[NABS-L] Preparing Blind People for the Rest of Reality

[Littlefield, Tyler]

Joe:
I will respond to a few of your points here.
First, my membership to this organization has nothing to do with the 
standards people in the blind community, and blindness organizations set 
for others. We like to take very specific attributes: braille reader, 
good at travel, good with technology, can prepare a meal for x number of 
people and boil down the idea of "success" to how many of these boxes 
someone can check. It's easy for those who are successful to look down 
upon everyone lower down the ladder and tell them they need to find 
reality. In reality, this isn't the case. I strongly believe that these 
ideas and attitudes do much more damage to people who are trying to 
determine what they want in life than they help. There's nothing wrong 
with encouraging people, but I can personally say that it feels 
incredibly discouraging to be put in boxes and have to try to live up to 
the standards set by others in all areas. My standards for people are 
whatever those individuals want out of life, and whatever they can get 
at that time.

I often wish that while "successful" blind people were trotted out in 
front of me while I was growing up and looking for answers to how I 
should progress, people spent less time talking about how well they 
progressed. This is less about talking about yourself and more about 
providing help, which I understand certainly takes more effort. It means 
shifting the generational hobby of complaining about the youngsters 
ahead of you to trying to be a positive influence. I saw a quote the 
other day that said something like mentoring is less about forcing 
people into your mold and more about understanding your mentee's goals 
and leveraging your lived experience and knowledge to help them get 
there. To be clear, this is about shifting the prospective from yourself 
to the true desire to help.

I would say that I am doing well where I currently am; I graduated and 
have a job which I do well at. What I would also say though is that this 
was pushed partially by my own desire to grow, but secondly by the idea 
of "success" and what that means. I personally experienced and continue 
to experience mental health issues: depression, anxiety and plenty of 
triggers out of this, which I would not wish on anyone. So the real 
question is not what you can do to get to the dream land, but what you 
can do to be happy, and whether or not the ideas of success set by 
others are worth the fight. This is why I responded to your article; I 
want people to know that there are other options, and most importantly 
other outlooks.

While I am humbled and honored by the thought of being featured on your 
blog, I will respectfully have to decline the offer of an 
article-writing pissing contest. I believe that there are more ways to 
spend my time that would lead to more tangible results for people. 
Secondly, although I have toiled through the salt mines and could brag 
about my battle scars, I do not believe that I should be telling blind 
people, or people of any group how best to live their life. I would 
instead suggest that people are provided with encouragement, solutions 
to individual problems, networking connections and resources to enable 
them to succeed.

