Working Blind Episode 1 – Meet Florian, a Blind Programmer

Florian Beijers is blind and lives in the Netherlands. He now works as a programmer after completing a degree at university.

I met with him to find out what life is like for blind people in the Netherlands and to ask what his experiences were in education. He also offers useful advice for blind people who are looking for a job.

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Transcript

Intro:
Working blind: sharing the stories of working blind people from across the globe.
Holly; Hello, and welcome to the first ever episode of working blind. I’m your host, Holly Scott Gardener.
Working blind , for those of you who are wondering, “What am I listening to?” is a podcast where I interview blind people from across the globe about their careers. I’m blind myself, and I really want to show the diversity within the careers and interest that blind people have. This is a project I’ve been dreaming of for a long time, so to get it out there for people to actually listen to is really quite special. I’m also hoping to show to the wider world that, despite what some people might like to believe, blind people aren’t all one person. We are actually quite different.
Today I am here with Florean Beijers, who is a blind programmer from The Netherlands.
Dialogue start:
Holly: Hi Florean, thanks for appearing on the podcast.
Florian: Thanks for having me.
Holly: So, When I spoke to you a bit about your career, you say that you are a programmer. What exactly does your job involve?
Florian: So, it’s sort of in the name. I’m a programmer, so I write computer programming code. This is for a web portal right now that um I basically build the back engine directions of the portals. So when you click a button I make sure something actually happens when you do that.
Holly: Ok, so you’re kinda the person who makes sure that when we’re there looking at a website or application, and we think a button should do a certain thing, you’re the one who makes sure it actually does that.
Florian: yes.
Holly: Ok, that’s cool. Um. So, I’m guessing you have been blind since birth, or did you lose your sight?
Florian: No, I’ve been blind since birth, that’s correct.
Holly: Ok and, what were your experiences like going throughout school? I’m mean, did you use technology from an early age, is that how you got into it?
Florian: Uh, quite an early age, yes. I started with my computer… us lets say education when I was, I think I was 8?
Holly: ok.
Florian: and uh, that was a really old M.S. DOS computer. Basically all it did was word processing, and I didn’t know how to make it do anything else. So… It just was setup to start right into a blank document, and all I had to do was type basically up what I used for notes. And then as I moved away from the blind school, a couple years later, I got a windows pc with windows 98 on it. And I got up to quite a bit more mischief with that machine, but…
Holly: Ha, I can imagine. So you actually started out at your blind school then.
Florian: I did, yes. I’d uh… been in blind school, the first lets say 6 years of my education. After which I switched to uh lets say regular mainstream education.
Holly: And what were the differences for you in between the 2 schools? Were they very different?
Florian: they were very different indeed. Uh… classes are about 4 times as large in a regular “school. Um.. the education is quite a bit higher level. And… I can’t say that I had a great experience with um… with blind school blind education over here. It’s not vvery um… conducive to uh… let’s say, a healthy integration into mainstream society. It was very, it could be quite demeaning, quite devaluing, and it was not good. Like it was not good to build some good self-confidence skills or social skills at all. So I pretty much all learned all that when I switched to mainstream education.
Holly: and how old were you when you switched?
Florian: I must’ve been… hmmm… 10? 9, 10?
Holly: It must be quite hard to spend, you know the first 5 or 6 years of your school life in one kind of environment and then go somewhere else and realize, well actually, you know I didn’t, I wasn’t challenged enough and I didn’t get the social skills where I started.
Florian: basically, uh… I got sort of like recommended for a mainstream school when I was still in blind education, because um… all the work we had to do I did in like a fifth of the time I should be doing it in.
Holly: oh, yeah that’s pretty quick.
Florian: so, I was basically just reading books at this point. Just basically reading books from te library all day, and that’s fun but not very educational cause it was mainly fiction. But uh… yeah, so it was quite a jarring shift, cause it was very… like I said the classes were larger, which means the teacher has less time for you. But its also just way busier. Way many more impressions coming at you at any given time. And then, umm… uh the education materials were quite it higher level as well so it was quite a big shift. But then, it was still a smaller shift than what I’ve seen other people do which is uh go from lets say the end of primary school on the blind side and then switch over to regular school for your secondary school. Which is an even bigger shift.
