Following on from my last blog post regarding how you should and shouldn’t behave when interacting with somebody with a disability, I thought I would illustrate my point further by giving a couple of examples of how not to do it. As I’ve already said, adaptations and government support may well be necessary, but a lot of it does also boil down to common sense. I will be purposely emitting names from this post but both these examples come from people who really should have known better. One incident happened to me personally, the other occurred when somebody in a Facebook group I belong to was visiting a hospital.
So first my own experience. As I’m sure plenty of people have before me and plenty of people will continue to do, I’ve had to call tech support for various problems in my time. Of all the people who struggle to understand visual impairment, tech support operatives seem to be the worst. I explain over and over again that I’m totally blind and they still tell me to click on icons using a mouse. I’m forced to reiterate that I’m totally blind, therefore unable to point a mouse, and the process takes twice as long as it should have done. Quite often I’m asked if there isn’t somebody with me who can help me.
Now if I was feeling generous, which often I’m not, I could make allowances and say they’ve never encountered a visually impaired person before and probably haven’t had the training for dealing with a customer in that situation, although that’s no real excuse in my book. However, the short story I’m about to relate involves characters that really can’t use that excuse at all.
I belong to several libraries, three of which specifically Cater to people who have trouble reading print, which of course includes visually impaired people. I was obliged to contact one of these libraries as I had a technical question regarding their app and downloading books to my phone. When I asked for instructions, this library for the visually impaired told me to tap on the wavy lines on the screen. It’s more than likely that there are plenty of visually impaired people who may have had good enough sight to see the aforementioned wavy lines, but to assume this to be the case is wrong. When it comes to disabilities, never assume anything, and a visually impaired charity should surely know this.
Onto my second story. I belong to many Facebook groups for the visually impaired and in one such group, the subject of eye tests came up. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve had my own negative experiences when it comes to eye tests as doctors seem incapable of deviating from procedure and will insist on giving me an eye test even though I’m totally blind and it says so in my notes. But this experience I’m about to relate beats mine hands down.
A gentleman in my Facebook group was attending hospital for an eye checkup. The doctor insisted that he must have a routine eye test before the checkup could commence. He explained that he was unable to have a test as he had no Vision. The doctor still insisted until in the end the gentlemen was forced to remove both his glass eyes and hand them over with the suggestion that the doctor should test them as much as they liked.
It sounds amusing when you tell the story, but the underlying message is a serious one. If an eye doctor, a so-called expert will not use their common sense, then what chance do people with disabilities have? Stop and think for a moment and as I’ve said before and will no doubt say again, when in doubt, just ask.