On an average day in 2016, blind people in developed countries across the world use many of the same technological tools that sighted people use: laptops, IPhones, IPads, Android tablets, etc. These pieces of technology have some inherent weaknesses in how usable they are when taken out of the box. These weaknesses are compensated for by the use of additional features, add-on software, and hardware such as braille displays that communicate via wireless connections.
These technologies are common enough that even I, in my mid-forties, and my husband, in his early fifties, must work to remember what life was like without them. The use of these mainstream technology gives us unprecedented access to electronic books, downloadable movies and music, online shopping with products delivered to our doors. These are all things that our sighted neighbors also enjoy. However, for us these are things that mean the difference between independence and being cooped up at home, waiting for someone to be available who has a car and doesn’t mind taking time out of their busy schedule to drive for us poor, unfortunate blind people.
I wrote the above words because they are typical of attitudes that people often hold about people who are blind. For many people who read this, my words may convey bitterness and anger. That is not my intent. My intent is to express the mixed messages that come across to people who are blind on a regular basis in the course of interacting with sighted people as we go about the task of getting things done. A normal task such as shopping for groceries becomes an activity in which we are acutely aware of the time burden we place on another person. We schedule that task based on the other person’s schedule, thank them for their availability, apologize for taking their time… If traffic is congested, we listen to grumbling about the traffic and tamp down the feeling that if we weren’t in need the person wouldn’t need to cope with such stress.
And above all, we are aware of how “unfortunate” we are because we cannot see. When the errand is over, the person will fade back into community life. We are not friends to do fun things with. Why? Is it because doing something would require extra time and energy? Or because doing something means associating with “unfortunates”?
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