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Employers urged to hire vision impaired workers in Canberra

Employers in Canberra have been urged to consider hiring people with impaired vision as part of White Cane Day.

The annual international event is held to raise awareness of the plight of people living with impaired vision.

Guide Dogs New South Wales/ACT said 37 per cent of the organisation's clients aged 15 to 64 were unemployed, but more than 90 per cent of those people were looking for work.

There were 300,000 people in Australia with some form of permanent vision loss, according to the Guide Dogs.

David Long, a vision impaired man who had worked for the Federal Government for nearly two decades, said employers needed to know the benefits of hiring a person who was vision impaired

"The studies have been done, and it certainly does show that staff with a disability are more loyal, and have less sick days, so they're more productive," said Mr Long, now a senior staffer in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

'It gives them economic freedom'

Mr Long said it was often difficult for vision impaired people to enter the workforce, a view that had been echoed by support worker Chace Richardson.

"Naturally some employers have reservations about what's involved with employing a person who's blind or vision impaired," he said.

Mr Richardson called on employers to see past their reservations, and hire those whose sight had deteriorated.

"It gives them that economic freedom that everyone else can take for granted, it gives them that social interaction, it helps them build esteem, it helps them build their social networks," he said.

"To let people lead independent, active and full lives, so there's no reason that then they can't do anything else that anyone else in the community would like to do."