Guidance

Guidance on supporting colleagues with Visual Impairments

Published 14 February 2023

This is designed to help managers and team members of visually impaired colleagues to thrive at work and generally promote a diverse and inclusive working environment where everyone can produce their best.

Key Points

• Visual impairment (VI) covers a range of conditions and impacts
• VI colleagues are equally capable, effective and independent valuable members of staff
• Those with a VI can be impacted in a variety of ways including psychologically
• Managers have a key role in supporting the VI (visually impaired) colleague by taking time to engage with the colleague to understand their situation and discuss what support they want to empower and enable them to be at their best
• There are a number of “physical/equipment” adjustments that can be put in place to support the VI colleague, including assistive software, but these may not be a perfect solution for all challenges
• Specialist advice is recommended, but often the VI colleague will also be knowledgeable about adjustments required
• It may be necessary to make some adjustments to task/role to play to the strengths of the VI colleague, and sometimes to coach the VI colleague in thinking about where their particular strengths lie
• The VI colleague may also need adjustments to how meetings they join are run and how documents they work with are formatted
• Visual Impairments and their impacts can change over time and managers need to regularly discuss with the VI colleague how best to support them.

What is Visual Impairment and what are the impacts?

Visual impairment (VI) is a reduction in vision to a degree that causes barriers and cannot be corrected by usual means, such as glasses. VI covers a spectrum of conditions ranging from what is commonly labelled blindness through degrees of difficulty reading and navigating around spaces.

Causes

Some people are born with a VI, and some suddenly become impaired through e.g. physical injury. There are many visual impairments that develop gradually over time, from normal eyesight through progressive conditions/eye disease such as Glaucoma and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD).

Effects of Visual Impairments

Visual Impairments can affect people in numerous ways. For example, Glaucoma narrows the field of vision and causes random parts of the visual field to become blank. AMD leads to gradual loss of vision from the central vision moving outwards. Thus, some people with a VI may have reasonable navigational vision but poor close/reading vision and others have the opposite. As many VIs are age-related it is common for older people especially to have multiple impairments.

Other common effects of many VIs can include sensitivity to light, poor vision in darkness, transition time from light to dark or vice versa, involuntary eye movement, and many other impacts varying by environmental or physical fluctuations.

Some VI staff will be experienced at explaining the barriers and how they deal with the practical and psychological challenges of life with a VI. They may be knowledgeable about and confident in asking for workplace adjustments, such as assistive software so they can perform at their best. Others however will be new to having a VI and need support and encouragement to find out about how they can best cope with the challenges presented including what workplace adjustments might help.

VI can be caused by conditions such as diabetes and some VI colleagues will also be managing other health conditions

Understanding the Impairment

It may seem fairly easy to work out the challenges the VI colleague faces especially if their impairment is severe. Sometimes however the impairment is more of a hidden disability. The VI colleague might not always be comfortable telling everyone they work with about their impairment and how it affects them. This reluctance is not unique to VI and can arise from;

• Fear of a negative impact on job retention or career progression,
• Concern about some societal attitudes to disability (stigmatisation),
• Simply because the situation can be complex, fluctuating and tiring to keep explaining to others,

Typical Challenges faced by those with a Visual Impairment

Here are some examples of barriers, but everyone affected will face different difficulties:

• Creating and / or reading text documents, and more so with those containing pictures and diagrams
• Using some common software applications and technology devices
• Finding their way around the office, especially large/open plan, noticing signs/labels, avoiding obstacles etc
• Recognising people, knowing who is speaking/trying to speak in a meeting or inability to pick up non-verbal clues/body language during personal interactions
• Fully participating in virtual/hybrid meetings which have focus on messaging chat and on-screen inaccessible displays etc.

Psychological Impact

The above factors can impact confidence, emotional wellbeing, and anxiety around their VI, especially for people who have recently become VI or have progressive conditions. It can challenge the VI colleague’s resilience. This psychological impact can also sometime hinder a VI colleague from being clear or sufficiently assertive about what workplace adjustments they need e.g. how meetings are managed to make them more inclusive.

Managers therefore need to be sensitive and discuss with their staff member how to manage these situations, including what to say to team members. Ultimately it is vital for that manager to establish a supportive and trusting working relationship with their VI colleague so that their needs are understood and can be accommodated to get the best out of them and for the team.

Managers will want to support all their staff regarding wellbeing, but it may need extra focus sometimes for staff with VI or any disability. So regularly checking in with the VI colleague, signposting sources of support and developing a trusting relationship is important.

How to support visually impaired colleagues

What are the workplace adjustments to consider?

Many workplace adjustments are free or relatively low cost, and some can be made by the individual themselves or in agreement with just their manager. Others involve provision of equipment or adjustments to ways of working for the team.

Assessing the Situation

Key to managing a VI colleague is to recognise that support needs and knowledge of what specific support is required will vary from individual to individual. Some staff may transfer into a role from elsewhere in the Civil Service with a Workplace Adjustment Passport (WAP) with details of adjustments agreed in their previous role (see Workplace Adjustment Stories. There is a commitment from our senior leaders that these WAP should be considered when managing staff with a disability. These WAPs should be regularly reviewed and updated a minimum of once a year or as circumstances change.

The VI colleague will generally find it useful to arrange a Workplace Assessment ideally involving the specialist health & safety staff. The assessment process will differ between departments or agencies, but some general principles are covered herein this Occupational Health blog.

Managers will thus need to really engage to develop an understanding of the VI colleague’s situation and use their judgement and discretion, along with any specialist advice received, in deciding how to support them. One size, or one process, does not fit all.

