I was recently asked to present at an upcoming meeting of an accessibility advisory council that I am a member of, to share my story and my writing. I was grateful and excited for the opportunity, immediately beginning to jot down bullet points of things I wanted to say. From there, I created a few basic slides for the virtual call which would take place in a few weeks.
As I started practicing my talk, I had a rut-roh and an aha moment at the same time. There are several other folks in the group with varying degrees of vision loss; some run organizations which support folks with little or no sight. They are up on the proper super-politically-correct terms; not only do they know them, they teach them.
I, on the other hand, mostly speak with fully-sighted people and my intent when meeting someone new is to get the elephant in the room out of the way. (I cannot actually see the elephant but I know it’s there.) For instance, my cane may not be visible when I am asked to use a credit card machine while checking out at a store. I will say, “Could you please help me? I’m visually impaired.” In thinking about my words for the presentation, however, it hit me that some people in the blind and low vision community take offense to the word “impaired.” I do not. I feel quite the opposite. First of all, my anatomy is, in fact, impaired. That doesn’t mean that my capabilities are. Also, as I demonstrated above, “impaired” is a quick way to cut to the chase with a stranger. Sometimes I use “legally blind,” but as I was going over my talking prompts, visually “impaired” kept coming up. I had also used “struggle” which can ruffle feathers as well. And then there was the word, gasp, “disability,” again, a word whose definition to me is strictly physiology-specific in its meaning. Some do not agree.
Of course, our stories are ours to tell. I intend to be cognizant and respectful, but in a presentation about me, well, I gotta be me. Visually impaired and disabled, the struggle was real. My story, in my own words.
#SisterRain #ALittleSightALotOfHear #LegallyBlindWriter #Blind #BlindnessIsASpectrum #LegallyBlind #LowVision #VisuallyImpaired #OpticNeuropathy #VisionLoss