Holly: yeah…
Florian: that’s a completely different environment, and that I’ve actually seen people running screaming back to the blind school after that, because its just too much to fast.
Holly: and you’re a lot older aren’t you? And the school in general is just more intense. So its like phew…
Florian: it is, and they have far less… like you switch teachers every hour basically. You switch rooms. Uh. You witch environments. Uh you have to account for so many things. You have to have your books, there’s barely any advocacy given, or at least here. so you’re on your own when it comes to like making sure everything’s accessible and things like that so…yeah. You have so many things coming at you.
Holly: so, you don’t really have a lot of support in the Netherlands, you don’t really have a lot of support in school.
Florian: not really. You do in primary school, uh… and you do in secondary school, to a certain degree there is a person that comes to check on you every so many weeks. Uh, from a blind school institution as it were. They make sure you stay on track, but they only have so much time and so much influence so it’s just one person that comes lets say for an hour every 2 weeks.
Holly: wow…
Florian: and then you meet and talk about what’s going on and what’s going wrong, and then they try and talk to you teachers to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And that is what they can do in secondary school. Pretty much we go to college, that entire support just ffalls away entirely. So you’re alone at that point.
Holly: so you learn how to advocate for yourself then from quite an early stage.
Florian: yes I did, mhm. Now I must admit that my secondary school was quite good about it. We had a small, what we call a gymnasium, which is just the pretty much the high tyred theoretical scientific education. Um… it was a very small school which means I could get a lot done. When I switched over to college, which we’ll probably get into later, um… it was a far larger institution. Far more skill, far more protocol oriented. So… when there was a problem,, it was quite a bit harder to solve, and there was no support from lets say the blindness institutions over here, because frankly it doesn’t really happen all that often that a blind person makes it this far into like college or university. Whichh is actually a bit sad.
Holly: wow… well, cause my perception of the Netherlands, being a british person, is that you guys are very developed, and you guys are very liberal and relaxed. And you know, I think perhaps when you come from a certain country, you look at other countries and think oh they must have great disability rights and things like that, and it might not actually be the case I’m finding out.
Florian: it… might… be, like I said the thing is that it is very uh circumstancial. It can be certainly as you say, when you have the right people in front of you. It can also be completely not. Like if you have a teacher who doesn’t want to work with you, you’re basically on your own. And that happens quite a bit, especially in higher education.
Holly: wow.
Florian: uh… if the teacher is set in their ways, and they just don’t want to change anything for you, it does happen.
Holly: yeah
Florian: that’s basically it. You don’t have anywhere to turn. And um… I had the fortune, I guess, that I could talk to the school dean, who had a bit of experience with people with disabilities. And they could sort of pull the right ropes to make sure things went a bit more smoothly. But um… I’ve heard stories from people who don’t even have that. And they really have a hard time to acclaimitize to higher education. And let them do what they need to be able to learn properly. To have digital examinations that actually wor and things like that. This person for example, had an equation objects uh… you know, the one Microsoft word makes
Holly: mhm
Florian: in the document. And you know, those are not accessible. And then when you ask the teacher to type them, just in regular sighns, you get a response like, well I’m not a robot. I don’t have the time. So uh, no.
Holly: yeah, they always think it’s someone else’s responsibility.
Florian: yeah they do.
Holly: and if you don’t have someone else on your side, then that’s tough, because you can’t force someone at the end of the day to meet your access needs if they really won’t.
Florian: if they don’t want to do it, then you’re basically at an impasse. Like he’s not going to do it, or she. And you’re not going to be able to do it till they do. So, yeah that’s a really tricky situation to be in, and I have been in that situation before.
Holly: yeah, do you think you’re quite lucky over all, compared to other students? Or do you think you’re experience was quite typical?
Florian: I was and I wasn’t. in that, if I had a good teacher, I could very well work with them and then we could do the school work, and that happened lets say about 40% of the time.
Holly: mhm
Florian: but then the other 60% of the time I had to do a lot of fighting. I’ve had delays, in my like graduation happened because of this. I couldn’t do the subject as it was taught to me, and uh there just wasn’t enough time to sort of lets say reroute and do something else to get those credits. So I had to fail the semester, and then do another semester, while I was researching how to do the semester I just failed. That happened actually twice.
