People who are losing their sight have a problem? How do you explain what sight loss is and how you can be blind even if you have some sight?
Many people only think of blind as not being able to see anything atall and if you can see something (no matter how little) then you are not blind?
How do we make them see that losing your sight and being bling is the same thing!
How do you explain it to someone who thinks that they are right and you are wrong? How?
the ghost of Phrixus said on 12/03/2013 at 12:02 pm
One thing we need to be careful of is official definitions being changed to our detriment. Now that benefits have been restricted to just the most severely blind and partially sighted people, there is the embarrassing anomaly that there are blind people who fail to get benefits designed for blind people. The simplest solution is to redefine blindness so that fewer people are blind. We need to be aware that some of us may soon find ourselves redefined out of the B&PS community, with associated removal of support. Government may call it reform or even rationing. It's more a massaging of the figures. Unemployment statistics were once reduced by telling unemployed people that they no longer counted as unemployed. So now the problems experienced by the disabled may be alleviated by telling us that we are no longer disabled.
Kerry said on 12/03/2013 at 10:59 am
It is this narrow minded perception of what words mean that results in terms changing and I am coming to the conclusion that moving from Partially Sighted / Registered Blind to Visually Impaired / Severely Visually impaired was actually quite a good call on someone's part. I have stopped trying to explain to people that although I am Registered Blind and have a Guide Dog I can see a (very) little, people who are not exposed to the consequences of sight loss cannot get passed the terminology and their narrow definition of what it means, if it were not for this sort of resistance to accepting what others are putting forward as their point of view the etire planet would live in love and harmony and bigotry would be unheard of! We can live in hope I suppose ...
And for Christmas I'm getting a Pink Pony AND a Unicorn;-)
I fought long and hard to try and get people to accept what I was saying but in the end it just wears you down fifteen years of banging your head against a brick wall will only ever result in a headache!
Pick your battles and remember "never get involved in a land war in Asia"
Kerry