My name is Tanja Heidmann, I am from Germany and blind since I was born. My birthday is the second of October 1977. So now I can always party as long as I want because the third is the German national day. That's the way since 1990 since East and west Germany were reunited. The eye disease I have is

very rare. My eyes are ok but the part in the brain which is responsible for seeing doesn't work. The doctors don't know why I have this eye condition. I can see a bit of light and dark though. In 1984 I went to the school for the blind in Hannover, about one hour to the south of my village. I stayed there till 1991 when I visited the highschool for the blind in Marburg. That's in the middle of Germany, about 3 hours drive to the south. First I didn't really

know what I wanted to do but at the end of highschool it was quite clear that I wanted to do something with computers but also something where I have to work with people. So in summer 1998 after my graduation, I went back to Hannover to the same institute. There I made an apprenticeship as a telephonist and a secretary till summer 2000. After that I was unemployed for one year. Even though it was not good to be without a job, it was a very creative time

and I learned much about myself, I have to admit! From May since August 2001 I did a 3 month training for a job as a call center agent in a young company in a small city near my home place. It was not easy I can tell you because many of the teachers didn't even know that there was a blind studendt in the

class. But I really enjoyed my work because that's the kind of work I always wanted to do. I started this job on the third of september 2001. I could tell you so far, there have been ups and downs but I guess that happens to everyone who has a job. But as time rolled by, things got worse and worse. The sighted

colleagues didn't help me at all and the boss gave me a lot of trouble. I was under the constant impression that the firm had just hired me because they wanted to be something good because they hired somebody who is blind. In June 2002 I lost that job because the company went bancrupt and couldn't pay the

employees any more. Since then, I was out of work again and I had been really active with translations of songs. In order to show you this, please also view my translation section. From summer on till December I took a lot of time out and visited friends and just tried to get my thoughts clear again. In the middle of December, my friend Maria in Austria offered me to take a look at the company where she works. She works in the personnel department of a

blindness related exhibition called "discovery of the invisible" But I learned some months ago that the exhibition had to close down. . There are different situations presented in the dark and it was my job to guide the sighted visitors through them. After I had been there for one week, I liked it so much

that I told Maria to notify me whenever they need tour guides again. This happened from the beginning till the middle of February 2003 and I was glad that Maria notified me again. The work in Austria has given me really a lot of sensability and self confidence in reference to the fact that I don't have to

put up with people's crap. When I used to work as a telephone operator, people often screemed at me for no real reason and my nerves suffered a lot from that. But now I know that it doesn't have to be that way. I don't think I ever want to be a telephone operator again. This is what I have learned so far

from my work experience in Austria. From the beginning of 2003 until spring, I had the hardest time of all. The German authorities wanted to force me back

into my old job. They thought just because I had got a nerve problem which is not visible, it is not there. I wrote all my trouble down in a song called

"a new beginning" which I sang at a musicians festival in the Czech Republic in June. I had already applied for the same tour guide job in Hamburg about 2 hours in the north of my village at the end of March when I got an interview there. It is a similar place to the one in Austria and it is called "dialogue in the dark". But I had to wait for my work beginning until I could find a free and cheap room in that city. I found one in september that is also financially

supplied by a blindness related organization in Hamburg. I finally moved there in October and got trained for my job in November. In December I started working there part time which I really enjoyed after the hard time of struggling. On January 15th 2004 I finally got hired full time at that place for one year. That summer my supervisor told me about a schoolingprogramme for blind people which helps them to find a permanent job. I went there from December 2004 till June 2005 but I had a really hard time. There were no other blind people, only people who had other disabilities and at first I didn't get the help I needed. Noone wanted to help me in the dining hall to carry my plate and for the first four weeks I only got a demo version of the screen reader for the computer. I was over qualified for this kind of training programme and so I often surfed the net and did other fun stuff when my teacher was not looking! But the good thing was that I finally got a permanent job in June 2005. I now work as a telephone operator in the local authorities of Hamburg. I know I said at the beginning I didn'T want to be a telephone operator again. But this job is totally different as the govermnent is something different altogether and there are 6 blind people including me. So the other colleagues are quite used to the fact that they have to help us.