My Blind Page

My wife, Gigi, is a blind person, having been almost entirely blind since birth (a few glimmers of light) and totally since mid-childhood. Because of this, I have spent a bunch of time around blind people and I would like to make a few comments in case someone wants my thoughts.

A purpose for this page is to provide some personal and general information about blindness for people who stumble across it. Note that this is not about the politically correct "visually impaired" which my wife does not like, since she is a blind person, a total, unable to see. Note that I say she is a blind person, not that she is blind. Blind is an adjective, not a complete description. In this case, she has earned more money than I do while working less hours and being more active socially than I am.

Recently (2002-03) I have been watching with admiration as our family friend, Suzanne Whalen, has coped with constant pain and restriction to a wheel chair for movement. Part of her recovery has been the retraining of Caddo, her Seeing Eye Dog, by Southeastern Guide Dogs, to guide her while she steers a power wheel chair. A description of a demonstration they did in February 2002 is here: Suzanne & Caddo Guiding As a direct result of Suzanne's demonstrations and pressure, several other schools, including the Seeing Eye, have set up wheelchair guiding programs. 2004-12-19

Help for the Blind

There are two major organizations composed mostly of blind people and a couple of more acting for blind people. Virtually every state has some kind of program for assisting blind people and there is a federal program for recording books and magazines for blind, usually administered at the state level, such as the State Library in Texas. There are a number of businesses that sell products aimed at blind users. Blind students can have textbooks recorded or get tapes of the many books that have been recorded through the library or directly from Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic. Typically, most totally blind people use computer assistance with portable Braille or talking devices or with speech assisted desktop units and partials may use all of these or enlarging displays or adaptive software.

The National Federation of the Blind http://www.nfb.org/ and the American Council of the Blind http://www.acb.org/ are the two leading organizations of blind persons. (There are several additional organizations FOR the blind.) My wife has been active in the first which broke off from the second decades ago because the ACB wasn't aggressive enough. The NFB has been much more militant. Although things have moderated in recent years, for years the two scheduled their national conventions for the same days around the 4th of July. Schools and exhibitors were a factor in moving them somewhat apart. The NFB tends to operate like a union with a low cost convention and keeps control of events without revealing them in advance. The ACB is more like a teachers conference with higher cost and details published far in advance.

Guide Dogs, Canes, etc.

Blind persons choose from several kinds of assistance which may include: sighted people, a white cane, or a guide dog. My wife and most of her friends use guide dogs. Under state laws, a person using a white cane or a guide dog is provided with special privileges, including special attention when crossing streets and taking dogs where pets can not be taken such as restaurants and public vehicles. By law a guide dog may go anywhere the owner is allowed. The owner is responsible if the dog does damage, but the dog can not be charged with damage just for being a dog (i.e. allergies or dog hair in a cab.) Guide dog users are provided with a photo ID showing the dog and owner, but there is no requirement that it be displayed while using the dog as I was recently asked.

Guide dogs are provided by a number of schools across the country. Because there have been several cases of fraud recently, it is good to mention that recognized schools: do not charge for the dog, training or residency during training; do charge a small fee as a responsibility factor - $75 or plane fare; do provide follow up at the user's home by traveling instructors, do not require students to promote the school or do fundraising. Right now most of the dogs being provided are Labrador retrievers, German shepherds or Lab-Golden mixes although almost any dog of appropriate size and temperament has been trained, for example boxers are used to help with allergies.
In most cases, getting a dog involves an application, which can be done online with some schools, an interview, a medical exam, traveling to the school for 3-5 weeks of residency for matching to and training with the dog. Depending on the school, more or less all of the expenses are paid by the school. Some schools will do home placement, bringing a dog and instructor to the student when the student can not travel; but this is not common with first time users. Some schools transfer ownership of the dog to the student, others retain ownership so they can recover the dog if abuse is reported.
Typically, training begins with an evaluation of the student for speed of walking, energy, kind of job, strength, patience, etc., which is followed by matching of the student with a dog taking into consideration whether the dog must rest all day at work or have high energy for traveling constantly, etc. The student immediately begins caring for the dog, keeping it with her at all times, so meals and leisure are part of training. The first walking trips using the harness begin the next day and routes become longer and more complicated as additional features, such as guarding against cars and low hanging branches, are checked out. Eventually, the training normally involves going to the nearest big city for more intense traffic work as well as subway, intense pedestrian work, etc. Once the dog comes home, a month or more may be required to continuously keep the dog on leash and at hand, day and night. This reassures the dog it will not be abandoned in this new location as well as completing the bonding of owner and dog and separation from the instructor.

