DISABILITY, UNIVERSITY AND THE WORKING WORLD: BARRIERS OF STUDENTS WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS

The transition to labour market and adult life is a complex process and different variables and matters can take part in it. The mentioned process goes from the childhood to adult period and it is common to all the population but we must remark that has more relevance for disabled people. Thus, barriers and difficulties that stop people with visual impairments access to the adult world has much more significance. Regarding the integration of people with visual impairments into the working world, it is appreciated that certain attention has been paid to the matter of their insertion into work yet there are very few studies that approach it, in spite of the fact that the difficult conditions in accessing work in the present circumstances are even more complex in the case of disabled people.
There are however some publications which detail the experiences of the visually impaired with respect to their social and educational integration (Alcantud, 1995; Miñana and Valles, 1998), but greater difficulty is encountered in finding publications which concern such problems in higher education. Access of disabled people to higher education is a growing issue that it has generated different lines of analysis; problematic, etiology, rehabilitation, etc., as well as in the detection of barriers that make difficult the process of sociolabour insertion.
In this work we present the main results based on the theoretical revision of the needs of visual impaired people with higher education who experience serious difficulties in joining the labour market, mainly psychosocial and educational barriers.
In accordance with other studies (Barrueco, 1993; Castellano, Delgado and Delgado, 1995; Crudden, 2002; Miñana and Valles, 1998; Verdugo and Caballo, 1995; Verdugo, Jenaro and Arias, 1995), students with disabilities suffer from greater difficulties in finding employment than the general public because besides their own problems, they not only have to overcome architectural obstacles but also psychosocial and educational barriers. Although these data are interesting, we must indicate the heterogeneity of the disable population, facing different obstacles of different nature that have to surpass in a differential way.