You have to be one thing or another

My post ‘No half measures’, while exposing an attitude that I’ve had thrown at me many times over my life, showed something of an extreme example of the common belief that people are either blind or they’re not - they can either see ‘normally’ or they can’t see anything.

 

I have had strangers express that indignant anger at me on a single brief encounter, their realisation that I can see something when they have assumed that I could see nothing at all has thrown them, disappointed or shaken their trust in the purity of ‘the blind’. People often resort to insulting behaviours in such circumstances and I’ve written here before about being sworn at when it has been realised that I’m not  as blind as I might have been, and my last post described a recent incident where a shopkeeper come amateur ophthalmologist waved his hand in my face asking how many fingers he was holding up.

 

In a world still full of so many rich examples of terrible behaviours to write about, It’s easy to maintain my focus on them. However, I am often more thrown by people who I’m acquainted with, apparently surprised either that I can see at all or that I can’t see much – they simply haven’ noticed or thought about it. I don’t think that I create a barrier of fear that prevents them asking, but asking questions as a means to finding out about people is currently unfashionable and this probably contributes to people finding out less about disabled people than they otherwise might – not all questions are offensive it is how they are delivered that gives them meaning.

 

It seems that there is little understanding of the continuum from total blindness to sightedness, neither how distant the experience of blind people with very little eyesight  is from sighted people who wear glasses – the statement “I can’t see anythink without my glasses” is rediculously common. Neither though is thee a recognition of the hard work that most blind people (with or without any sight) undertake in every aspect of our lives, to manage as well as we can in a pretty inaccessible world.

 

For my part, I can see too much to need a long cane, but not enough to manage without a white stick (as described in a previous post), I can see a shop, but not enough to identify what it sells or read a menu in the window. In normal circumstances, I walk about confidently and use public transport, I expect to be able to get to places on my own, often using my phone for navigation in unfamiliar places, asking other pedestrians directions on the way, learning and memorising routes. I work my sight hard and have to continually memorise routes. Our pavements are increasing made use of by shop advertising signs, their overflowing stock, or by tables and chairs. Current shopping centre and street design makes little distinction between roads, cycle lanes and pedestrian areas. All these things make navigating the streets increasingly exhausting and cumbersome.