Reading a recent reflection from Connor Scott-Gardner on thoughts on blindness after blogging for 11 years made me think about my own experiences and reactions. I once wrote quite prolifically about my thoughts about blindness but have been rather quiet in recent years. Perhaps it will be useful for me to write something in response to this, especially since it resonates quite a bit with me in places.
I should begin by noting that there is a generation gap between myself and Connor. For me this is significant because many people who are younger than myself, at least in the U.S., have been taught their travel skills in ways that result in greater confidence than I had as a young person. The primary element in this is that they are encouraged at very young ages to use their canes at home and at school, not simply taught the skills of cane use. This is a vital aspect of building travel confidence.
Connor speaks about having learned to use the cane but not having built confidence and not knowing that it was possible to travel independently. I had a somewhat similar experience. I learned skills but was not expected to use the cane at home or outside the environment of formal lessons until high school.
I had an abstract knowledge that I could be independent, because I was taught that the reason I was learning all these skills was for my independence. Therefore I expected to be independent and was confused when learning the skills didn’t result in more freedoms. My 10-year-old sister had total freedom in the neighborhood and I was still crossing streets under supervision. So I became unwilling to use the cane–clearly it didn’t matter, and I had reached the age when I was being taunted about it since my peers were not used to seeing it.
As the time approached for me to plan for college, I heard that siren song about independence again. Combined with my desire to study music business, a perfect reason and opportunity was born for me to seize independence 1100 miles from home. I thought that a guide dog would be a great companion on the journey.
The first dog guide school I applied to didn’t agree. They thought I wouldn’t have enough motivation to work with a dog. I have never understood this judgment since I was on the brink of moving away from home. But there it was. So I moved anyway, did my first year with the cane, and applied to another school the second year. I have now worked with seven dogs from that school.
There are aspects of blindness that no one talks about. On one hand the sighted world is busy thinking we are so brave for getting up in the morning and can’t pay attention to how this attitude impacts us. On the other hand, blind people debate about whether there is such a thing as “blind culture,” thinking it is about things like use of braille and common gadgets, failing to realize that it is also about some of the negative expectations we place on each other. Connor says:
The world expects so much of us, and at the same time it also expects nothing. Most people would be quite comfortable with the idea of a blind person doing nothing for the rest of their life, because they think us so useless and blindness so terrible that it is only reasonable that we stay in one place forever. Yet those same people fail to recognise the energy that we must give when we do choose to go out, to get an education or a job, to have a family, to be free, in whatever form that takes. Most people do not consider that the world is built for the convenience of those who can see, not those who cannot. And so we are always adapting, finding our own way through environments that make little sense to us at all.
I think many of us as blind people feel the pressure to prove to the world that we can, because we want sighted people to value us and recognise that we can meaningfully contribute. And so we also place those same expectations on other blind people. You must walk by yourself, or other people will think we are all unable to do so. You must cook that meal. You must know how to format a presentation. You must fit into this world, even if there is no place that has been carved out for you.
Many of these expectations that we place on each other originated in a time when there was much less technology and even lower expectations from the sighted community. Blind people had no choice 100 years ago but to work against these low expectations if they wanted to live in the mainstream and work in standard jobs. Society expected them to live in segregated housing and to work in specialized production jobs, out of sight. A few might demonstrate their abilities for the benefit of sighted people who would then give money to charities that worked toward prevention of blindness or education of “poor unfortunate blind children.”
But oh dear, blind people actually expect to live in the community at large today and work alongside everyone else, at the same jobs everyone else does… It is a difficult thint for sighted society to adjust to. So while society is still trying to adjust, young blind people have forgotten the old segregated days and often have no knowledge of what it was like to live without independence. And without that knowledge, the pressure we put on each other is unbelievably high.
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- ITD day 1 - June 27, 2023
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- Traveling without a Guide Dog: Experience with Cane and Walker - October 14, 2022
- Disability and Church, Intersection - June 11, 2022
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