[blindlaw] Do blind people have a right to visual memory?

[Sai]

I would also add 14th Amendment rights to liberty, property, and equal
protection to the consideration.

(Do you have "property" rights to your memory? It's a bizarre framing, I
know, but seems fairly tame as IP law goes.)

Consider the inverse: suppose there were a drug that could specifically
erase someone's visual memory of the last 24 hours. Would it be legal for
the government to make someone take it, eg as a condition of going through
customs or entering a courthouse?

Sincerely,
- Sai

Sent from my phone; please excuse the concision & autocorrect typos.

On Jan 23, 2018 20:36, "Singh, Nandini via BlindLaw" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

This is such a cool question! I would have to think about it further, and I
hope there are other voices that can add more. I imagine the that perhaps
one place to start is identifying which constitutional right is at issue. I
think there is an argument for procedural due process under the 14th
Amendment.



Nandini Singh

Covington & Burling LLP
One CityCenter, 850 Tenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001-4956
T +1 202 662 5113 | nsingh at cov.com
www.cov.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Sai via
BlindLaw
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 3:02 PM
To: Blind Law Mailing List
Cc: Sai
Subject: [blindlaw] Do blind people have a right to visual memory?

Consider any of various situations where it is illegal to secretly
record video. Customs, courts, etc etc.

A sighted person going through those situations would have a visual
memory of what they saw. A blind person would not; they wouldn't have
access to the same information that the sighted person does (albeit
limited by memory).

So, could one (winnably) argue that the blind person has a
Constitutional *right* to covert video recording, i.e. the right to
see and remember what they saw (albeit through the intermediary of a
recording), at least for personal or testimonial use?


I started thinking about this recently during O&M training. I recorded
the training session out of curiosity to see what it was like.

I didn't learn until after recording that training session that a
street I walk very frequently has a painted-on bike lane on part of
the sidewalk.

I had absolutely no idea it was there, despite having walked that
exact path for months and easily recognizing various parts of it by
cane. The painted-on bike lane, and the division between it and the
pedestrian part of the sidewalk, just have almost zero perceptible
tactile cues, let alone something to indicate "don't walk here".

As a result, in that video of my training session, I was blithely
walking along the curb side of the sidewalk, smack in the middle of a
bike lane. It came as quite a shock to me when I reviewed the video.

I've had multiple other experiences where visual memory was critical,
like where TSA violated my rights and I needed evidence of who did
what. Had I not been recording, I wouldn't have that evidence.


So it makes me think: what about establishing a blind person's right
to perceive, and recall, the same visual information that a sighted
person would have access to in the same situation? (Or likewise for
d/Deaf and audio, or psychological issues and memory in general.)

Has anyone ever tried this?

Sincerely,
Sai

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