How to increase visually impaired people's employment and industry diversity ?

Business Plan

1.The Introduction: a. How did we come up with this idea? With the spread of mobile software and social media and the development of technology, mobile phones have quickly become an indispensable part of our lives. According to the 2021 Statistical Bulletin on National Economic and Social Development, China has approximately 1.03 billion mobile Internet users, accounting for 73.1% of the country's total population, while the number of visually impaired people using mobile phones to surf the Internet only accounts for 46.7% of the total population of visually impaired people. For the visually impaired, mobile phones are also becoming an essential part of life. In addition, the unemployment rate for visually impaired people is high, with high saturation in single market like massage that they normally specified in. As a result, the proportion of visually impaired people in the job market is low and most people are concentrated in one market. This and now the normal industry division of labor, people engaged in different industries of the status quo is very different. There are more than 17 million visually impaired people in China, so they remain a massive social group in China and will continue growing in the future, with about 450,000 new visually impacted people are born every year and the overall population growth in China. The statistic information shows that the visually impaired is a huge group within the total population; however, the majority of them are excluded by the society. We are disappointed by the discrimination they face and the strong exclusion of the visually impaired in the whole society. As a result, we came up of with the idea of developing an application for the visually impaired to acquire future occupation skills. Our software will have a very convenient barrier-free mode, there will be a voice prompt throughout the process, convenient for visually impaired people to use. Our software contains very rich curriculum learning, visually impaired people can learn different courses and careers through our software. After learning the course, we specially prepare practice questions and simulation tests for the visually impaired who want to take the industry qualification exam. After learning through our software, they can easily pass the vocational exam and become working professionals. b. Questionnaire survey: We conducted survey research and have collected 118 questionnaires in the form of questionnaire survey and with the methodology of sampling cities from different tiers. We included first-tier cities including China Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, other first-tier cities including Hefei, Dongguan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Tianjin, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, new first-tier cities including Xiamen, Foshan, Huizhou, Zhuhai, Shijiazhuang, Changchun, Changzhou, Yangzhou, Taizhou, partial second-tier cities including Shantou, Zhanjiang, Baoding and partial third- and fourth-tier cities, as well as Hong Kong, China. Through the analysis of these data, the society's understanding of visually impaired people is studied. Questionnaire data from different provinces and regions adds richness and we applied Stratified Random Sampling to ensure that our analysis results are not biased.

In this questionnaire survey, 56% of the samples were female and 44% of the samples were male, which basically guaranteed the balance of the sample number of men and women and prevented the data bias caused by gender. The sample of this questionnaire includes 20.34% junior high school education, 21.19% senior high school education, 33.05% undergraduate education, 19.49% postgraduate education, and 5.93 % doctoral and post-doctoral education, which ensures a balanced distribution of people with different knowledge levels and prevents data bias due to differences in education levels. Through the collection of questionnaires, we draw the following conclusions:

1. Society's willingness to actively understand the visually impaired is low. In order to investigate the public's willingness to understand the visually impaired, we added "Are you willing to pay attention to the news related to the visually impaired? ” "Do you usually pay attention to news related to the visually impaired?" The results of the survey showed that 41.24% of the people in daily life do not want to actively pay attention to news related to the visually impaired; The survey result of "would you like to make friends with visually impaired people" shows that 43.14% of people are very willing to make friends with visually impaired people. Compared with the survey result of a paper, the question "Would you like to make friends with others(normal people)" shows 78.57% of people answered very willing, the data is significantly different. This can reflect the society's low willingness to actively understand the visually impaired. On the question "are you willing to go to public places where people with visual impairment gather?" 47.46% of the respondents were neutral, and 10.56% were less/not willing.

