Success on the Horizon
"A blind man that runs a print and design business? Some people think that's odd. But people don't look twice at my disability when they see what I can produce."
Originally Mandeep Singh Lotta ran a business in Kenya but he decided to come to the UK over five years ago to develop new skills and seek a larger potential market. The world of publishing and print design is fiercely competitive but, despite this, Mid Horizon Publications has proved to be a bold and viable business.
"A blind man that runs a print and design business? Some people think that's odd. But people don't look twice at my disability when they see what I can produce." Mandeep thrives on proving his doubters wrong. "You might say that blindness is in the eye of the beholder. I can see in my head what will work and I translate that to paper."
Mandeep felt he needed to develop new skills before embarking on his UK business. He received a lot of help from a variety of organisations, including Leonard Cheshire Disability, who provided him with a refurbished computer to undertake his training. After completing an NVQ Level 2 in sales and marketing, Mandeep felt ready to begin trading.
In a variety of situations Mandeep had to battle against being given forms to fill in that were only on paper. These forms made setting up his business and managing benefit arrangements far more difficult than he would have liked: "Couldn't people see that their forms weren't going to be of much use to me? These days I use a scanner to convert documents into a format that specialist software can then convert into speech."
As well as producing printed materials and publications for his customers, Mandeep has also published a collection of his own poems. But it's his business that he is really seeking to develop in the years ahead. "Challenging people's blinkered perceptions is a great feeling."
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