In Touch - 09/03/2010

Listener Tom Walker voices his concern about an article written by RNIB Chair Kevin Carey, in which he states that until we have a perfect world, without prejudice, in some situations blind people will take longer to perform some tasks than their sighted peers; particularly visually-impaired people using access technology or blind people reading Braille, who are not able to scan a document as they have to read it in a linear way. Tom said that he can read printed material more quickly than his sighted colleagues when he uses his screen-reading software and he thinks that making generalisations is fraught with danger and that disabled people should be 'talked up' by people such as Carey. Carey responded by saying it's not helpful to say that blind people can do things they can't and that his article did offer some solutions to the problems he pointed out, but that wasn't the bit that people chose to focus their attentions. As chair of the RNIB, he said that we have to be honest on the way they formulate their policies, based on the evidence they've got. Michael Whappels has been looking for a job for two years, and talked about his experience of trying to find work.