As some of the old-timers may know, I am totally blind and I was never a Mormon. My interest in this Board began when I was considering dating a sighted LDS woman who worked with blind people back in 2007.

Anyway, I am now posting something from the world I very much know. It's the link to a blog post about this subject that has generated a lot of comments from within the blindness community, both pro and con. Most of what is written in this post is accurate with embedded links that will take you to where you can get more information. Enjoy!

http://www.cracked.com/article_21295_5-shocking-ways-modern-world-screws-blind-people.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2014 01:24PM by blindguy.

Fascinating stuff. I had no idea braille was so problematic and that only 10% of blind people know it.

A friend was starting a business and inspectors insisted he put braille signs on the restrooms. Fine he said, next time a blind guy asks where the john is, I can just tell him to find it himself.

Of course now I'm terrified I just typed a bigoted joke onto your thread.

Don't worry! I don't consider your comment to be bigoted in any way. There are really two reasons that blind people are not being taught brail: 1) most blind people are not totally blind and can read large print; and 2) public schools, despite the law, often fail to provide the teaching of braille to their totally blind students.

I agree with the observation about people assuming one must be 100% blind or faking it. As you know I was visually impaired a few years ago when I was undergoing and having complications for series of cornea transplant surgeries.

My biggest problem was when I'd tell receptionists I couldn't see well enough to fill out forms. "They'd say, don't worry about it. Do the best you can."

The trouble was I couldn't see the print and didn't know one question from another. Sometimes I'd just write in the margin that I couldn't read it and to ask if someone needed specific information. Then I'd sign the paper and hope it was near the space provided. No one seemed to have time to look at the form or help me know what I was signing.

Once a lady came out and stood up to my husband saying he had to stay in that waiting room because where she was sending me didn't have enough seating for non-patients. I had to feel my way down a long hall alone and couldn't read the room number. I had been there before and knew about where the room was located, but I had to feel the doorways and ask where I was to be sure I'd gone to the right place.

I found it frustrating and embarrassing to have to keep asking for help when people acted like I was faking or imposing. I had always thought medical people would be more understanding than that, but they often seemed the most preoccupied and the least willing to help.

Thank you for posting this information. It could help posters know how to help or at least understand about visual impairment.

Hope all is well with you.

Nice to see you here Blind Guy. I remember you were here for a while when I first got here. I remembered being impressed with
how intelligent you are and I enjoyed your comments.

Way back in the last century when I made the doubtless questionable move to start driving a taxi (hey, it was either that or wind up homeless), it was an eye-opener (Ugh! Sorry about that) for me to make the acquaintance of so many visually impaired people.

Many are still dear friends, and I don't enjoy having them as passengers because the money is good. Most, in fact, have coupons from the cab company that the local center for the blind provides. They rely on us for short trips as well as occasional long ones.

I like them because they, for the most part, are sensitive to what it means to be human (even here on ex-Mormon.org we find a common bond in the pain the church has inflicted). I respond well to that. I also save my "tip seeking tactics" for the one-percent crowd; they can afford it.

Okay, in twenty-odd years, there have only been a couple of jerks (one who drinks too much, and the other is often overly demanding).

Anyway, I knew about the trick of folding different denominations of bills in different ways; I had no idea people were often accusing blind people of faking their infirmity. That one sets the old road rage boiling.

Okay, one tip for those who are called to assist a blind person. Let them take your arm; don't grab theirs and lead them about. It's unsettling and only reinforces the "inequality."

And a honk of my horn to the blind lady who graciously explained that one to me.

Actually, I did know of someone who faked being blind. This was while I was in college, and a friend of mine wanted to see how differently people would treat him if he were blind. So he bought a pair of dark glasses, borrowed one of my canes, and boarded a Los Angeles city bus. About a week later, he returned the cane to me and told me what an interesting experience it had been! He had managed to get all the way from Los Angeles to Palm Springs (a distance of some 120 miles) by city bus without having to pay bus fare (blind people didn't have to do this at the time), but he also found that people gave him the strangest looks when they saw his disability.

After that incident, I lost track of this friend and I often wondered what happened to him. Well, I found that out last year. As part of my duties for the Governor's Council on Blindness and Visual Impairment (GCBVI--I represent one of the blind consumer groups), I answered questions at a table for those who were interested in what kinds of services Arizona had for its blind population. The person came up and reintroduced himself to me. It turns out that after leaving college, he drifted around and eventually decided that he wanted to work with the disabled. He got a rehabilitation counseling degree and now works for the Arizona Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in Tucson as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the disabled. So I suppose that letting this gentleman borrow my cane to "fake" blindness ultimately had a happy ending.

Of course, in taking disability claims, we had to learn how to deal with visually impaired people, deaf people, non-ambulatory people in wheelchairs, you name it.

We were actually taught to deal with a number of the things mentioned in that article. Particularly, that there are degrees of blindness - and offering your arm to walk from the waiting area to your desk and helping them to get seated, if they asked for help. We learned not to interact with service dogs. (They are on the job, and don't need distraction.) Sometimes, the people could write their names if you guided their hand to where the line was; some people just made an "X." Whatever worked.

Because I had taken a sign-language class, I got invited to a special seminar on how to deal effectively with deaf people. I loved the opportunity.

Being exposed to so many differently-abled people over the years helped me to realize that all in all, we have more in common than we do differences.

I remember meeting one lady who was deaf as well as blind. She had a friend with her who finger-spelled into her hand, just like Helen Keller. Their fingers just flew - it was amazing to watch. Since I can finger-spell (though not nearly as fluently as they could), I asked at the end of the interview if I could "speak" directly with the lady. I thanked her for the experience, as I had never met a deaf-blind person before, and promised to process her claim just as quickly as possible. She smiled, squeezed my hand warmly, and verbally said "Thank you" in that kind of flat, toneless way that deaf people do.

Meeting all sorts of people was one of the best things about that job. (Mindless paper-shuffling sucked, and there was way too much of that.) But over the years, I met some people who were unforgettable.