“People are strange . . .”

Jim Morrison

This post details some weirdly common interactions I have as a blind guy. To be honest, for me, most of the below interactions are looked back on with complete comedy as they’re just ridiculous. I’m sad to say most of the below are not  atypical either. However, when I was telling some people about some of these, their shock, discomfort and incredulity that these  things happen made me re-evaluate how I felt towards them. I think, as a blind man, I’ve just become accustomed to certain interactions and they seem normalised.

Let’s be honest, most  (but not all) people don’t go out of their way to be offensive or make you feel like rubbish. I suspect most ( not all) of the interactions had no malintent and the other parties were just completely ignorant of the impact of what they did or said may have. However, I’ll let you  decide for yourself. Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts.

1. Check The  Cubicles First…

Interaction: Picture this conversation which I overheard at one of my previous workplaces.

• Person A” Kaleem was telling me that he wants to do more challenging and interesting work than what we’ve been giving him”.
• Person B “Well he is doing all of my work, nobody else  will want to do it so he can complain all he wants, what is he going to do, leave…?.haha”
• Person A “That is true nobody else will hire him because of his blindness so, who cares…”

What Does This Say: Note to Superiors: If you’re going to have a work related chat whilst at the urinals, it may be worth checking none of the  cubicles are occupied. In the words of Brookline Nine Nine’s Jake Perolta you should always , “check for poopers”.

Inherent in this conversation between two of my superiors is the belief that a disabled employee can be treated less favourably , or not given the same opportunities as able bodied colleagues. Here, the example isn’t the classic promotion opportunity but it related to getting a more varied diet of work. The fact  a person is blind, or disabled, can be seen by some less educated individuals as an opportunity to have leverage on the basis  of their own belief that there are no other opportunities available to a blind person.

In essence, this conversation was saying that Kaleem has to put up with anything at work because he won’t be able to be employed anywhere else because of his sight loss.

It’s also very scary to think about the distinction between what people say and do in public and what they say when they think they are in private. It’s a good metaphor for the point that I’ve banged on about in previous points, namely that there is no point in organisations implementing policies to  make work  more accessible if the individuals within the organisation pay no notice of them. 

2. I’ll Get This Blown Up

Interaction: A common assumption is that if you’re sight impaired, but not completely blind, the problem with your eyes is that you can’t see things because they are not big enough. So often, at school, university, and in the office, contemporise have often thought the way to make  things accessible is by  “blowing them up” i.e. enlarging the size of a hard-copy document on the photocopier.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for a lot of sight impaired people – including myself – as the nature of their sight condition is not just extreme short sightedness….

What Does This Say: It shows the level of misunderstanding amongst people as to what sight loss is, and the variety of symptoms that different sight loss conditions consist of. If you’re not completely blind, the assumption is that you just can’t see small things and there needs to be wider education for people to help them understand the diversity of symptoms and issues different sight conditions have. This is particularly  important if colleagues have blind or sight impaired colleagues. 

This interaction also shows that there is a misunderstanding of the nuance required to make things accessible. For many, simply getting a hard copy document “blown-up” is simple, so is an easy way for things to be made accessible. However, if blindness was so simple, and providing access to things was so easy, surely all blindness would be cured by a set of glasses, right?  Unfortunately things are not that simple.

One of the positives of this interaction is however that there is some recognition that I need accessibility adjustments. And whilst the action to blow a document up isn’t appropriate , it is better that contemporise are at least recognising that some adjustments need to be made. This is a better starting point than not even trying to make any adjustments.

3. I assume your wife is blind?

Interaction: In social settings, people ask you if you are in a relationship and whether your partner is blind.

What Does This Say: This is actually  quite an upsetting interaction I have a lot? The widely held assumption is that blind people will only be with other blind people.

What’s this about….and how is this any different to saying something like blondes should automatically be with other blondes, or people who are 5″3 should only be with people of the same height? 

For me, it denotes a wider bias, that most people project. Namely, in the opinions of most people, there isn’t a  world where non-blind people can be in relationships with blind people. I get that part of this attitude may be driven by the assumption that the shared experience of being blind  and the common challenges that provides would create more in common than a blind person and a sighted person, but if you think about it, we’re all humans, we’ve all got unique experiences, and there are likely very few couples in the world that have identical experiences of life. Everyone has different challenges and  everyone deals with those challenges differently.  No single person comes through a challenge taking exactly the same lessons and life experiences out of it as another person.

So why  would the anomaly be for blind people? Fundamentally, I know why, and it’s quite a sad reality. We live in an inherently ableist society.

4. Elevator Pitch

Interaction: This happens a lot. You get into a lift, and someone you’ve never spoken to before, but with whom you share a floor,  comes into the  elevator with you. They stand there in silence for a couple of seconds. Then don’t introduce themselves but just start talking to you about sight loss. It might be an anecdote about someone they personally know with sight loss or it might be a comment about how they have to wear glasses. 

What Does This Say: Aside from the weird sense that this person has been watching/stalking me, and the slightly scarier prospect that this person sees me on a daily basis, I think it shows an inherent  awkwardness on how people think they should interact with me. It also shows that I’m identified as a blind person, rather than just a person.

I mean to be fair, I’m all for people asking questions, and trying to educate themselves more on sight loss – that is the point of this whole site. However, to randomly talk to me about it having never interacted with me before is just weird.

I may be blind but I’m still a person. You wouldn’t start talking to someone about blonde hair in the lift if you noticed they were blonde because that would be weird wouldn’t it. So I don’t understand  why these people think the weirdness goes away when talking about sight loss. Just pure weird.

Its this kind of interaction which gives credence to the philosophy that disabled people are just as disabled by society, as they are by their own  physical or mental disability.

5. Are You Going To Try And Become A Lawyer?

Interaction: This next interaction is one I have with non-law acquaintances. These acquaintances usually know me a little and know I work at a law firm despite being blind. Given this you’d be gobsmacked at how many of them assume that I’m not a lawyer, and rather am a member of  business support or a paralegal. I often get the following questions: “When are you going to get a training contract at your firm then?”, or “Do you work for the lawyers then?”

What Does This Say: As I said above, this is something that I get from  acquaintances that know me a little bit and therefore know I’m blind. It goes to show that even where you know someone like me the unconscious assumption is that someone like me isn’t able to be a lawyer….I guess because I’m blind…..

Now if I put a positive spin on this…you could say that people can’t comprehend, knowing the daily challenges that I have, that it is not conceivable that I could overcome them to such an extent that I can be a lawyer.

However, overall, I still think that this interaction points to the assumption that someone like me is more likely not to be able to be a lawyer than be a lawyer. I find this quite offensive tbh.

Final Thoughts

There are plenty more weird interactions I could have added here. Let me know what you think in the comments about what these interactions say about society. If you find this post interesting I can do a part 2 of this piece highlighting a few more of these interactions.

*Disclaimer  – The thoughts on this post are mine. They are based off the life experiences, difficulties and challenges of a man having lived with, worked and experienced the world with a sight impairment who is lucky enough to use these for the betterment of disabled individuals and society in general. Other  individuals may have alternative  views to those of my own which will be just as valid as my own.