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Home > Services & Assistance > Career Services > eSight Careers Network > For Employers > Interviewing A Blind or Print Impaired Job Candidate

By: Nan Hawthorne

Why It's Important to Take A Proactive Approach

We often think in terms of "what we have to do" when it comes to human resources practices. Professionals in that field attend seminars, such as the National Employment Law Institute's, largely to be sure they are operating within the law when it comes to hiring minority applicants. The application and interview process, both aspects of screening candidates, comes under particular scrutiny as a phase where mistakes can be made and lawsuits initiated. What questions can you ask? What concerns can you express? In what ways might the interviewers' bias come through?

But we don't always look at the spirit of these requirements for fair hiring processes. Clearly they are intended to remove hiring barriers for the job seeker. But they also can remove barriers that disable a company's chief objective in the hiring process: find and retain the best person for the job. Why let misinformation or simply inadequate data rob your company of an employee who will contribute greatly to your organization's success?

When your screening process is stacked against someone who is visually or print impaired, you simply don't have a way to uncover whether the person is the most highly qualified, committed and suitable person for the work you need done. Here are some of the guidelines that can help you make better informed and realistic choices.

How to Streamline The Application Process
The major disadvantage in the typical job application process for people who are blind or print impaired is that materials are almost always in print format. When you ask a print impaired person (and this could be a blind person or someone with a reading disability such as dyslexia) to sit down and fill out a paper application, the whole relationship starts out on the wrong foot.

There are several good alternatives to applications in print format, most of which are quite easy to accomplish:

• Accept a complete resume in lieu of a completed application. You can always contact the person for additional information you need or ask the questions you may have during the interview.
• Allow the person to take the materials home so that he or she may take advantage of a sighted reader's help, a magnifier or even an optical character recognition device.
• Provide a sighted reader for the applicant in your office. Make sure that person knows exactly what to do.
• Have large print versions of materials available at all times for those candidates with low vision. You can produce the application with a larger font. "Official large print" is 14 point, but 18 or more serves a larger group. Or you can enlarge the pages of your standard letter-size application on a photocopier so they are printed on 11 inch by 17 inch paper.
• Provide a cassette-recorded version of all the application materials, including any position descriptions, applications and peripheral information. Be sure the candidate has a means to communicate answers to the application's questions.
• Automate your application by setting it up as a form to submit on your web site. Many print impaired people have computers that are adapted to increase print size or to read text aloud.
• Only about five percent of visually impaired people read Braille, but it is good practice to provide materials in that format for those who do and for deaf/blind people. Check your local library or school district to locate nonprofit or private Braille transcription services.

Face to Face: The Interview
Part of the screening process requires that an applicant demonstrates the ability to do the work, and to do the work the person must be able to get to work. So unless you plan to have your candidate, disabled or otherwise, work from home, you don't need to do a telephone interview. A face-to-face interview with a disabled candidate who would work in your office is just as important as any other person who is under consideration for the job.

First of all, relax. This may be one of the first visually or print impaired people you've interviewed, but you can be sure that you are not the first sighted person he or she has talked to. You already know you can't quiz your candidate about issues which may produce at least the appearance of bias on your part. When you meet the person in the waiting room, behave normally. If your extended hand is not taken, just drop it. Don't be embarrassed. You can often avoid such awkwardness by simply stating, "I'm pleased to meet you; let me shake your hand" and then shaking the person's extended hand.

Offer the person "sighted guide" which, at its heart, is just offering the person your arm. If the person refuses, accept that. Walk the person to the interview room without undue ceremony, only warning them of obstacles, if there is obvious need. If the person has a guide dog, you may compliment them on the dog but otherwise ignore it. Make sure other staff know this, too.

Once in the room, guide the person to a chair. Take the person's hand and put it on the back of the chair. That is all you have to do. If you offer your interviewee coffee, just be sure to put the cup and any sugar or cream where the person can easily reach. You can say, "The cup is a couple inches away from your right hand directly in front of you." You may offer to get water for the dog. Noelle Grant, the disabilities expert in the Affirmative Action Office at Western Washington University in Bellingham, offers these further tips for the interview:

1. Ask at any point if there is anything you can provide to make the application and interview more successful for the candidate. Disabled people are often the best experts at their own accommodation.
2. Don't assume that there is "no way" to accommodate any particular task the job entails. You are probably not aware of the many technological advances that have expanded the potential for those with a disability during the last few years - everything from using a computer, cooking meals, doing carpentry and accessing print. Further, a person's disability may not necessarily preclude a specific task. Disabilities, even forms of blindness in particular, can vary radically.
3. Bearing in mind that the person has had time, most likely, to adjust to a visual impairment and that you may not be aware of tools and techniques the candidate could use, think about how you might cope and how you might feel if you were the interviewee with the disability. As the saying goes, "do unto others..."
4. Again, use accessible materials. If you give the candidate printed materials to review later, don't penalize the person for not having been able to review them on the spot.

You may give the person a copy of the job description that includes a list of the essential tasks for the job and ask the person if he or she can perform all of them with or without accommodation. And if the person volunteers that he or she has a disability, you are free to ask about the accommodations needed, what they do, how they work and what they cost.

The goal is to make the interview flow as any other meeting with a job candidate, so ask the same questions and expect the high quality answers you seek from non-disabled applicants.

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