Attorney Parnell Diggs Set to Improve Attitudes

Attorney Parnell Diggs Set to Improve Attitudes

Braille
Monitor
December 2007
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Attorney Parnell Diggs
Set to Improve Attitudes
by Jan A. Igoe
From
the Editor: The following story appeared on October 18, 2007, in the Myrtle
Beach Sun News. Parnell Diggs is president of the NFB of South Carolina
and the newest member of the National Federation of the Blind board of directors.
The story is exactly the message that we hope Meet the Blind Month media and
public education efforts will carry. Here it is:
As a child,
Parnell Diggs's parents wouldn't cut him any slack. He was expected to excel
in school, do his share of the chores, and take out the trash just like every
other kid in his Charlotte, North Carolina, neighborhood, sighted or not.
Diggs, thirty-eight,
a Myrtle Beach attorney who has been blind since birth, wouldn't have wanted
it any other way. He views blindness as a neutral characteristic with no more
intrinsic significance than blond hair or olive skin. As president of the National
Federation of the Blind for South Carolina, he's out to challenge any other
perception, especially during October, which is Meet the Blind Month. "I
don't think it's all that bad to be blind. Blindness is not what it used to
be," he said. "In the olden days we had to hunt and gather, be good
with a bow and arrow. Now we go out and buy frozen dinners."
Diggs suspects that those who equate misery with blindness simply don't know
any blind people.
Even his parents,
who raised Parnell to be "the exception to the rule" didn't realize
what normal lives and aspirations most blind people have, he said. Technology
has opened up new worlds for those without sight. People who are blind or vision
impaired have become craftsmen, professors, scientists, computer whizzes, entrepreneurs,
and even medical doctors. But of an estimated ten million Americans who have
significant sight impairments, less than 50 percent are employed, according
to the American Foundation for the Blind. Diggs thinks that unemployment figure
is actually closer to 75 percent.
"There
is a presumption that blind people will not be able to do the job as well. The
struggle is not blindness. The struggle is attitudes," he said. "If
you're choosing sides for baseball, the blind person is handicapped. If you're
choosing sides for a quiz show, it's equal." He recalls graduation day
from the University of South Carolina when "they sort of stopped me. They
wanted to present me: 'Look what we've done. We got a blind guy graduating,'"
he said. "But they wouldn't have hired me." Diggs said he couldn't
even land a job with his dad's law firm, where his father was one of three partners.
So father and son ventured out together.
Today Diggs
shares an office with his assistant, Tracey Weiland, who handles most of the
paperwork and all of the driving. A photo of his wife Kim and seven-year-old
son Jordan is the only ornament on his orderly desk. His royal blue notebook,
thick with client records, lies at his fingertips. Diggs doesn't sweat much
about confidentiality because everything's written in Braille.
His computer
communicates through a speech synthesizer in JAWS for Windows, which also outputs
to Braille displays. He uses the keyboard to input data. Weiland said he can
touch-type faster than she can. Email and Web access are no problem. "I
start drafting letters and rely on Tracey to make the margins wide enough. I
hate it when you leave one word on the next page," he said. "That's
kind of tacky. The only thing I can't do is check her work. That puts me at
a little disadvantage. I want to make sure it's visually and aesthetically pleasing."
How he senses
these things may baffle sighted people, but Diggs said people have been explaining
the difference between stripes and polka dots to him since preschool. "People
tell me how something looks. They take my hand, move it across the fabric,"
he said. "I have to care about it. Whether you're sighted or not, you want
to look presentable."
Diggs's practice
is about 60 percent Social Security and disability work, with a sprinkling of
criminal cases, such as last month's murder trial. Everything from drafting
wills to handling divorces is fair game, but disability cases he accepts on
contingency are trickier. "If [my client is] blind, it's a slam dunk. If
you're sighted, walking and talking, it's harder to prove you're disabled,"
Diggs said. "It's a situation where someone can't work anymore, you have
to win. When you win a case, they tend to refer you. Guess they wouldn't if
you lost all the time."
Deidre Edmonds,
Horry County probate judge, has known Diggs for about four and a half years
and holds his work in high regard. "He really does a good job representing
people in the probate court," Edmonds said. "He represents everyone
to his fullest ability, whether he's been retained by the client or appointed
by court for an indigent client. He's certainly doing a service to the people
in this county."
Seeing Diggs navigate hallways with his white cane is pretty familiar to people
around the courthouse, Weiland said. Prospective clients are another matter.
"If we have a new client who doesn't know he's blind, they'll be taken
aback," Weiland said. "But as soon as they meet him and realize how
capable he is, they're fine with it."
Diggs insists
that he's a pretty normal guy, though Weiland said he routinely commits complex
client records to memory without breaking a sweat. "I don't have a better
memory. I'm not smarter. I don't have better hearing," Diggs said. "My
wife will tell you that I don't hear her 95 percent of the time." Diggs
met wife Kim in high school, when she was a senior and he was a sophomore. It
took him four hours to convince her to date him. "I didn't want her to
think about it. Girls always want to think about it," he said. "She
is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. She can solve complex problems
in life with relative ease."
When Diggs
isn't working on behalf of clients or his blind brethren, he's practicing for
his upcoming tenor solo performance with the Master Chorale. He learns the music
by recording it at practice and having the lyrics read to him. "When we
sing in a foreign language, I'm in the same boat as everyone else," he
said.
"Given
the choice of $1 billion or 20/20 vision, I'd take the money. What would I do
with 20/20 vision? I'm married. I'm self-employed. I have a child. The sky's
the limit. I just can't drive myself."
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