[nagdu] "Some vision" was: Introduction and Questions

[Cindy Ray]

I doin't even think it is a situation of jealousy. From the time we were in schools for the blind around here though, the "seeing blind" were allowed to do things that the "blind blind" weren't. James Gashel tells a great story about taking food to the cottage at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, and that is a classic example. There is a huge amount of emphasis put on how much better a little sight is than none. I have flown with a friend before who really didn't have enough vision to total navigate the airport, but when the airlines folks noted that she had a tiny bit of vision, they left us at all because she could see. In the end, this causes in itself some misconceptions about totally blind and partial. I have had people tell me they thought I had some vision. This isn't a compliment because it implies that if you have no vision you are a bungling … something or other. So I think the idea is for us all to learn, and the rest of the public, too, what are vision is capable of, what we are capable of when we aren't using it but, rather, alternative techniques. Not sure this is all very clear, but I know that I never had a sense of jealousy.

Cindy