See My Skills

Right now, more than 2 million people in the UK are living with sight loss[1], causing a significant impact on their daily lives. Issues around employment represent one of the biggest barriers to equal participation, only 1 in 4 blind and partially sighted people of working age in employment, a figure that has worsened in the last decade.[2]

The sight loss employment gap is a shocking 48%. Currently 75% of the general population are in employment[3], falling to 51% amongst the disabled population (excluding sight loss) and to 27% for people registered blind or partially sighted.[4]

In order to better understand what factors contribute towards positive employment outcomes for blind and partially sighted people, the Vision Foundation commissioned research from the University of Birmingham’s Department of Disability Inclusion and Special Needs.

This briefing outlines the research findings and makes recommendations for a united response from the public, private and charity sectors to level the employment playing field for blind and partially sighted people.

To read the briefing report, please follow the links below:

PDF version: See My Skills Employment Briefing Report July 2021

Plain text (word) version: See My Skills Employment Report July 2021 (Word Version)

To read the full research report, produced by the University of Birmingham research team, please see below:

An investigation into factors contributing towards employment outcomes for individuals with vision impairment-FINAL – clean

[1] Barriers faced by blind and partially sighted people (2018) RNIB

[2] Slade, Edwards, Crawley (2020) Employment for blind and partially sighted

people in 2019. RNIB

[3] ONS Labour market data (April 2021)

[4] Slade (2019), Labour Force Survey 2018: comparison of people with sight loss to the rest of the population