Myth-busting was my theme as guest speaker at the national Talking News Federation annual conference in Coventry at the weekend. You may have heard Peter White on Radio 4: he’s the President. There are about 300 independent local charitable Talking News associations spread across the country with volunteers who make the essential audio recordings for people who can’t access print media. Meeting together in Coventry was their chance to share ideas, learn about technological advances and plan for future challenges.
My task was to help them set aside the stereotypes about people who find printed information difficult. Of course, there are many different reasons for those difficulties and I could only talk about the visual impairment aspects.
I did my best to explain that losing one’s sight (all or some), doesn’t bring life to a grinding halt. In fact, my personal experience was that life with blindness has had far more interest, satisfaction, rewards and fun than my previous Royal Navy career (and that had been outstanding). I have no sight at all but don’t “live in the dark”. Some might describe themselves as “black blind” but I live in constant golden summer sunshine, day and night. It’s amazingly positive.
Like the vast majority (99%) of visually impaired people, I don’t use Braile (only about 20,000 use it regularly). Instead, I’m a demon touch-typist and can read even the longest dullest documents very fast with screen-reader software (and understand and remember it!).
Years of busy travel and work mean that I haven’t had a guide dog as there’s never been enough time for all that exercise, grooming and more. On-the-spot training for “guide people” is much quicker, they are more interesting and don’t need biscuit treats.
Blindness has lots of advantages: not judging other people by their appearance but on what they say and do; having outstanding 3D perception of whatever I’ve discovered around me; focusing my hearing to detect when others are being less than honest.
I just happen to have no sight but am certainly not defined, not restricted and not made miserable by my blindness. There’s so much more to life!