[Cabs-talk] [cabs-talk] Diversity and the NFB

[Haben Girma]

A few months back I called the city of Portland's Transportation 
Department requesting that they place chirping signals at a particularly 
difficult intersection near my house. Today, finally, the city sent 
someone who actually did just that! I was amazed at how quickly the man 
was able to set up the chirping signals, and how little work it 
required. Reflecting on the whole situation, I wondered if maybe I could 
start a volunteer group to set up chirping signals at the intersections 
around Portland. Then my boyfriend said, "You know what the NFB would say?"

"Oh shit," I was suddenly hot and took off my hat. I felt momentarily 
stressed, ashamed, panicked. I knew exactly what the NFB would say. The 
NFB would say chirping signals are not necessary, a properly trained 
blind person can safely cross the intersections by listening to traffic 
patterns. Suddenly my plan seemed stupid, and I felt guilty for asking 
the city to set up an chirping intersection near my home.

After some thought, after talking it out with my boyfriend, I realized 
that the blind population is too diverse for the NFB to dish out 
standards for every single one of those blind people. I attended the 
Louisiana Center for the Blind and in some ways my confidence in 
crossing streets shrunk from that experience. I am blind, but I'm hard 
of hearing, too, and hence I cannot trust my ears to help me get across 
streets. I use a combination of vision and hearing to cross most 
streets, but some streets I simply do not feel safe crossing. The 
intersections that cannot be tamed by my vision and hearing are those 
for which I want the city of Portland to install chirping signals.

My point is that the NFB should not be treated as law by all blind 
people. I've had to pick and choose which standards of the NFB to adopt, 
and which I should discard because I am hard-of-hearing. There are other 
blind people with multiple disabilities that probably experience similar 
frustrations with the NFB. I noticed that the girl in the youtube video 
who rants against the NFB has a partial facial paralysis. I strongly 
feel that the NFB should more vocally acknowledge the non-homogeneity of 
the blind population.

Sincerely,
Haben