From the Great Falls Tribune in Montana:Bruce Breslauer (pictured) is literally a case of the blind leading the blind.
By the end of the year, the 58-year old will have a master's degree in orientation and mobility, which means he'll teach blind people statewide how to travel independently. It's a profession he's familiar with; Breslauer has been blind since birth.
"Bruce is breaking ground in what he's doing," said Melanie Bush, a local O&M instructor and the owner of Walk by Faith, Not by Sight Vision Services. "He also wants to use his guide dog to teach. It's really exciting, but it's happening under the radar in Great Falls."
While one blind man is pioneering an atypical job opportunity for others with the same disability, hundreds like him, who are capable of doing almost any job, are unemployed.
"Generally, we think the unemployment rate (among the blind) has got to be 70 percent (nationwide), but could be as much as 90 percent, based on the number of people who aren't employed but could be," said Doug Robinson, program manager for Blind and Low Vision Services in Great Falls, adding Montana is in line with those figures.
According to the Montana Association of the Blind and a national report by Prevent Blindness America and the National Eye Institute, about 3,000 blind adults live in Big Sky Country.
Across the country, people with the same impairment are working as accountants, teachers, salespeople, lumberyard hands, attorneys, fast-food cooks, engineers, receptionists and business owners, the groups say.
In Montana, where the lack of urban areas limit job opportunities, there are blind teachers, massage therapists and telephone operators, as well as folks working in fast food, retail and management positions.
However, the majority of employable blind people are jobless.
Some employers are reluctant to hire blind workers out of ignorance or worries about the cost of training or special equipment, officials with blind advocacy groups said. Other times, blind job-seekers, who have lived in a sheltered setting much of their lives, don't have the skills necessary to excel in the workplace.
Additionally, government assistance programs, such as Supplemental Security and Social Security Disability, provide enough income that some people with vision disabilities don't actively pursue work.
"The biggest obstacle to the employment of blind and visually impaired people is not the disability itself, but the attitude of society toward the disability," Breslauer said. "If we can do everything we can to work with the gatekeeper — the employer — to show what the blind and visually impaired can do, that will greatly reduce the unemployment rate."
It's common to see a 15-year-old blind person wearing Velcro shoes, said Carol Clayton-Bye, who has taught at the Montana School for the Deaf and the Blind for 10 years.
"Too often we don't see students until they're 9 or 15, and their parents come in and say they want to see them go to college or go onto employment," she said.
Clayton-Bye said getting people prepared for those goals is challenging when there are hundreds of visually impaired kids in Montana, but their parents are in a grieving process and can't do what they need to in order for their children to be ready for the "real world."
Early instruction is vital for blind children, she said, adding one of her favorite quotes is, "They don't know what they don't know." But the ultimate goal is to keep kids close to home, if possible, because parents are the first teachers.
MSDB teaches people ages 3 - 21. Blind and deaf children can attend the residential or day school on the Great Falls campus, or they can receive services in their home school districts.
"There are nine folks employed in Montana as outreach consultants (who serve blind students around the state)," Clayton-Bye said. "This is new, in the past we've had three."
MSDB has an environment designed for children with visual impairment. Some students take their classes and/or extracurricular activities at MSDB, some go to Great Falls Public Schools and some attend a combination of both.
The MSDB curriculum includes everything students would learn in public school, as well as an expanded core curriculum including things like eating/food, hygiene/appearance, dressing/clothes and social skills — all of which people with sight can learn visually.
"Statistics say we learn between 85 and 95 percent visually," Bush said. "It's a powerful thing."Clayton-Bye said the expectation is that it takes a blind person twice as long to learn something. However, some students don't get to the school at a young enough age and they aren't ready to graduate by age 18, so they stick around a little longer.
"We have some kids learning Braille as 17-year-olds," she said.
There are 20 blind students at MSDB, ranging in age from 3 to 18. The reality is some of these students will leave the school without the skills necessary to be a successful adult, Clayton-Bye said.
"Employment, unfortunately, is very low," she said.
Of the 12 students who've graduated from MSDB since 2003, one is in supported employment and one is attending college. Three former students are in adult living centers, and half of the graduates live at home.
