There is one strategy that people who work for organisations with blind in their title do not seem to realise is that one size does not fit all. This might not seem obvious when they are dealing with people who are visually impaired and have some vision but dealing with somebody who is totally blind does mean that they have to alter their approach to the services they offer. In the outside world this is known as reasonable adjustment but this seems to have gone unnoticed by the organisations with blind in their title.
I have heard that the employees of such organisations wear glasses to simulate the effect of living with certain visual impairments but I have never heard of anybody being blindfolded for 24 or 36 hours to get a feeling of what it is like to be blind. I assume this goes against any health and safety regulations or fails risk assessments.
I took some time to go through the talking newspapers app to see what services some organisations had to offer the blind and they were noticeable in their absence, or they had regulations that a blind user would have to follow. One such requirement, and this was in organisations throughout the country, was that if you were blind you would need to bring your own guide with you and to me that seemed that it makes going on a specialised walk pointless as I could go on a walk with my guide to anywhere we wanted without the company of these other service users having to meet at a certain place at a certain time.
Another requirement for certain courses is that you must travel there independently, travelling blind is a difficult experience at the best of times but travelling blind whilst pulling a piece of luggage and waving a white cane about is almost impossible, especially if you have two keep getting on and off buses or trains and finding seats and luggage lockers. You could read into it that when they say that you must travel independently is that they don’t want totally blind users there anyway.
Another facility that has made it difficult for blind users to join in with visually impaired users is the trend to do a lot of courses by video calls. Some of these work, especially if audio description is used in some form, but usually this is not adopted and the blind are left totally baffled when just listening to the basic instructions accompanying a video.
To sum it up it is important that people who are leading courses for the blind and visually impaired really understand their audience and their capabilities. The problem with sight loss of all levels is that it is not obvious to other people unlike a lot of other disabilities so this is where reasonable adjustment must be made by both parties so a conversation must be held and understood, led by the service user, before every thing falls apart.
