Hey everyone,

my name is Gerrit and I am a third year PhD student at Northumbria University Newcastle, UK. For my research study I am conducting qualitative interviews with blind and partially sighted people about their employment experience. Most of the national UK charities have helped me get in contact with potential participants, but I still need a few more interviews (about 6 more would be great).

I have just found out about reddit and that there is this subreddit through a colleague of mine, so I apologize in advance if it looks like I'm just taking advantage of this. But I am happy to help others with their research if I can (I am not VI myself, though). One thing I could do is share the results of my research with everyone here (anonymised data of course).

So here is the call for participants for some more info:

What is it about? The research is about employment experiences of people with visual impairments. For this purpose, I am recording interviews, either in person (if you live in the North East of England) or via Skype or telephone/mobile phone.
Who can take part? Anyone over the age of 18 (or 21 where applicable) can participate. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve already worked in a job or just finished school/a degree or been without employment for a longer period of time. We could then talk about your expectations/wishes instead.
What do you need to do? This is not a typical survey or interview with lots of questions; rather, I will ask you to tell me the story of your employment experience. Whatever you have to say about this can be useful at this stage. You might think of it as telling me about your employment biography, in a way. Most interviews last between 30–60 minutes, depending on how much people have to say.
Is it ethical? Is my data secure? This research project received ethical clearance through an independent review on the university’s ethics board. Needless to say I will anonymise the data and exclude any personal information (e.g. names, places) that people feel not comfortable sharing or that could be used to identify them. Of course, you can drop out of the study anytime during, or afterwards by writing me an email.
Contact details: Please don’t hesitate to get in touch for more information and to schedule a meeting with me: gerrit.kotzur@northumbria.ac.uk. Or drop me a message here.
For the interview Skype might come in handy; if you're in the UK we can also do the interview via telephone/mobile phone.

Thank you very much in advance for your consideration. Feel free to share this call with anyone who might be interested in participating.