Typical Workplace Adjustments – Software and Equipment

There are many adjustments that can be made to support VI colleagues. Here are some examples to give an idea of the sorts of support that have been put in place in many circumstances:

• Screen Magnification, Screen Reading (Text to Speech) and Dictation Software (Speech to Text or Speech Control). These are outlined in the Government Digital Service Testing guidelines
• CCTV/cameras - Magnification for paper documents. These can also digitise documents for Optical Character Recognition when used with OCR software
• A larger screen
• High visibility keyboard
• Braille devices for braille users
• Adjustments to display screen settings like screen resolution or accessibility settings
• Adjustments to desk location including having a fixed desk rather than hot desking.
• Service dogs (and provision of facilities to support a service dog on site).

Limitations of Assistive Software

There is a wide range of software solutions in use throughout the Civil Service. Assistive technology for visual impairment has developed considerably over recent decades, particularly in speech to text/voice control. All assistive technology however takes time to learn. These products also need to sit in the complex and ever-changing IT environment of the Civil Service and can suffer from system/application compatibility issues. The software is computer resource-hungry, and its performance can also be impacted by slow internet connections. It is thus important for managers to help ensure that VI colleagues have access to latest versions of products and to their regular updates. Additionally, many IT systems may require tweaks for assistive software, sometimes this can be simply done via setting or in other cases require assistance from in-house IT support.

It also takes longer to read and produce a document using this software, whether a screen magnifier or screen reader. This software is also not perfect for proof reading, often not picking up e.g. special characters, punctuation errors or double spaces etc. Thus, extra time for these tasks is required. Large tables and spreadsheets are difficult to access with this software. Some software applications like PowerPoint and Adobe are not fully accessible with this type of software so reading/creating slides for example can be challenging.

The route to solutions can take time and good IT support. The main factor as a line manager is to be understanding of your VI colleague and supportive, for example escalating issues where required to resolve them.

Adjustments for Light & Noise

Many staff find their VI exacerbated by glare/bright light or dark/low light so they should be enabled to sit where their vision is least impacted, and also where they can hear e.g. screen reading software with minimum noise interference from the surroundings.

Adjustment to Tasks & Role

Ultimately managers should focus on the areas of strength/activities less impacted by the VI to bring the best out of the VI colleague. Workplace Adjustments can enable VI colleagues to perform at their best. That said, potential adjustments to role/task may also need to be carefully considered if these adjustments alone do not produce a completely “level playing field” for the VI colleague when compared to others doing the same role.

It is important to really try to understand exactly what tasks the VI colleague finds difficult or needs more time to complete. Some tasks like processing handwritten correspondence may simply not be possible.

Tasks involving large amounts of text will inevitably be completed at least a bit more slowly and it is reasonable to make allowances for this. This may involve adjusting performance measures/KPI’s on a permanent basis or as the colleague adjusts to their VI, especially where these targets are related to “processing/throughput” of text documents.

Using screen readers or magnifiers to read (especially for longer periods) can require more concentration. This can be more tiring, so more regular breaks might be needed so that the VI colleague can operate at their best.

Adjustments to how meetings are run

To ensure that VI colleagues can fully participate in meetings, general best practice should be followed which will benefit all participants. They should adopt usual best practice and run in a more structured manner to ensuring that VI staff do not miss out important elements of discussion. It may be helpful for meeting participants to introduce themselves when speaking until their voice is known to the VI colleague and to give a bit more commentary on the discussion and not rely upon non-verbal reactions.

When using video conferencing software like MS Teams in a virtual/hybrid meeting all participants should be aware that:

• When sharing slides, shared screen functions are inaccessible with most assistive software
• The presenter should thus summarise each slide / page as it comes up, and also describe where they are clicking with a mouse or navigating
• Some VI colleagues cannot access the conversation bar. (This could be because they need the documents open separately to read from with assistive technology so are not actually in the meeting screen), also chat may be read out over the presenter’s voice by screen readers
• Raising virtual hands to speak will be difficult or impossible to see for VI colleagues.
• Documents for meetings should whenever possible be sent out in advance as reading “in real time” during a meeting may not be possible for VI colleagues.

If guiding the VI colleague between e.g. meeting rooms. colleagues should respect the VI colleague’s personal space and ask how they would like to be guided. For any work-related social occasions VI colleagues may also need some extra support to find the venue, rendezvous with team members and feeling as included as possible in the interactions.

Accessible Documents

In line with the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, it is reasonable to ask team members to create documents that the VI colleague needs to access in a format as accessible as possible, and managers should support this even if some team members are reluctant to adapt. For example, where the VI colleague uses screen magnifiers to read, it is better to avoid:
- Very small and light/feint fonts (e.g. Calibri Light), - Low contrast text (e.g. light text on light backgrounds and e.g. white text on yellow backgrounds) - instead check which colours, where these are needed, cause the least difficulty or use no background and automatic font colour. - Use of PDF – use MS Word or HTML instead

Line managers, with the permission of the VI colleague to share the background, should ensure these requirements are communicated and adhered to.

More details on creating accessible documents can be found here for accessible Microsoft Content and accessible Google content

Annex

Useful Contacts & sources of further information

Civil Service Visual Network – further support for Visually Impaired colleagues, their managers and IT/HR professionals. Including Resources, usability testing, mentoring scheme, vocational support and peer support groups.

Civil Service Disability Network – For engagement with other staff networks, Civil Service Inclusive Practice team and CS Disability Mentoring scheme