Some of these students are continuing with MSDB's transition program, which includes transitional services such as instruction, employment, community experience, post-secondary living and more.
Transition services start at age 16, as required by law, though people such as Steve Gettel, superintendent at MSDB, believe they need to start earlier.
"Really, I think the appropriate age to start talking about it is age 12, in middle school, when kids start to either form ideas or not form ideas because no one's talking to them about it," Gettel said.
Each student at MSDB has an individual education plan and a team, including his or her parents, teachers and any therapists or specialists working with the student, that discusses post-school activities with the child.
"We determine what services are needed and who will provide the services," Clayton-Bye said.However, if a parent decides the student is not going to be employed or is going to live at home, the team can conclude that transition services are not needed, she said.
Once students leave MSDB, they can get support through Blind and Low Vision Services, a division of the Department of Public Health and Human Services. BLVS programs, such as vocational rehabilitation, assist the blind in finding and maintaining employment.
Vocational rehab specialists help blind individuals pursue college degrees and job openings. The specialists also provide mobility and job training, offer counseling and guidance services, and help identify adaptive aids and equipment that makes certain jobs possible.
"A lot of what we do is help people with higher education," Robinson said. "It gives people a lot better employment opportunities."
Robinson, who's blind and uses a guide dog, has a master's degree in vision rehabilitation therapy and holds a management position with the state. However, that was one of few doors that opened for him.
"I would go through interview after interview and not get hired and not know why," he said. "Constantly I would hear, 'you're over qualified.'"
Robinson said he doesn't believe employers are prejudiced against hiring blind people, but he believes they are scared.
"They don't know how," he said. "They'd rather not go there than get involved."
Robinson and others with the vocational rehab program do outreach to educate employers and help them become more comfortable with the idea of hiring blind people. They explain how people such as Breslauer; Breslauer's wife, Joy, who works as a blind customer-care representative at N.E.W.; and Robinson do their jobs. They also tell employers about the adaptive technology that makes such jobs possible.
"A person who's blind can do any computer task as well as a sighted person," Robinson said.
Along with making the unknown understandable for employers, the group also makes sure those looking for jobs are well-versed in the equipment so they can show employers how they could do the work.
"The chief thing you can say about a blind employee: You can bet he or she is going to be a devoted employee," Robinson said. "They're going to be faithful, proud of what they do and very dedicated."
Joy Breslauer said three things are necessary when searching for a job.
"You need computer skills, social skills and literacy skills," said Breslauer, who has been blind since 1998, and working at N.E.W. since June 2003. "If you don't get those skills in school, you better go to an institution to get them."
Breslauer said blind people need to be able to read Braille and visually impaired people need to be able to read standard print, if.
"Listening to a computer works, but it doesn't make you literate," she said, referring to talking computer software that is available.
Officials noted that there is one other thing blind people need to succeed: motivation.
"If you don't have that determination, you're going to give up with the first impediment that comes along," Robinson said.
Bush said students need to be taught self-advocacy so they will be prepared when such obstacles come along. They need to be able to tell teachers, professors and, eventually, employers what they need to get the job done, such as needing to be in the front of the classroom so they can see the white board or requiring "zoom text" on their computers.
"They should be able to go to an instructor at (Montana State University)-Great Falls College of Technology and say, 'This is what I need, and I need you to get it for me,'" Bush said.
She added that ingraining this ability in blind students falls in the hands of teachers, including parents, who need to work more with the student on self-advocacy, hold him or her more accountable, and include the student in the process of how things get accomplished.
"Each year make them more and more responsible, so by the time they're a junior or senior in high school, they can do things for themselves," she said.
Bush believes any blind person has the potential to be like Bruce Breslauer, who has a bachelor's degree, three master's degrees and a fourth master's in the works, and is a certified vision rehabilitation therapist. Breslauer also is a ham radio operator, and is working with the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art to get the Braille signage there up to snuff.
Breslauer has worked as a music history class listening assistant, a museum curator, a director of reading services, a counselor at rehabilitation services and an instructor for computer classes for the blind. He also worked for Guide Dogs for the Blind.
"Then I came to work in orientation and mobility (at Blind and Low Vision Services), and now I've worked for the state of Montana for two years in June," he said.
