Andrew Leland wrote an article in the New York Times that I read recently, and mentioned his book, The Country of the Blind, which is a memoir that details his experience living with declining vision due to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP).
This book goes into a lot history involving blindness, Braille, and organizations such as the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), that I thought was really interesting. Leland flips back and forth between memoir and historical background information.
Society tends to lump blindness into black and white categories of vision and lack of vision. In reality, there is a lot of grey area. For instance, even in my eye that is completely blind, I can still recognize shadows. Leland does a good job of describing these types of experiences through interactions at NFB conventions and in training school. This would be a good book for academia or for someone who either has a vision impairment or works in that field. I appreciated reading about experiences from people of all ages and professions who have a range of vision loss.
One of the points that I thought was particularly relatable was compensating for tasks that normally require visual cues. For instance, reading a page in a book that is enlarged to the point where there’s only a couple of words on the page, or navigating with a screen reader that relies on web designers to write adequately descriptive image alt text. Access to tools and information depend on environment and creator knowledge more so than the disability itself. Technology changes so rapidly, but general accessibility requirements have remained largely the same since the history of the web—color contrast, captions, alt text, etc.
Another point that I liked regarded navigation and the ability to navigate streets and buildings without visual cues. I personally can walk around my house without actually seeing anything because I am familiar with where everything is. Think about how you are on autopilot while driving to work every day. Without access to good visual cues, there is a lot you can learn about a place.
I hope that society will continue to move towards more inclusive access. Maybe one of these days it won’t feel odd to have to take pictures of menu boards or lean super close to read signs without getting weird looks.
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