[224/366] living

[cosmolinguist]

Dunno why the local blindie charity called me, on my landline for some reason, to tell me they have online socials and an online version of their "Living with Sight Loss" class. I told them years ago that I've been "living with sight loss" my whole life; I already can cook and use a computer and all the kinds of things it teaches people. Those are good and valuable things! But I don't need them. And I don't know why they think that this would have changed in the few more years I've had of living with sight loss since I told them. I'm sure they don't think that; they'll just be chasing people up, maybe covid is shaking things up for them.

What I want is to teach a Living wihle Sighted class to teach people about the social model of disability and barriers they put up and probably don't even know they're contributing to. Or in other words, how to Stop Being Assholes to Blind People.

Comments

[otter]

That is a great idea for a whole series of classes, starting with kindergarten. Which is when we certainly start teaching ablist ideas to kids.

funny typo - land m ine instead of land l ine

[sir_guinglain]

That class of yours would be a very good idea.

[raino]

I wish my University had Living while Sighted (etc) course! It would be super useful for designers. EDIT and consequently to everyone using the designed products & services.

[cosmolinguist]

I definitely have a lot of things that I'd like designers to know, yes! :)

[barakta]

I would attend a living while sighted course!

That org sounds wellmeaning but ANNOYING, cos if you did need them it's be about 5 months too late!

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I don't know how tf they're doing a class like that on Zoom. The socializing I can imagine even if I'm not interested (I'm not even socializing with people I already know/like, much less strangers who I only have this one tenuous thing in common with).

Well meaning but annoying does describe my experience of Henshaws pretty well so far. It's not really their fault, they're very "when you've got a hammer everything looks like a nail" people and since I'm not old or new to being blind, I am not their damn nail. :)

[mrs_leroy_brown]

I would totally take that class, so I can better support my blind and partially sights chums and family (my nephew has done quite a bit of schooling me!)

[mrs_leroy_brown]

Or do I mean visually impaired (just thinking of what former colleague and now beyond work friend uses to describe himself).

(aware that I may be doing the annoying 'pls educate me about ablesim instead of me educating myself thing so feel free to ignore!)

[cosmolinguist]

No it's cool, I genuinely love talking about stuff like this (I would truly love to teach people this for money, I'm not just being sarcastic in my post here!).

Either "blind and partially sighted" or "visually impaired" is okay in a general sense. If you're talking about a specific person they might have a preference for or against any of these terms, but if you're talking about people in general both are approved-of and respectful.

I tend to call myself partially sighted as an individual because I'm actually pretty sighted for a blind person. But technically I'm as blind on paper (i.e. for gatekeeping purposes) as someone who can't see at all, so sometimes I will call myself blind to ally with that experience.

I more often use "visually impaired" to include myself in the bigger group though. It's a shorter phrase than "blind and partially sighted" and, as much as I like partially sighted it seems kinda specific to the UK as far as I can tell? So if I'm talking to fellow USians or whatever, visually impaired does a good job. And it just includes a lot of people who for whatever reason Do Not think of themselves as blind but still have some sight loss. Including temporarily, if they have cataracts or whatever! A person with cataracts, in our society where they can expect to be fixed, is very unlikely to think of themselves as blind but is going to share some of the experiences of other visually impaired people.

So anyway I hope this really long rambly answer was of some interest or use to you. :)

[mrs_leroy_brown]

Yes, very much! Thank you :)