Blindness in Perspective II: Dealing with the Darker Side

One Guy's Thoughts
Blindness in Perspective II: Dealing with the Darker Side
By: Bruce Toews
Date: Mon. Mar. 11, 2002

Is blindness a handicap, a disability? Well, a lot of blind people may try to mask or deny it, but the fact is that it is. There are these cute cliches going around, things like, "We're not handicapped, we're handicapable." The purpose of such tired sayings, sayings for which I have no time, is to camouflage the disability. The emphasis, we're told, should not be on what we can't do, but on what we can. And on that basic premise, you'll get no argument from me. But there comes a point when a shift in focus turns into denial. People are so busy emphasizing what we, as disabled people, can do, that we deny that there are things that we cannot.

I'm not out for sympathy here. That's not the point either. Evoking sympathy is the opposite extreme to the denial of which I just spoke. What I'm planning to do, though, in the next few paragraphs, is simply to give you a glimpse into some of the frustrating aspects of blindness.

Imagine life without a car. There's no jumping into your car to go to the 7-11 for milk, or to visit a friend at the spur of the moment. There's no going out on a long drive just to get away from it all. And, if there isn't adequate bus service, weekly trips to places like church suddenly mean either taking an often-unreliable public transit system for the disabled, or regularly asking others for rides. It means a constant feeling of imposing on the freedom of others to accomplish basic transportation needs. It means that, instead of going to visit your parents for an afternoon, you have to give up the entire weekend to accommodate those willing to drive the four-hour return trip to pick you up. And it means that, in an emergency, you have to hope someone somewhere is available to get you to the hospital.

Imagine not being able to see your computer screen. Yes, there are screen reader programs out there, but they double the cost of the computer itself. There are also many things the programs will not speak, such as the reinstallation of your operating system, or some of the more basic configuration aspects of the computer. This means more imposing on others for help, and a feeling of utter helplessness when you are unable to perform a task - not because you are unwilling to learn the procedure, but rather because that procedure is physically impossible without sight.

These are two illustrations which I hope can give you an understanding of some of the utter frustration that can be associated with blindness. It means, in a lot of cases, living at the mercy of other people's schedules. If something needs doing that you are unable to do yourself, it means waiting a day, a week, a month, whatever, until someone who can has the time, the energy, the willingness to help you. It means having to deal with people who, sometimes, make it abundantly clear that they'd rather be doing anything other than helping you, that you've imposed on their time, their freedom, their life. It means sometimes having people be slow to accept your friendship for fear that you're going to leach on to them and make them constantly do favors for you. And it means having to constantly guess at who is free to help at any given time, when people cannot or will not be put on a schedule.

I was really hesitant to write this week's Thought ... not because this stuff isn't true, but because (a) it deals with some very painful realities, and (b) I sound like I'm whining. It's not about sympathy, it's not about pity, it's not about any of these things, just an understanding of reality. Having said that, let's go back to carefully focusing on what the disabled can do.

Well, anyway, those are one guy's thoughts.