The following article, which included several photographs, appeared on the
front page of Sunday's Pittsburgh Post Gazette and may be found at :
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000903blindwork2.asp
No sight means no work
Unemployment low for almost everyone, but it's 75% for blind
Sunday, September 03, 2000
By Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Labor Day honors those who work for a living, but unemployment among
the blind and visually impaired is 75 percent. And Pennsylvania is
considered one of the worst states at providing services
Luis Angel LaBoy attend a special orientation at Community College of
Allegheny County with Bela, his four-year-old guide dog. (Gabor Degre,
Post-Gazette)
Luis Angel LaBoy has had his share of health problems. When he was 23,
he was diagnosed with diabetes. At age 41 he had a heart attack. But
the biggest obstacle of all has been his blindness.
The difficulty is not his inability to see. LaBoy has no vision in his
right eye and little in his left -- and that's deteriorating -- but he
gets around fine with his cane or his black Labrador guide dog, Bella.
LaBoy believes his impaired vision has been the primary reason for his
six years of unemployment. Even his efforts to earn a high school
General Equivalency Degree were stymied for a year, he said, because
no local program was willing to supply him with a reader for the
exams.
"If it's not one thing it's another," said the 43-year-old Mt. Lebanon
resident, whose wife, Merrily, also is legally blind. The couple have
five children between them. "As a blind individual, people are scared
to give you a job. They say, 'Because you're blind, you might get
hurt.' Most people will say, 'My insurance will go up because of the
safety hazard.'"
By any measurement, jobs are difficult to find for the handicapped and
even more so for the blind. Nationwide, the unemployment rate is just
over 4 percent, but among the handicapped it's about 70 percent and
for the blind it's nearly 75 percent. About a third of the blind who
do work are underemployed, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
Between July 1997 and January 2000, a 30-month period, Pittsburgh
Vision Services, which provides vocational and social services for the
blind, found jobs for just 38 people, at an average wage of $6.15 an
hour. Typically, the jobs are part-time; the employees rarely receive
health insurance.
An Uphill Struggle
State rank slow in service for the blind
"The county is crying for skilled people," said Dennis Apter, director
of vocational services for Pittsburgh Vision Services. "We have to
coincide that with training and business community support in
providing opportunity vehicles for employment."
An estimated 8.5 million Americans are blind or visually impaired.
Blind means people with vision of 20/200 or worse in their better eye,
even with corrective help, which is about 10 percent of normal vision.
Another way to put it is that a person with 20/200 vision can see at
20 feet what someone with 20/20 vision can see at 200 feet.
A visually impaired person's vision is 20/70 or worse in his or her
best eye, although someone with 20/50 vision with a degenerative
condition could also be considered impaired.
Pennsylvania does not have a means of tracking the number of blind in
the state. Instead, it relies on estimates that two of every 1,000
people are blind and five of every 1,000 are visually impaired. Based
on the state's estimated 1999 population of nearly 12 million, there
are about 84,000 blind and visually impaired Pennsylvanians.
Neither are there exact figures for the number of blind in Pittsburgh
or Allegheny County, but using the same ratio there would be about
8,800 blind and visually impaired people in the county. Pittsburgh
Vision Services annually serves about 2,400 persons who are blind or
visually impaired. But as Apter said, "Obviously, we don't know how
many people we're not reaching."
Blind persons are among the highest-educated segment of the
population. According to a 1999 survey by the American Foundation for
the Blind, 88 percent of the respondents had at least some college
education, and more than a third had graduate degrees.
Technology mixed blessing
While technology has made some tasks easier for blind persons -- the
conversion of Braille to text, for example -- it has created other
problems requiring more experience and better adaptive equipment.
Vocational rehabilitation counselors for the blind say that computer
software such as Windows, or other programs requiring blind persons to
move a mouse around and click on icons, are virtually impossible for
them to operate.
Computer innovations such as speech software packages that speak and
voice scanners that audibly "read" text have proliferated. And through
the American with Disabilities Act, a 1990 law banning discrimination
based on disability, employers are required to take "reasonable" steps
to accommodate disabled people. But despite various federal, state and
local programs that can help them pay for adaptive equipment,
employers often balk.
"The reality is, if you wait for the employer to get what you need,
and for the state to review the situation, it's going to take too long
for you to get a job there," said Peggy Chong, manager for Newsline
for the Blind, a National Federation for the Blind program in 70
cities -- none in Pennsylvania -- where local newspapers are read to
blind people over the phone through an electronic
text-to-synthesized-speech system.
Luis Angel LaBoy waits in the dining room of his Mt. Lebanon
apartment to recover from a dizzy spell after his blood sugar feel too
low one afternoon. Eating some candy and resting about 20 minutes will
quell the dizziness and stop his hands from shaking. But LaBoy cannot
correct the long-term effects of diabetes, which has irreversibly
damaged his vision. LaBoy takes nine pills a day, uses medicated eye
drops and receives two insulin shots a day from his wife. (Gabor
Degre, Post-Gazette)
"If you do not know about software packages [at the job interview], if
you can't answer those technical questions, you don't get past that
interview point and you don't end up getting that job," Chong said.
One of the most venerable of the national employment programs for
blind people has been the Randolph-Sheppard Program, introduced by two
congressmen in 1935, one of whom was U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph of
W.Va. It enables blind people to have first priority on all federal
property to operate food service facilities.
