I’ve heard it said that blindness is one of the least debilitating of all the major physical disabilities but it’s one of the least understood. Surveys over the years have shown that people fear losing their sight much more than they do losing their hearing. In our age of heightened video stimulation and snapchat messaging, we can certainly understand why. People today are simply on the go. When someone sees a person as lacking the ability to do something major in life, it doesn’t matter if that person is blind or deaf or paraplegic, they are often marked as different, abnormal, or handicapped.
Even in our age when special interest groups seem to get a lot of FEderal attention and personal rights are all the rage, blindness is lumped in as just another disability that must be overcome, seen as merely a nuisance, or beaten down as not such a big deal.
But that’s not the aim of those who wish to raise awareness in popular culture of blindness and dismantle the many myths about those of us who are blind. Being blind in itself simply means we lack the sense of sight to some degree from hardly a a concern to being totally unable to see. Yet, as important as this is, even more important is recognizing how adaptations have opened the job market, social events, and traveling from place to place to us who are blind.
In other words, we don’t argue what we do despite our inability to see. RAther we uphold those ways advances in technology, mental health, and advocacy has helped us live with our blindness as an integral thread of who we are.
Contour, Not Nuisance
One of the myths that so many both in and outside the blindness community is that we always have to compensate for our lack of sight in everything we do. There’s a blind way of cooking, a blind way of reading a novel, a blind way of being a parent. Yet, the more someone prepares spaghetti, orders new checks from the back or changes diapers, the more someone recognizes we are doing activities that are different than our sighted counterparts. Instead, we make adaptations, adjustments to give the same care or manage a home just like anyone else. What kind of adaptation or adjustment we make depends on how much or little remaining sight we may have.
Hence, we are contoured into the running flow of life so that, whether at work or school, home or social leisure, our drive to engage in everyday things remains the same as anyone else. How we feel or think about those adptations is wholly individual. What we do to throw ourselves in the daily grind is our way of embracing the condition(s) we have while teaching others who we are.
As we approach this years blindness awareness month, here are some further links that may give you who are blind or sighted a good feel for how people across the spectrum bring awareness of our dignity, capabilities, and contributions we bring to and for others.
Boldly Blind 