Why I Am Choosing Blindness

Why I Am Choosing Blindness

Why I am Choosing Blindness:

Personal Reflections on the Need for a Functional Definition

by Scott Feldman

Reprinted from the February, 1997, issue of the Braille Monitor, the

monthly publication of the National Federation of the Blind.

From the Braille Monitor Editor

BARBARA PIERCE:

One of the most annoying misconceptions about the philosophy of the National

Federation of the Blind is the notion that committed Federationists are proud of their

blindness and, if given a chance, would choose it over returned vision. Those who have

heard and believed such statements are enraged, I think, because they consider it

needlessly cruel to encourage the development of neurotic and twisted ideas in people who

are already facing vision loss. Federationists, on the other hand, are frustrated when we

are accused of holding such notions because, in fact, we don't.

Learning to be unapologetic and to resist feelings of inferiority because of blindness

is very different from being proud of the characteristic. It is as absurd to be proud of

blindness as it is to take pride in being six feet four, having size five feet, or

demonstrating an IQ of 145. One may be comfortable or not with any of these

characteristics, but one can certainly claim no credit for possessing them.

A person might well take pride in developing his or her artistic ability, athletic

skill, intellectual powers, or expertise in the alternative skills of blindness, but that

is very different from claiming personal credit for a God-given characteristic. Of course,

being only human (and therefore often a little ridiculous), people frequently take pride

in their naturally wavy hair, quick reflexes, or green eyes. It isn't surprising, then,

that, in the process of evolving a healthy identity as a competent blind person, some of

us act for a while as though taking pride in blindness were the goal rather than achieving

self-confidence and effectiveness as a blind person.

Debunking the second half of the misconception is more complex. I don't think I know a

single blind person who would actually choose blindness above fully functioning sight, if

the exchange were an actual option. In a world structured for and largely dependent on

sight, it is obviously more efficient to use sight to get things done. But such a choice

is virtually never an option. Most people with a little residual vision are faced with the

dilemma of either depending on very restricted visual data for doing tasks or mastering

alternative techniques for getting the job done. The pragmatic question these people face

in situation after situation is which strategy would be more efficient. The emotional

freight that such decisions carry can be heavy indeed. If one has never learned effective

alternative techniques and if one has always depended on vision, then vision—even

very poor or painful vision—often seems the easier choice. Family and friends

reinforce this tendency every time they urge the person not to "act blind"

because, after all, he or she can still see something.

Recognizing these pressures, experienced members of the Federation understand the

importance of encouraging those with vision problems to get to know able blind people who

are comfortable using the alternative skills of blindness. It isn't that we prefer

blindness; we just prefer efficiency, confidence, comfort, and success. For almost

everyone with less than 10 percent of normal vision, this means using some combination of

blindness skills and remaining, genuinely usable vision. Working out the combination is

time-consuming and often emotionally demanding. One man who has given this struggle a lot

of thought in the past few months is Scott Feldman, a graduate student in clinical

psychology and a member of the Chicago Chapter. This is what he has to say about his

journey into self-understanding:

"But that's not you—you're only print-impaired." It was my best friend

Amy speaking, and she was clearly concerned about me. Until recently I suppose that I

thought of myself in this way as well. My visual problems first manifested themselves

after extended periods of reading, and reading print was the first activity that I

eventually had to relinquish, in my early twenties. Even today, several years later, I

could force myself to read a small amount of print in an emergency, but I would pay the

price with accommodative spasms. When I try to see things at near distance, my eyes lock,

as in a muscle cramp, and later double vision and a throbbing headache set in as my eyes

struggle to relax. I do not like pain, nor do I like setting myself up for failure. Since

1990 I have listened to my books instead, and I write with a speech-adapted computer.

Last year I began to learn Braille because in many situations speech is an inadequate

substitute for print, such as when I have to give a lecture or presentation from notes.

Braille is coming slowly, and materials in any accessible format are hard to come by. Only

five percent of printed material published each year is converted to speech or Braille. So

I most certainly do feel print-impaired.

This might have been the end of the story, except for one, well two little problems. To

begin with, there are many other things besides print that can get too close for my

comfort: people's faces, a kitchen counter or dining room table, or a Rembrandt, to name a

few. I suppose that you could say that I am face-impaired, food-impaired, and art-impaired

as well. Better, let's say that I am functionally blind at near distance and leave it at

that. This is where I was several months ago, after much kicking and screaming—not to

mention a year-long depression that nearly sapped my will to live.

