Visually
impaired community
Wrd 110
October
13th 2015
Jonathan
Barnes
Think about your day to day life,
how you walk to class or work, driving from place to place and reading the news
or a book. Now imagine all of that not being possible without help or not at
all possible. The community of visually impaired is larger than most people
think. When most people think of visually impaired people they think of ether
people who need help with glasses or the worst case scenario of being
completely blind. Being legally blind means that your vision is so close to
being gone that the government considers you to be blind. What most people
don’t know is that there are ways for them to still be active in their
communities, to drive and to have a job.
If someone was to think of a person
as close to blind as possible without being blind or being legally blind one
might think that there is nothing for that person to do in the world. People
who think like this have been miss informed, with all of the disabilities that
are out in the world today groups have started to come together and formed
different sports teams. Dan Clark talks about different things that people who
are legally blind can do “Many areas have centers and groups for blind people.
These places offer additional resources, and they may also be have regularly
scheduled events and outings for members of the blind community”. Centers like
this are all over the country and help to get people who are legally blind be
more active.
Learning how to drive and get a
driver’s license for someone with good vision is as easy as 6 months driving
with someone and 6 months only able to have one person that isn’t family in the
car. But did you know that people who are legally blind can get there driver’s
license too. When someone is legally
blind the process becomes a little more complicated. In order for someone who
is legally blind to get their driver’s license they have to get fitted with a
pair of special glasses like the ones above, go through a driving class, go two
years only being able to drive in the day, then go through a night driving class
and after that they are allowed to drive whenever they want. This process is to
ensure that the driver has gotten enough experience so that they won’t freak
out behind the wheel for no reason. With all of the obstacles for them to get a
driver’s license, Jamey Boyum interviewed Tillson a legally blind
driver and she talks about the joy that getting a license did for her ” “It was
a great moment," Tillson said. "You could tell how excited she was,
how much of an aha moment it was that this was really happening”, not to
mention that after they get their driver’s license it becomes a little bit
easier for them to get a job. The joy that is talked about can be seen in the
second picture of my father driving for the first time after he got his full
license.
With today’s world it would be very
easy for someone who is legally blind to go through life and not have a job the
entire time, but there are those who choose to get a job. For those of the
visually impaired community are legally blind and want to work there are a
couple of different avenues for them to take. One of the ways for them to go
about this is to apply for a job like the rest of us, the only difference is
that they have to let the company know that they are legally blind. Another way
that they could get a job is by going to a government organization called OSEA.
This government organization helps people who have disabilities such as being
legally blind find and get a job. After OSEA helps them to get a job, if it is necessary
they will provide the disabled worker with any tools that are needed to perform
the job properly such as computer programs like dragon or large scale magnifying
glasses. Another piece of equipment that they might provide you with is a
computer that you speak to in order to type and that reads it back. Computers such
as this make it easier for people who are legally blind to handle documents on
the computer.
These are just some of the things that
are happening within the visual impaired community that people just aren’t aware
of. There are people out there that are almost blind and could walk around in
everyday life without you having any idea and perform jobs just as good as or
better than people with good vision. So the next time you see a person that is
legally blind don’t think about what their disability keeps them from doing but
what challenges they over come to be here.
Biography
Boyum, J. (2015, April 1). Legally
blind woman about to get her driver's license. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
Clark, D. (n.d.). Activities for
Blind People. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
Products for the disabled - Blind,
low vision, Magnifiers, legally blind, macular degeneration, dyslexia, reading
disabilities, voice recognition. (n.d.). Retrieved October 14, 2015.
