Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness

Worldwide, people with visual impairments often struggle to gain employment. This study attempts to closely evaluate the work experiences of employed individuals with visual impairments living in one of the world's most populous developing nations, Nigeria.

The researchers developed a questionnaire that assessed personal and professional experiences among a sample of 172 adults with visual impairments living and working in Nigeria. Statistical analysis procedures included descriptive and nonparametric methods. The Mann-Whitney U test compared the difference between the mean ranks of 12 work-experience measures (dependent variables) within the independent groups.

Gender, degree of visual impairment (total blindness or low vision), age at onset of visual impairment (childhood or adulthood), educational attainment, and marital status were all characteristics that evidenced significant differences (p <.05) in the participants’ work experiences evaluated by the present study. However, there were also instances where there were no significant differences in the independent groups among several of the 12 work-experience measures (p > .05).

Annual income, hours worked per week, confidence level performing current work, and future job opportunities were found to be significant based on participants’ gender, education, or marital status. There was overall consistency among participants in the sample (regardless of degree of visual impairment or age at onset of visual impairment).

In this sample, advanced education equated to higher salaries and greater confidence in performing work. The importance of postsecondary education was affirmed in terms of future earnings and confidence.

This study presents the perceptions of employed individuals with visual impairments living in one of the world's most populous developing nations, Nigeria.

The researchers developed a questionnaire that assessed personal and professional experiences among a sample of 172 adults with visual impairments living and working in Nigeria. Qualitative analyses of all the participants’ responses to open-ended questions on the questionnaire were performed; as well as an analysis of responses from a subset of the participants who engaged in face-to-face interviews.

Participants identified out-of-date or inaccessible equipment and materials, coupled with inadequate assistance, transportation issues and environmental barriers, poor remuneration, weak job status, discrimination, lack of funds or time, inaccessible housing, and limited training opportunities as work challenges. The majority felt that further education was the key to improving their work situations.

This study validated the findings of the quantitative study with which it was aligned, underscoring the importance of education and access to employment for people with visual impairments. The participants in this study conveyed their thoughts about what worked and what did not work for them in employment. They also shared their ideas about how parental support had enabled them to achieve employment, and stressed the importance of disability-specific skills such as using assistive technology, mobility techniques, and independent living skills.

Practitioners are reminded of the importance of working closely with families to help them help their children acquire skills and the belief that they can work. They also need to remember the critical need for their students and clients to master disability-specific skills.

We hypothesized that consumers who are blind or visually impaired (that is, those who have low vision) who were served by state vocational rehabilitation agencies with decision-making control over administrative functions would experience better vocational rehabilitation outcomes than consumers served by vocational rehabilitation agencies with less control in these areas.

We merged person-level RSA-911 (fiscal year 2010) data with agency-level data collected as part of the National Survey of State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies, which we conducted in 2011. We employed multilevel modeling, controlling for select person-level characteristics, and agency-level indicators of primary decision-making control by vocational rehabilitation agencies in six key administrative functions: human resources, infrastructure, management information systems, policies and procedures, program evaluation, and purchasing. Dependent variables were measures of “any employment” and “competitive employment” outcomes.

We report a positive association between agency decision-making control over policies and procedures and competitive employment outcomes by consumers who were blind (odds ratio = 2.64; 95% confidence interval 1.23–5. 72). Among consumers who are visually impaired, agency decision-making control over human resources was negatively associated with any employment closures (odds ratio = 0.56; 95% confidence interval = 0.36–0.93) and competitive employment outcomes (odds ratio = 0.56; 95% confidence interval = 0.33–0.97).

Results demonstrate the potential for factors related to agencies, in addition to factors related to individuals, to function as mediators of vocational rehabilitation outcomes for consumers who are blind or visually impaired.

Findings highlight the importance of understanding how management control over areas such as policy and procedures have the potential to influence service delivery and subsequent employment outcomes.

Given mutual concerns of vocational rehabilitation and the Social Security Administration, our purpose was to evaluate the effect of current individual and economic factors on competitive employment for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries with visual impairments in vocational rehabilitation.

Using fiscal year 2010 RSA-911 data on 4,478 SSDI beneficiaries whose vocational rehabilitation services had concluded, we conducted descriptive and multilevel analyses to determine which client and state or agency factors predicted competitive employment.

Unemployment rate, gender, age, race, disability, severity of visual impairment, education, prior earnings, SSDI amount, and interactive effects of agency structure were significantly related to competitive employment.

