Managing Risk for JPMorgan, and Blindness

LONDON — As a trader at JPMorgan Chase in London, Ashish Goyal helps manage billions of dollars of the bank’s exposure to risks like foreign exchange fluctuations. In his spare time, he takes tango lessons, plays cricket and goes clubbing with friends. Mr. Goyal is also blind.
Watching him in the middle of the trading floor as he switches back and forth between computer screens, that is not apparent at all. But to check his e-mail, read research reports and look at presentations, Mr. Goyal uses a screen-reading software whose speed is so high that it sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear. When he needs to read graphs, which the software cannot do, Mr. Goyal goes through the data and tries to imagine the graph in his head.
On his desk, two computer screens show the usual flashing Bloomberg messages and spreadsheets of constantly changing numbers. Two keyboards are linked to headsets through which the information and figures are read out to him at rapid speeds. The same technology reads out text messages he receives on his cellphone.
“My colleagues already complained that they can’t hear my phone speak, as it is too fast,” Mr. Goyal said jokingly. “I turn around and say, ‘Well, I can’t read your text messages, so it’s only fair.’ ”
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His computers can read information to him rapidly through a headset.

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Mr. Goyal was not born blind. Growing up in Mumbai, Mr. Goyal said he had a normal, happy childhood. But when he was about 9 years old, he noticed that he could not immediately recognize some people and could not see the lines in his notebooks at school. One night he walked into a ditch, later he crashed his bicycle, and then he started to miss the ball during his tennis lessons.
Mr. Goyal was told he had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that damages the retina, and would gradually become blind. By the time Mr. Goyal was 22, he had completely lost his eyesight.
“The worst thing was I didn’t know what was happening and what to do about it,” Mr. Goyal said. While other people his age were starting to date, he said, “I was struggling to deal with a disability. What was I to tell people? ‘Sometimes I can see you, sometimes not?’ ”
The loss of his eyesight left Mr. Goyal “scared and confused” and with fewer friends, he said. “I was ready to just give up and not take my final exam and just go and work for my dad,” a real estate developer, Mr. Goyal said. But his mother forced him to sit for the exam, and to his surprise he not only passed but received good grades.
Today, Mr. Goyal said he was proud that he did not need help from others on a daily basis and he had again become active in sports, as he was as a child. Last year, his team won a cricket tournament for the blind, which is played with a slightly bigger ball that has sound.
Despite his achievements, which this year also included a national award from India for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Mr. Goyal speaks modestly of himself.
“One challenge is that I don’t become a benchmark for other people,” he said. “I’ve done all these things but yes, it’s been a struggle. Not everyone is as fortunate to have the support of friends and family and it wouldn’t be fair. I’m mediocre at many things.”