2. People do not know much about the education and employment status of the visually impaired. In order to investigate the public's understanding of the education and employment situation of the visually impaired, we added questions like "Do you think the visually impaired can only go to the university for the blind" "I think the visually impaired can only work in massage" "How do you think the employment situation of the visually impaired". Most of the answers to these questions did not match the answers given by the visually impaired volunteers. 39.98% of people think that the visually impaired can only engage in massage work, but from the interviews of volunteers and visually impaired people, we find that the visually impaired can engage in many jobs besides massage. However, in the study of scholars, visually impaired people almost lose their ability to act alone due to visual disability and are commonly treated unfairly in the field of work. Even some simple professions that visually impaired people can do are discriminated against, so that they have very limited employment options. With the continuous adaptation and improvement of the society, massage for visually impaired people has become an ideal choice for them. But at the same time, there is a bad public opinion that blind massage benefits a lot because of people's sympathy but actually not; In addition, there is confusion in the management of the massage market for the blind. Some people often open shops under the name of massage for the blind and try their best to enjoy the relevant preferential policies of the state for the disabled. All this has a direct impact on visually impaired people's jobs and earnings.

Therefore, under the current situation, visually impaired people have a single job option, only a handful of positions are available, and more visually impaired people cannot solve the employment problem. 34.24% of the people think that the employment situation of visually impaired people is not to be worried, but the visually impaired volunteers told us that the employment situation of visually impaired people is not good, even with the help of the government, However, some welfare enterprises still discriminate between the visually impaired and other employees, and even recruit employees according to the degree of disability of the disabled, giving priority to workers with low disability. c. Interview The questionnaire focuses more on the awareness of the public towards the education and employment condition of the visually impaired, whereas the interview focuses more on the reality faced by the visually impaired. The interview targets a congenitally blind old man that is retired, an acquired blind lady that is currently working as a masseur and an active volunteer in associations for blindness.

a) The congenitally blind old man: Mr. Xu has graduated from school for the blindness for more than 40 years. When he was in the school, the school only served for the visually impaired. The school is in Shanghai, China. He believes that the knowledge learned at school is very useful for him in later life. His understanding and judgement to the environment or conditions are developed. School maximized the sensitivity of other senses that help them to do basic orientation to sense the directions. These are essential for their daily life and career. Some of his classmates knit things as a living. The handcraft classes were their enlightenment courses. Furthermore, the students accept moral education at school which helped them to build their understanding to the world.

b) The acquired blind lady: When she was in school, there were intellectually disabled and hearing-impaired students other from the visually impaired. The school is in Sichuan, China. The subjects included at school were braille (special language used by the visually impaired), math, English, sports, massage, and rehabilitation training. To be more specific, braille, massage, and rehabilitation training was the most valued. Thus, students spent most time on these three aspects. All the subjects are required, and no elective classes were available. However, according to the lady, the variety of subjects was acceptable, and they didn’t feel restricted.

When it comes to employment of the visually impaired, the lady sighs a lot. The employment condition is continuously declining. The increasing population of the visually impaired devoting to the massage leads to saturation of the “blind massage” industry. No need to mention the massage parlor provided by the sighted, since more customers are willing to visit them instead of ones opened by the visually impaired. The lady believes that life skill courses beyond massage is useful but not necessary. The interviewer asks more about the necessary classes other than massaging. The lady claims that the most important knowledge for the visually impaired to make a living is massaging even though other knowledge can beimportant. However, she says that certain language is also necessary. She is working in Beijing which is an international city that lots of foreigners would like to visit in China. When foreigners are in the massage parlor, her English skill is very essential. Music is also important for her life now. She is learning the harmonica and feels that concerts are a great way to express emotions for blind people. “Psychological support or professional psychology knowledge is crucial for us.” She was blind due to drug side effects and suffers through great depression at that time. Although it took her a long time, she cured herself eventually. Nevertheless, it would be more effective if there were psychological classes in school. If there were these three classes, she says, she would be more pleased even though she knew that her variety of career is very limited.

