[Ohio-talk] Work Tolorence

Tue May 20 09:06:12 UTC 2014

Hi all,

I'm a bit late on the conversation, but the cultural stuff is kind of
interesting to me.  While I totally agree that BSVI needs some serious
changing, I have limited experience with them because I am still
working towards my degree.  So, I will speak about the culture stuff.

I think that although the blind do not have such an organized culture
as the deaf, that there are certain things we do when we're in groups
that we wouldn't normally do with sighted peers.  For example, I
usually dumb down my explanations of braille, notetakers, etc for
sighted people who are curious enough to ask about them.  When I'm
with a group of blind people about my age, we freely talk about the
stuff we use on a daily basis.  A really popular thing for us to do
when we were about 16 or so was to write BrailleNote documents which
made weird sounds.  One of our friends was so good at it that he could
make Keynote Gold sound like it had a southern accent, and he also
could make it sound like it was beat boxing.  It sounds incredibly
childish, but we thought it was the funniest thing for a while.  It
was something unique to our group, that sighted kids our age just
would not have understood.

I have also heard some very interesting terminology in various social
circles such as the NABS list.  I have heard the term "blink" before
too, and though personally I think it is a bit weird, I know people
who use that term.  I also know people who describe canes as "sticks"
and that is a different matter because it doesn't accurately teach
sighted people those "stick" sayers come into contact with.  One
person on NABS has consistently referred to sighted people in kind of
a condescending way, calling them "Old sighty."  I know there are
groups out there who really don't like to be around sighted people for
perceived injustices towards them, and that's a cultural thing.  Not
to mention that I've seen the blindisms of rocking actually come into
play, not because the blind people wanted them to but just because
it's weird for a sighted person to see, so they're less likely to
socialize with someone who can't sit still and have a conversation.

I guess it really depends on how you look at it.  Definitely, we are
not as culturized as the deaf, but I do think that groups of blind
people have quirks which create a sort of culture surrounding their
blindness.  And, Colleen, I agree about the ASL.  I took a
sign-singing choir class that used pigeon for both semesters last
year, and it was much less efficient than ASL.  Pigeon is basically
only the ASL symbol signs with no finger spelling at all, but the main
drawback to it is that the translations are very weird.  I know enough
that a deaf person could have a simple conversation with me using it,
but they would probably have to think about what I was saying to make
sense of it.  It would be like if a person speaking to you only knew
certain words, and didn't use conjunctions at all, or could not add
endings like ING or ER to the endings of words.  My favorite
translation happened when we were signing My Favorite Things from The
Sound of Music for our Christmas concert.  The line that says,
"Doorbells and slaybells and schnitzel with noodles," was translated
to Doorbell ring, Christmas spaghetti.  This was due largely in part
to the lack of a sign for schnitzel, but Christmas spaghetti became a
catch phrase in the class whenever we had a translation which was
particularly weird.

On 5/19/14, COLLEEN ROTH via Ohio-talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>  Hello,
> Well I wouldn't say that blind people have a disability culture.
> I think deaf people have a deaf culture because of the fact that they have
> had to find different ways of communicating. I do think that some people who
> are deaf may feel isolated due to the challenges they have in communicating
> with others. There are also some people who want to use a system to
> communicate which other deaf people might not agree with. I know that there
> are some deaf people who want to spell each word when they communicate and
> some want to use ASL while others prefer total communication. I thin that
> the pendulum is swinging toward the middle now and ASL is more accepted than
> it was in the mid sixties to the mid seventies for example.
> I can't remember what the communication system is called which has people
> communicating with each other by spelling each word.
> I for one am glad that ASL is more accepted now for ease of communication.
> We could probably compare this to Braille.
> Deaf people in different parts of the country have their own little
> short-hand which is understood by those they spend time with.
> I think some blind people may have had some of that kind of lingo and cutesy
> sayings particularly at schools for the blind.
> I was aghast the first time I heard someone refer to themselves as a Blink.
> I had no clue what they were talking about and to this day I never use that
> term.
> Colleen Roth
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Arlie Ray via Ohio-talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org>
> To: ohio-talk at nfbnet.org
> Date: Sunday, May 18, 2014 8:51 am
> Subject: [Ohio-talk] Work Tolorence
>
>>
>>
>> Hi List Viewers,
>>
>> Your concerns about this work tolorence matter are completely valid.
>> Consequently, I am trying to become a job developer because I think
>> counselors and employment specialists are missing one key resource; they
>> do
>> not understand disability culture. Not having this understanding means
>> that
>> all jobseekers with disabilities get treated the same. Hence the need for
>> a
>> "work tolorence" program. A blanket program for counselors who only
>> understand disability from a "how fast can you get the job done" point of
>> view.
>>
>> Blanket programs are wrong, cause too many inconsistencies, and are
>> antiquated ways of thinking. There is no unified theory for assisting any
>> job seeker. Everyone needs help in different areas, from soft skills
>> training to resume writing. Some people only need a piece of assistive
>> technology and they can hit the ground running. As blind people, we just
>> can't see, but without an understanding of disability culture we are all
>> to
>> often treated as if we can't think.
>>
>> I hope this did not sound to preachy.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Arlie Ray
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
Kaiti Shelton
University of Dayton 2016.
Music Therapy, Psychology, Philosophy
President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
Sigma Alpha Iota-Delta Sigma