Disability from the outside in: perception and reality

Posted in Sandi's blog on 27 July 2010 | 0 Comments

Like most people in the world, how I perceive myself and how I feel about myself inside is probably somewhat different to how others perceive me and when you add disability into the mix, this can sometimes yield some rather odd results.

As I go about my business in my rather able way, most people just forget that I am blind, until I do something like stand up and head butt a wall. I can only assume that this is because I am so loud and opinionated that people are just so busy trying to manage all that I spew at them. And that giving consideration to anything else, such as whether or not I can see, is not possible due to the fact that all of the processing power inside their brains is already being utilised. And I am also very well adapted; with all of my kit and my acceptance of the things I am not able to do. I am very mindful to just not get myself into situations where I encounter the challenges or frustrations that such things would present.

But life doesn’t always go exactly as one wishes and sometimes, as a consequence of circumstance, I find myself in situations when I have to do something to which my lack of eyesight poses a barrier and although it is inevitable that I will get frustrated in trying to resolve said challenge, what I found very interesting and insightful recently was not how I responded, as this always follows a pretty set path, but how others respond.

And so, the other day, I had to fill out an online form, which was not particularly onerous, but I was having a bit of trouble with it nonetheless and emailed a colleague for help. Now I did not specify what help actually meant and so he tried to give some advice about what I could do, so I tried this and it didn’t work and my frustration increased. More of the same type of advice was dispensed, leading to more frustration and then, with the absolute best intentions, the seminal piece of advice came and I was told to chill out. OK. Toys went flying out of the pram. Chill out? Really? At this point, I was ready to hurl the computer out of the third floor window. There would be no chilling.

But after things were sorted, I reflected on this interaction and the subsequent apology texts and came to a bit of a realisation.

Other people understand my disability from the outside in - how they see me behave, which has nothing to do with how I actually feel inside or what I need to go through to appear strong and positive. And because I am generally pretty strong, am rather self-effacing and don’t define myself by my disability. When it does come to the forefront on these occasions, it is not something that the people around me actually know how to handle because it is so at odds with their perception of me.

And so I realised that it is down to me to educate them, to make things clearer and to facilitate a better understanding of what living with a disability means and how what may appear to be one thing on the outside actually requires a whole bunch of work on the inside to make it seem so.

0 comments | Tags: Challenges, Disability, Living with Sight Loss