Changing Perceptions on Sight Loss in Style
What I wish sighted people understood when I as a visually impaired person asked for help.
Today I wanted to talk about something that is weighing heavy weighing heavy on my mind and that I need to get off my chest so to speak.
Some of you may have seen from a recent Twitter post that I made about a negative experience I had at the cafe, but for those of you who haven’t I will bring you up to speed.
On Monday I had it to a local cafe having a blood test to get on with some work, I fancied a piece of cake -what can I say, Monday vibes.
Whether this particular caffe did not have an accessible menu which told me all of their options for cake and pastries, normally I would look online so that I could order myself on arrival or order through an app if they have one.
I’m conscious that staff are busy and that there might be a queue behind me.
I’m always worried that my disability is an inconvenience to people, but that’s the highly toxic internalised ableism talking there (don’t worry I know).
However, I do try to be mindful of other people’s time and overall, I can do things myself without the need for sighted assistance.
However, on this occasion I couldn’t and so I tentatively asked one of the sighted staff members if they wouldn’t mind telling me what cakes they had.
For reference, I had a guide dog with me and stated very clearly that I couldn’t see to read the print and wanted some assistance reading what they had.
The staff member said: “We have chocolate cake, victoria sponge, what do you want?”
I then reiterated again that I had a severe slight problem and couldn’t see to know I would want and could they please tell me a bit more.
I was met with complete silence which to me was an indication that my request would not be met.
So, in the end I decided to pick something that I knew that they had which I didn’t particularly want, but as I didn’t know what else they had was limited to that.
Another customer in the café at that time did say to me: “Would you like me to tell you what they have? They have loads there?”
However, with an uncomfortable feeling I politely said no as I felt that it wasn’t her responsibility to do another person’s job.
I say this as someone who used to work in retail for six years and helped many disabled customers during my time there.
Suffice it to say, I went home, and a complaint has been made with the said company and I will await to hear their response.
However, it got me thinking that this interaction I had isn’t in isolation and hasn’t just been experienced by me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have so many positive and lovely interactions with sighted people on a daily basis.
A lot of people working in hospitality and retail are usually very helpful and normally offer to give me assistance without me even needing to ask.
So this experience is not a common occurrence for me, however situations like the one I mentioned have happened before.
I have spoken to a lot of sighted friends and colleagues recently about their own experiences and found a lot of them had similar experiences to my own.
A number of them commented on their experiences shopping for food and asking for help to do the weekly shop.
They described how they would ask for staff to tell them things that were on offer or read the names of the different products on the shelves.
Some told of stories where they were met with very vague answers from staff members who they felt didn’t want to spend time reading off lists of products.
I have also experienced scenarios like this, where I have asked for help reading the labels of things and have been met with unenthusiastic responses.
But as much as these interactions frustrate me I do get it, we’re all human and we all have off days.
Not all new staff members get adequate disability awareness training, especially if there’s a quick turnover with new and temporary staff coming in and out of the company.
However, I would hope that some empathy and yes, some common-sense would prevail in these types of situation.
Personally, I’m not one who enjoys asking for help and mainly for this very reason.
I would rather do things for myself and give myself the choice to be able to select things unaided.
I do this by sticking to shopping online, using shopping and pre-order apps, I screenshot things that I know I particularly want to show to staff members.
I don’t particularly like feeling like I’m being left in the dark, if you’ll pardon the pun.
In short, I do everything possible to give me the options and freedom that society doesn’t.
Being a visually impaired consumer is still a very inaccessible experience in terms of the way we can shop independently.
There are new apps and technology becoming is available that is starting to help make it more possible to shop independently as a visually impaired person.
But it still isn’t as simple, as efficient, or as quick as it needs to be for us to be totally independent.
So, there are occasions where it is necessary to ask sighted people for help.
One of the things I want mostly as a visually impaired person is to be able to choose.
I want to have the freedom and not feel that I don’t have the option to have as much information available to me as a sighted person.
The biggest challenge for me being visually impaired is not being able to access information, not being able to read maps, to see menus in coffee shops, to see street signs and all manner of things like that.
I want to have the option to do things and have the freedom to make informed decisions about my life.
Even the simplest of things like being able to choose what cake I eat at a coffee shop.
In an ideal world, we would be able to do everything ourselves with technology that was made to accommodate us, with things like Braille or large print menus in every restaurant, with access to all the information that we need.
But we aren’t there yet and sometimes we do need to ask for help.
So all we ask for is some patience and a bit of mindfulness when we do.