Employment and visual impairment do not go hand in hand

In an age of enlightened business practices and corporate responsibility, it seems ludicrous that any organisation could argue against equal opportunities. If anything, the opposite is true, with employers of all shapes and sizes falling over themselves to offer diversity-friendly mission statements and policies.

But Neana Lawson, a visually impaired student at Nottingham Trent University, has found that, regardless of how good a company's intentions are, a commitment to equal opportunities does not always translate into best practice.

"I applied to one of the biggest computer firms in the UK and they were great because there was an email address if you needed any adjustments made to the online aptitude tests they had set. The test was 32 questions in 30 minutes, but it would take me double that. So, I emailed them before Christmas to let them know I was doing the test and needed extra time. The company's response came in January when the deadline had passed. They had the right intentions but they didn't have the person there to back it up."

Recent statistics for blind and visually impaired graduates would seem to suggest that Lawson is not alone in finding barriers to employment. First-destination statistics for disabled graduates, published in the AGCAS What Happens Next report, show that disabled graduates are still far more likely to be unemployed than non-disabled graduates, with 48% and 55% respectively entering full-time employment six months after graduation; for blind and visually impaired graduates this falls to 44%. The same graduates are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled graduates. Some opportunities are more equal than others, it seems.

Blind in Business employment coordinator Genevieve Herga says that, despite the gloomy statistics, there is cause for optimism - advances in technology are creating a level playing field for blind graduates and great strides have been made from the days when employing someone with a visual impairment was perceived to be a time- and resource-consuming chore.

"Companies are definitely getting better at diversity but they're still learning which means that they're going to get things wrong. I've seen a really positive change in the last year alone; Blind in Business has become a lot busier and companies are starting to pay to come to our events now which means that they're obviously starting to give the issue a higher priority."

One such event the charity held recently allowed blind and visually impaired graduates to practise adapted assessment centre tests. The event not only allowed students such as Neana the chance to see how they would fare with psychometric testing, but it allowed the test designers to see how, and if, their adaptations would work.

As a managing consultant at OPP, John Hackston is one of the people you should blame if you've been confounded by an assessment centre test. "We've had a welcome increase in awareness from companies realising that all people need to be catered for in assessments. We don't develop tests specifically for people who are visually impaired; what we've done is taken the tests which seem to be best at predicting job performance and asked, how can we fairly adapt them?"

The adaptations range in complexity. One of the most immediate and easiest changes that can be made to the papers is to simply increase the font size and allow visually impaired candidates more time to sit the tests.

"It's the simple things like being able to access the materials and tests," explains Lawson. "Some of the tests we've tried today were fine when it came to the words but some had graphs in them and they weren't brilliant; they were quite hard to read." Another simple solution is to print the paper in Braille, although again this doesn't resolve all issues.

"Braille doesn't work very well as a medium for presenting graphs and pictures. What we'd look at there is possibly finding another way to test for that particular competency which could be presented in words or numbers," explains Hackston.

Recent business management graduate Sunny Bains hopes that by practising psychometric tests he will have a clearer idea of what to expect when it comes to the real thing - he has an assessment with BT looming. Sat in a separate room from other candidates, Bains is trialling a system in which Herga acts as his reader and scribe; when prompted she reads the test questions clearly while Bains commits his thoughts on to his Braille notetaker. He can also follow along on a Braille version of the paper. Once he has digested the information he gives his answer to Herga, who notes it down and they continue - Bains' guide dog Mac watches proceedings from the corner of the room.

Herga has acted as a reader and scribe for candidates at assessment centres before and says that the job requires a good understanding of what the graduate is being asked to do.
"It all depends on the person and the assessment. They might just need me to read or to scribe. One of the most common issues you come up against is a diagram or a graph that can't be translated into Braille and so you'd need to describe it very clearly without giving away the answer; so you describe the title of the diagram, read the X and Y axes and the key to the candidate."

Vickie Chamberlain, graduate recruitment manager for Simmons and Simmons, the firm hosting the assessment event, says that turning diversity policies into action is not just a case of writing the policy and hoping it comes to life. "It comes down to resources - if a company is going to successfully tackle diversity it needs to provide the resources to do that.

We have a diversity forum, which meets to look at what we're doing and each member of our graduate recruitment team has a speciality in each area of diversity. In many cases it's not until you host an event like today that you realise the sort of minor changes that you need to make. For instance, we've been meeting the candidates in the main entrance of the building rather than letting them come upstairs to the company reception."

While the statistics and the experiences of some visually impaired graduates show that there is still a long way to go before the true definition of equal opportunities is realised, even the minor changes implemented by companies can go a long way to ensuring that diversity doesn't become a pipe dream.

Says Bains: "It all comes down to planning for the problems that you're going to come across."
Bains has since been recruited by BT, which suggests that with better planning by employers and candidates the future needn't be as bleak as the statistics suggest.