Holly: my god that’s a lot of pressure on one student.
Florian: Yup!
Holly: um, did you when you were younger, so before you went to university when you were maybe in primary school, did you imagine that you would have a career in technology?
Florian: Hmmm… I mean, honestly I was a child, so I didn’t really think about it that much. But… um… I mean I had childish dreams, I was going to be a doctor at first, when I was like 7 years old. I mean, that’s obviously not going to happen, but I didn’t know that then. It had to do with my mom. She did medical, she was a medical intern at an asylum for like people foreign people foreign refugees and things that were come across the border that would need a place to stay and get medication. My mom worked there and we would come there after school, because my mom was a single mom. So she had to take care of us as she was doing that. So we hung out at the office a lot. And that sort of gave me the idea, oh hey that’s cool. I should be a doctor, that’s cool. Obviously that didn’t happen. Uh… and then when I was in, actually a couple months after I went to uh to primary school, like mainstream primary school I found this website on google that a classmate of mine from blind school wrote about writing about building websites.
Holly: ok.
Florian: and I was like Hey! That seems doable, lets try that and that first website that I made it was very simple, just had a bunch of links and I think one heading. But it came but it came to life pretty much in front of my eyes, and that was a really addicting feeling. Like hey, I can just make things appear on the screen, and that’s something I did, its not the computer its me. And that basically got me hooked and interested in tech all throughout my secondary schooling. Um… after which I was ggoing to switch to either music which I still want to do but I don’t have the money for, or something I can actually make money with. The economy being what it was at the time, lets say 2008-2009, I figured uh maybe not music right now.
Holly: yeah its tough isn’t it, when you have interests, but unfortunately you also have to eat at the same time and pay the bills. Haha
Florian: yes, you have to eat, and that’s also around when the credit crisis happened. So, I had to like, I mean I could do the music thing, but I can see like funding being withdrawn from music projects here right now. Lets not,, lets do something actually like where I’m reasonably sure I’ll have a job that I can actually get income from easily and then we can think about the music thing. And that’s pretty much how it happened.
Holly: wow… and what happened after you went to university? So you had these struggles throughout university you know you had to retake a couple of semesters because of not being able to access things and obviously you graduated in the end and then what did you do? Did you start looking for a job immediately?
Florian: pretty much. I was lucky in the sense that I could do a stematic job at my school, there was a company on campus, pretty much in the same building I had my classes in. uh… it was a media office so to speak. So they made videos, they made websites, they made posters and things. And the website part was actualy very much aligning with the stuff I wanted to do once I was done with my university degree. So what I did, was actually do that as a side job while I was studying. So a part time job if you will. And that actually gave me a bit of a leg up CV wise, as I could put that on my resume. Uh when I had to start doing a job. Then right before my final internship, I got in a bit of uh… I started a bit of a cooperation with Microsoft where I could be intern for Microsoft my last year. Obviously, that didn’t really uh get in my way either when I was looking for a job. It kind of helped.
Holly: yeah.
Florian: so, uh when I put all that together and actually like made a resume I had all that stuff on it, it was actually quite simple to find a job at the time cause I was very easily pleased at the time. I wanted just a job that had to do with the sci degree at university. So, I pretty much just spammed my resume to I’d say 15 companies, and uh 5 of them got back to me. 2 of them actually had a good story to tell. One of them I worked at for a half a year. So, yeah…
Holly: that’s great!
Florian: it actually, how long did it take? I’d say about a month, before I had a job.
Holly: I think that’s great for any graduate and you. Obviously graduates who are blind in general have lower employment rates so to be a blind graduate and get that quickly, I think you’re probably breaking a record there. Hahaha
Florian: haha perhaps I am yeah.
Holly: yeah, well I’ll let you know, when we’re about 12 episodes in. haha
Florian: haha, go for it!
Holly: and did you disclose your blindness when you were looking for a job?
