This is going to be long so please bear with me.
I have name changed as this is completely outing. Was thinking of posting in AIBU but imagined I will be told that “there are no excuses/you’re obviously doing something wrong,” etc. And maybe I am.
I will preface this by saying that I am registered blind.
In the past I have worked, however I gave up work to be a SAHM, and after my DC were old enough I found looking for work almost impossible. I am limited to the kinds of jobs I can apply for because Many just aren’t accessible. I can’t, for instance, go and work on a supermarket checkout or I would be by now.
So I started looking for work again and then I fell seriously ill, so was unable to even contemplate the idea for four years. But eighteen months ago I had an improvement in my health, and so was able to start looking for a job again.
i have applied everywhere. In fact I had an interview booked with a company who, when they discovered I was blind, withdrew the interview offer because of the fear that the system might be inaccessible if they gave me a job, and if that happened it would be unfair on a sighted candidate who would have missed out. Yes, I know they’re breaking the law but there really is nothing that can be done about these companies.
In October last year I was offered a job and thought that I’d struck lucky. However, once again I went to look at their system and it was found to be completely inaccessible. There are often ways to get round this through scripting of accessibility software etc, but it happened that on this occasion nothing could be done, and after deciding that there wasn’t a single other job in the organisation I could do the offer was withdrawn in April. I will point out at this stage that it was a full job offer, with a contract to sign, pre-employment screening which I passed etc. Access to work had been suggested as a possibility to look further into accessibility, but in order to apply for access to work you need a start date, and the employer was unprepared to give one even though it could obviously have been changed/removed.
Then the pandemic hit but I kept applying for jobs, some I never heard back from, some I had rejections, but this is just par for the course when you’re applying for work.
So I finally bit the bullet and applied for universal credit on the basis I would be assigned a job coach. I’ll admit I didn’t have much faith in the system after hearing accounts of blind people being told to apply for such roles as amazon delivery drivers 😂 but hey ho, we do what we must.
The job coach took some details, I have to commit to spending 35 hours a week looking for work, etc. She also referred me to Reed Employment as they are the service they use.
However I have this morning received an email from Reed saying that due to high demand they’re no longer taking referrals and so sorry to disappoint but good luck in the future.
Disability employment advisers no longer exist so that is not an option.
The VI charities such as the RNIB have no employment support in place, in fact my experience of the RNIB has been that I A, signed up for a back to work programme about four years ago which was cancelled on the day, they did however ask if we would sit on an interview panel which would look good on a CV. However they didn’t say what the interviews were,and when we arrived it transpired that they had brought together a group of blind people to interview existing employees to pick the ones who should be made redundant. All of these candidates were also visually impaired. So they were using the visually impaired community to put other visually impaired people out of jobs. Fuming doesn’t even cover it and if I’d known beforehand I would never have agreed to it.
Subsequent to that they also ran a focus group on getting back into employment, saying that they were going to liaise with companies on employing people with a visual impairment. Given that they themselves only have a 5% visually impaired work force the question was asked as to how they could possibly show any credibility to other companies. The programme was then withdrawn.
So, I feel I have in fact exhausted all avenues here. I’m not entitled to any money from UC due to owning a house, this was purely job specific, and given the amount of stress it has created I’m thinking that I should just withdraw the claim.
But I’m still unemployed, I receive spousal and child maintenance from my eXH but that will cease in a couple of years. I receive PIP which isn’t means tested.
So I am going to be in a position soon where I have very limited income, and even if I can sell the house and move elsewhere I still won’t have an income.
ESA (employment support allowance) was scrapped a year ago and it’s all now UC.
I literally don’t know if there’s any answer beyond this.
Clearly this is why 85% of the visually impaired population is unemployed but I really, really don’t want to be one of them, and yet it looks like I have no choice.