c)The active volunteer: He categorizes the visually impaired people he met into two characteristics: optimistic and positive versus introverted and refuses to communicate too much. The latter characteristic, he believes, is caused by lack of confidence. They don’t have many skills that can support them for living. Certain parts of the society still exclude the visually impaired. The interviewee believes that this is mutual. The visually impaired are not so pleased by going outside to contact the others. An important reason for this phenomenon is the difficulties faced by them to work. People in core cities have relatively high demands for quality of life. Occupations such as massage for the blind, acupuncture and moxibustion for the blind can obtain users. This helps the blind become self-reliant. In underdeveloped areas, however, these unique occupations cannot exist, because they cannot guarantee their basic survival, and there is no courage for social interaction. Using electronic devices is also a common difficulty for visually impaired people. The most popular application used by the visually impaired are sports software, listening software that contains book in audio form, such as: Joy Run, Gudong, Keep, WeChat reading, Himalaya, etc. He listed some problems of the existing application software: boot ads will affect the use of APP; the screen reading method of the mobile phone is not 100% easy to use.here are too many menus, and it takes patience to wait for the screen to be read; and so on. Conclusion:

According to the interview, we can find that the subject in different schools may change due to different economic level of cities or individuals. The variety of subjects in schools are satisfying even though some schools do not contain music and psychology classes which are actually very necessary. We also find that the resources devoted into visually impaired education is decreasing. Most schools only for the visually impaired have already widen their focus group to all the disables. The education visually impaired students receive is less specific for their condition. Thus, the diversity of subjects still can be expanded. Using application software can be most convenient for the visually impaired since lots of the classes are not available at school. The application can mostly help them to widen their horizon and even help them learn skills that can make a living.

2.Current problem or opportunity a. Current problems: a) Career opportunities are limited from the aspect of range, most of the visually impaired work as massagists. b) Society does not pay high attention on the visually impaired, leading to many difficulties being faced by the visually impaired people. c) There are no relevant laws and regulations in China to protect the visually impaired people from barrier-free reading, and only a few companies selectively develop software. The apps that target the visually impaired cannot meet their demand and are hard to manage. b. Opportunities: a) There are both profit and non-profit organizations now that support the visually impaired. We are able to cooperate with them in order to make our product more aware in the society. b) In addition, governments are providing subsidies for the visually impaired, along with education and career opportunities for them. The phenomenon shows that the social awareness on the visually impaired will increase, which indirectly increases the rate for us to success since we may be able to contact governments. c) The App we are going to design meet the demand for our target consumers. We aim to offer convenience for our target. The objective is both voluntary and beneficial. d) Laying a mobile phone "blind lane" for the visually impaired requires attention. The software we design should be more standardized and user-friendly. e) Our app provides various courses for the visually impaired, so they can acquire different skills through learning with our app. f) The app also includes functions for the visually impaired to share their thought, chat and communicate.

3. Solution:

To solve the problem stated previously, we hope to develop a visually-impaired-friendly app that offers various courses for the visually impaired. The application software is divided into mainly three parts: relevant official exam registration, platform for communication between users, and courses of different subjects which is the main function. In order to make it more convenient for visually impaired people to use our app, we optimized some aspects of the accessibility mode of the existing system (here we refer to VoiceOver of Apple) : a. There is no image type interface in the software to prevent text recognition in barrier-free mode. b. When setting account numbers, we will optimize the rules and protocols as much as possible so that visually impaired people can quickly access information c. When the user clicks the switching interface, inform the user that he/she has clicked the button and is switching interface in the first time, so as to prevent the user from not knowing whether he/she has switching interface. d. when the user is typing in input box, if the user stops typing for five seconds, the system automatically reads the content of the input box to prevent typing errors 5. A voice assistant follows user through the journey, setting up a Siri-like robot that users can call for help if they run into problems. The most important function of the application is to offer a platform for the visually impaired to learn and reach out the academic resources they cannot have in daily life. Multiple jobs other from masseur are available for the visually impaired. Especially for the congenitally blind, their brain form compensation mechanism for development of language learning and other four senses. Thus, lots of work are suitable for them. For people with acquired blindness, we also have very easy to understand courses, such as braille learning, which can make their life more convenient. They can also find jobs in other industries by taking our courses. The application offers classes of the following subjects: language programming, customer services, psychotherapist, music theory, announcing skills, braille and massaging. Most of these classes are not provided in their school or are more advanced than school classes.