Fraudulent persons and "schools" and a few misguided attempts to "help" have produced ill-trained dogs and some abuse of the people involved. Further signs of bad operations include requests or demands for payment of $1,000 to $10,000 for a dog, claims that a particular state or area is being ignored or cheated by the established guide dog schools, and demands that a trainee participate in demonstrations, fundraising, or other business activities of the school. Guide dog instructors hired by legitimate schools have undertaken a 3 year apprenticeship at a school. Any good school or instructor should be able to identify their training school and background.

Legitimate, recognized schools include (but if I miss one, are not limited to)
The Seeing Eye, Morristown NJ, the first school in the U.S. http://www.seeingeye.org and the source of my wife's dogs (below).
Other recognized schools include:

Eye Dog Foundation for the Blind	Phoenix	AZ	http://www.eyedogfoundation.org/
Guide Dogs for the Blind	San Rafael	CA	http://www.guidedogs.com/
Guide Dogs of America	Sylmar	CA	http://www.guidedogsofamerica.org/
Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation	Bloomfield	CT	http://www.fidelco.org
Leader Dogs for the Blind	Rochester	MI	http://www.leaderdog.org
Freedom Guide Dogs	Cassville	NY	http://www.freedomdog@juno.com
Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind	Smithtown	NY	http://www.guidedog.org/
Guiding Eyes for the Blind	Yorktown Heights	NY	http://www.guiding-eyes.org
Pilot Dogs	Columbus	OH	http://www.pilotdogs.org/
Southeastern Guide Dogs	Palmetto	FL	http://www.guidedogs.org/
Upstate Guide Dog Association, Inc.	Bloomfield	NY	http://www.ugda.org/ (Western NY only)

What is Blind?

Many people are very edgy about the word 'blind' and 'visually impaired' has become popular. People who are really, really blind, as in no vision at all and maybe plastic eyes that pop out, are much less edgy and make jokes, "visually precluded" being one. "Legally blind" means that a person has such limited vision, even with correction, that they can't pass a vision test with better than 20/400 vision or have other limitations, such as a very narrow field of vision or severe lack of night vision. [My vision with my glasses off is about 20/400: I can barely make out the second row of letters on the eye chart and parts of the E at the top are missing. I am not legally blind because my vision is corrected to 20/20. I keep backup glasses on hand!]

"Totally Blind" means a person can't see. A person who is a "Total" may have a tiny perception of light, but typically does not have enough sight to make out objects to avoid them or find them on the floor. Obviously, a lot more people are legally blind than totally blind and one of the major problems of blindness is that it often progressive and even professionals in the field have been reluctant to encourage a person who will get worse to learn the skills needed when totally blind. For example, learning Braille has been a skill put off by people and the 'professionals' advising them, to the point that parents had to sue to get it taught in schools to young people. One of the upcoming problems with the aging baby boomer population is the increased incidence of blindness due to diabetes, which will increase the number of blind and produce people with poor feeling in their hands, precluding the use of Braille.

In broad classifications, blindness starts with needing enlargement of text in order to read because no magnifying glass will make it readable. This is usually done today with TV cameras and monitors or with oversized text on a computer monitor. Next is blurring of sight so reading is lost as well as the ability to identify people. Here the solution is machines for reading aloud and recorded books. In parallel with these may be loss of peripheral vision, so the vision is like looking through a cardboard tube, and loss of night vision, so that sight is reasonably good during the day, but, as color vision fades at night, the black and white most of us are used to using just isn't there.

House & Kitchen

Among the prejudices we have to deal with is that my wife is helpless (see below) and that if I go out of town, someone has to come in to take care of her. Not only is that not true, now retired, she went to work everyday and made more money than I did.

In our house, you will find a fair number of eye screws attached to the walls above the baseboards. These are for hooking up dogs with their leashes or bed-chains.. Seeing Eye leashes have a snap hook on each end with a pair of rings that allow using it as a short or long leash or as a bed chain. Dogs frequently are attached to a bed leg or piece of office furniture if they have a tendency to creep off to see who is around the corner. When we have a party there may be five or more dogs clipped at various points around the house.

The kitchen is a shared domain and when we rebuilt it, we took into consideration her "real" handicap - she is only 5 feet tall. Since I am 6'3", making a kitchen to serve us both has some interesting choices. When we first moved in, the kitchen was very old and broken down. Someone had cut the top off the built-in cabinets to accommodate the sink and a store bought Formica top. It was even lower than average. Gigi thought it was great until she discovered her dog could walk up and lay its chin on the counter and we couldn't get a dishwasher under the counter. When we rebuilt, the counters are at standard height, but an over-and-under dual-oven is mounted lower than average. I favor the upper, she the lower. The upper cabinets are extra tall (42") for more storage but are brought down to 15" off the counter instead of the more usual 18" (the ceiling in this older house is 108" so there still is space above the cabinets.) The determining factor in lowering them was just clearing the top of our beloved Kitchen Aide mixer. The microwave is under a counter instead on one or hanging with the upper cabinets.

