Rory is 18. He has Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, three to five per cent of his vision remaining, and three A* grades earned after losing most of his sight mid-way through his A-levels. He is now studying business at university in Belfast. Apple’s film about his journey is well worth watching — not as an inspirational story about overcoming adversity, but as a precise illustration of what blind and partially sighted talent actually looks like, and what it costs employers to ignore it.
The Employment Gap Is a Systemic Problem, Not a Capability Gap
Around 75 per cent of blind and partially sighted people of working age are not in employment. That figure is not explained by ability. It is explained by barriers — in recruitment processes, in workplace environments, in the assumptions made before a candidate even reaches the interview stage.
Rory’s story makes the point clearly. When he had the right tools and was trusted to find his own method, he became one of the top-achieving students in his school. His teacher did not lower expectations. She changed her approach. That is the distinction that matters.
What Tenacity Actually Looks Like in Practice
While he was still in hospital following his diagnosis, Rory started teaching himself how to use his phone’s accessibility features. His reasoning: if he could work out the phone, everything else would follow. He then went home and spent six hours at his Mac, working through the night, because he had identified a method that would let him continue.
That is not a soft skill listed on a CV. That is a demonstrable capacity for:
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Independent learning and self-direction
- Adapting rapidly to new tools and environments
- Maintaining output and quality during significant change
These are the qualities that organisations spend considerable resource trying to recruit and retain. Blind and partially sighted candidates have often developed them to a degree that their sighted peers have not been required to.
Adaptability Is Not Despite the Disability. It Is Connected to It.
There is a tendency in recruitment to treat disability as a risk to be managed — something that might require adjustment, might affect performance, might complicate the process. Rory’s story inverts that framing entirely.
His adaptability is not separate from his experience of losing his sight. It was forged by it. The same is true for many blind and partially sighted candidates. The experience of navigating a world not designed for you — of finding alternative routes, tools, and methods as a matter of daily necessity — builds a kind of operational resilience that is genuinely rare.
Blind and partially sighted candidates are not a risk. They are often among the most resourceful, determined and adaptable people in any recruitment pool. The question is not whether they can do the job. The question is whether your hiring process is built in a way that lets them show you that they can.
— Seema Flower, Founder and Managing Director, Blind Ambition
Access to Work: The Practical Support That Most Employers Don’t Know About
One of the most consistent reasons employers give for hesitating to hire disabled people is concern about the cost of adjustments. In most cases, that concern is based on incomplete information.
The UK Government’s Access to Work scheme can fund a significant portion — and in many cases all — of the workplace adjustments a blind or partially sighted employee needs. This can include specialist software, screen readers, adaptive equipment, and support workers. The employer is not expected to carry that cost alone.
Beyond Access to Work, many of the adjustments blind and partially sighted employees use day-to-day are already built into the devices and software most workplaces run. As Rory notes in his film, his classmates have the same accessibility features on their laptops — they just are not using them. The same is true in most offices.
What Accessible Recruitment Actually Requires
Posting a job is not enough if the process itself creates barriers before a candidate can demonstrate their capability. Accessible recruitment for blind and partially sighted applicants means:
- Job adverts and application forms that work with screen readers
- Interview materials shared in advance in accessible formats
- Flexibility in how candidates demonstrate their skills — written, verbal, or practical
- A clear, simple process for candidates to request adjustments without it affecting how they are assessed
- Hiring managers who understand that a candidate using assistive technology is not at a disadvantage — they are demonstrating exactly the kind of resourcefulness you should want on your team
The Employers Who Act Now Have the Advantage
The 75 per cent employment gap represents an enormous pool of capable, qualified, and underemployed people. Employers who build accessible recruitment processes are not doing blind and partially sighted candidates a favour. They are accessing talent that their competitors are routinely overlooking.
Rory does not yet know what his career path looks like. But the skills he has already demonstrated — self-direction, adaptability, technical resourcefulness, collaboration — are exactly what employers say they cannot find enough of. The gap is not on his side.
About Blind Ambition Recruitment: Blind Ambition Recruitment connects employers with blind and partially sighted talent. Post your job today at recruitment.blindambition.co.uk or contact recruitment-ops@blindambition.co.uk