a) Programmer Programmers communicate with Internet users through mobile apps, and they often write their own programs and develop new apps for visually impaired users. Programming is not a simple measure. Testing information validity and accessibility is most of their responsibilities. As codes are in English letters, it is energy-consuming to familiarize the codes, especially for step-by-step research. Currently, applications such as screen reading software allows the visually impaired to use mobile phones and various electronic devices normally, allowing them to participate in IT industry and to explore the path of career diversification.

b) Customer service Customer services engage in sales and other positions in internet enterprises or other industries. Through cooperation with Internet products to make information barrier-free, they optimize the products, enabling more people to actualize independent online shopping.

Customer services have to reply to customers on time and with patience in order to ensure long-term relationships. Because customer service requires sitting in front of a computer 24 hours a day, it does a lot of damage to the glasses, and it pays less, most people don't want to do this job. But for the visually impaired people, they have enough patience to sit in front of the computer all day long and they don't have to worry about their eyesight being hurt. It's a great career for them.

c) Psychotherapist Psychotherapist requires a rich amount of professional knowledge, which is well provided by our program. This is a course that provides the visually impaired to have a professional study of how to cure and treat people, since they have issues visualizing, they can deeply and truly listen and understand others better. Lots of techniques will be taught to our learners, including different ways to talk to people, fun and unique tasks and games that can be provided during their talking session, and finding better ways to help people. Our APP also helps learners to achieve the professional qualification certification of Psychotherapist which offers a better employment opportunity. After completing our course and getting certified, visually impaired people can work as psychologists in schools for the special disabled and for the blind. Because children with disabilities find it difficult to accept their disability at first, they may develop problems such as depression and autism if without guidance. But if there is a general psychiatrist, c children with disabilities may refuse to communicate with them because of low self-esteem and the belief that they do not understand them. But children with disabilities are more likely to open up to and receive treatment from psychologists who also have disabilities.

d) Announcer Our course will be given to those who are willing to share their voice and their stories, where people can study different methods that help them improve their specialties. This also encourage the visually impaired to exploit different opportunities in the society where there are so many competitive jobs. It's a really good way to express feelings and thoughts through their voice, which also requires some techniques to handle the job. Our software offers specialized announcer online classes to professionalize the students’ announcer skills and provide potential career. Because announcers need to broadcast in a relatively small room for recording, many people will have the fear of small space, resulting in poor broadcasting effect. But for the visually impaired, this is not a problem. And many radio announcers are now paid less than other jobs, such as delivery, and people are reluctant to take jobs that are claustrophobic and underpaid. But the visually impaired have no such concerns.

e) Musician Based on studies, people who lose their visual sense will have better auditory sense and easier to learn instruments. Thus, making a musical instrument teaching system on our application is a feasible plan. We not only provide the course of some popular instrument like violin, piano, and guitar, but also, we will offer some minor musical instrument, such as Xiao (A vertical Bamboo flute), suona horn, and Ansai waist drum. Most visual impaired people hardly have a chance to communicate with other people. In this way, We can contact some public interest organisations that will help these visual sighted people to construct an Orchestra or band and offer them a chance to make new friends by musical instruments. At

the same time, they can also perform in some public welfare activities and theaters. I think the musical instrument teaching system will also remit the mental problem of visual impaired people.

f) TCM Massage for the Blind Massaging techniques are common classes available in schools. However, according to the previous interview and research, lots of schools do not provide professional massaging courses for medical use. Most of the students are not qualified to be a doctor to work in school. Thus, the online classes can provide them extra classes. Massage for the blind is an occupation acquired by the blind through systematic learning. Providing a professional massage and massage medicine service for patients from all kinds of people in the society. Blind massage is based on the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine, understanding the meridians and acupoints, and massaging the patient's whole body can eliminate fatigue, relieve tension, relax the meridians, and activate the collaterals, refresh the brain and the mind. Blind people massage mainly focuses on acupuncture points, and its techniques have strong penetration and can relax muscles. Clear the acupuncture points, relieve fatigue, and regulate human function. It can restore physical strength, relieve fatigue, enhance human blood circulation, enhance human resistance to disease, regulate internal organs, prevent, and treat diseases. Blind massage techniques are both firm and soft, with pushing, pressing, soft, dialing, and rolling, as the main techniques.

