More fodder for my How to Be Sighted class

[cosmolinguist]

In the really interesting comments to a really interesting link, jesse_the_k asked me if starting to use a white cane has made crossing the street different. My answer included a story from Thursday that I've been meaning to blog about anyway, so I'll just copy the whole thing here.


Definitely. In tons of ways. Sometimes cars will stop and I'm pretty sure they are indicating for me to cross. But if I'm not really sure, I won't do it. I can't tell if they're waiting for me, another car, or just a light that's about to change and I'll always choose waiting, feeling awkward, and maybe annoying them over any chance of getting run over!

Lots of times other pedestrians waiting to cross too will tell me when they think it's safe/when they start to cross the road themselves, even though I'll almost always wait for the green man. At least one man (middle-aged, white, northern English) sort of bullied me across the road with him when I was waiting at an intersection where I knew the lights take a long time to cycle through. He wasn't accepting my polite refusals of crossing the road when he did, and I ended up having to do so just because I didn't want him to grab me and push me along with him like it looked he was about to, in the name of jocular helpfulness that can be so nice in some contexts and makes me happy to live in a northern English culture, but the downside is there's no effective way to refuse that "help" sometimes.

Another anecdote about "help": The other day I was waiting at an intersection in the middle of town, and saw someone next to me cross the road while I'd pushed the button for the green man but was still waiting by the red one, with my fingers on the spinny cone. Then she walked back across the road to me again. I thought she must be a very confused person. And, oh no, she was heading towards me. I braced myself to have to give directions or something (I was struggling across the city centre with a suitcase and had a lot on my mind, so didn't have a lot of physical or mental energy at this point).

But she just got right up in my face (blind people don't need personal space, right? we must not; she's hardly the first person to do this) and said "there's no beep." Now I was confused.

I forgot that sighted people seem to think blind people can only know when to cross roads if there's an audible beep to go along with the green man. Blind people know that this isn't going to happen where I was (about to cross a bus lane, with tram lines behind me and a busy road to my left) because it wouldn't be clear which crossing the beep was indicating it'd be safe to cross! And there needs to be a tactile indicator anyway, for people with both sight and hearing loss. And I never pay any attention to which crossings beep or not anyway, I couldn't keep track.

I said "I know!" before I could temper by surprise into something less rude, and then added "it's okay" because I didn't want any more "help." So she went back across the road, and I waited because the man was still red (and I know she'd safely crossed this road three times in the time I'd been waiting, but I was crossing a bus lane, and when I'm not hugely impatient I'm more than happy to wait for my green man!), probably thinking she'd done her good deed by helping a poor disabled lady, even though the disabled lady was also stupid or something because she didn't take advantage of the help.

Comments

[lilysea]

Thank you for sharing! ^_^

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for reading!

[cxcvi]

I will admit that the only reason that I knew about the knob under the buttons is because Tom Scott did a video about them a couple of years ago. Video has subtitles (in several languages). Transcription (only in English, alas) available on request (or more likely, I'll start working on it now and it will appear as a reply to this).

[cxcvi]

Ok... that didn't actually take very long. Being able to download the subtitles helped a bit. This is my first time transcribing a speech-heavy video, so feedback is appreciated.

---

Video title: The Secret Button on Pedestrian Crossings

[Video starts with a view of a pedestrian crossing, viewed from one side. The red man is showing on the light across the road, signalling "do not cross".]

Last week, I did a video about pedestrian crossings, and while I don't want this to turn into "things you might not know about British pedestrian crossings"...

[Camera rotates, ending in the same view of the crossing, but with Tom now visible.]

Well, there is one more thing, and quite a few people got in touch to say I should point it out.

[Video briefly cuts to an underside view of the "button box", showing a ridged black cone sticking out of the bottom.]

There is a secret button, or nodule, on the bottom of these things you push when you want to cross the road.

[Camera turns to view the box, which shows instructions "PEDESTRIANS push button and wait for signal opposite". The button is pressed, and the word "WAIT" lights up underneath the instructions. Caption: "Many of these things. They're not compulsory." Camera turns back to the crossing.]

And what that little secret nodule is, is a sign for anyone who is blind and deaf, or partially blind and partially deaf. Or, who is partially blind and at a crossing that does not make a beeping noise when it's safe to cross, which is a surprising amount of crossings.

[Video cuts to traffic lights changing from green to amber, and then to red, before cutting back to the crossing.]

Because that little nodule rotates any time that signal turns green, as we will now see.

[The signal across the road changes from the red man to the green man, signalling "cross with care". There is no beeping signal when this happens. Cut to the cone, which starts to rotate. Caption: "It's ridged, so even if you can't grip tightly, you can touch it lightly and know it's safe."]

Because don't forget, disability isn't a thing that turns on or off;

[Cuts back to crossing.]

you don't just get people who are entirely blind but fine every other way, or entirely deaf but perfectly able to see.

[As the signal across the road changes so that neither man is visible, signalling "do not start to cross", cuts briefly to the cone to show it stop rotating.]

You get lots of folks who might be able to walk around safely in the world, but who couldn't make out that signal,

[Signal changes to red man again.]

and who couldn't work out the beeping from the background noise, even if there was some.

So that little nodule means it's safe for a lot of British people to cross the road,

[Brief cut to the cone again, before cutting back to the crossing, which is now obscured by a large bus. The bus drives off, creating a lot of noise.]

and that is something you might not have... Why do I do videos near roads? THAT is something you might not have known!

[White text "THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW" appear, before video fades away to a red background, with text still visible. Additional text "by Tom Scott - @tomscott - tomscott.com", as well as subscribe and playlist links. Additional text in subtitles only: "Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!"]

[cosmolinguist]

Hilariously, one of my phone's quirks is that it's only giving me audio and not video of almost anything I try to watch. So I've already found the description really useful! Thanks for sharing the video, and doing this.

[rmc28]

I knew about them because my son told me, and I think he learned about them at school.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm really glad to hear that.

I'm on a facebook group for my local area, and last year someone in that group told me she was practicing a new walk to school with her visually-impaired son, and was outraged that one of the crossings along the way didn't beep. No one had told her or her son about the spinny cones. :( (I did, of course! And so did a few other poeple. But still, it shouldn't have come to that.) I really wish this kind of thing, as well as a basic "here's how to act/what to expect from someone with sight/hearing/mobility problems" was part of primary school education. Might help us eventually not have so many problems with "this person's faking!" or the kind of "helpiness" I describe here.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the details!

Oh, the "help" crossing streets! I've witnessed a blind woman with a dog guide being dragged across by a "helpful" stranger.

You know how often women are treated as "sex objects"? When our only functions are to be fucked or take care of the babies which result.

Those of us with visible disabilities are often treated as help objects.

[cosmolinguist]

Help objects, definitely! That's an idea that needs to be disseminated more. :)

[alatefeline]

Gahhhhh, helpiness.

>> And there needs to be a tactile indicator anyway, for people with both sight and hearing loss. <<

YES YES YES.

[cosmolinguist]

This is another thing that, when I say it, the response is usually "oh yeah, I never thought about that..." so yours is much more fun. :)

[barakta]

Supposed to be writing about paradoxical judicial interpretation of Australian disability legislation but wanted to say these posts are brilliantly interesting...

We need to promote the spinny cone things more!

And yes, how to deal with people who can't deal when they have offered help which we then don't need... Oh Noes!

[cosmolinguist]

There's a good (I think, my phone only shows audio in videos these days, for extra blindness-experience!) promoting-the-spinny-cone video shared on the DW version of this post, with transcript.