Please don’t stand in my way
If I may, I’d like to take a break from my usual undirected dialog, and discuss the elephant in the room. Or rather, the one that a small group of individuals cannot describe. The blind individuals. There, I’ve said it.
There are probabaly as many degrees of visual impairment as there are “pairment”. Not the word I want, but I don’t have a fancy thesaurus close by. I originally thought of this subject as binary: you see, or you don’t. Darkness vs light. And it isn’t. We are ill prepared for the concept of visual impairment; by the time you “get there”, you wish that you had prepared yourself more fully. Welcome to my world. I first learned that I didn’t see as well as my classmates, and when I did get eyeglasses, I found many (many) excuses to not wear them regularly. My bad.
I’m now at a different point in my life. A new plateau, if you will, where I don’t have any chance of going back to better times. The responsibility to adapt is now mine. This afternoon, I met with a “tech” who brought cases of “tech”. Things to make not seeing easier. Most of the tools are used with youth; I no longer wear that mantle, but my needs are just as pronounced.
I had the chance to find out what is easily available. No bionic eye transplants. A lot of magnifiers (because who needs smaller, right?) A chance to discover the hidden secrets in the control panel on the iPad. My regular laptop will get upgraded to a more modern OS. I’m going to mark my staircase to the basement (gray on gray is an invitation to fall). That pesky post, in one room, will get some markers. And I am even tasked to discover if I need a cane. A whilte one. To let the rest of the world know that I have some special needs. Wish me luck, and don’t stand right in front of me (a “blind spot”).
