Evans was born in Manchester to Welsh parents. He was educated at Llanelli Science Schools and at St Paul's College in Cheltenham, before training as a teacher at the University of London. He taught first at an elementary school in London, then successively at Linden Lodge Special School for the Blind, the Old Kent Road School for the Deaf and the East Anglian Schools for Blind and Deaf in Gorleston, Norfolk. He held special diplomas in the teaching of blind and of deaf people, and retired as the headmaster of Gorleston in 1943, having been a teacher for 40 years, and served for the next two years as Secretary of the National Institute for the Blind.