Often when discussing the experience of being blind, I find that different simulations are implemented to explain what it feels to be blind. Probably the most common is to put on a blindfold. While such exercises can have many different values, the only thing they don’t simulate is what it means to be blind. However, such activities do have value, they should just be used for what they are worth. In this article I will show a few ideas and discuss how they can be useful and also what they don’t add to understanding blindness.
Blindfolding
Let’s start with the most simple, and most used exercise, putting on a blindfold. When you put on a blindfold for five minutes, you will not understand what it means to be blind. At most, you will understand what it means to wear a blindfold for five minutes. The first experience a sighted person will have in a blindfold is that everything is dark. For many blind people, who do not have any light perception and were born blind, there is no concept of light or dark. Darkness can only be understood when comparing it to light, but if the experience of light is lacking, the concept of darkness is non-existent.
Carrying out activities in a blindfold can actually be scary, if not dangerous when not done in the proper environment. Blindness, however, is not scary for people who had years to get used to it and develop skills to interact with the environment without vision.
What such exercises add is understanding that eyesight is taken for granted, and in order to function in a given environment, even in a familiar one would require many skills to learn. A simple example would be walking around in a blindfold and potentially walking into the wall. The first thing one will realize that they need to apply some protection, for example holding out a hand at face height to avoid injury. People will probably do it as an instinct, but this practice is often taught to blind kids when they start to walk. This is why, for example blind people will walk more confidently than blindfolded people, because they learn how to negotiate obstacles.
Using a cane
Unless it is in a very controlled environment, this exercise could be very dangerous, do not try it on the street alone. Traveling with a cane is very complex, people practice it for months and years until they become confident and develop the necessary safety skills. It is not only about using the cane, but also about finding and negotiating different obstacles such as trees, holes, sidewalks, etc. People also need to learn to interpret sounds, echos or air movement to better understand the environment which is too far to reach with a cane.
What such exercise will teach to a blindfolded person is that blind people experience their environment in very small chunks. Any given time what they can reach is using their hands, their cane, or an area as small as they can cover with their palms.
Walking with a guide dog
Often guide dog schools organize events when anybody can come in and learn about the school. One thing they tend to offer is a blindfolded walk with a guide dog, of course under supervision. While this is an interesting experience, it can be confusing for a guide dog, because what they learn is not just to guide, but to guide one particular person. For a guide dog, each person is an entirely different experience. When visually impaired people learn to travel with a guide dog, they need to spend 3-4 weeks with the dog just to get used to each other’s pace, reactions and style. This is partly why guide dog schools put quite a bit of effort into matching the right person with the right dog who will most likely work best together.
What this experience teaches is how clever these dogs are, and how they navigate without bumping the person into any obstacles. It could be interesting after taking the blindfold off to go through the same rout to understand how many obstacles were unnoticed because the dog guided around them safely. The other valuable experience here is that a guide dog can both obey and refuse instructions. Generally a dog is either well-trained and obeys, or not trained. But a guide dog will have to do both. To obey instructions, but disobey when an instruction would lead into an accident, for example a guide dog will not walk forward on a train station when the blind person can fall into the rails.
Not using a mouse
Back in the days when I used to teach accessibility in labs on desktop computers which still had a physical mouse and not a touchpad, one of the exercises I did was disconnecting the mouse. Setting it aside doesn’t work, because a mouse user will reach after the mouse as a habit probably even without noticing it. This exercise does not teach what it feels to use the computer without a mouse. When you spent decades interacting with your favorite applications with the mouse, all you will notice here is that things don’t work the way they used to.
Where such an exercise helps is to be able to slowly figure out if an application is possible to use with the keyboard. You may notice that certain functionalities do not have a keyboard command assigned to them, and unless using it with the mouse, people with visual or physical disabilities will not be able to use it. Another discovery made often is that even if a functionality is keyboard accessible, it is more time consuming to use with the keyboard, because what is a few moves and a clicks with a mouse, it maybe several keystrokes to achieve the same.
Using a screen reader
Another exercise built on top on keyboard usage only is to turn on the screen reader. If you happen to do it on a blind person’s computer, probably the first thing you will experience is that the screen reader talks so fast that it is impossible to understand initially. Blind people develop skills for days or weeks to understand the screen reader talking so fast because it saves time. The faster they can read, the more they can get done. Being blind can be quite time consuming sometimes, this is where one can save time.
Screen readers also have many features to read information to explore the screen faster. Without knowing these commands, by default using a screen reader for the first time will be more difficult.
There is a takeaway though when trying out an application we built with a screen reader. After you slow down the speed, you will start to get a sense of how much information is announced. Is it too much? Is it not enough or nothing is spoken at all? When using a screen reader and a keyboard you maybe able to find some basic problems on your own, for example when an error message pops up and it is not spoken. You can still find it by navigating the screen, but it is more time consuming than if it was announced by default.
Eating in the dark
There are restaurant events where people experience an entire dinner blindfolded. You definitely need to approach it with an open mind, there is a chance you will be surprised about the mess you created after they turn on the lights at the end. Will you experience what it means to be blind? Again, of course not. But you will learn a thing or two about food and yourself. Eating without sight is also a skill blind children learn for a long time. Think about it this way, if you have always used a fork and knife to eat, you won’t be proficient when starting to use chopsticks, but after a few weeks of vacation in China you will do just fine.
What you will learn here, again, is that you can’t take things for granted. It can be a surprising experience when you put something in your mouth and it wasn’t what you expected. You may know that you cut a piece of meat, but you will only find out about the sauce on it once you taste it. Not to mention that often times not everything is eatable on your plate, like bones, shells or decorations.
Dialogue in the dark
You may have heard about Dialogue in the Dark, which changed the life of millions around the world. It is a very intense experience, when a blind person guides blindfolded people through different environments. Depending on the location it could be rooms, simulated traffic or a bar. This experience uses many of the above described exercises. The guide comments on the experience, and helps the audience go through each scenario. It is usually done in small groups. It is an intense learning about blindness, however, still needs to be noted, it is not experiencing blindness. It is experiencing being blindfolded in a challenging environment and learning about obstacles blind people face.
This exercise has so much to teach that I wouldn’t even want to go into it, I would highly recommend that you join one of these events if it is offered where you live. But I think the biggest takeaway here is that blindness is not scary. It may just be difficult at times, it needs many adaptations, but when given all the tools, it is absolutely doable and it does not stop people from living a happy and productive life.
Conclusion
As you can tell by now, the above “blindness simulations” do not simulate what it means to be blind. But all of the experiences have value when used properly, taken for what they are and what they can teach you. I would encourage you to try them out, especially with the help of a professional teacher for the blind, or a blind person. Some of the experiences may change your mind about how you create products and services.
But if you really want to make sure that what you create is useful for blind people, talk with someone with experience, because they will be able to point out the little details that you didn’t think about. Every situation and environment is different, and there isn’t a list of things you can learn to make it just right, it will be a constant learning, and getting better at it.
