Re: a few complaints about the blind comunity
@Cx2, thanks for getting my point that is indeed the distinction I meant and your example of a bus pass is a good one, though interestingly enough I myself rarely use busses sinse I don't want to risk getting on one with no audio announcements and then being stuck, and the silly government have refused to make audio announcements on busses manditory.
They are in London, but that's about it.
@Steve, "the sighted give blind people free stuff?" you must have encountered some very different sighted people to the ones I've run into and the ones most people run across. Even when sighted people offer some form of assistance this is usually not a free gift from eone human to another but an imposition, a sighted person behaving as expected to behave.
For example, I once had a guard at a train station who was supposed to be showing me to my next train connection (a necessity sinse i'd not been in that station before), and he said "wait t
here" when i asked why he said "we're getting the staff lift for you, passengers don't usually use that lift so it takes a while"
He did not ask me whether I wanted or needed to use the lift, or even whether I was capable of walking the greater distance to the passenger lift, he just made a dictatorial decision, assuming he knew better than me what my capabilities were and treating me effectively as incompitant.
This was not a "gift" so much as it was an imposition.
Much, (though not all), of so called discounts offered by sighted people go in this line, essentially "Take this and bog off!"
There is also the problem as Cx2 said, that there are some services which are offered which are offered which do have a degree of equality behind them, such as the free bus passes , sinse on a basic financial level living with a disability is indeed far more expensive, albeit unfortunately the bennifits offered do not always eq ual the costs of access items.
There are also occasions (rare though they might be), where someone is simply being kind and it would be rude or offensive to not accept.
For example, a few weeks ago I ordered a pizza from my local Papa Johns, (which has just opened). I'd ordered a couple before and had spoken to a very nice Scotish lady. As usual I had to ask (in as polite and friendly a way as possible), what pizza's, side orders etc they did, and what offers they had on, sinse they didn't have any accessible menu.
On this occasion i decided just to order a pizza and a side and not bother with the desert. The driver appeared and said "Our manager sent you a free desert"
I am not sure if she did this because of my lack of eyeballs, because I had been polite when asking about what pizzas they did, or just because I'd ordered a few times and was a good customer. Either wayr it would've been intensively rude had I said " ;no I don't deserve free stuff, take it back!" as it happened I ate it, and when I ordered another pizza from them last week I thanked her.
while it is true there are blind people who are very demanding, who refuse to try things for themselves, and in fact treat others as simply a means to fulfill their needs, this to me is more of an atitudanal difference than a difference in what is actually provided sinse it is one thing to say "I can't have a car and use the bus a lot so can I have a free pass to equal out the financial costs of travel" and quite another to say "I am blind! I deserve free bus travele give it to me now!"
Lastly, I have begun to think rcently that there is an extra layer to this issue aside from the one of equal access, sinse there are far too many occasions when living with a disability is just not nice. When people ignore, or discriminate, or are out and out unpleasant. It is all very well to say "I am bl ind I don't deserve any special considderation" however, more often than not you recieve quite the opposite sort of behaviour from people, often in a way the law cannot touch. For example, if I go to any new group of people nobody will speak to me for the first hour, and I have to physically get them over the "He's blind" syndrome.
Also, I've had far too many occasions of being given blatant excuses for discrimination, as I got when I applied to opera school.
I must admit this is making me rethink the idea of entitlement rather more, sinse frankly if people have to put up with all this crap because their eyeballs don't work, then maybe there should be some sort of bennifit on offer as well.
I don't know what this bennifit should be, financial, social, legal status or what, but I do find myself in the position of thinking there probably should be one. Missing access to things is bad enough, but maybe there should also be so me sort of recognition that most blind people aren't treated very well by the so called "normals" as well.
@Gellman, I agree with your sentiments here very much, (especially your talk about the corporate), although I wouldn't personally put things in the context of rights sinse I am not personally sure rights are a good way to form a morality, but that is quite another arguement, (I have no problem with the idea of rights in law, I am just not as sure about their moral force in the thinking that goes behind those laws).
Interestingly enough, in Britain much of our legal philosophy is based on Jon Stewart Mill. Mill did not use the language of rights, but talked of equal freedoms, and the idea that acquiring equal freedom for all was essentially the business of law and government.
If you have not read his book "on liberty" I'd very much suggest having a look at it.
I myself have a slightly different approach but that is ve ry much tied up with my Doctoral thesis, suffice it to say I completely agree with you that equal access should be a legal requirement, although unfortunately on a practical level with the power held by most coorporations it probably won't happen, ---- though before I get into a debate about the evils of multinational capitalism I'll stop.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
