, but far more are just business minded and largely ignorant about disability when it comes to accommodation in their field.


It reminds me of how people don't like to consider the possibility of sexual discrimination in the STEM field, particularly I-T being a reality, because (it's 2018 man... that stuff just doesn't happen any more) and all the feminazis are just bitching about nothing as if it's the 1950s again!
Yeah well I didn't really want to admit it at first either, but on further investigation, you know actually looking into it with an open mind? I discovered that the majority of these claims were made by well put together women who only went to the media after everything else failed (sometimes after years) and were clear about the fact that it was  people at the top (including older women) doing it not their coworkers (at least most of the time) that they usually weren't being nasty about it even if it was still wrong, and even that they didn't want to get anyone in trouble (something which I don't think I could do...) rather they just wanted to get back to work as soon as possible and cut through all the BS so they could just do what they went to school for.
Seems to me like we've only really started making significant strides in combating real, everyday discrimination since the 90s, and that we've only started trying to look beyond the in your face obvious stuff to the more insipid and  often more damaging subtle things that big business and government has been getting away with for decades right under our noses since the mid 2000s.
Of course we also have the side effect of over scrutiny (microaggressions anyone?) but either way, to think that particularly the older generations (those often calling the shots in hiring) are totally caught up with that is ridiculous, considering what an adjustment it is and how much politics plays into it.


But as long as your aiming for a position that could actually, realistically be made accessible, than the smaller the application pool, the more niche the position, and the higher need for it to be filled will all benefit  you as a blind person as long as you have the qualifications, social skills, and the knowledge and willingness to work with the employer on workarounds.
That said, the smaller and less well funded the employer, the higher the costs of adaptation will be in almost all cases, so it's a catch 22.

2018-04-16 19:09:40

@Munawar, I think you pretty much stated what I tried to state previously in a much better way than I did. smile I can't tell if your agreeing with me or not, though. smile I've never really liked it when someone just claims that they can't do something, or can't get something, because they're blind, or because they supposedly can't do this, or that, and so on and so forth; it makes them sound like they're either using their disability as a way of getting sympathy from others (and thereby taking advantage of others) or making it sound like they or their living conditions are far worse off than they actually are. Now, I know that conflicts, like Darfur and other international incidents can make life difficult, but I'd imagine that, if the country your living i was involved in such a major conflict, your government(s) certainly would be requiring all your time, whether you liked it or not; your disability would most likely be irrelevant then because you'd be assisting in the saving (or damnation, depending on the side your on, or who you talk to) of your country. Either way, I think that, before you can say that you can't do something, either because your still in primary or secondary education, or simply because others have said they can't do it, you should at least try. Just because someone else can't do something does not automatically mean you can't either. And hey, if you can't do it, then you can't -- try again when you know you can do it, whenever that time will be. But don't ever use your blindness, or your disability, as a weapon to take advantage of others unless its explicitly warranted or you have absolutely no other option.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-16 19:22:34 (edited by defender 2018-04-16 19:28:31)

Agreed Ethin, and I've started to come to that conclusion more as well over the past few years, allot of us just don't try, or aren't permitted or encouraged to try, and some of us just take the easy road, giving up and blaming the system in it's entirety so that we can enjoy our angry echo chamber without having to admit that it could be something we did separate from blindness, or even that the first several job applications rarely work out for anyone, blind or not these days, but all it does is turn us into losers with persecution complexes that drain our friends and relatives while not contributing meaningfully to society.


That said, I believe a significant portion do understand, but just aren't cut out for what it takes to blaze a path up to the top and put them selves out their socially, commit to the extra time needed, and piss people off along the way, and that's where the unfairness comes in like Munawar said, that we have to do that.
Sure some of it's expected and reasonable, like teaching someone who's skeptical about screen readers, but other things, like getting people to move their asses on getting you braille text books before your class starts up, when it's literally their only fucking job should not still be so difficult in the modern world.


I think most reasonable people would agree with this after giving it some honest thought, but the problem is the way you said it and how you came off as seeming to kick the guy when he was already down. I guess try to formulate the message in a way where you believe someone looking at it from the outside wouldn't consider it to be a personal attack or a groundless claim. It's not easy but it can be learned with reasonable accuracy with experience.

