Employers urged to change attitudes towards disabled

BETTY O’LEARY is a successful barrister. She is also blind from birth and uses information technology to guide her through her legal briefs.

It’s now six years since Betty, the second youngest of a family of 10 from Killarney, started practising law.

Betty is doing okay, but it’s still early days. “I’m a realist. It’s going to take time before I know that a career in law is for me,” says Betty, one of a number of contributors to a high profile business conference in Dublin Castle today that will urge employers to take a fresh look at disability.

The conference has been organised by the Aisling Foundation, a business organisation established in June 2000 by visually impaired adventurer Caroline Casey, who two years ago trekked 1,000km across India on an elephant to raise awareness of what people with a disability can achieve.

Betty believes there is a real need for employers to change their attitude towards people with disability. “An increasing number of people with disabilities are now graduating with third-level degrees but only a very small number find permanent employment,” she says.

Betty, 31, was educated at St Mary’s Centre for the Visually Impaired in Merrion Road, Dublin, and then went to TCD. She was soon using computers to scan documents and produce them in braille. She still scans documents but tends not to produce them in braille. Instead she uses computer equipment with voice output.

Betty has realised her potential and wished other people with disabilities could do the same. “It’s not always a case of what the Government can do for us - it’s what we can do given the opportunity,” she said.

The conference, entitled Ability ’03 and supported by the European Year of People with Disabilities, will have speakers as diverse as Tánaiste Mary Harney, former Attorney General and chairperson of BP Peter Sutherland, comedienne Francesca Martinez and MEP Proinsias De Rossa.