On 4/14/2021 8:56 AM, Joe Orozco wrote:
> Tyler,
>
> I appreciate the thoughtful feedback. I'll reply in kind, not to win
> you over, disagreement is a good thing, but to explain my rationale
> behind some of your points of contention.
>
> Taking a sabbatical from blindness advocacy in general does not mean
> people will stop advocating for things on the job. Sadly, sometimes
> advocacy has to be done so often that it feels like it becomes part of
> the job, but there's a difference between that individual level of
> advocacy and devoting countless hours to helping with the running of
> the organization. I'll grant you I should have been more clear with my
> wording. The 30 plus hours some of us put into our affiliates on a
> weekly basis, depending on the season, are hours some of us might
> consider pouring into other social causes to help along that
> normalization of blindness in the public eye. Your interpretation of
> my advice feels slightly dramatic, because one, we're assuming people
> will take the advice; and two, even if people take the advice, we're
> assuming no one will be left to pick up the slack. The NFB did not
> crumble when I disappeared for the better part of a decade. Though not
> unique to the NFB, we do too good of a job of taking hard workers and
> burning them out when we discover they are reliable.
>
> I never suggested we should just accept the sighted world for what it
> is and learn our technology to get by. In fact I slam the workplace
> for claiming to be diverse and inclusive when they habitually leave
> disabilities out of their equation. I am suggesting we need to meet
> the world halfway by learning the tools that will make us competitive
> in a world that is already skewed against blindness, and frankly, on
> the point of competitive marketability, it is advice that could
> equally apply to young sighted adults.
>
> I'm sorry you found the article discouraging and disappointing. The
> point was not to make anyone feel warm and fuzzy. The point was to
> reiterate the dismal reality that a blind person could encounter if
> educators, blindness professionals, parents, and even consumer groups
> do not do their part to adequately prepare the up and coming
> generation for the challenges of the real world. I did not recommend
> anything I had not carried out myself. If you are disgusted by blind
> people holding other blind people to lofty standards, I have to wonder
> what keeps you in the NFB, because while I would not describe our
> standards as "lofty," I would describe our standards as unconventional
> compared to what the rest of the world would find feasible for blind
> people. In this context, I'm not concerned with people outside of our
> community. I'm concerned about the perpetual statistics that suggest
> our community continues to be held back.
>
> Indeed, everyone has a different set of abilities and experiences.
> This is largely why the article does not put the burden of
> responsibility on the individual but rather on their support systems.
> As long as we're going to talk about accepting people where they are,
> let's use this opportunity to emphasize the importance of doing more
> to be accommodating of blind people who live with secondary
> disabilities.
>
> Disagreements are healthy. Deliberate misrepresentations of facts are
> abhorrent. The article clearly states my ambitions are not other
> people's ambitions. In fact, I go on to defend people who choose not
> to aspire to taller responsibilities, provided this is a personal
> choice.
>
> No, sighted people do not have to devote hours of training to learn
> their technology. Then again, sighted people can quickly scan a screen
> and efficiently conceptualize how a user interface clicks together.
> You yourself admit some of us have to work extra hours to work around
> accessibility issues. That's not an unfair comparison of blind versus
> sighted. That's just facts as they currently stand. A person can
> always choose not to make the investment in time to properly learn a
> software, but their career potential will shift accordingly. This is
> no different for the prospects between those who choose to go to
> college and those who choose not to.
>
> You urge me to go be the change I want to see and to go help people.
> Rather than list my accomplishments and contributions to the community
> and make you look silly for making hasty assumptions about people you
> don't know, let's just say the article was motivated by a close,
> familiar, and frequent interaction with blind people inside and
> outside of the Federation. I like to run my mouth. This is true, but I
> can back up what I spout.
>
> That being said, I am perfectly willing to accept there are
> alternative views. Remember, I acknowledge these were just one guy's
> opinions, so consider this an open invitation for you to email me your
> own article outlining your advice to better prepare blind people for
> the real world. I will run it on my blog and give people the freedom
> to decide for themselves which philosophy makes the most sense for
> them.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Joe
>
>
> On 4/13/21, Littlefield, Tyler <tyler at tysdomain.com> wrote:
>> I wasn't sure if I wanted to respond to this or just skip past it, but I
>> think there are a few points worth talking about.
>>
>> Firstly, I would love to live in a life where I could take a sabbatical
>> from advocating in the blind-sphere, because that would mean I'm not
>> interfacing with the accessibility issues I experience daily. I realize
>> that I may not be grounded in your reality, but I would say that this is
>> simply not possible, and you cover part of why. Every day we need to
>> advocate for accessibility, or for something to be slightly different to
>> enable us to perform tasks and to accomplish our jobs. We work extra
>> hours daily to overcome accessibility challenges and to compete with our
>> peers. to suggest that we can simply ignore this fact and wander off
