In an interview with FMT, Choo said many companies still had reservations about hiring blind people as they did not understand how blind people worked.

“When companies interview a blind person for a job, many do not ask the person how he or she would be able to do the job.

“Instead, they ask how will we be able to go to the toilet or find our desks. These are secondary questions. They should be more interested in how we can do work.”

Choo, who is legally blind, said for years, blind people had proved that they were able to study and work like anyone else.

Since the 1960s, he said, universities in Malaysia had produced blind graduates and now there were many blind students in both public and private universities, such as Universiti Malaya, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Monash University and Brickfields Asia College.

“If we can study as good as anyone else and get our degrees, we can do the same at the workplace.”

He said this was especially so nowadays, when there were all sorts of specialised hardware and software to help blind people do their work more efficiently than ever.

“It’s not just Braille. We have computers that can ‘speak’ to us and smartphones that can scan documents and read out the contents,” he said, while demonstrating how some of these tools worked.

Choo said many blind people had proved themselves to be more than capable employees.

For many years, he said, Sime Darby has had a blind lawyer in its legal department. Choo himself has worked in the financial sector for 20 years.

“It is the sighted who have no confidence in the blind. That’s why many blind people end up holding smaller posts instead of decision-making positions, or opting to sing in the street.

“We hope that companies will give blind people the opportunity to show that we can do the job, as with the right tools, we can do it,” Choo said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWavRaO0l8&feature=youtu.be