Re: Your choice? Would you restore your vision?
camlorn, i don't really think that a "Society of the blind" is really what's necessary. More a social revolution for disability in general (as in, how we approach how we think about disability). After all these are issues that intersect many disabled issues at large, although blindness is a specific presentation with unique circumstances. The problem with implants is that we organize our healthcare based around the idea of a healthy person, so much more resources is invested into it. this is actually a big reason why accessibility gets a lot less funding than expensive surgeries despite being more effective at presenting a social solution to blindness - its because we socially want people to be healthy. So by submitting to transplants we don't actually give the possibility for more lives, but actually less, by eliminating the blind way of life, along with other disabilities, instead of accommodating them.
This isn't to say that these surgeries are bad by the way - but rather the way that we socially look at them is based around treating blind people, rather than giving blind people options. And that actually LIMITS options for blind people, by forcing them to live as a sighted person if they can, in this theoretical scenario.
Furthermore I think a lot of people would feel uncomfortable with the idea of their bodies being modified without their will. consider the huge ethical issues surrounding intersex surgeries for example. You're talking about a full scale technological invasion of people's own bodies, which will likely be driven by some large corporation or government organization. I do not trust that one bit. Then there are the children who aren't given autonomy over their own bodies, with both disability and gender, that are forced to suffer through treatments their parents think is best for them instead of deciding for themselves. They can't even say no. This is a source of a lot of trauma in many disability and queer communities.
The problem with this kind of science fiction future is that it doesn't recognize the inherent structures that drive our decisions, which leads to an eventual path towards elimination of differentiated experiences. The idea that along with a cure for blindness we bring forward a cure for sightedness ignores the social pressures involved. Consider that we could literally blind anyone we wanted permanently right now quite easily by simply removing their eyes but this option is not socially available. Why is that? Simple - because the healthy person excludes blindness.
@70 - I understand your pessimism but remember that almost all of those things you listed are hard for blind people to use because of how we socially structure society based around vision. Most of those things are either tools that have crappy accessibility or tools that blind people can't use but people are expected to use. It's just that blind people have to deal with so many crappy design choices because of assumptions based around healthy people. It's worth stressing that these design choices also impact a lot of other disabled people as well, so its a process that extends across a wide group of people, not just the blind; so i feel its necessary to at least try to change, since it impacts so many people.
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