"Visual dependency" means that people who are sighted are so confident of their vision that they fail to realize the drawbacks to this mode of perception. A blind person can cross a street using auditory skills and knowledge about the spaces they are moving through. A visually impaired person will try to use damaged and inadequate (for the task) vision perception to cross that same street. A sighted person is not aware of inattentional blindness; blind locations around the body are ignored, and the limited range of the visual system is not considered.
(Note: define these terms/ideas for this discussion:
What will we do with these new tools? Can we morally ignore them because we lack training, funding, institutional frameworks, personal vision or resolve? Or, is there a more responsible course to take?
1. Inattentional blindness
We can expect more and more technologies to emerge that provide alternative perceptual "solutions" to the problem of navigating blind. Ones on the market now, like KASPA and The vOICe hopefully will continue to evolve, becoming more sophisticated, less expensive, smaller, and more accurate.
2. The blind brain perceives differently
3. The world was designed by sighted people; what if a sighted person was born into a blind world
4. Louis Braille analogy
5. Vision substitution versus vision replacement
6. Blending with the Cyborg
7. Blending with the digital environment
8. Situational blindness
Pretend for a moment that there was no Braille.
You are the head person of a large agency (consumer group, professional organization, etc.) You serve people who are blind. Your secretary is buzzing you.
“Yes?”
“There is a Mr. Louis Braille to see you.”
“Ah, yes. He has an appointment. Send him in, please.”
“Hey, Louis, nice to meet you. What can I do for you?”
“I’m an inventor.”
“And what have you invented?”
“I call it Braille.”
“I see, after yourself, right?”
“There are these little bumps on this special kind of paper. People who are blind read the bumps.”
“Oh Boy! Where to start? Listen Louis, there are a lot of well meaning inventors out there, but I am afraid they haven’t done their homework. They don’t know the demographics of blindness, they don’t understand the politics and infrastructure. They have no awareness of the history and the traditions. And the cost, wow! You have no idea. Off the top of my head, Louis, here are some problems I see."
“If we do this Braille thing with the bumps, we will have to change the entire infrastructure of the blindness community. The universities will have to design new training programs and curricular materials. The professional groups will have to create new specialties, new standards, and new certifications. That’s even if you can convince the professionals to give up their current approach. It’s working quite well, you know, without the bumps. Anyway, change can’t happen overnight. You might be dead by the time this thing catches on."
“The consumer groups aren’t going to like this either. They are doing fine having friends and family read to them. They will lose the human contact. Technology is so impersonal, you know. They are very powerful, the consumers. Have you talked to people who are blind about this idea? I mean, people who are blind have been involved in the planning of this thing from the beginning, right?"
“Laws will have to change, too. Because there are no funding avenues, Louis. You will have to write grants and do bake sales. How much are you going to charge for this Braille stuff? If it costs more than $200, no blind person will buy it."
“Finally, you should know there are few people who have time to learn about the bumps, Louis. It looks like a long steep learning curve is involved here. You would have to start with very young children. The schools would have to change. That should be a piece of cake. And who is going to design, manufacture, and market the Brailling tools? You know, given the demographics, very few blind people would ever use such an idea. It’s a good idea, the bumps, don’t get me wrong, I’m one hundred percent on your side, but the practical problems are insurmountable."
“You know, Louis, you look like an empathetic, good hearted, young man. Have you thought about a career in social work? Thank you for coming, and good luck with the bump thing.”
Now, pretend you are the head person of a large agency (consumer group, professional organization, etc.). You serve people who are blind. Your secretary is buzzing you.
“Yes?”
“There is a Mr. Michael May to see you.”
“Ah, yes. He has an appointment. Send him in, please.”
“Hey, Mike, nice to meet you. What can I do for you?”
“I’m an inventor. I have a company called Sendero. It means “Pathway” in Spanish.”
“And what have you invented, Mike?”
“I invented a system for using global positioning satellites to help people who are blind navigate. There are these satellites going round and round the earth, they tell you the longitude and latitude. Every spot on the planet is a unique landmark. You have to learn to read the environment in a different way. I call it environmental literacy.”
“Oh Boy! Where to start? Listen Mike, there are a lot of well meaning inventors out there....”
I work for a school system, at a place called the Millet Learning Center, in Saginaw, Michigan. All the severely disabled children from Saginaw County go to school at Millet. One day, having read about a new technology out of New Zealand, called Kay’s Advanced Spatial Perception Aid (KASPA), I decided that I would expose my students (I am a mobility specialist) to “sonocular perception”, the term that inventor Leslie Kay uses to describe his “vision substitution” system. KASPA costs $3,000.00.
I walked into the physical therapy department one morning, shortly after deciding to get a KASPA. I was wondering where I was going to get $3,000. In the therapy room was a beautiful new wheelchair for a sweet little five year old girl who is severely physically disabled. The chair was a technological wonder. It was a space age marvel.
“How much did this chair cost?” I asked a therapist.
“Twenty three thousand dollars.”
“Who paid for the chair?”
“Medicaid.”
I called Medicaid and explained how mobility was “restored” to a physically impaired child thanks to Medicaid funds. I told them that children who are blind could also use technologies to help with their mobility. The answer I got was that Medicaid “didn’t do” blind kids”. People who are blind have a separate rehabilitation network. I should call the State Commission for the Blind.
So I did. And so began a very frustrating personal education. The conclusion I reached in 1997, after more than a year of “investigative journalism,” was that there are no agencies that will fund navigation technologies for the blind. The technologies are not on anyone’s radar screen.
If you ask why not, you get the litany from the story that began this editorial: no social infrastructure, no funding avenues, insufficient consumer interest, little professional interest, the price is too high, the learning curve is too steep, and so on. Meanwhile, the child in the twenty three thousand dollar wheelchair is moving through the halls of the Millet Center independently, with a huge smile on her face.
I did get my KASPA; I now have two. I had to start a non-profit agency and write grants and hold bake sales.
So there you go, if you want advanced navigation technologies for your blind students, all you have to do is start a non-profit agency and run it in your spare time.
Or, we could begin the long process of institutional, legal, and philosophical change. This textbook and the NEC Foundation of America grant (that supported this campaign for change) are the beginning of the effort to open minds and open doors to new opportunities and challenges.