At its zenith in Pennsylvania, the program provided jobs for nearly
200 people; now just 54 earn a living from it. Known as the Business
Enterprise Program, it is overseen by the Bureau of Blindness and
Vision Services and its governing state agency, the Office of
Vocational Resources. Until July 1999, oversight came from the
Department of Welfare.
"The state is not geared to operate a business," said Jack Potts, who
has been part of the program for 34 years and for the past three years
has been president of the Pennsylvania Randolph-Sheppard Vendors. He
currently operates a snack bar in the state's Health and Welfare
building in Harrisburg.
"All the red tape you go through," Potts said, "is just bogging down
the business. We can't get anything done. The paperwork for new
equipment or making new locations -- it takes us a year to get things
done sometimes. The state system is terrible."
Potts said he knows of "a lot of blind people out there who want to
work," but the Business Enterprise Program suffers from a lack of
those who have completed rehabilitation successfully enough to work. A
1995 study recommended that the state contract the program to an
outside agency, as many other states do, but the blindness bureau and
state Department of Welfare declined to make the change.
Roadblocks everywhere
Albert Schwartzberg, who is married with five children, would be
eligible to work in the Business Enterprise Program, but said he wants
a more challenging job. Legally blind since 1967, Schwartzberg has
been looking for work since December 1995. The college graduate and
Squirrel Hill resident has had job interviews, held occasional
part-time jobs, worked with counselors from the state blindness
bureau, taken aptitude tests and had an internship in a Community
College of Allegheny County computer program called the Institute of
Advanced Technology.
LaBoy and his wife work hard to make life as normal as possible for
their family, with this chance to get out of their Mt. Lebanon
apartment during a trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo. LaBoy often has to ask
what animal the group is looking at. His wife is also legally blind,
but not as acutely as Luis, Lift to right are Juan Jose Solis, 21,
LaBoy's son by his first marriage, Merrily Aaron Walker, 5, LaBoy,
Damian Walker, 9, and another visitor to the zoo. (Gabor Degre,
Post-Gazette)
Located at CCAC-Allegheny campus, the 14-year-old institute is an
intense, yearlong customized program for persons recommended by
counselors from OVR, the blindness bureau and the Veterans Affairs
Department. Its $12,776 per-person cost is paid for by the agencies.
When Schwartzberg took the program's aptitude test, he said he was not
provided a reader or an enlarger so that he could clearly read the
math and logic questions. Nevertheless, he said, his cumulative score
was 103 out of 104.
He was accepted into a six-week evaluation program, and, according to
director John Bernard, "he had a lot of skills already." Bernard said
a program known as "Jaws" was recommended to enable Schwartzberg to
better utilize the Windows software program.
Schwartzberg said he learned Jaws and then reapplied to the institute
in order to update his computer skills. He said he was told by a
placement counselor that he should get a job instead and was not
admitted to the program.
His vocational rehabilitation counselors with the blindness bureau
have helped him line up only one job interview, he said. Two June job
interviews did not result in employment. Schwartzberg said he and his
family might have to move out of state in order for him to find work.
"We have to find more opportunities for full-time employment," Apter
said. "The types of opportunities we have are not as broad in terms of
scope. There have been some supportive employers in the Pittsburgh
community, but in general there are still many businesses that aren't
as receptive as they should be with opportunities for employing the
blind and the visually impaired."
But first, blind persons must overcome the attitude barriers of
society, said Bill Chrisner, president and executive director of Three
Rivers Center for Independent Living, a nonprofit organization in
Point Breeze that helps people with disabilities live productive lives
in the community.
The critical tool the blind need to succeed, Chrisner said, is a
college degree. Studies have shown blind and visually impaired persons
with college degrees are much more likely to find work than those
without degrees. For the blind, college is more appropriate than most
trade or vocational schools, whose training programs aren't easily
adaptable. To facilitate college, many states, including Pennsylvania,
provide blind individuals with tuition help.
That's how Chrisner earned his undergraduate degree from the
University of Pittsburgh in 1970 -- with tuition help from the
blindness bureau. The Point Breeze resident went on to earn two
master's degrees from Pitt before taking his present position with the
center in 1988.
"College is extremely important because you almost have to be
overqualified to compensate for the prejudice of employers," Chrisner,
52, said. "Without the two master's degrees I wouldn't have gotten
this job."
The blindness bureau pays up to $8,100 per year for tuition, room and
board for blind college students. The sum does not include the cost of
adaptive equipment such as scanners and enlargers, for example, but
much of that also is available through the state.
Since the blindness bureau has come under the purview of OVR, however,
there has been discussion to decrease the $8,100 stipend. No decision
has been reached. Advocates for the blind think such a change would be
disastrous.
"Our clients [would] suffer," said Jim Bruce, a vocational
rehabilitation counselor in Pittsburgh and the local union's chief
shop steward. "It costs a lot to go to college when you're blind. The
lower middle class and poor people [would] have the toughest time.
Some of them have a family income that is just enough to knock them
out of scholarships but not enough to send them to college."
Despite the difficulties, Luis LaBoy began college in August. Earlier
this year he found a General Equivalency Degree program at Goodwill
Industries' Workforce Development Center on East Carson Street that
provided him a reader for the tests. LaBoy, who has been president of
the local chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, will enter
the North Side campus of Community College of Allegheny County and
study social work. He hopes to pay for his education through state and
federal loans.
"Without the education there wouldn't be any self-confidence," LaBoy
said. "Since I did everything on my own -- with a little coaching -- I
have a lot of confidence I can do more.
"My family is real happy about this. They knew I had it in me to do
it."
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 PG
Publishing. All rights reserved.
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