Blindness

Blindness and low vision are one broad type of physical difference that sociologists of deviance and disability have written about extensively since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA; 1990). The term blindness is sometimes used as a general term for conditions more properly termed vision disabilities. In Western society, various shades of visual impairment are distinguished with regard to medically measured sight acuity. In turn, ideas of social restriction are attached to the various shades of difference, usually having to do with social criteria: how easily the person can interact with others, the extent to which the person can be employed and in what connection, and the particular personality traits the person is thought to have or to have developed.

People who have a vision disability have always been a part of disabilities rights and awareness movements. Thanks in part to the ADA, terms like the blind, the sightless, and the afflicted have been discarded in favor of terms like the person who is blind and the person who has a vision disability. The ADA encouraged accurate terminology along with an adaptive technology to meet the educational, occupational, and private needs of people who are blind and have low vision.

Blindness and low vision are sometimes perceptible to others, sometimes not, and the perception can vary with the context, channel of communication, personnel, and decision to use or forgo assistive devices like sunglasses, guide dogs, red-tipped canes, and other adaptive devices. Views that people without visual disabilities have about people with visual disabilities are sometimes arrived at without any actual contact, through learned stereotypes and myths, or due to fear of people they think are different from themselves.

In common with people with other disabilities, people who are blind and partially sighted are subject to differential treatment by those who have average vision. People with a vision disability are often considered particularly sensitive to emotional states (as people with normal vision may think they would feel if blind), are subjected to insensitive social interaction, and are believed to have increased use of the other senses to “compensate” for the absence of vision. In some of the arts, blindness is still often used as a metaphor for the character who is out of touch with the consciousness of her or his time or who willfully disregards the morals or the circumstances of her or his social situation. There are now portraits of blindness derived from people who themselves have vision disabilities. Such work attempts to associate characteristics such as powerful, gifted, and serene with those with vision disabilities.

In the United States and in other industrialized states, there are many social accommodations for people with vision disabilities, both in terms of services and in terms of material objects and tools. For private life, a variety of articles—such as watches, dishes, and appliances—have been created or can be adapted for their use. Some adaptations are subject to popularity, as in the case of Braille, which is steadily losing favor to make way for new technology. In addition to personal devices and services, [Page 71]accessibility requirements are rapidly adapting the public environment for people with vision disabilities. Other advances are laser canes, ultrasonic devices to detect and classify objects in one's pathway, and other advances to facilitate transportation and communication for all people with vision disabilities, including adaptation of public places. Both sidewalks and buildings have been constructed to interact with the assistive technology of people with vision disabilities and make their lives in public places safer and more manageable.

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