Visions are nothing but daytime dreams if one doesn’t have the means or the will to aspire and perspire for them. The aspirations of most visually challenged people, too, are bound by the same principle. Nearly 15 million of our citizens suffer from symptoms of blindness which amounts to a 3rd of the world's blind population.
Such a large population cannot be rendered helpless by leaving them to the dictums of fate.
The Government, in its maximum capacity, tries to fund organizations and institutions to look after the welfare of the members of the V.I. Community, but its own budgetary constraints are immense. One can only imagine how the 4% reservation in government jobs and educational institutions becomes a battleground for members of the entire PWD community.
This situation brings us to a crossroad of either choosing to brood about the limited opportunities or to unlock opportunities of our own.
How to tackle it?
This would come about by increasing our competence and also acknowledging the altruism emerging in the private sector. V.I.P.s who have become doyens in domains of the private sector have demonstrated this sense of competence. Gradually, recruiters have come to realize that the cutting-edge skills of V.I.P.s are wholly distinct from their personal disabilities. They recognize that V.I.Ps no longer present themselves as helpless job seekers but market themselves as "Value Givers" as they have rigorously trained themselves with assistive technologies, which are skills for others but necessities for their own sense of independence.
Case scenario: Entrepreneuer in AI-led-Wearable-Glasses
Imagine a case scenario where a V.I.P. who is a tech genius, and is looking to invent a pair of wearable glasses powered by Artificial intelligence[A.I.] through Screen Reader softwares that could narrate what is in front of her.
As an innovator, this device would be helpful for her own cause, but as an entrepreneur, she could leverage her skills in marketing to offer up the idea of this product to a Venture Capital by pitching the idea that so many of our farmers and daily wage workers who live on subsistence are illiterate and get defrauded by middlemen who renege on verbal agreements.
However if the very same people used these glasses, they could rely on contracts and written memorandum of understandings, as the glasses could read and narrate the contents of the contracts for them in their own language of comfort.
This is what a vision looks like: taking in ideas, finding opportunities to grow them, and maximizing them for the betterment of society at large.
A few other sectors where the V.I.P.s thrive are in Academia, Finance, law and managing back-end jobs because they are trained to use screen readers such as Voice over, NVDA, Talk back and Jaws to name a few. Through muscle memory and a keen sense of hearing to go along with a vivid sense of imagination, they are fluent in the use of various shortcut keys and skim through lengthy documents, jotting down points and collating the data before presenting crisp reports with detailed insights.
The speed and accuracy with which these reports are presented astonish their peer groups and reaffirms the employers and peer’s confidence in the fact that the V.I.P’s mean business, and they expect “Nothing more than a fair opportunity to demonstrate their competence.”.
Author of this article:
Joshua Lobo is a research scholar in the domain of Political science with a Masters Degree from Delhi University. He aspires to be a research enterpreneur in the field of Public Policy, comparative politics and constitutionalism. He is a Person with low vision Disability (90% blindness RodCone distrophe) and is currently an Intern.
He writes about finding inclusive and enabling policy solutions for the marginalized sections of society.