This research provided new knowledge of state or agency influences, risk factors, advantages, and compensatory effects of services in blind agencies, and underscored the importance of prior work experience in achieving competitive employment for SSDI-beneficiary consumers.

Recommendations related to vocational rehabilitation services to SSDI beneficiaries, policy regarding agency structure, and future research are made.

We investigated the employment status and identified factors that may affect the employment outcomes of people with visual impairments in Taiwan.

A retrospective, ex post facto design study was conducted. The sample included 313 visually impaired clients who commenced and “closed” (completed) disability employment services between 2008 and 2010 in a metropolitan area in Taiwan.

Two hundred and seventy-one out of 313 (87%) clients were gainfully employed after receiving services. Among those employed, 224 clients were employed as massage practitioners. Factors that increased the likelihood of successful employment outcomes after receiving services included more postemployment services, fewer pre-employment services, and having a vocational qualification.

This study provides some empirical support documenting the association between the provision of employment services and employment outcomes among people with visual impairments in Taiwan.

The importance of disability employment services programs, a major component of vocational rehabilitation services, within the overall operation of rehabilitation is their capacity to provide direction, focus, and meaning to other therapies or services. The results of this study may lead employment specialists to reexamine their case services practices. Knowledge of factors that may affect clients’ rehabilitation may help employment specialists to better estimate how much support and training are needed and better assess their clients’ employability.

In the Province of Quebec, Canada, it is estimated that only about one-third of working-age adults with visual impairments are part of the workforce, despite ongoing efforts of rehabilitation and government agencies to integrate these individuals. The present article describes the development and adaptation of a pre-employment program specifically designed for English-speaking visually impaired persons in Quebec.

Based on a model program introduced at the University of Texas in the United States, and further developed with the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the United Kingdom, the MAB-Mackay Rehabilitation Centre (MMRC) adapted the training materials for its pre-employment program to the local requirements. Its effectiveness was appraised using posttraining employment status as well as responses by participants, using the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) Tool to Assess Preparedness for Employment (TAPE) measure of employment readiness.

Of the eight participants who completed the four-week program, five had found employment and, of those, four had maintained employment within the eight-month follow-up period (one full-time, three part-time). Further, two of those employed part-time also returned to school part-time. An additional two participants chose to continue their education in order to improve their employability. Scores on the CNIB TAPE subscale of communication showed statistically significant post-training improvement (p = .01) that was maintained after eight months. A statistical trend indicated improvement on the technology subscale following participation in training (p = .10).

MMRC's pre-employment training program was developed to address the need for a structured employment preparation program that was integrated with the available rehabilitation services for English-speaking visually impaired individuals in a predominantly French-speaking environment.

The multidisciplinary nature of this approach facilitated a common language and shared perspective for practitioners across disciplines that are involved in preparing clients for the job market.

This meta-analysis reviewed correlational research on youths (ages 13–21) with visual impairments (that is, blindness or low vision) conducted using the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2).

After a systematic literature review, six studies (four peer-reviewed articles, one dissertation, and one conference presentation) met inclusionary criteria and provided sufficient findings for meta-analysis. Three studies were selected to represent NLTS2 Waves 1, 3, and 4 without violating assumptions of independence. The fixed-effect meta-analysis tested the summary effect of social skills variables.

Social skills had a moderate summary effect (r² = .373), with high precision for an aggregated sample of 1,229 youths. The test for heterogeneity (I² = 94.25) indicated that social skills explained 6% of the between-study findings. Cumulative analysis suggested a small amount of publication bias.

Although differences other than social skills accounted for most between-study variances, trends in the research imply relationships between social skills and the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC).

Given the limited time available for specialized instruction, identifying ECC areas with measurable positive impacts empowers teachers to design effective programs. The moderate positive overall effect for social skills variables reported in this study supports the continued emphasis on social competence in the educational programs for youths with visual impairments. Given the challenges with conducting research using small samples in the field of visual impairment, meta-analysis offers opportunities to test the overall effect of interventions by combining the findings of multiple smaller studies. This study demonstrated that meta-analytic research is applicable to the field of visual impairment. Future meta-analytic studies of any ECC variables would benefit from the inclusion of additional sources of quantitative research (that is, intervention studies and different large-scale datasets). New research from a variety of data sources would allow the field to more clearly describe trends and relationships among ECC variables and transition outcomes for this population.