g) Learn braille Life will be much more convenient for blind people after learning Braille, because now Braille is gradually popularized in China, knowing Braille will definitely make life more convenient. Blind people can also translate books into Braille and read, not necessarily having to reply on audio books. To resolve the visually impaired people’s employment problem, the application will cooperate with the government and some companies. The application contains official qualification exam registration tab , such as: Medical Practitioner Qualification Certificate, or Grade Examination Certificate for certain language, and so on. Furthermore, by cooperating with the government, we can recommend some students with top grades as civil servant. For example, some students learning announcing can be recommended to be an announcer in the national radio. More companies are seeking to enhance the employee diversity which is a great chance for the visually impaired to find a decent job. By cooperating with certain companies, we can recommend some students in our application with great talent. There are “welfare enterprise” in our country. They are required to accept certain percentage of the disabled. However, most of them choose to hire people with low-level disability. This is unfair for the others that worked harder. Hence, we can provide a platform for the firms to have access to the students and offer higher chance to acknowledge them.

4. Customers The target groups fall into two main categories. The first category is visually impaired people aged 20-45 who are unemployed; The second category is the visually impaired people who are interested in some courses and want to study beside working. For the first category, Most visually impaired people between the ages of 20 and 45 who cannot find work are acquired blindness. They lose their sight because of drugs or accidents, and they are too old to receive training at blind schools. Since they became visually impaired late in life, they are less skilled in massage and Traditional Chinese medicine than those with congenital visual impairment who have been educated in schools for the blind since childhood, thus they have no advantage in the massage market for the blind. Therefore, it is very necessary for these people to open up new career options. Our software includes a rich curriculum so they can choose to work in other fields without having to compete with other visually impaired people who are experienced. If they want to stay in the blind massage industry, our courses also include lessons in massage and Chinese medicine to help them learn. For the second group of people, that is, visually impaired people who have hobbies and want to learn different technologies, the rich courses in our software can also satisfy them. In fact, there are some visually impaired people whose families are relatively rich. They are visually impaired because of some diseases. For these people, musical instrument learning and Braille learning in our app can become a good hobby. Generally, the judgment criteria of visually impaired is divided into the following four sections: a) Amblyopia: Best-corrected visual acuity lower than peers in one or both eyes. b) Low vision: Visual acuity less than 0.3 to light perception, or visual field radius less than 10 degrees, but can use or have the potential to use visual acuity to do or prepare to do various tasks. c) Legally blind: Best visual acuity of 0.1 or less in the patient's better eye (normal 1.0) with a field of view of only 20 degrees, or less. d) Blind: One losses response to light.

5. Compare and Contrast We compared our app with 3 other app that also focus in the same area with us. a. Tactile IMages READER: It is a software for blind children to learn words. It contains many cards and books, and children with visual impairments can learn by clicking on different places on the screen, which makes different sounds and speaks different words. Similar and Difference: Both our software and this software are mainly used to help visually impaired people learn new knowledge, but the target group of this software is different from our software. The app is aimed at visually impaired children and helps them learn new words. The clients of our software are visually impaired people who have not found work and visually impaired people who are interested in other industries.