Florian: I tended not to no. what I would do, is I would keep that to myself pretty much until I couldn’t anymore. Uh. Um that used to be um when I went when I walked into the door, because I had like a blind cane and I had to come either by cab or by bus, and then I would walk in and they would see my blind cane. Uh. These days I can’t really do that anymore because I have a guide dog. And I don’t want to like cause like an allergic attack from someone who has like severe dog allergies. So what I tend to do now, is when they call me up to schedule the interview, I’ll have them do it. I’ll have them set a time, and I’ll agree to the time and then as they’re about to hang up I’ll be like hey, by the way does someone have a dog allergy in your office? And they’ll be like uh… I don’t know why? And I explain that I’m walking with a guide dog. They ask me why, and then I say well because I’m a blind person and basically at that point I explain you know my whole speal where I do everything with a screen reader I have a braille display, I bring my own stuff. You don’t have to do any advocacy. You don’t have to get any technology. I’ll have that with me. Its all good. And then this is usually not a tech person. This is usually some hr person or even a recruiter. Uh so they’re like ok ok. They ask me a few standard questions that I always get. I give them the standard answers I always give. And then basically uh I usually take it from there and I go to their office and talk to people who actually matter in the sense of being selected for the job yes or no.
Holly: yes
Florian: and usually what I have to do is like the whole monky see monkey do, thing where I show off that yes I actually do have a talking computer that can tell me how I need to program and things like that. So, once we get past the whole wow that’s amazing factor, usually what we do is pretty standard and pretty similar to any other job interview with a nonblind person would look like. But what I do is minimize the blindness so much I deemphasize it even to the degree that it doesn’t, it isn’t any longer a big deal for the other party either. That’s what you want, I think is that’s been working really well for me.
Holly: definitely sounds like it has if you’ve managed to get jobs so fast, and you now maintain employment. And it sounds like it’s doing well for you.
Florian: let me put it this way, I’m not worried if I were to be fired from my current job, I’m not worried that I won’t be able to find employment again. I think I’ll have a job in 2 months at most. And that’s mainly because I’m picky.
Holly: haha
Florian: cause I’m a programmer. Everyone wants programmers and like usually they’re like really broken old systems that someone needs to maintain and no one wants to do it. Uh but if I’m really strapped for cash, I can go do that. I don’t want to, but I can.
Holly: yeah, you have options.
Florian: so I could have a job within the week, if I really wanted to. I don’t want to though, because I’ve had a few misses there, and I’ve worked at places that I didn’t like working in. and I don’t want to do that anymore, so I look at things I actually want to work on, like subjects that interest me, or programming language that interests me. Sometimes even when I have a job. I go and by and ask the questions I want to ask. Then if it sounds good, that’s when I say ok I’ll switch over, or when I don’t have a job ok I’ll start working. So its basically me picking the job, not so much the other way around. Which is quite rare, I’ve been told in the blind community.
Holly: I think its very rare. I would say even in for people who aren’t blind. I think, you know in certain fields, perhaps its less rare but I know a lot of people who are working jobs they’d rather not be that you know pays the bills. So I think having the luxury of choice is great, if you can.
Florian: yes. that’s actually one of the rather big advantanges of this field. Um. A lot of people want you, when you’re a programmer that knows is stuff or her stuff of course. But this is an area of study where you can be competitive, you can be picky, which is important. Because if you can, you should work at a place where you like to go cause its work and its something you have to do 40 hours a week or more. So its better if you do something you like doing.
Holly: yeah the happier you are the better, if you have to spend a lot of time there.
Florian: yes, yes, and you need to eat so, if you can combine all that you can get past all the roadblocs because there are many in this field. Once you’ve surpassed them all, you definitely do have a shot at a really good job.
Holly: and do you think this is a field that other blind people could get into with, I don’t want to say relative ease, but its within reach for blind people.
Florian: yes. I would say itswithin reach. Its not easy because a lot of the stuff you don’t have to do. its not documented.
Holly: mhm
Florian: in the sense that at um the high way may not always be your way, because it might not work for you.
