Out of sight out of mind is the day to day lifestyle reality of many Canadians who are blind. Begging for arms at the church door or money at the castle gate has been replaced with a contemporary lifestyle of restrictions, dependency, poverty and lack of meaningful choices.
This article draws attention to quality of life issues which profoundly effect persons who are blind. Being punished for being blind is the bottom line of the charitable medical mottle of suppression of people who are blind in Canada today. It is a guilt as real as the medieval stereotype causes of blindness like infidelity of the parents, masturbation or some other punishment from the deity of your choice.
As a follow up to the article Blinding Grinding Poverty published in the edition of the Blind Monitor, this article illustrates with real life examples the practical effects on human beings of the great Canadian neglect of persons who are blind.
Some people who are blind contribute to this devaluing of their fellow persons who are blind. Pervasive attitudes such as the following prove the point. I am integrated, “I married a sighted person.” “I can do that task so all people who are blind should be able to do it. ””I am able to be as productive as a person who is sighted”. “Blindness is just a nuisance”. .
These and similar mirages get in the way of a true understanding of blindness. These half truths fan the fires of neglect by pitting people who are blind against one another. Integration takes on the meaning of being like, acting like and living like a person who is sighted. A pipe dream that not one person who is blind has or ever will achieve. The struggle to be “normal” is a very real obstacle to the provision of needed supports to Canadians who are blind.
The reality is that blindness is a very severe disability. When a person is not able to function on a visual plane then the world shrinks and begins to wither away .”successful” persons who are blind have achieved their status despite the system. They have fought the odds and won. Those people are rugged, strong willed, determined, ruthless and zealots of their opinions as the only valid opinions on blindness. No where is this more evident than when people who are blind discuss the service delivery system in Canada. Any dissatisfaction is immediately branded as “anti CNIB” in order to devalue and dismiss the concern.
Organizations of and for the blind must bear some of the responsibility for the fractious nature of discussion about blindness issues and needs. The individual’s tin cup has been replaced by the corporate tin cup. In order to generate revenue it becomes necessary to generate more and better feel good stories year after year to generate greater revenue. The focus and preoccupation becomes the raising of the dough. Focusing on the reality of the existence of people who are blind in Canada today or the actual benefit derived by individuals who are blind from the dough raised is actively discouraged.
Having services customarily provided to the public delivered to persons who are blind through the mainstream delivery system is actively discouraged. Without the ability to cite the service as the need the service organization looses its grip on the hart strings of corporate, government and individual people’s purses. Thus for decades governments and corporations have been actively lobbied in Canada to serve people who are blind through a third party NGO without regard for the feelings of many persons who are blind, the quality of service or any objective measurement of the deliverables.
This service monopoly has effectively blunted advocacy work in Canada. Any time citizens who are blind ask for the same services as others are receiving the service provider steps in and actively works to get money by claiming they can solve the service problem. Money is paid but the people who are blind continue to go without, as victims of charity. This scenario is repeated time after time, year after year without an effective solution in sight.