[Jobs] FW: [ffth03] Blind Leading the Sighted

Wed Jun 14 13:11:25 CDT 2006

David Ballmann, MS
Rehabilitation Teacher
Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired
754Williamson Street
Madison, WI  53703
General 608-255-1166
Fax 608-255-3301
Direct 608-237-8106
Sharper Vision Store 608-237-8100
www.wcblind.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Schroeder 
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 8:37 AM
To: Wc-staff at wcblind.org
Subject: FW: [ffth03] Blind Leading the Sighted

Blind Leading the Sighted: Yellow Cab of Austin has become an
employment option for people who are visually impaired

From: The Austin Chronicle

By: R.U. STEINBERG

King the dog may be the eyes, but not the ears for his owner, Denime
Sadler, a Yellow Cab call center worker who can answer phones and
communicate with cabbies as well as any sighted person. photo by Jana
Birchum

Ever wonder what it's really like at a taxicab company? If you're old
enough to remember the TV series Taxi, you can probably imagine Louie
De Palma in his cage, barking out orders to Reiger, Nardo, and the
others.

If you never watched Taxi, it's just as well because that kind of cab
company is history. Over at Yellow Cab of Austin, they use computers
with mapping and geo-positioning software to track customers and
drivers. The garage is immaculate, with seven bays, and they have
their own body repair shop. The only one barking - well, he barks
once in a while - is King, the seeing eye dog. No surprise, since
five of the current 25 or so call-center staff members are visually
impaired.

Louie would be positively livid. But not Tomas Smith, who, as
communications manager at Yellow Cab, manages the call center and
computer equipment. "One of our guiding principles is that we be an
active participant in the community," says Smith, who has been in the
cab business since 1978 (the year Taxi premiered on TV).

A little over a year ago, Smith received an unannounced visit from
Denime Sadler, who has been completely blind since age 7. "I had no
idea he was coming. I didn't have any want ads in the paper. But he
decided that I needed to hire a blind man to answer telephones,"
Smith said. He convinced me he could get help from the Department of
Assistive and Rehabilitative Services. ... My intuition was he could
handle the stress and excel. So I hired him."

Sadler, who prefers to say he is a person who doesn't have "physical
sight," moved to Austin in 2004 from Mississippi where he had been
attending college. "I had a friend here already, but it was a rocky
start. My first service animal and I were in an accident with a tow
truck. Although we both survived, the dog had to retire. But from
tragedy came triumph: I got help from the state and a job here."
Sadler says he got the idea for working at the cab company because
Capitol Metro contracts with Yellow Cab to provide transportation for
people with disabilities. "I kept asking the cab drivers if there
were any openings here, and one day they suggested I check it out
myself."

Sadler said he recently helped form a coalition to help increase
public awareness about issues for people without physical sight. "The
blind need to be taught they can be independent and businesses need
to be shown we can work just as well - if not better - than 'normal
people.' Our unemployment rate is 70 to 80%, which is a disaster."

How hard is it to integrate people with disabilities into the
workforce? Employers may complain about all the difficulties
associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but a recent
study by Cornell University says one of the obstacles to hiring
people with disabilities is the negative attitude of supervisors and
co-workers. Smith says he's spoken with people in state government,
as well as with area-employment specialists about what Yellow Cab has
done. "The toughest thing is to come to the realization that there
really isn't a difference between a sighted and unsighted person. We
all have our shortcomings, abilities, and disabilities. Once you can
shed the prejudice, you'll find a body of very willing, able, and
motivated workers."

Smith said Yellow Cab had to make sure door handles had levers. The
company also had to mark the bathroom doors with braille, make sure
nothing was protruding into hallways, and install screen-reading
software called Job Access With Speech (JAWS) on call-center
computers. "Fortunately, we were already moving into a new building
that was ADA compliant," Smith said.

Chad Nezat, who has been visually impaired since birth, came to
Yellow Cab in July 2005 after being laid off from his previous job.
"Computer people at some companies don't like messing with JAWS or
claim it has security issues. Then there are times when JAWS doesn't
always work - that's been my experience with other customer-service
jobs."

Unlike many of his sighted co-workers, Nezat has been touch-typing
since the fourth grade and was ready to work with Yellow Cab's
computer system. "Most blind people

learn how to type from an early age because we have to communicate in
written form," he said. Everyone may not realize it, but all computer
keyboards are "braille," Smith added. "If you look at the 'F' and 'J'
keys, there are little raised areas - that's basically all they need
to get oriented."

Hugo Sanchez, who has only worked at Yellow Cab for a short time,
also brings a skill some of his sighted co-workers don't have: He is
bilingual. "Speaking Spanish is not only a good asset for me, I also
think it will help generate revenue for the company, because we can
provide something for a segment of the population that might not get
served otherwise." Sanchez, who at age 44 is the most senior of the
visually-impaired staff members, says there are more opportunities
for younger people with visual impairment today than there used to
be. When he is not working, he is a proud father of four (his oldest
is in the Marines), a ham-radio operator, and plays on the Austin
Blackhawks, a world championship-winning baseball team for people
with visual impairments. (For more information, visit the National
Beep Baseball Association at

<outbind://18/www.nbba.org>www.nbba.org.)

Although other businesses have been blind to Yellow Cab's success
thus far, Smith is happy to report that the Yellow Cab franchises in
San Antonio and Houston are also working toward hiring people who are
visually impaired.

"When we went into this, it was a learning curve. None of us had ever
done it, but I got help from Ed Browning at DARS. Our San Antonio
branch is currently moving forward with implementing the hiring of
blind call-takers, and Houston is not far behind. And there's been an
added bonus. We had to make a pretty big technical jump from old,
dumb monochrome terminals to modern PCs so we could install the JAWS
software. We liked the PCs so much better that we moved all of our
software to them. Now, all of our call-takers have access to the new
map software. This has helped the entire company."

______________________________
Chris and Pryor
[Because Life Is Much Too Short, Never Hug Tomorrow Who You Should
Hug Today!!!!!]

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Ruthie & Mallory,
my mellow yellow labradorable happy tail wagger

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