Here is a summary and a link to the recording of our Career Talk with Andrew Hodgson which took place on Wednesday 18th March.
Some of you may already know Andrew as an active contributor to the TAVIP discussion list, and as a former Chair of Trustees at TAVIP.
Andrew says “for those who don’t know me, I am a blind IT professional who has worked for over 20 years as a systems and platform engineer in various industries including financial services, retail and energy. Outside of work, I can usually be found in a bell tower ringing for a church service or wedding.”
During the Talk, Andrew shared the story of how his career developed and how he felt about working as a blind person.
Andrew also shared insights for anyone who is interested in starting out in the technology sector, covering topics such as practical things you can do to help prepare for and talk about during interview, his experience of face to face and online interviews, pros and cons of jobs in and outside of London, his thoughts on screen readers and his approach to using audio and braille for work, and the value of simplicity and keeping things under your control when choosing tools for programming.
The session was hosted by TAVIP’s current Chair of Trustees, Tony Stockman. Tony has over 40 years’ experience of using various forms of assistive technology to study and work in education and industry as a visually impaired person. Much of his research as a university lecturer was in the area of Human-Computer Interaction, often with a specific focus on accessibility for visually impaired people, ranging from access to spreadsheets through to improving interfaces for visually impaired audio engineers.
There is a link below to the recording on AudioBoom, or a link which will download the recording as an mp3 file.
Download file: