[clue-talk] Hello CLUE

[T. Joseph Carter]

On Sun, Aug 06, 2006 at 09:45:06AM -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> Just a word to the wise. If you're opposed to transportation by
> automobile for religious or ecological or Luddite or whatever reasons,
> you're in the wrong city.

Oh, how silly of me--I left something out of the obDescription before.  I
am an albino, and like most albinos, I am blind.  Blindness is a rather
subjective term, so I'll head off the two most annoying questions right
from the start:

"I thought you said you were blind?  How did you see that?"  The US
government has defined blindness as having 20/200 or worse vision in your
better eye, lens correction, as measured by reading letters at a distance
of 20 feet.  They consider less vision than that to be totally useless,
however many schools of thought say that a person at or near that mark, a
so-called "high partial" shouldn't be treated as "blind" because, after
all, they can still see.  That means that theoretically they can live
something of a normal life, right?  (I'll get back to that.)

"How much can you actually see?"  Well now here's where that eye test
breaks down a bit.  I'm an albino, as I said, and most of us are very,
very sensitive to light.  In sunlight, my vision is so bad that it cannot
be measured.  In nothing but moonlight, I can see better than you can,
but only because while I can still use all of the receptors in my eye,
you've lost the ones that see color.  Indoors with indirect light, I am
pretty close to 20/200.  With brighter and more direct fluorescent light,
I have been measured at 20/310.


So the upshot of this is that I can read print, though I prefer heavier
sans serif fonts because I have an eye movement issue.  I can get around
indoors well enough most of the time, but outdoors I should use a long
white cane.  (Opinions vary on that last point, but from experience I can
tell you that yes in fact I do need a cane in the daylight.)  Because of
these factors, I was raised to be "visually impaired" or some other
ridiculous term, not "blind".

That's why I'm here in Denver actually.  The attitude that I would be able
to live a somewhat normal life, sort of, because I can see, is flawed.  I
was expected to learn to cook by watching others, to clean by noticing
that I'd missed a spot, to cross streets using traffic signals and
watching for cars, and to just insist that print be given to me in a
reasonable font and size so that I could read it.

Okay, so I spent my teen years being scared to death to cross a street
with moderate traffic such as Mineral Ave. anywhere there wasn't a light.
I got one lesson of about five minutes in how to cross a light when I
could not see that light--there's a trick to it.  I got just as much of a
lesson using a white cane, mostly because I insisted, not because I really
needed to use one.  Only one person in all the time I was in school
actually encouraged me to read Braille, and I was told that my other
academics had to take priority to learning it.  They did, and the minutia
of classes I could've tested out of had I been permitted was allowed to
keep me from learning it.

Other stupidity from the experts abounded in those years, but I'll spare
everyone the details.  (The Psych grad wonders if maybe he subconsciously
chose to omit mention of blindness in his introduction primarily to avoid
having to almost write an essay on the topic for the list..)


Now, if I could have been almost "normal" because I can still see a bit,
that means that people who can't see can not be normal, right?  Enter the
radicals and nutcases at the National Federation of the Blind, who insist
that blind people can do what they want, including "things that aren't
safe for a blind person", if you talk to the so-called experts, all of
whom are sighted.  Anyway, they have a training center right here in
Littleton, in the old YMCA building, right behind the Littleton Downtown
station.  I started at the beginning of July and will be in the program
for six to nine months.

In that time, I have learned "grade one" Braille--alphabet, numbers, other
punctuation and begun "grade two", which adds 189 short forms.  Math and
computers have their dot codes, which I'll learn.  Braille is taught under
a sleepshade--basically a blindfold.

I've crossed a few intersections such as Windermere and Littleton,
Broadway and Littleton, and Broadway/Lincoln at Alameda, and others, as
well as done a few assignments involving "go find <address/bus stop/thing>
and bring back proof you were there," and most of that has been done
independently.  Travel is taught under sleepshade.

I can cook a few things already.  I've even used an oven a few times now,
something that used to scare me a lot.  And I've been learning how to
clean up after myself.  Home management is taught under sleepshade (do we
sense a pattern?)

I've learned the basics of navigating Windows (blegh) with JAWS on a
computer that has no screen.  I'll learn another screen reader for
Windows, reading software, a few portable devices (all of which run some
WinCE derivative except the Icon (http://www.levelstar.com/)), and
probably given my background I'll get extremely good with VoiceOver,
Speakup, Orca, and brltty.

And you know what they say about not trusting programmers bearing a
screwdriver?  How about a blind programmer with a power drill, a drill
press, a router table, a compound miter saw, a table saw...?   ;)  The
first week of July we were at the NFB national convention.  Three thousand
blind people in one hotel for a week.  Anyway, one of the speakers was a
general contractor.  He commented it takes a lot of confidence to stand
there with a white cane in one hand and a saws-all in the other while he
is talking about tearing that wall down, moving that one back about 12
feet, etc.  Believe it or not, there are only a few specialized tools used
by blind people--usually for measuring and marking.


So to answer the original message, you don't want me to get a car unless I
get a driver to go with it.  ;)  The only time I could drive safely is at
night, and I'd never convince the DMV of that, for sure!  Sharon says that
when she gets her new car, she'll take me out to the Utah salt flats and I
can drive her old one, as soon as she's back across state lines.  =D