The Role of an Association of Professionals
by Jeanne-Marie PAGNOUX
The Association of Blind Telephone Operators and Technical Agents of France, known under the name of ASATAF, was set up in 1960 and evolved along with the profession over the next 43 years.
Indeed, in 1960, 10 blind and partially-sighted individuals who had themselves found employment using the telephone, decided to band together and with the force of their persuasion inform companies, prospect government departments and propose applicants.
They want candidates to be competent, trained in centres where the ASATAF prepares programmes and examinations jointly with France Telecom technicians.
Our association, composed solely of visually impaired persons, has been relentless in its efforts. With painstaking work and usually with very little resources it has sought to achieve recognition for the skills of this population whose handicap generally inspires fear.
Through our actions over 43 years during the favourable era of the telephone we have managed to place 1900 people, with an annual maximum of 116 placements on French territory in 1982. On telephone switchboards, with good training and their memory, dexterity, concentration and speed, the visually impaired have been really competitive and have themselves been ambassadors for the visually impaired with employers.
To facilitate the profession of its members and help them keep abreast of the inevitable changes, the ASATAF has always published technological documents in Braille or enlarged font : administrative geography, telephone technology and now methods for self-training in the use of office automation hardware and software.
Over the last ten years, the situation has greatly changed, for better and for worse !
The profession purely of switchboard operator has gradually evolved towards multi-tasking workstations, platforms of technicians specialised in I.T. tasks.
Blind people now obtain more access to culture (Baccalaureat +2, 3, 4 or even 5 years of higher education) and qualifications : some have forged new paths to become psychologists, I.T. experts, journalists, etc., however others continue to call on our services.
I.T. technologies enable real progress, they open new horizons and offer a wider diversity of jobs. However, these same technologies, the source of so much hope, are also the source of difficulties in terms of compatibility and keeping up with the fast rate of software releases.
Maintaining the individual in employment and opening up new jobs is becoming increasingly complex for employers, employees and placement technicians alike.
The role of our Association, which over the past three decades has had close ties to the profession and the varied array of jobs within that profession, has been to inform its members, prospect for them and open up and present applicants for job positions.
However, it would be dangerous for a professional Association to remain rigidly focused on a single profession. The ASATAF wants to remain faithful to the prime objective of its founding fathers : the integration of visually impaired persons into the ordinary workplace. To do this, it must open up to the contemporary work market and broaden its scope to accept requests from members with a diversity of professional projects, mainly in tertiary services, usually based on the use of an adapted PC or Intranet, and maybe or maybe not involving the use of the telephone.
Our active members and volunteers, backed by the salaried employees, always perform several of the fundamental functions, due to their close ties with the field and being at work on a daily basis and themselves encountering the human and technological difficulties.
In full knowledge of the problems therefore, they can speak out and give witness to how things really are in the world of work to all sorts of organisations on a local or national level : associations, corporate organisations, employers, health and safety committees, company welfare committees, official placement agencies and even legislators.
On a daily basis they see the need for increasingly advanced skills and technological proficiency and are concerned to offer tailor-made in-service training resources to those members who feel the need.
From the very outset, our teaching team has been concerned with validating the knowledge (level 5). Currently and for approximately ten years now, for reception and communication agents, it co-ordinates and prepares for the exams of the AFPA, an official in-serving training organisation in France, which allows us to present those tests in a form accessible to the visually impaired. Our next aim is to take that professional training to a higher level still.
A lot of firms contact us to find out and understand how we work before committing to appoint a blind or visually impaired person. Our action enables them to ask questions and avoid the pitfalls. It smoothes out the difficulties and helps them dialogue more successfully with their employees. Demonstrations held in our own premises for audiences or during participation in information days, help improve attitudes.
For years, the efforts of our volunteer prospectors have resulted in many job proposals for which we have been able to present applications from our members. However, in the face of a degree of passivity and a wait-and-see attitude on their part, our method these days is to make them active players in the job search by making available to them our equipment, our skills, and by dynamically accompanying them in their personal search for employment.
We are careful to act in concert with other players in the field and the various partners whose work we can complement : official organisations or associations, etc.
If a better placement is always the sought-for aim, defining the source of the difficulties that we ourselves encounter, we want to help them progress as a group, to ensure the professional future of all those suffering visual impairment.
Under our statutes, our local branches have freedom of action. Within this context, our efforts doing cultural work with a multi-media library have enabled opening a welcoming public space with freedom of access for our members to learn the new I.T. technologies at no charge.
Because of the high cost of specialised equipment and training for the visually impaired, this action enables jobseekers and employees to acquire skills at no cost, thereby making them even stronger on their workplace and in their dialogue with employers.
Our work can be thankless at times and results are sometimes slow coming. It brings few financial returns. People sometimes denigrate our collaborators as being " unqualified " to mentor others. However, we are more than just an association of " professionals ", we work actively for the professional future of the visually impaired in France.
As militants, and through our specific skills and experience acquired with companies in our daily life as disabled workers, we can be useful to others in the field and provide a valuable complement to the work of the other organisations strongly committed to the same purpose.
We represent our members and act as their spokespeople.
We dialogue with the employers and employment partners.
We arouse an awareness of the difficulties in the concerned organisations.
We seek to make progress, as a group, on the background problems.
And we do all this by participating in a practical manner as needed in to seek progress, job openings or help employees maintain their positions, by keeping the doors of invention open for young people currently taking responsibility for their own professional future.
Human action in the field will always be necessary. I ardently hope that the technological difficulties that currently block the way will smooth out, that research will keep pace with technologies and that a political determination will enable the funding to achieve this progress. For my part, I look forward to a European and perhaps even International effort to accompany the visually impaired in their struggle for employment.
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