| Description | Charles Parker and Philip Donnellan interview Mr Symon, Disablement Resettlement Officer at the pre-vocational training centre at Torquay. He talks about the services provided by the Ministry of Labour in finding work for people with visual impairments, and the focus on people as individuals. He responds to suggestions that most blind people will end up being employed on lower salaries than they had been receiving before losing their sight and talks about the range of professional and manual jobs available to people. He discusses the effects of the economic recession on the number of placements available, talks about how he thinks employers view blind workers, and gives his view that blind people should be treated in the same way as other people with disabilities. He talks about the introduction of legislation to deal with the employment problems of people with disabilities, the establishment of workshops for blind people since the 1940s and the need for employers to be educated through visits to factories and placing blind workers in firms. He gives figures for the number of people who pass through rehabilitation training each year and talks about the psychological adjustments that blind people have to make when communicating with others and living with their disability. He thinks that people need to have the right kind of sympathy for blindness, not just pity, and that there needs to be an acceptance amongst the general public of blind people as disabled people. He discusses the different abilities of blind people to learn new skills (tracks 1-9).
Total: 32.37 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0738380 |