Gigi cooks and likes it and does some things that frighten me - like touching frying chicken in the skillet to see how done it is, missing the fat. She is a very good cook.

The Dog Party

Gigi and Suzanne invented the dog party, and they certainly keep the tradition going. This party is held just before a person to goes off the get their next (or first) dog. It may be held at a restaurant of the person's choice or in someone's home. The purpose of the party is partly to remember the previous dog, who may be retired or deceased, but mostly to share stories of using dogs and previous training sessions. For a first time user, it may include some teasing about "adventures" during training.

These pictures are from Suzanne Whalen's 2001 dog party at the restaurant Celebration just before she went off to Southeastern Guide Dogs to get her retrained Seeing Eye dog, Caddo. At SEGD, there is a program for wheelchair users who are blind. Caddo is the first dog to be retrained for chair guiding after being fully trained as a guide dog at another school. SEGD normally does all the training, and has, in fact, trained a dog for a deaf-blind woman who now goes to catch a city bus. Suzanne is in the wheel chair in the picture at right and in the blue coat in the picture below. [In July 2003, the Seeing Eye announced it would train wheel chair dogs for previous graduates.]

The red dog in the picture at right is Liz Campbell's dog, Bates; Liz works for the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. She is one of several blind people at the party. We had 6 dogs. Other people included Suzanne's coworkers at the elementary school where she taught before the accident and people who have assisted her with dogs and other aspects of life since her accident.

My wife, Gigi has her hand to her face in the picture at right. To her left is Suzanne Whalen. The woman in black above and between their heads is Liz Campbell a reporter for the Ft.Worth Star Telegram.

Background

My wife, Eugenia "Gigi" Fisher Firth, was born prematurely in 1950, which is the middle of the period when the medical profession was learning that giving lots of oxygen to preemies would save their lives, but unless precautions were taken, the optic nerve would be destroyed. There were about 10,000 babies born from 1948 to 1952 blinded in this manner. Some babies are still blinded this way, but usually only under extremely exceptional conditions. As this "pod" of blind people grew older, considerable changes in the way blind people were treated occurred because, in part, this considerable group became really angry about how they were treated by various schools and bureaucrats. Other changes occurred because of similar anger from older blind people who were blinded during World War II.

I am eight years older than my wife. As I grew up in northern Illinois and Iowa, I don't recall ever dealing with a blind person. Looking back at the history of how blind people were treated at the time, I should not find this surprising because most blind people were shuttled off in some corner: kids were in special schools, adults had to battle to get training and jobs.

Gigi is my second wife; she was 34 when I met her. She called me as contact for the Apple Corps of Dallas, a computer user group. She wanted help in setting up her talking Apple II, which was supposed to be shipped ready to use, but had not been. I took on the job myself. I had long been interested in the use of computers by the "handicapped" and had done a couple of presentations at user group meetings showing sip n'puff spelling that I had programmed on my KIM-1 and bringing in people who used computers as assistive aids.

I enjoyed the company of Gigi and the evenings with her and her roommate and friends. Eventually, we got serious and married. For a while I wrote talking software for the blind to use on Apple II computers (and later adapted it for PC's), but people who were on salary developed screen readers that would work with (almost) any program, thus making specialized programs hardly worth developing.

The Dogs

Gigi gets her dogs from The Seeing Eye. About every 8 years she goes off to the Eye for a month and we get to follow up with New Dog days, wherein the dog is adapted to the new environment and worked through the time when a dog learns what it can get away with. I have done this three times. Gigi has had six dogs, Gert, Oma, Zelda, Cara, Bianca, Dolly and now (2005) Elana. (If you ask how a 50 something woman can have 7 dogs an average of 8 years, Gert lasted only through college, dying on the day she graduated, and Zelda developed congenital cataracts and was retired after about 3 years. Dolly died suddenly in the summer of 2005 of an embolism and Elana is being picked up as I write.) (Pictures of some.)

After one unfortunate experience, Gigi now keeps her retired dogs as pets. Her early ones retired with her parents, but they got their own dogs later on. We had Zelda for a number of years and now have Bianca as a pet.

