Blind Swede Proves Point in Post

Blind Swede Proves Point in Post

Braille MonitorMay-June 1986
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Blind Swede Proves Point in Post
(Reprinted from the December 15, 1985, Kansas City Star.)
Stockholm, Sweden--Bengt Lindqvist,
Sweden's new Deputy Minister of Health
and Social Affairs, has been blind since
he was 15 years old but says he has
taken the Cabinet post to show that the
handicapped can get the job done.
"Someone told me early on that it is
in fact easier for a blind man to be in
a top post than to be a hotel busboy,"
Mr. Lindqvist said.
He uses electronic equipment that
turns written documents into synthesized
speech or into Braille.
"Some things simply take longer for me
than for others, but I cope," he said.

He was appointed by Prime Minister
Olof Palme in October as part of a Cabinet
shuffle following the Social Democratic
government's narrow election victory.

The
appointment came as a surprise
because Mr. Lindqvist, 49, a long-time
spokesman in Parliament for the handicapped,
had been a harsh critic of government
policy.
"I was taken aback when asked by
Palme, but I did not hesitate long before
accepting this challenge," Mr.
Lindqvist said. "It means a breakthrough
for us handicapped that one of
us receives such trust."
But he feels that he should not be
held up as the "shining exception to the
rule that the handicapped are second
class citizens."
"Only four out of 10 handicapped in
Sweden are employed and my chief concern
is to get more and better jobs for
them," he said.
Mr. Lindqvist, who became chairman of
the National Association for the Handicapped
in 1977 and was elected Sweden's
first blind member of Parliament in
1982, said he prefers to be known as a
government minister rather than a blind
minister.
"It is not easy to overcome a handicap
like blindness. It is a great strain,
but in a few years and with adequate
support it is possible to live a worthwhile
life.
"There is a tendency to put too much
emphasis on the handicap and too little
on the personality. A blind Swedish
author has said that the blindness is
only a small part of the blind man."
For his daily work, Mr. Lindqvist has
an assortment of chiefly U.S. and Japanese
electronic devices, including a
"compressed speech" tape recorder that
enables him to "read" twice as fast as
most people with normal sight.
He also can take notes as fast as
anyone with the aid of a special metal
pad and pencil.
The tape recorder transforms his official
documents into synthetic speech via
digital data on tape cassettes or into
Braille.
He can play the tape recorder at normal
speed to listen to the synthetic
voice or at double speed, making it
sound like Donald Duck to an ordinary
listener. But he can understand it
because of years of training, he said,
describing it as "about like skim reading,"
For
taking notes he uses a metal pad
on which he jots down Braille dots with
an awl as fast as anybody does with pen
and paper. He writes fast but reads
slowly, he said.
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