Have you ever encountered a blind person and felt uncomfortable, and didn't know how to act? You are not alone. As a blind person, most of the people I meet don’t know what to do when they meet me. They are somehow afraid of helping us. I became blind when I was 7 months old, so I have been blind almost all my life. I came to the USA in 2009 to complete my higher education as a Computer Science major at CSU. I’m writing this article to help people understand better about blind people and give them a clear idea to work with blind people more effectively. Blind people are just normal individuals, like everyone else. Interacting with blind students should not be an obstacle.
I asked a CSU student if he had ever met a blind person and how he felt, he said, “I have met a blind person and felt uncomfortable and didn’t know how to act.” People are not aware of what they can do to help blind people, not because they don’t want to help, but because they are afraid of offending us. I asked my friend Christine Difato, a PhD student at the University of Exeter in the UK about the most difficult challenges she has encountered as a blind individual. She replied by saying, "One of the most difficult challenges for me, personally, is when a person is so concerned about making a mistake that they won't approach me…” It seems to me that sighted people already have their own assumptions as to what a world without vision must be like and sometimes the fear of offending us prevents them from interacting with us more effectively.
Another main problem that me and other blind students encounter is when we go somewhere with our aids. When we ask a question, people talk to the sighted person instead of us, even if we started the conversation. Sighted people who help blind people notice this as well. I asked my friend Auda Hazeem, about his experiences working as an aid for the blind, and if the sighted people hold conversations with him instead of the blind person he is helping. Hazeem said, “They almost always do. I nicely ask them to address the blind person directly as he or she can understand, answer and interact without me being in the middle of the interaction.” People often talk to the sighted person instead of the blind person because they think that we are somehow different than sighted people. As a blind person, the only thing that I can’t do is see, but I can do almost anything else. Talking to someone like me shouldn’t be a problem.
There is no absolute method of dealing with a visually impaired student. I interviewed several people who provided different perspectives and helpful suggestions for interacting with blind individuals. Being empathetic can help a lot to understand the plight of the blind. When I asked a classmate about his viewpoint of blind people he said: “Honestly the only blind person I have met was you Noah … I didn't really know you but I never really felt uncomfortable with you. I kind of just was trying to picture what the world would be like for me if I could not see.” In Billy’s case, he had never encountered a blind person before me, but he used empathy to interact comfortably with me. Empathy goes a long way when dealing with blind people.
To provide more effective ways and advice to help sighted people deal with blind individuals, I interviewed a student at CSU who has had over 20 years experience growing up with a blind sister. The advice she gave in the interview was to : “…remember their disability is that they can't see; but they can hear, they can think, they can walk, they can answer for themselves, they can read and that they are capable of most anything anyone else can do, but in a different way.”
I hope that these various perspectives from sighted people who have had experience with blind people and also blind peoples’ viewpoints are helpful. I also hope that the tips I provided will help sighted people feel more at ease the next time they meet a blind person. A person interacting with blind people must make a serious effort to understand the nature of the challenges presented by visual impairment, and develop a way of dealing with blind people in a systematic and professional way. Blind people represent a valuable human resource which has been ignored by societies because of a lack of understanding and empathy. I hope this article will bring more awareness of the struggles blind people face, so that we can enjoy the same equal opportunities as sighted people.
