By Jennifer Dunnam

The age in which we are living can certainly be confusing at times.  Many changes that sometimes seem contradictory with one another are occurring in parallel.  For example, while we now find more independent access to information than we have ever experienced or imagined in our lives, some of us are also finding our jobs, which we may have done quite satisfactorily for many years, becoming harder to do as blind people because of technology that is increasingly difficult to use in a nonvisual manner.  The National Federation of the Blind, both in advocacy and mutual support, is just as critically important as it ever has been.  The changing landscape requires us to think hard and carefully about how we can have the most and best influence as individuals and as an organization.

Not long before this column was finished, Twitter turned seven years old.  Twitter, with its 140-character messages and its many ways to categorize and share information,  is full of as many types of communication as we read and hear through other means on a daily basis: the important, inane, funny, ridiculous, profound, edifying, irritating, and everything in between.  A communication has the potential to spread more quickly and widely than ever, and, of course, this applies equally whether the communication contains good or bad information.  Twitter and other venues like it also make it more possible that there will be reactions to a communication, even from people that might not take the time to write a letter or make a phone call.  A problem can be caused, escalated, addressed, and resolved in a very public manner and in a very short span of time.

A recent kerfuffle illustrates the point and the need for us to be proactive in shaping the public perceptions of the capabilities of blind people.  Not long ago, A word of advice for people with low vision (and presumably those with no vision as well) was offered on Twitter by a company that sells products of specific interest to blind people.  The tip was, "Use microwaves instead of conventional ovens whenever possible to avoid burns."

Really? 

Some of our Federation members use stoves daily and can cook circles around most people, sighted or blind.  More of us may not be master chefs but use our stoves on a regular basis to cook for our families and ourselves.  It is hard even to know where to begin to expound on the many problems with this helpful hint.  The implication is obviously that if one is not fully sighted, then one is more likely to burn oneself on a stove.  We know that safety in the kitchen is not related to sight or lack of it, but to paying attention and using good techniques.  We might even prefer "Use conventional ovens instead of microwaves whenever possible for better tasting food.”

The company deals in blindness-specific products and may therefore be viewed by some as expert on blindness.  People who are new to blindness may get the idea that, in order to be safe in the kitchen, they will now be limited to cooking in a microwave oven.  Using a microwave oven is, of course, not in and of itself bad; false perceptions that limit options are very problematic in all too many areas of life for too many people.

Anyone in the world might have been able to read this tweet.  Perhaps very few in the world actually did read it.  However, quite a number of blind people took a moment to send off a 140-character reaction to the advice on using microwave ovens.  The company ultimately handled the situation well.  At first, they indicated that they had just been passing on the tip from another source, and they provided the link to the fuller list of tips for cooking with low vision.  Upon investigation of the full list, one might count the 140-character limit on Twitter as a blessing.  The advice on using a microwave oven whenever possible went on to say that if indeed a conventional stove were required, then only the front burners should be used.  Readers were also encouraged to buy pre-cut vegetables and the like to cut down on the need for chopping and grating.  These, too, are false limitations; blind people may safely use any and all of the burners on the stove and chop food as much as we wish. 

Just a bit of re-framing of the advice  could have helped; for example, even simply to have suggested the use of the front burners in the beginning until the cook becomes more confident in the use of nonvisual cooking techniques would have projected an attitude based on more accurate information and higher expectations.  However, the book If Blindness Comes, which provides many details about how a blind person cooks in the kitchen and does many other tasks in daily life, says it well as follows:

"A cook who becomes blind still has a lifetime of experience and knowledge about food as a resource to be prized.  There is no reason for a blind person to be frightened of hot stoves, electric mixers, sharp knives, or anything else in the kitchen.  It is important to take the same good-sense precautions you always did: don't leave cloth potholders on the stove, don't stack glasses in the sink, and so forth.  Accidents occur because of carelessness, whether the cook is blind or sighted."

The book is available in hard copy free from our national office, or online at https://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/books/ifblind/ifblnd01.htm. 

The dialog with Twitter followers continued.  To their credit, the company apologized, deleted the tweet, and began encouraging blind people to submit cooking tips of their own.

In some ways, this was a tiny incident, but small things like this if left to stand can add up in a very big way to make our lives harder.  Could a comment like this, or enough of them, cause a blind senior citizen to be placed in a nursing home rather than be given the training to continue to live independently?  Could it factor into a parent deciding that letting a blind teenager learn to cook in the kitchen is maybe not a wise idea?  Could it help cement a social worker's perception that blind people cannot safely take care of their children?  And what about the appliance manufacturers — if blind people are advised not to use stoves, then why bother making sure that the controls are accessible?  This litany may seem alarmist, but for many of us trying to live fully within our world, the misconceptions and ripple effects that create attitudinal barriers are all too real.

Again, I do not mean to pick on one company.  Even while we have made great progress, the misconceptions about blindness are still widespread.  That is why we as a movement have a responsibility to be prepared to handle them effectively, individually and organizationally.  We need to know all we can about how blind people can get things done, and we can know much more collectively than we can individually.  All the money identifiers and accessible e-books can only help so much without us also honing and using our skill at both recognizing and acting to prevent the underestimation of the innate capabilities of blind people.  We must continue vigorously to fight for accessible information so that we are not left out of employment and all of the other aspects of life.  At the same time, it is urgent that we continue to find ways to improve public attitudes and perceptions, by the lives we live every day and by the work we do for a cause larger than ourselves.  Our Federation is full of people to learn from and work with.  We must work actively to educate the public, through the methods we have developed and through the new ones that we have not yet dreamed of.