Tomorrow, Thursday 23rd April 2026, Blind Ambition takes the stage at the SHiFT Conference in Coventry to address one of the industry’s most persistent blind spots. Seema Flower will be speaking about how street works affect blind and partially sighted people — but the conversation that follows will matter just as much as the presentation itself. Because the industry’s inclusion problem isn’t only about how sites are managed. It’s also about who is, and isn’t, sitting inside the office, the van, or the boardroom.
The Statistic the Sector Needs to Sit With
75% of blind and partially sighted people of working age are not in employment.
Not 15%. Not 25%. Three in four. In an industry that prides itself on precision, safety, and operational excellence — that number represents both a failure and an opportunity that most employers haven’t yet looked at directly.
The barriers aren’t usually about capability. Blind and partially sighted people who do enter the workplace — and those who navigate the world independently every day — bring with it something the industry finds hard to train for: an extraordinary degree of problem-solving, adaptability, and resilience built from years of navigating a world not designed with them in mind.
What Tenacity Looks Like on a CV
When Seema Flower navigates a street works site as a registered blind person — as she does every day — she is deploying skills that most people never need to develop: spatial awareness, rapid risk assessment, composed communication under pressure, and the ability to find a route through when the obvious one has been removed.
These are not soft skills. They are operational capabilities. And blind and partially sighted candidates who enter the fibre and telecoms workforce bring them as standard.
The question isn’t whether they can do the job. The question is whether your organisation is set up to let them.
Inclusion in Fibre and Telecoms: What It Actually Means
The fibre rollout is one of the largest infrastructure programmes in UK history. It involves thousands of sites, hundreds of contractors, and millions of interactions with the public — many of whom are blind or partially sighted.
Disability inclusion in this sector isn’t just about who you hire. It’s about how your operatives behave on site, how your offices are set up, how your communications are designed, and what your procurement standards say about the contractors you work with.
Blind Ambition works across all of those areas. But it starts with a fundamental question: does your organisation genuinely believe that blind and partially sighted people have something to contribute — or is inclusion a box you tick at the end of a tender?
“Street works don’t just disrupt traffic. For blind and partially sighted people, they disrupt independence. Every site has the power to either remove a barrier — or create one.”
— Seema Flower, Founder and Managing Director, Blind Ambition
Come and Talk to Us Tomorrow
Our colleague Liz will be at the Blind Ambition stand throughout the morning at the Heart of England Events and Conference Centre, Fillongley, Coventry. Seema will be joining after her presentation and will be there in the afternoon.
Whether you want to talk about training your operatives, reviewing your Traffic Management Plans for accessibility, or thinking about what genuine inclusion looks like for your workforce — come and say hello. The SHiFT Conference brings together 300+ delegates from 180+ companies every year. That’s an enormous concentration of influence in one room, and it’s exactly the right place to start a conversation about what the industry could look like if it got this right.
Post a Job on the Blind Ambition Recruitment Site
If you’re a fibre or telecoms employer who is serious about building a more inclusive workforce, start here. The Blind Ambition recruitment platform exists to connect employers who are genuinely committed to disability inclusion with blind and partially sighted candidates who are ready to contribute.
Post your vacancy at recruitment.blindambition.co.uk or get in touch with our team at recruitment-ops@blindambition.co.uk.
The talent is there. The question is whether you’ll create the conditions for it to thrive.
About Blind Ambition
Blind Ambition is a disability inclusion and behaviour-change consultancy founded and led by Seema Flower, who is registered blind. We work with organisations across construction, utilities, highways, retail, healthcare, and professional services to deliver Visual Awareness Training, Train the Trainer programmes, and strategic accessibility consultancy. Our recruitment platform connects inclusive employers with blind and partially sighted candidates. Visit recruitment.blindambition.co.uk or contact recruitment-ops@blindambition.co.uk.