>> into the sunset to not advocate for blindness-related issues shows me
>> that you've missed a point here. While I would agree that centering your
>> life around these issues might not be the best for some, it works for
>> many, and we all owe a lot of gratitude and appreciation to those who do
>> dedicate their lives to making it easier. I would also say that it is
>> this daily advocacy that brings us into contact with organizations like
>> the NFB and ACB.
>>
>> You also make a point about how the sighted world isn't going to meet us
>> where we are, and how we should just learn to use our tech and get by.
>> While I understand that learning your technology is important, there are
>> two key issues here. First, your ability to write this, your ability to
>> bestow your paternal wisdom upon us folk is only because you stand on
>> the shoulders of giants. If everyone accepted the world for what it was
>> and simply adapted without reaching for more and trying to make it a
>> better place, we would not be having this argument. You would likely
>> still be reading raised print if that, and your article opener wouldn't
>> be talking about opportunities for work that we currently have.
>>
>> I find articles like this discouraging and outright disappointing. It
>> disgusts me how many times blind people hold other blind people to lofty
>> standards that they themselves sometimes don't even rise to, or that we
>> don't hold others outside of this community to. There's something to be
>> said for understanding that everyone has their own lived experiences,
>> and that those experiences are what might shape us. Opportunity isn't
>> there for the taking for everyone, many times it relies on so many
>> characteristics outside of someone's control. It's easy to dismiss a
>> group's issues as not learning technology, or not being grounded in
>> reality, when there are many other factors that might dictate how one is
>> able to use the tools that they are given. These include but most
>> certainly are not limited to education and ability. You want to compare
>> us to the sighted world, yet the standards your article sets for blind
>> people is far above what most people need to aspire to in order to say
>> that they are your version of "successful." Not every sighted person has
>> to devote hours and days of training and experimentation to learn their
>> technology, at the very least. Not every blind person can do this,
>> either. So rather than tell blind people they've got it all wrong, I
>> would urge you to go be the change you want to see. Do something that
>> helps people, rather than disparage a community on mass by putting them
>> in a box that you can write an article full of stereotypes around.
>>
>> On 4/13/2021 5:02 PM, Joe Orozco via NABS-L wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Considering I wrote the post below with this list audience in mind, it
>>> makes sense to share it here. I'll reiterate these are just personal
>>> opinions, not an authority by any means.--Joe
>>>
>>> There’s never been a better time to be blind, or so I’ve heard. And I
>>> have to ask: How low have we dropped the bar?
>>>
>>> I was recently chatting with a friend. I forget exactly how the
>>> subject came up, but we found ourselves discussing blind people and
>>> entry level jobs. I expressed frustration at the blindness consumer
>>> groups for not doing a better job of partnering with national chains
>>> to employ blind people.
>>>
>>> If the unemployment rate among the blind persists deep into double
>>> digits, why would we not fight to change the landscape?
>>>
>>> The number of jobs that ask for a high school education or jobs that
>>> do not require formal education to fulfill are growing at the slowest
>>> rate compared to other trends. Blind people should be prepared for the
>>> inevitability of automation, but in the meantime, it does not seem
>>> reasonable that blind people should be kept out of the jobs in retail,
>>> hospitality, and recreation so common to Americans as early as
>>> adolescence.
>>>
>>> In 2021, Amazons announcement to make more opportunities available for
>>> the blind should not have been newsworthy. It should have been
>>> commonplace. Why are we not demanding more companies follow Amazon’s
>>> example of opening their industry to blind workers? It’s fine for
>>> diversity campaigns to be inclusive of all genders, ethnicities, age,
>>> and religions, but if companies are not stretching themselves to
>>> accommodate disabilities, they are still blocking the doorway to
>>> equality.
>>>
>>> And then my friend said something that stopped my rant in its tracks.
>>> She said that maybe it was because blind people were not ready for
>>> those jobs...
>>>
>>> I’ve prepared a few thoughts on the steps the up and coming generation
>>> of blind individuals should follow as they prepare to meet the real
>>> world. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do claim to be
>>> successful. These are just one guy’s personal opinions, and hey, if
>>> you disagree, you know where to leave your comments.
>>>
>>> You can read the entire post here:
>>>
>>> https://joeorozco.com/preparing-blind-people-for-the-rest-of-reality/
>>>
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Take Care,
>> Tyler Littlefield (he/him/his)
>>
>> Tyler Littlefield Consulting: website development and business
>> solutions. <http://tylerlittlefield.me> My personal site
>> <http://tysdomain.com> My Linkedin
>> <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ty-lerlittlefield> @Sorressean on Twitter
>> <http://twitter.com/sorressean>
>>
>>
>>

-- 

Take Care,
Tyler Littlefield (he/him/his)

Tyler Littlefield Consulting: website development and business 
solutions. <http://tylerlittlefield.me> My personal site 
<http://tysdomain.com> My Linkedin 
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/ty-lerlittlefield> @Sorressean on Twitter 
<http://twitter.com/sorressean>