One of th e phrases that many people use when discussing disability matters really bothers me: Special accommodations. That’s because the truth is the accommodations we who are blind, deaf, quadriplegic et al make are part of the contours we follow everyday in doing work, going to school, living at home, and so forth. They are the things that counterbalance the conditions we have so that we can contribute to our neighbors’ needs and concerns, whatever our vocations.
To say something is a “special accommodation” means to be speaking from the perspective of someone who a. doesn’t use it or b. doesn’t have a usual familiarity with it or even more troubling c. will do what it takes to move on once setting it in place for someone else.
The truth of the matter is that screen readers, large print magnifiers, tactile bump dots on light rail platforms are normal and come most of the time when a new computer, light rail station, et al is built. Part of the reason for such accommodations and things like pedestrian audio signals or descriptive video services aren’t so well-known falls in both the disability community’s court and the mainstream community’s oversight.
On our part, the disability community doesn’t always know how to take full advantage of said accommodations right away when implemented. So a cross-walk may have audio signal capability’s but if very few people use them, folks who drive through or sighted pedestrians may find the beep or robotic voice coming from the light poll to be a strange occurrence. If we use them more frequently, our sighted counterparts will find that such adaptations are just part of the daily experience.
On the mainstream perspecgtive, it’s tempting to be intrigued, enthralled and a bit touched by the fact that such technology exists. But without knowing many people who could benefit from it, the temptation is to move on past and let each encounter with “special accommodations” reopen our eyes. In the interim, it’s easy to forget what you’ve learned or seen.
Hence, the normalization of braille menus in restaurants, audio signals at crosswalks, screen readers at work or school continues to be a venture that we all-blind, sighted, deaf or hearing, quadriplegic or walking all part of.
No one who uses said accommodations is deficient or a separate class in society. Rather, making accommodations and adaptations for the full quality of life should be a part of all our endeavors.
Hence, the reason why I love promoting blind sports so much, though I myself don’t play beep baseball or blind soccer, goalball, or wheelchair basketball. They are all fantastic athletic opportunities and take incredible talent when competitors win at the club or ParaOlympic level. The more the public gets to see goalball, beep baseball or blind soccer being played, the more you get to see another cool sport in action and folks busting their butts taking in all that competition has to offer.
The more we who are blind frequent restaurants, go to the movie theater, and involve ourselves in the workplace, the more our use of the variety of adaptations will become.
One out of every hundred folks, for example, is totally blind from a medical standpoint. Folks, that’s still a ton of people. I don’t know the percentage of wheelchair users or totally deaf in the general population. Nonetheless, the more we are boldly navigating life’s contours, the narrower and narrower the acceptance gap will become. And that, of course, is a good thing to strive for.
Boldly Blind 