b. Siliao: This is a learning platform for visually impaired people in China, currently not translated into other languages. The app includes information on how to use a mobile phone, massage lessons and lessons in Traditional Chinese medicine. It is designed to help visually impaired people learn how to use the mobile phone system and practice massage skills. The app also includes live content to help them better learn massage techniques. Similar and Difference: Compared with this software, our software can choose a wider range of courses and have more courses. But at the same time, we will also consider adding courses on how to use other mobile phone apps into our software, so that more visually impaired people can use mobile phones conveniently. At the same time, we can use our software to do some test exercises to help the visually impaired people get better results in the test. c. Mangyikao: This is a teaching platform for massage and TCM courses. This software is mainly for those who want to learn massage and TCM knowledge. It also has practice questions for different units to help the visually impaired better prepare for the exam Similar and difference: Both software have TCM courses and exercises for the exam. However, our software courses are more diversified, and the visually impaired can choose more courses in our software. According to several comparisons between multiple similar APPs with our APP, we offered lots of special programs provided on the APP which none of the others on the market had, for example, providing different kinds of professional qualifications among a wide range of different courses. Unlike most similar APPs in the market, many of them only focus on one specific purpose, like medication, or GPS guiding. In our APP, people with visual impairments are able to match their interests with these courses which can provide them a better employment position once they enter the society. We provide course offerings based on professions that are in the favor of visually impaired, like programming, custom services, instrument performance, teaching, massage in medical uses, psychotherapist, and announcer. Another interesting part of our APP is that people can chat and talk about their experiences with other visual impairments. It's really important for them to make friends, and to know that they are not alone.

6. Promotion Activities After our app is designed and test, we will publicize it in three ways. In the primary phase, we will organize public welfare activities to attract visually impaired people to join us. We will recommend our software to visually impaired people, introduce the functions of our software in detail and let them try to use it. In the first month or two after the software is released, we can make all the courses free for the visually impaired, which will attract more people to download our software. In second phase, government is an efficient place to broadcast information to citizen. The government gives some subsidies to the visually impaired every year and helps them find jobs. We can work with government agencies to recommend our software to visually

impaired people looking for jobs. This not only helps us to promote the software, but also reduces the workload of government departments. Finally, we will collaborate with some testing organizations, such as the certification organization for broadcasters. These organizations will recommend our software to visually impaired people who come to inquire about the test content, and our extensive courses on the software will attract more people to sign up for the test. We will put detailed examination knowledge and real questions of the exam on our app for our users. we will provide the mock test, video class, and learning plans. By learning our knowledge points and exercises, the visually impaired can easily obtain the qualification certificate. Visually impaired people can also register for the test through our software.

7. Value Proposition Visually impaired people make up 6% of the population. This is not a small number. But now the protection and help on them in society has not reached the ideal state. Because of the visual impairment, many visually impaired people do not have a job. They will not get income in order to purchase daily necessity, and also some people even lose their hobbies. Just imagine, losing sight is undoubtedly the heaviest damage to a reader. What we can do is to help them with our APP, They can easily find a job or learn some basic curriculums on APP. So, that is the initial purpose of our team—To help more visually impaired people getting back to normal life.

8. How to gain profit a. We will set up the VIP mode. If the user buys the VIP mode per year, he/she can use all the courses, unit exercises and test simulation questions for free. However, if the VIP is not purchased, the user can still learn all the courses, but the unit practice questions and test simulation questions need to pay separately to unlock them, otherwise they cannot be used. b. We will cooperate with different testing organizations. Through our software, the visually impaired people can register for a variety of exams such as the certificate of announcer and learn the contents of the exam. Every time a visually impaired person signs up for a test through our software, we charge a intermediate fee from the testing organization because we get the testing organization more clients. c. We will ask the government and disability related foundations for funding. Because the purpose of our software is to help visually impaired people better employment, which is one of the common goals of the government and the Disability Foundation. So we're going to ask them for donations to sustain the revenue. d. We will contact companies that design wands, eyeglasses and navigators for the blind, and make money by helping them advertise on our software. But we will not advertise during the course, we will only have a ten-second voice advertisement when we open the software, so that the visually impaired can learn the course without interference.

Reference MLA: 1. WHO. “Blindness and Visually Impairment”. 14 October 2021. who.int. 2 April 2022 <https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment> 2. Liu Tingting (2009). "The Formation of Social Exclusion of the Disabled" 3. National Bureau of Statistics." Statistical Bulletin of the People's Republic of China on National Economic and Social Development in 2021 ~([1])" People's Daily 2022-03-01,010, document. 4. Lu Dan (2012) "A Brief Analysis of the Root of External Factors leading to the plight of the blind"