American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Summer 2025 ACCESS
Environmental Ableism and the Importance of Environmental Education for Blind Students
by Justin Salisbury
From the Editor: Justin Salisbury is a graduate student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. He has taught cane travel, Braille, home management, and classes on NFB philosophy at residential and nonresidential training centers for the blind. He works to bring the knowledge of the National Federation of the Blind into research, policy, and university training spaces.
The idea that we must provide equal access to science education for blind children and adults is widely understood by the readers of Future Reflections. I am here to expand this idea to venues beyond the traditional classroom and to address the systemic environmental ableism that impacts the blind community. Our nation is making important decisions about the future of our planet, and blind people deserve to play a part in those decisions.
Accessibility of Environmental Science Lessons in the Classroom
Publications of the National Federation of the Blind frequently include discussions about the importance of accessibility to curricular content in science classrooms. The lack of full access is a widespread problem. Many blind students are not given the support and equal access that they deserve, and this gap has material consequences for everyone. Our planet and all its inhabitants deserve to benefit from the contributions that all of us, including blind people, can offer to our shared future.
In my high school, environmental science was treated as a second-class STEM option. It fell outside the course sequence that was designed to prepare students for competitive college admissions: biology, chemistry, and physics. There was no honors-level option in environmental science, and I was told that I was limiting my desirability in college admissions by taking environmental science. I took it anyway, because I thought it was important. I hear that some high schools now offer Advanced Placement (AP) environmental science courses, and I am glad that more students today have this opportunity.
The second-class treatment of environmental science can be a double-edged sword for blind students. Sometimes schools focus only on getting blind students to succeed in the widely accepted core subject areas. At other times, schools push blind students into those “second-class” courses based on low expectations. Regardless of how a school treats environmental science, blind students deserve to have an equal opportunity to study it with their sighted peers.
Accessibility of Hands-On Environmental Experiences
Performing environmental service is a great way for students to give back to the local community. It feels good to go out and help pick up trash or build or restore nature trails. As a sighted kid I enjoyed these activities until my sophomore year in high school. Blind students deserve the benefits of these experiences, and our communities deserve the benefit of the service that blind people can provide. Kids who grow up understanding themselves as part of a community that takes care of its environment have a greater sense of social responsibility.
In Hawai‘i there is a common understanding of a concept called kuleana, which translates roughly as “mutual responsibility.” We have a duty to take care of our environment as our environment unconditionally takes care of us. Whether we do our part to nurture this relationship, by living in the world we are a part of something greater than ourselves. Blind kids deserve to grow up with this understanding as much as sighted kids do. Yet one of the ways that ableism acts within our society is by telling us that blind people cannot give back to the community. Blind people are perceived as needing help rather than being capable of making positive contributions.
Environmental service projects are a great way to foster a sense of kuleana in our blind students. They can allow our blind students to show the community how much they can contribute. Unfortunately, however, many environmental service projects are not easily accessible to blind people. Often they are designed in ways that are not ideal, although this does not need to be the case.
When I was a college student, I participated in an environmental cleanup project. The organizers handed each of us a garbage bag and instructed us to walk around campus, picking up garbage. By design that activity expected participants to visually scan a big area, spot pieces of garbage, and walk over to pick them up. That garbage could be unsafe to touch, but a person has to know that before reaching for it. I never hurt myself picking up trash, but I wonder what my life might have been like if I had picked up a used syringe because my way of finding it was with my hands. A blind person can do this work, especially with sighted assistance, but it is not naturally accessible.
When I worked in Honolulu, we once took our blind students to engage in an environmental service project. Traditional Hawaiian saltwater fishponds are similar to human-made lagoons with openings in them for the fish to pass through. When the tide comes in, the fish come with it. At high tide, gates are dropped over the openings. Then the tide goes out, trapping the fish in the fishpond. Our job was to strip the bark off mangrove wood so the wood could be used for the gates. It was a very natural activity for us to undertake nonvisually. We could feel the spots where the wood still had bark, and we could remove the bark when we found it. We did our part, and it was very intuitive to us.
Outdoor Recreational Activities
It is totally possible for blind people to take part in outdoor recreational activities such as hiking. However, we seldom are encouraged to partake in these activities. Furthermore, many of the great places to engage in outdoor recreation are not located on public transportation routes. It does not have to be this way, but it often is. Sometimes this is because the people holding power and prosperity in a given area want to keep these outdoor venues inaccessible to people of lower socioeconomic status. Though not spoken directly, the idea is that the outdoor site will become less appealing once poorer people gain access. Blind people end up suffering due to these urban planning decisions. I experienced this lack of access with a beautiful seaside lighthouse trail that I loved hiking in Hawai‘i. Fortunately I managed to find ways to get there because it was important to me, but it took extra effort and planning.
Environmental Ableism Impacts Blind People
I have spent a lot of time searching, but I have not found literature about environmental ableism that lines up with the concept that I want to present here. I am a mixed-race person, which includes being American Indian. I hear a lot of discussion about environmental racism, which is very real. I think it has a lot in common with environmental ableism. If this description of environmental ableism sounds similar to environmental racism, that is because it is similar in the way I think about both concepts. Consider these core principles of environmental ableism applied to the blind community:
- Environmental issues disproportionately impact blind people versus sighted people.
- Because access to public transportation is disproportionately important for blind people, many blind people end up living in cities, where pollution and other environmental hazards may impact us disproportionately.
- Because of our marginalization socially and politically, the blind face barriers to fighting against environmental justice issues that impact our community.
- Housing projects for the blind, schools for the blind, and other blindness-specific institutions may be housed in areas with less desirable real estate. These areas may be at a higher risk of exposure to environmental hazards.
- Blind people have less access to financial resources that help people to move to more prosperous areas, which tend to be less polluted.
- Poverty and lack of affordable housing exacerbate environmental ableism; low-income communities often have limited access to clean air, clean water, and green spaces.
- Blind people have less access to environmental benefits, such as state parks and other green spaces, that may be off public transit lines.
Taking Collective Action
When environmental issues impact the blind community, organizations of blind people, such as the National Federation of the Blind, can take action to try to address those issues. If environmental hazards come up at a school for the blind, the affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind in that state may advocate to address that environmental issue. When something affects a blindness-specific institution, it becomes a blindness issue. If a school for the blind has a problem with its drinking water, blind children in that school will be affected. The societal conditions that made that environmental hazard possible were likely influenced by attitudes about blindness. If blind people are perceived as less valuable than others, protecting the spaces that we occupy is less of a priority to the larger society than it would be if we were perceived as equal to the sighted.
Access to environmental education for blind people of all ages is essential to promote the well-being of the blind community. I am glad to see environmental education included in some of the youth science programming run by the National Federation of the Blind. I saw this emphasis at the Youth Slam and STEM-X events in 2011 and 2013. Giving blind people access to outdoor recreation allows us to enjoy the great outdoors and feel connected to the world around us. When blind people engage meaningfully in environmental service projects, we honor our kuleana—mutual responsibility—to take care of our environment as it takes care of us. As we raise the environmental consciousness within the blind community, we increase our ability to diagnose and correct environmental ableism. Let’s make sure that environmental education is accessible to all blind people.