The article Blindness: Handicap or Characteristic? by Kenneth Jernigan poses some interesting questions to me. The philosophy that blindness is only a characteristic, like age, intelligence, looks etc., seems to make sense, for each of these characteristics has its limitations. One would say that blindness has no advantages, whereas for example being twenty or forty or being educated does, and then you could list blindness together with being uneducated, being unintelligent, etc. as those disadvantageous qualities. But Jernigan gets to argue that even lack of education, being unintelligent etc. have their advantages, or rather, that education and intelligence are limiting. I, being a highly intelligent person, tend to agree. However, by this definition, we’re setting blindness yet more apart from other characteristics, as I cannot think of a situation where blindness is an advantage. Oh, you’re saying that when it’s dark a blind person can read and a sighted cannot? At the school for the blind, we used to make jokes where we got to see sight as a disdvantage. There are jokes of these kinds with all sorts of disability groups, and all tend to use this humour in a way to advocate to have these people respected as equals.
The “blindness is only a characteristic” philosophy seems to differ quite a bit from other disability philosophies that tend to emphasize the fact that disability is an essential part of who a person is. I have, however, discovered quite a few similarities, in that all these groups would not want the disability to be cured and argue to have their alternative ways of accomplisihg things acknowledged as valid.
However, NFB folk have a very restricted idea of what alternative techniques should be accepted and what shouldn’t. They want Braille, cane travel and the like to be accepted and taught to all low vision people. But don’t ever dare to ask for tactile warning strips or audible traffic signals, no matter how many blind people have died or been injured in accidents that could’ve been prevented if such adaptations were in place. What’s the logic in here? It sends a negative message about the abilities of blind people to have such adaptations in place. This, in turn, leads to discrimination and unemployment. Now I have never been fond of this logic, but if audible traffic signals and tactile warning strips send negative messages, why don’t Braille and the white cane? In fact, they do send negative messages, but the NFB wants to change that and in fact reinforces the stereotype concerning other alternative techniques. I do agree that in some places audible traffic signals and tactile warning strips are greatly unnecessary. However, at some places they are needed. For instance, there’s a street near my house where there used to be only a visible difference between the sidewalk and the street, until tactile warning strips got placed on my O & M instructor’s demand five years ago. And as for audible traffic signals: if you say that blind people can listen for traffic, you could say the same of sighted people looking out for it, and yet visible traffic signals do exist.
You may say that Braille and cane travel aren’t accommodations an employer or someone else must make, but usually it ain’t the employer or the like who has to buy adaptive equipment and make accommodations - at least, here it’s paid for by a Social Security type of organization. And in schools it is the school district that has to make accommodations, including braille and cane travel things (at least, in the U.S.).
But back to the article. Jernigan makes it clear that the statement “But think of what you might have been if you were sighted?” makes no sense, since we don’t compete against what we might have been but against other people. He’s right here, but then you’re presuming that the blind have superior qualities that compensate for their blindness. Jernigan denies it, but throughout the article compares blind people to sighted people who lack a certain quality, or he takes blind people with superior qualities. That’s assuming that blind people are going to compete against inferior sighted people. The most notable example Jernigan gives is the comparison of a blind person of above-average intelligence with a sighted person of average intelligence. He gets to say that the blind person is at an advantage when we want a history teacher, as if there wouldn’t be dozens of sighted applicants who have the same certifications (for which above average intelligence is required, to get the sort of education required).
Jernigan uses the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. I was indeed surprised to find out that the former President of the United States (and the one I most admire) was severely disabled. However, this makes clear this same thing: Franklin D. Roosevelt had superior qualities. Can we say that blindness, or disability, for that matter, is only a negative quality adding up to our total mix of positive and negative qualities? That’d make sense, hence reducing blindness to the level of a characteristic. However, no Federationist would deny that a blind person has to be better than sighted persons to accomplish the same. That’s denying the idea that the average blind person can do the average job in the average time, which is also an NFB statement. Since it ain’t the average blind person, or blind people, indeed, have superior abilities that make up for their blindness and cause all accommodations that employers so hate to be unimportant. I wish it were this way.
Astrid
