My Pathway Into This Current Role Started After Completion of a Year on the Trainee Grade

Dayo Adenowo

My name is Dayo Adenowo and I'm 33 years old. I've been blind now for four and a half years as a result of a medical condition called Neuro Myelitits Optica. My sight is extremely limited. My current role is as an administration assistant on the CHAS scheme. CHAS is an acronym for Contractors Health and Safety Assessment. I work as an administration assistant dealing with those contractors, helping them to answer any questions they may have from an administrating viewpoint; entering and dealing with invoice inquiries as well as helping to process their applications.

My pathway into this current role started after completion of a year on the Trainee Grade Scheme with the RNIB. I'd worked as a receptionist administrator and basically developed my skills as an administrator having lost my sight. This meant that I got used to working as a blind person in a work environment and used that to basically redevelop my CV.

Prior to my sight loss I was qualified at degree level as an engineer and I'd worked mostly in manufacturing, of course that then became impossible having lost my sight.

Now that I am in effect partly in the health and safety arena it can be a stepping stone to a career. I could maybe do some courses to further develop myself and hopefully at some point even maybe end up as a health and safety adviser or as an assessor.

To do my job in my role I use screen reader software called JAWS, and what that does is it's quite compatible with the range of office packages and that simply just reads the screen as it appears on the computer and reads what I type into the PC as well. As I use the phone I have an small gadget with is connected to my phone and I simply just deal with phone calls via a headset, and then I've got my BookSense voice recorder so when I get involved in team meetings or need to take notes I simply just record those into the voice recorder and get on with my work that way.

Obviously there are other things to consider such as Access to Work which supports, or pays, in effect, pays for the equipment. I had had my equipment transferred over from the Access to Work funding when I was with the RNIB.

The sort of advice I would give to other people that are in my situation, such as what I was in, would be to take advice where it is offered; make attempts to develop their technical skills as much as they can and just apply for as much vacancies out there as possible.