Unemployment rate high among visually impaired

CHALLENGES still continue for the Brunei Darussalam National Association of the Blind (BDNAB) as they observe World Braille Day today.

High unemployment amongst the visually and partially sighted members is still prevalent today especially among the visually challenged youths who are already of working age. To date only a handful (perhaps two or three) of visually impaired members are employed.

Some of the other pressing issues that the BDNAB has is the high rate of drop outs as quite a number of the BDNAB members have not completed their educational courses.

"A few of our members who are now above the age of 20 have only managed to complete their primary education while others only managed to complete their lower secondary education. The rest managed to finish their Secondary Five education but were unable to proceed further due to their modest academic qualifications," said Noralizulrainee Ali Yusop, the vice president of the BDNAB.

He added that he personally feels that an "alternative programme should be made available in order to impart job skills to help them broaden their employment opportunities in the public and private sector.

Today, 50 per cent of the disabled in the world are still unemployed due to lack of opportunities and the negative perceptions of employees on the disabled is one of the main reasons for the high unemployment rate.

"Then there's the matter of broad digital divide amongst our visually challenged members as well as computer literacy among the members," he said.

At the moment, the BDNAB conducts computer classes and it has done well but at the same time the problem of affordability remains because most of the members cannot afford a computer at home nor can they afford the expensive screen reader (the talking programme that allows them to access the screen through a computer generated voice). "As a result, their skills are not put to good use and they gradually lose their valuable information technology skills and we are always looking for new ways on how to make it more possible for our members to acquire the required assisting technology," Norali explained.

The BDNAB has 50 registered members and they range from youths to adults.

Nationally there are no statistics available as it is something that will be developed in the future and the BDNAB hopes to address the issues of visual impairment.

When The Brunei Times asked the BDNAB vice-president about the availability of Braille materials in Brunei, he said that Braille materials were not easily available in the sultanate. "Some are dependent on Braille and some are more into audio books," he said.

Braille materials are not very easy to access as they are very time consuming to order and currently, according to Norali, Brunei does not have its own Braille printing machinery.

The Brunei Times