Life is not fair, nor is it simple. At present I get around without the assistance of a

cane or dog. Walking outside is one of the activities recommended to me by my visual

therapists because it allows me to gaze into the distance and relax my focusing system. (A

world-renowned neuro-ophthalmologist who first diagnosed my condition as severe

accommodative and convergence insufficiency suggested that I become a forest ranger. When

I said that I wanted to be a scholar, he asked me if I would mind if he prayed for me. I

did not.)

If you are sighted, you may be aware of relaxing your eyes, particularly when you are

walking along, lost in thought. Your eyes do not fixate on anything in particular but take

in the general environment. You perceive gross forms, color, and most definitely movement.

You do not crash into things. This is how I have gotten around for the past six years. It

works, except for the fact that I cannot make out street signs or other such niceties of

modern travel. To be precise, if I squint through the various overlapping images, I can

sometimes make out street signs, but then I get back into that same painful cycle that I

described earlier.

So traveling is the second little problem. I was not aware of it while in Los Angeles

for graduate school, where my range of independent travel was effectively limited by my

busy campus schedule and inability to drive. Nor was it a problem when I returned to

Chicago on a leave of absence since I know the city very well, having spent the latter

part of my childhood and my adolescence there.

But this past October I traveled with my family to London and Paris. It was a lovely

trip, especially because of the English theater. During a side trip to Stratford on Avon,

I scalped a ticket to the Royal Shakespeare Company's performance of Macbeth. I sat next

to a delightful old woman who had been coming to Stratford for decades. She recalled the

glorious days when the likes of Richard Burton were members of the company. The lights

went out, and we fell silent, expectant. At the end of the performance, she asked me

whether I had enjoyed it, not being able to make out the individual actors. As it turned

out, I had enjoyed the performance more than she because I had been able to focus on the

poetry, while she had difficulty getting beyond her aggravation at the inauthenticity of

the costumes and stage set. (At one point, to her horror, the gate keeper lit a

cigarette.)

It was walking around on my own in London that made me realize how compromised my

ability to navigate new places visually has become. The first day I went out I squinted at

the street signs painted on the sides of buildings to make out where I was. I did not

enjoy the theater that evening or the following afternoon because my eyes reminded me, in

no uncertain terms, that I had mistreated them. A couple of days later I wanted to venture

north to visit the Folk Institute because I am very fond of Irish music. My parents said

that it would be no trouble to go with me, but I felt that it was important to figure out

how to travel there independently. The influence of the National Federation of the Blind

was in full evidence here. With the help of an excellent map--and my parents' eyes—I

familiarized myself with the general layout of central London and with the specific route

I planned to take. Then I set off for the Kensington underground station, our local base

of operations. To make a long story short, after a few wrong turns and requests for

directions from a couple of polite Londoners (they are so polite), I found the place.

Happily, I returned to the subway with four new CD's in hand, the result of a thoughtful

introduction to the institute's collection by another extremely polite Londoner.

My travels the following few days were much the same. Instead of asking my eyes what

street I was on, I asked someone more reliable. As you might suspect, this strategy failed

miserably after we took the newly constructed tunnel under the English Channel to Paris.

Being a native English-speaker and a sometimes Spanish-speaker, I couldn't even begin to

formulate the appropriate question, let alone understand the response. To the extent that

I walked around on my own, such as when my parents indulged in a visit to a museum, I

traced large circles around prominent landmarks.

As I sit here in my new apartment in Minneapolis, staring out into an impossibly early

snowfall, the little question of how to navigate an unfamiliar city blossoms into a

preoccupation. Besides the question of how to map out the city, pinpointing the places

that hold special interest for me (such as a folk music club or dim-sum restaurant), I

wonder how I will shop for necessities. Twice now my refrigerator has gone empty before I

asked a neighbor with whom I am acquainted for assistance shopping. Of course, I could

walk into the grocery store and ask for customer service, but I am not blind, right?

Actually, Amy, I suspect that you and I are wrong. It is true that I do not meet legal

criteria for blindness, which are based on simple indices of acuity and field of vision. I

am not a low-vision candidate—I have plenty of it. It just doesn't seem to be working

for me.

True, many people have strong negative stereotypes about blind people, into which they

will try to lock me if I identify myself as blind in public by using a long white cane,

for example. They will see me only as a blind person. But I have seen much more in many of

the people I have met through the National Federation of the Blind. When I am in their

company, rather than feeling ashamed of who I have become, I feel empowered to work to

create a more positive image of blindness. I am starting here.