2018-04-16 20:20:55

@defender, completely agreed with you. I think what influences this hole issue -- or, at least, what compounds it -- is that most of us, if not all of us, have gone to a blind school for either most of our lives, for our entire main educational period(s), or have gone to a blind school at least once in our lives, and those times that we've been there the schools have filled our minds with the fact that "we can't do [x] and instead must do [y] because [z]." Additionally, I think that, while everyone has a list of "can't's," blind peoples lists of "can't's" is impressively extensive, either based on our experiences in life, on what people have told us, or our general stereotypical or internal thought processes. As such, while every person, sited or not, has a list of what they supposedly can't do, blind people continue to build their list, and once they've added something it, they have this urge to never try it again when they're older and have more experience. Now, there some things I will agree that we absolutely cannot do, for now at least, such as driving a lone. But I know that we can drive... of sorts, at least. I remember a memory that's now 12 years old... always stuck with me... where, with my dads assistance, I, as a six-year-old, sat on his lap and took the steering wheel of his vehicle and drove us, safely, to my Grampa's house. (He died some time later due to a heart attack... and what made it worse that it was on Christmas of all days.) Nevertheless, that showed me that, if we are aided, we can drive, at least in the most basic of forms. I won't be so bold as to make a claim that I can fully drive a car from one place to another, nor will I say I may be able to accomplish that feat again, because I don't think I can. I honestly don't know. Like I've said though, we've filled our heads with this massive lists of "cant't's" and we stick to them, completely. We refuse to try them and we come up with some nonsensical reason to justify our refusal, whether that includes our disability or otherwise. And I think that, if we open our minds a bit more, perhaps clear that list of a lot of its contents, and we give these things a try, we might actually go somewhere. Lots of people have told me something I'm sure we've all heard before: "If you think you can't do it, and you say you can't do it, then you can't do it. But if you think you can do it, and believe that you can do it, then you can do it." smile Naturally, this doesn't apply to everything. But it applies to nearly everything.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-04-16 21:55:34

At Defender, you made a lot of good points. And I completely agree that it's unfair that, generally speaking, blind people have to fight harder, achieve more, and go further before we're accepted at the level that most sighted people are. Thing is, they don't even need to try in most cases, or, at the very least, they have choices about how hard they want to try, what kind of impact they would like to make in society, and so on. It's not their fault, but I don't have a whole lot of patience for those who dismiss you, and then expect you to do the work just to prove yourself worthy in their eyes. In some circles, that's what would be referred to as unnecessary emotional labor, and a hell of a lot of it too. That said, we really don't have much of a choice in the matter, unless you happen to be blessed enough to encounter a majority of accepting people. In some countries, and, yes, even in certain parts of western societies, too, that isn't always the case.

Does that mean we should give up, or carry an entitlement complex the size of Jupiter? Of course not. The thing that gets me down isn't so much that blind people can't do this or that, but the fact that  it's extremely difficult to be average as a blind person, not the same way that sighted folks can. Wherever you go, you stand out. You often have to overcompensate, or have skillsets that aren't even your chosen field, just to be taken seriously. And you know what? That sucks, and I'm not ashamed to say it.

This doesn't affect some people. In fact, they thrive on the challenge of being the best, or at least showing the world that they defy the odds, or the stereotypes or what have you. Some of us don't like the limelight, though, and I wish there was more of a place for people like me. I'm not saying that I won't educate someone on the use of screen readers, or other things that they honestly would have no reason to have thought about before, even when that involves accomodations for a job. The thing is, I sense things about people from the instant they open their mouths. Bullying, rejection, a string of bad relationships, family conflicts, etc. have taught me the signs to look for. It's pretty discouraging to pick up on the fact that someone doesn't believe in you the instant they lay eyes on you, and their judgments and preconceived notions are working overtime. others would embrace the battle, the race to the top. I would rather quietly accept that not all fights need to be fought. I'm sure that means I'm going to miss oppurtunities, but that doesn't really bother me. I'd love to be working right now, to contribute to society in the traditional ways that most people think of as being acceptable, but when faced with the prospect of being something I'm not just to get a job, any job, it's just not worth it to me. I don't like the idea of grovelling, or worse, changing myself into a completely different person just to fit the typical 9 to 5 model, knowing all the while that all my efforts very well may be in vain.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-17 14:08:52

Yeah I know what you mean Turtlepower, almost any sighted person who's breathing and has an IQ higher than a rock can get a shitty, but paying retail or service job with little effort, and rejection isn't as much of a problem either do to all the variety in most populated places.
And if you are dumb as a rock, you can still get a job in the back stocking or sorting.
Still, at least you can be a good neighbor, donate any extra cash you don't absolutely need to trustworthy charities or local assistance programs, do hobby projects for people to enjoy and maybe make some cash from that if you get good enough, make friends and be fun to hang out with and understanding when people are going through hard times ETC.
But that's something that most people settle for later on in life, and if your young, it's really hard to accept.


That said, their are people with chronic issues which effect them severely every day of their lives, to the point that they can't really enjoy much at all accept things you can do in bed, and often only in bursts, while everyone around them is living life, so with all that blind people can do these days, I feel lucky still.
I often look at Cool Blind Tech or Blind Bargains when I'm feeling shitty about my blindness, especially when CSun raps up, just to give me a boost and remind me about how society does care about us, and that even if I'm not their yet, I have the ability to do allot.