Blind Do Well In Industry

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 16

Blind Do Well In Industry

Finding a job is naturally a most difficult thing for a blind person. He must discover what he can cope with, persuade an employer that he is employable, and then, when he gets a job, he often has to adapt conventional methods of work to his own abilities.

As if those were not hurdles enough, he often finds that other workers treat him at first with reserve amounting almost to suspicion.

To break down some of these barriers the New Zealand Foundation for the Blind has a placements officer, Mr L. J. Voice, of Auckland, who helps the blind find work. More than this, Mr Voice, who is blind too, does the job himself for a week or two to

prove to the management and other employees that a blind person is not a freak. Blindness has not prevented Mr Voice qualifying as an engineer, and this training no doubt helps him fit into the wide variety of industrial jobs in which he acts as guinea pig. One of the blind workers Mr Voice has helped to place in industry is Miss Jewell Blanche, who operates a highspeed drill press at a fire alarm equipment factory in Christchurch.

Miss Blanche has been blind for 20 years, ever since an operation for a brain tumour. Her job is to drill holes through the plastic and brass fittings of thermal heat detectors, and she does it at the rate of 200 an hour. She travels to work each day on the bus from Brighton, sometimes, but not always, with a sighted friend. Miss Blanche has a guide dog, Mitzi, but because she trained the dog herself she is not able to take it on the bus. Mitzi takes her around Brighton, however, and last January they toured Auckland together—Mitzi’s first work in heavy traffic. One of the most confident blind workers in Christchurch is Mr Bruce Jeffares, who repairs telephones at the Post Office workshops. A chemical engineer before he was blinded, Mr Jeffares lost his sight 20 years ago in an accident with liquid gases. Mr Jeffares is proud of the work he does, not so much for himself, but because it shows what a blind person can accomplish with determination and ingenuity. “Rehabilitation of the blind in industry has made great strides over the years,” said Mr Jeffares as he worked busily away, moving his test probes deftly from one terminal to another. “But the blind have got to show they can do it. We have had to prove ourselves, and at first we worked under pretty bad conditions. Now the blind are working in

practically every profession.” For his repair work and maintenance on telephone circuits, Mr Jeffares has had to devise an unorthodox means of distinguishing one part from another. There are 22 different coloured wires in a telephone, and as Mr Jeffares works, buzzers sound from a little box above his bench.

He can identify condensers by the amount of voltage they will take —one which takes more than another will sound the buzzer. A buzz also tells him whether the dial is working. Before he even started he had to teach himself to take apart and reassemble the dial’s 57 parts. “People think blindness is a handicap,” said Mr Jeffares. “It’s not.”

A system of buzzers has also been devised by Mr Jack Reece, a former Canterbury cricketer and umpire, who has been partially blind for more than three years because of a disease. Once a foreman in heavy industry, Mr Reece now tests circuit breakers for a plastics firm. Prepared for Worse

At present Mr Reece is able to see well enough to tell where the hands are pointing on a large test dial, but he is prepared for the possibility that his sight may get worse. The Foundation for the Blind has supplied him with a Braille dial to do the test job, and buzzers will tell him what is happening.

Mr Reece does not use the Braille clock yet, but it sits near him on his bench. “This means that if I completely lose my sight I will be able to continue working,” he said.

Reduced Sight has meant that Mr Reece can no longer umpire, nor read the newspaper. “I have learned to do without it,” he said philosophically. “I no longer strain to see what is difficult for me to see.” He is still a member of the Sydenham Cricket Club, listens to the cricket on his radio, and plays bowls.

All of these people are registered with the Foundation for the Blind, which not only looks to their material welfare with such aids as Mr Keece’s Braille clock, but also provides them with social amenities and with an experienced, practical organisation to turn to in all the difficult situations that crop up in a blind person's life.