October is National Disability Awareness month, or as the National Federation of the Blind calls it, Meet the Blind Month. Meet the Blind month always gets under my skin as a name, and today I want to talk about why. I’m also going to talk more generally about how you should talk about blindness with blind people.
As I said last week, these are my views. I do not purport to represent all blind people. I’m sure there are many who disagree with me. And I certainly don’t represent all people with disabilities. Further apologies if this post is a bit scattered. I’ve been pretty sick all day and I’m not at my best organizationally-speaking, but I wanted to get this out there.
So, Meet the Blind Month. I understand the point. I do. A lot of my friends will put up posts or statuses answering some common questions they get about their blindness and inviting their friends and followers to ask more. In case I haven’t been clear, I’m all for that. But I find the name Meet the Blind Month to be frankly demeaning, doubly so because it comes from an organization meant to empower the blind through increased independence. I am not some rare specimen in a petting zoo to be put on display in October. (Oh look, a blind Jameyanne. Look how it picks out matching clothes. How fascinating.) More importantly, I dislike the implication that the public doesn’t have to interact with the blind any other month of the year. We don’t just come out of the woodwork in October.
Honestly, though, I don’t really like National Blindness Awareness Month or National Disability Awareness Month, or any of the other myriad names we have for the same thing. I understand that, as much as I would like our society to be at a point beyond awareness, we aren’t. Most people have never met or interacted with a blind person, and blindness can make people uncomfortable or frightened. So yes, we want to build awareness about blindness and what blind people can do independently, but I wonder if we should go beyond that. Why not seek to build awareness by seeking more than awareness? Why not call it Blindness Rocks Month? Or something less terrible but you get the point. Let’s not just be aware of blindness. Let’s celebrate the accomplishments of the many incredible blind people out there who have done great things, not despite their blindness but with their blindness and because of their blindness.
Terms like “awareness” sound a lot like other ways sighted people try to avoid the issue–perhaps part of the NFB’s purpose behind rebranding the name (Meet the Blind Month is still terrible). So I want to talk about how to talk with a blind person. This has been coming up in my life a lot lately with my transition to a new job and all the new people I’ve been interacting with.
I identify as blind. Not visually impaired or visually challenged, not low vision, and certainly not sightless. This is an intensely personal choice. I can see light and color with my left eye. I can even read print—if it’s 72 point font and my nose is pressed to the screen or the page—but my vision is not my primary tool for navigating the world. I read Braille. I travel with a Seeing Eye dog, I primarily use smell and taste to judge if a meal is finished cooking. I know when to cross streets based on auditory cues. So I’ve found that blind more accurately describes how I use my vision and what I might need in any given situation. The other descriptors sound like I am missing something, and that is the exact opposite impression that I want to give. This post on using the word “disabled as” opposed to “special needs” does a really good job of explaining why some disabled people prefer to identify as disabled or as their specific disability. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it. Terms like “differently abled” or “special needs” might seem like they’re more politically correct, more humanizing, or more accepting than other options, but they in fact highlight differences and make it harder to fight for disability rights, which are at their core equal rights.
Another note, I used to be big into person first language—“a person who is blind” or “a person with a disability”—but lately I’ve found that to be clunky and awkward, and I don’t mind referring to myself as a blind person. I don’t feel as strongly about this and my choice is more about how grammatically awkward person-first language feels to me.
Another big thing for me is I hate it when people try to skate around visual words in a conversation with me. I speak the same language as you, and you don’t need to alter what you were going to say because I can’t see. Expressions like “see you tomorrow” are not going to offend me. You can totally ask if I saw a movie or if I watch a TV show. In fact, trying to avoid visual words just makes it awkward for everyone.
Again, my choice of how I identify and what language I like to use is entirely mine and entirely personal. Other people identify differently. Other people find some language ableist that I don’t mind. I have a friend, for example, who finds the use of “blind” to mean “ignorant” in research studies to be ableist. I don’t have a lot of experience reading research papers like she does, but in regular conversation I don’t mind it. I also tend to make blind jokes and make fun of myself all the time, though I know other blind people who would never joke about it.
If you’re curious, I recommend checking out this list of ableist language. It’s pretty comprehensive. As the author says, not everyone is going to be offended by all of these, and some will claim the terms for themselves as their identity, the way I claim blind as my identity. But it’s worth being aware of the roots and meanings of some of these terms and phrases. Even I was surprised by some.
I can see how this can be complicated terrain to traverse as a sighted person, but sighted people have their own preferences for identity and language too. Just like sighted people, all blind people are individuals. Don’t assume that just because I prefer to go by blind, the next person you meet prefers blind too. If you’re interacting with a blind person, take your cues on how they identify or what language they prefer from them. I always try to be clear about my preferences when it comes up, but if someone isn’t being clear, don’t hesitate to ask. It might be awkward, but it’s respectful.
And speaking of questions, if you have any about this or anything else, let me know. I’m happy to clarify anything I’ve said here, and there are many more blind posts to come.