Holly: Yeah
Florian: uh, you might have to figure out your own work arounds for things and you might have to reinvent the wheel, because what I’ve seen in this field, and that’s actually a really annoying trend, is that once you’re past a student’s age you stop documenting things. Like you don’t really care anymore for people who are just getting into this field who may be facing the same challenges as you you just past. And I actually don’t like that. You may have seen it last week. I made a bit of noise on twitter about that. Because people, they keep asking me, very very similar questions. And I always have to sort of take them apart. Then go look, this is nowhere, you can’t find this anywhere. I can tell you this but its the only way, and I think that should change. You need to make some kind of repository of all this information that people have figured out work arounds streets smarts, things like that, put them somewhere so people can find them. And I’m actually working in my spare time on a little system, a little repository of knowledge. That I’m going to put online that people can contribute to that. I don’t know what I’m going to call it yet. But watch my twitter. But I’m going to try to make some kind of curriculum path for absolute beginners to this field like people who barely know how to turn on a computer to get into this field. And like if you have enough dedication, and time and energy and focus, I would say it’s definitely within reach to get good at this field. And to be competitive with your sighted peers as well.
Holly: and that’s so important, not just getting into the field, but really being able to compete and feeling like you compete fairly and on an even field.
Florian: mhm. I’ve actually written an article, on the, what is it called, 24 11 Y that’s it. It’s a thing they do in December. They send out accessibility articles written by people in the field. Various fields actually.
Holly: oh yeah?
Florian: sort of to educate people. And I wrote an article on that last year, actually about many of the challenges I’ve had to face as a blind programmer and how I overcame them. And what are still problematic areas where I should improve. So that was sort of like the idea of the curriculum in a very condensed version. I’m actually going to expand on that and actually make like a whole learning path people can follow to get into this field. To sort of avoid some of the treacherous pits I’ve sort of fallen into
Holly: yes.
Florian: they’re very avoidable if you know where not to go and that’s actually really hard to figure out if you’re on your own.
Holly: yes, it’s about giving future blind people the resources you maybe didn’t have but wish you had.
Florian: yes, and like the important part is as well to keep it up to date.
Holly: yes
Florian: and that’s gonna be a thing and a half to do so maybe I’ll need some help at that point to get people who are also doing this to chip in and help
Holly: yeah, to contribute.
Florian: cause it can be a living resource, a living document. As it were
Holly: well, that sounds great! That sounds like a really positive thing to do so that you know people don’t have to struggle their way through when there are actually existing solutions to the problems. That sounds really positive!
Florian: yep, that’s the idea.
Holly: and what are your goals for the future? Do you intend to stay at your current job? I don’t know if you want to say on a podcast. Haha.
Florian: haha, I was about to say. Honestly, I don’t know at this point. I will probably stic around my current job for a bit yet, it’s quite a nice job. So I can do whatever I like. There are definitely somethings that irk me though, so I might just spread my wings and fly off, I don’t know yet. If I find something that seems cool, I will go talk to them. Say if anyone here listens to this has an awesome thing that they need done, keep me in mind. Give me a shout. I’m always on twitter. But apart from that, I really don’t know. I have a house. I’m also working on the music thing, I have a little studio upstairs where I’m learning to do audio producing and things like that. So I haven’t managed to make something of that hobby as it were. And apart from that, I just tend to live my life and have a good time and I’ll see where I end up.
Holly: sounds like a good way to live. If listeners want to find you to give you a job, where can they reach you? Haha
Florian: probably the most direct and easy way to do that is to tweet my twitter. Which is @zersiax, it’s a game name don’t ask. And apart from that, yeah that’s probably the easiest way to reach me. If you don’t have twitter, you can email me that’ll be my name @ gmail.com. my name is really hard to pronounce to figure out phonetically, so I’ll just spell it. F l o r I a n b e I j e r s @gmail.com. if you want to repeat that, rewind.
Holly: well perfect, so lets hope you get job offers flooding in. haha
Florian: we’ll see
Holly: well thanks for agreeing to take part in this episode. It was really interesting getting to speak to you, because I’m not a programmer so its really cool to find out kinda the things that other blind people are doing.
Florian: mhm. Yeah, it was great to give you my perspective, and I wish you the best!
Holly: thank you very much.
Outro;
Holly: thanks for listening to working blind. If you like the podcast, please subscribe. For more of my advocacy initiatives including my blog, visit my website; http://catchthesewords.com you can also find me on twitter and Instagram. At catchthesewords- that’s c a t c h t h e s e w o r d s
If you have any comments or feedback, please email me: holly@catchthesewords.com