Disability is social: Is someone else's medical condition your business?

When I was sixteen, I was travelling in Germany and I sat down on the edge of a fountain to read a book and wait for a bus. While I was reading, three other people sat down nearby. They apparently noticed me and the fact that my book was literally an inch from my nose.

One of them eventually reached over and mashed the book into my face and said, "There. You need some help getting the book close enough?" 

This was not an uncommon occurrence for me with immature peers, but that didn't make it any less aggravating. I'll admit that I have a temper and there have been times when I would have chewed the head off of anyone who did such a thing. But I was suffering under the delusion that Europe would be more open-minded than the US. So, instead of biting the head off the offending guy, I turned around and asked, "Haven't you ever heard of a person being nearsighted?" 

 "Why don't you get some glasses then?" the woman next to him said with no inflection of humor or understanding whatsoever. 

While I've had plenty of similar encounters and tossed them away into the fog at the back of my mind titled "Why lots of people suck," that one has remained clear and fresh in my mind for twenty years--down to the grain of the cement on the fountain base and the sunlight shining through the budding trees of early spring.

Maybe I remember it because that was when I first started to understand that this is going to happen, no matter what you do. If you have a disability, you will be harassed--even in nice liberal places like Germany, even when you aren't asking for help or accommodations, even when you're just minding your own business. 

Up until that point I had taken every nasty social encounter as proof that I was a social loser. But this time it was so clearly not my problem that it was a bit of a revelation to me. 

The other day, I was on a train with my six-year-old daughter, headed for her music lessons in the city. I was reading Little House in the Big Woods to her with my nose properly rubbing the pages. The train conductor came by and I bought a ticket and showed my transportation disability ID that gives me a discount on that route. The conductor made a stink about how my card must be expired, even though the date on it was clearly good for another two years. Finally, the conductor did his job and left. But then one of the passengers turned around in a nearby seat and said, "Were'd you get the fake ID? You're obviously not blind, since you can read." 

I hadn't stowed my foldable white cane and it was still propped against our seat. Sometimes I leave it out on purpose, just to scare away nosy twerps, but sometimes it doesn't work. Even without having an argument with the train conductor, I've had people stop me and demand that I surrender my cane, because they have seen me reading something and therefore they "know" I'm not "blind." 

On this particular occasion I turned to my daughter and explained again how some people don't know very much about people who can't see well. 

My daughter replied, "A girl at my school said that you look bad." 

"What kind of bad?" 

"Just bad," she said. "Anyway, I made her stop and she promised she wouldn't say that anymore. " She clenched her tiny fist and bared her teeth.

Oh gods, now my six-year-old is getting in fights over it. 

As a result, I would like to do a little bit of public education right here and now. Here are some basic facts that could resolve all of these situations and a great many others. Please pass them on to your friends.

Creative commons image by Antonio Cruz/Abr of Agencia Brasil

• First, the majority of legally blind people can see something. 
• Some legally blind people wear glasses to increase what they can see or to protect their eyes from bright light or to gain social acceptability (either by hiding eyes that appear a bit different or by simply alerting others to the fact that they don't see well).
• Some visually impaired people DON'T wear glasses. For instance, my eyes look a little odd and I would get a lot less social flak if I wore sunglasses, but sunglasses cut way down on what I can see. Some vision impairments are not helped by glasses. Some visually impaired people wear contact lenses. 
• Some people have to use a combination of contact lenses and glasses for medical reasons. Unless you're a doctor and the person is seeking your medical advice, this is not your business. (For instance, I see far better with contact lenses than with glasses--due to some complicated optical physics--but I can't wear contacts all the time for medical reasons. So, I wear contacts when I really need to see well, for instance when out in public, but I usually wear glasses at home.)
• Some partially sighted people use white canes. The fact that someone uses a white cane means they are legally blind. It does not mean they can't see anything. I for instance can see quite well at about one or two inches. I can't see other people's faces so well or speeding cars.
• Some totally blind people don't use white canes. They navigate almost entirely through echolocation and good memory. They are not in physical danger and it isn't your job to tell them how they should get around. I can get around like they do and I did for more than thirty years, despite not being able to see the ground very well, but I now choose to use a cane to avoid a lot of social flak. That is my choice and some people choose differently.
• The fact that someone's eyes move oddly does not mean they are mentally ill or developmentally disabled. Again, I don't care to count the times people have told me that they thought I was "retarded" when they first met me only to be "pleasantly surprised" to find out later that I'm only visually impaired. This is the primary reason I have used a white cane when in public for the past seven years. I traveled the world without one, worked as a journalist in war zones and some other sketchy places and so on. But small town social life is less forgiving than that and I've been beaten into submission. I now carry a white cane as a sort of signalling device because I prefer the nasty social things many people do to visually impaired people to the nastier social things many people do to developmentally disabled people. Which means...
• You'll sometimes see me using a white cane and then folding it away and not using it. You'll sometimes see me riding a bike in quiet areas without a lot of traffic. You'll sometimes see me hiking on rough terrain without a cane and then using a cane on a nice smooth sidewalk downtown. This is because the only real safety-related need for my cane is to avoid being run over by drivers who assume that every pedestrian can see them, and sure, they're supposed to stop but "just this once" the pedestrian should move out of the way or stay put or whatever (depending on the hand signal the driver is making).
• And to expand upon this, people who use wheelchairs are not all paralyzed. Many can move their legs. Many can walk for short distances.
• People who use wheelchairs can very likely talk just fine, as can people with white canes. and many deaf people can as well.
• People who use wheelchairs or other walking devices are often powerful athletes. Using a wheelchair does not make a person an invalid. I am quite a good swimmer myself and a disabled man who used two canes to walk very slowly beat the pants off of me in a swimming race when I was twelve. Arm muscles are quite a thing in the water. I became a lot smarter after that.
• Not all disabilities are visible or apparent to an outsider. 
• The people who diagnose disabilities and prescribe aids for them have years of medical training. This is the job of doctors and specialists. It is not your job to give advice or correct "unfair" use of disability devices on the subway, at school or in the workplace. 
• People who hold disability ID cards or disabled parking permits in some countries go through a long and arduous process of medical assessment. The benefits provided by such cards are not only minor but generally not of any interest to non-disabled people. So, just leave this issue alone. Unless you're a state medical assessor, this is not your business. 

Those aren't all the facts to be sure. But they all add up to the same thing. 

Please don't bug people about their glasses or lack there of or their cane or lack their of or their wheelchair or their hearing aid or any such thing or lack their of. It is their device and their responsibility. You can't possibly know enough to make a judgment on someone else's specific needs. Neither can I, unless the I'm the person in question.

If you're curious, many people with disabilities will be happy to explain, if you ask politely. Some won't. In the end, it is really their business. 

Comment below with questions and your own experiences. I love to hear from readers. Let's get a discussion going. Share this post (using the button on the lower right)  to help spread education. Best wishes!