Before presenting monetary valuations placed on independent travel and freedom to participate in all that life and the urban environment has to offer, the employment status of the subjects is briefly explained. Nationwide, about 70% of blind people are unemployed (Kirchner et al., 1999) . The subjects that are reported on here differed from the norm in that they had to be active travelers to get to the site for the experiment. Out of 30 subjects, nine were employed full-time and two were employed part-time. No students were in the regular education system, but two went to a blind skills center and were also employed part-time, while another eight went to skills centers and were not employed. The majority of those who went to the centers were recent high school graduates who were learning how to live on their own. Another five of the subjects were self-employed: four in assistive or computer technologies and one as a masseuse. No one reported being a volunteer, and three were unemployed because of their disability. One person was retired.
One difficulty with the oft-touted higher figures (70%) for unemployment is that they include all blind people of working age, including many without good health. A national survey by the National Center for Health Statistics in 1994-95 (data released in 1998) showed that legally blind people less than 55 years old and in "excellent" health, were 40% unemployed (AFB, 2000) . The subjects in this experiment were more similar to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data.
Sixteen subjects were happy with their current employment status. Of the others, 12 wanted to be employed full-time and two wanted to be employed part-time. Eighteen subjects reported being employed an average of 12.2 years. Of the five people who were working when they became blind, three said that vision loss led to their being under-employed and two said it did not. In addition, one subject who was blind before starting work said that he was under-employed because of the blindness. These six subjects reported earning on average $11,500 less because of their blindness, with ranges between $5,000 and $20,000.
Of the 18 people who had jobs, nine (half) said that they felt they were under-employed. Eight of these nine people (90%) thought that they were under-employed because of transit and access problems.
For the nine people who were unemployed, six had never had a job and three had lost their job because of the disability. Of the three formerly sighted and employed, one made $38,000 less, one made $18,000 less, and one person on a disability pension made $2500 less than when employed, for an average loss of $19,500 for the three unemployed subjects. Three of the nine (33%) respondents who said they were unemployed thought their unemployment was a result of transit and access problems. The other six said their unemployment was not due to these limitations; these were mostly the young adults from the living skills centers who were not yet looking for employment.
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