Ms Jodie McGriele:

Even if you look at education, assessments are inaccessible for people. If a blind or visually impaired person goes to a further education and training college and needs to book a package holiday as one of his or her assessments, if he or she goes onto a website, he or she cannot book a holiday because there are too many drop-down menus. This person just cannot complete his or her assessment. This is why we had to write a bespoke award that was realistic for people with vision impairment to achieve independently to bring them into the labour market. Part of that was the mandatory work experience, because we found that within transition year, blind and visually impaired children do not have the same experiences vocationally as their sighted peers. They are not getting that job in the coffee shop. They are not interacting in a professional environment so those types of work experience opportunities and internships are extremely important.