I have enjoyed sharing experiences with Gigi and her dogs. One of the most fun occurred at Scarborough Faire, when we sat on a bench to watch the sheep dog trial demonstration. Bianca was laying on the grass at the end of the bench. One of sheep that was supposedly "cornered" decided to make a break for it in the most open direction, straight at Bianca, leaping over her head and out through the crowd behind us, with a sheep dog in hot pursuit to bring it back. Bianca never flinched, as she should not have, since she was in harness. Several people came up afterward and said her demo of guiding was as impressive as the sheep dog trial.

Caddo and Suzanne's previous dog, Jesse, were amazing in their ability to reverse a path. Many times it was demonstrated at conventions and other confusing locations that her dogs would leave a restaurant or meeting and thread their way back through lobbies, parking lots and hallways to find the elevator, sometimes in hotels that confused sighted people such as five round towers shoved together!

The difference in behavior between the dogs in and out of harness is stunning sometimes. Cara was a yellow lab that was very good in harness - focused on her guiding, barely distractible - who turned into an oversized puppy when the harness came off.

Clichés

Intelligent Enterprise, January 1, 2001, p.39 repeats the cliché, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." calling it an "axiom." Now the first problem is that an axiom is an assumed truth that need not (or cannot) be proved. This is a cliché and a dangerous cliché in a world where more and more people are going to be blind as the baby boom population ages and has an increasing incidence of diabetes.

In fact, if there were a "land of the blind" we can be reasonably certain that the one-eyed man would be either killed or exiled. If he was permitted to stay in the land, it is almost certain that he would be at a disadvantage or his sight would be no advantage, because all "printing" would be in Braille which he could either learn to read with his fingers or stumble over it with his vision. Also, there would be no lighting, as the blind would not need it, so the one eyed man might gain during the day but lose at night and indoors.

This cliché is built on the idea that if you take away vision, you are hopelessly cripple, while in fact there are four other senses to help deal with the world. I find it interesting that the greatest pity is evoked among blind people for being blind and having some other disability, such as deafness or loss of mobility. Blindness alone certainly imposes limitations, but paying attention to the other senses (not developing super-senses) compensates in many ways. The same clues can be used by the sighted who wish to; for example, I use the sound clues my wife does to locate doorways in the dark when I don't wish to turn on the lights at night - tiny sounds such as the refrigerator running or air through a grill which locate a door opening by their presence or absence as the head is turned or body moved. 2005-10-03

Recently, my wife purchased a Pacmate to get a 40 character Braille display and later added StreetTalk talking GPS, although she felt it had disadvantages that Sendero's Talking GPS on the BrailleNote does not, the latter program having been written for blind walking and costing much more, while StreetTalk is obviously a car oriented program, although the soon to be released version 2 is supposed to be better. The current version does not allow input of latitude and longitude (although it will display where you are at) only addresses.

DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) has a file of very accurate GPS Latitude and Longitude positions of all the bus stops, which they have provide me, and there are programs on the internet that will take a latitude and longitude and come up with an address which maps correctly to that lat-long even if it doesn't really exist on the street. In other words, Destinator, Google and others are converting the address we put in to Lat-Long location!!

[Older notes, email reply] After reading your description and going to the site GARMIN: Street Pilot III, it becomes obvious what is left out of the site - the unit does not speak the route apparently, it only prompts for turns on a previously loaded route - right? And then only says distance, not name of street? The more I read about these units and the attempted adaptations of PDA connected to GPS, the more it seems that the solution is not to put the map in the unit, but to put a GPS in a cellular phone (with PDA software?) and simply call a service like Tell Me (800-555-8355) which takes the GPS location and direction reported by the phone and converts it to a street location and routing, which it says on the phone. The current pricing and ubiquity of cellular phones with huge numbers of minutes and small size, including hands off use all support the idea. "Where am I?" "What's Next"

Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 2:37 PM
Subject: Your article
Dear Mr. Firth;
I came across your article while researching for a character study as an actor.....Your writing was informative and enlightening!
Mr. Firth, I am an actor who has been given a role as a blind woman. I am writing to you with hope that you can help me in my preparation for this role. The character that I am developing is a blind woman in her mid 40's and the only absolute about her that I know is that she uses a cane for assistance. The scene that I am a part of takes place in a busy coffee shop and I engage in a conversation with a sighted woman.......Mr. Firth, I am determined to portray my role in an authentic and respectful manner and do not want to rely on the false stereo-typed depictions that are often presented when a sighted person portrays a blind person. Any insight that you could give to me would be greatly appreciated such as: Posturing, Proper use of a white cane, etc.
Thank you for reading this and thank you for sharing a bit of you and GiGi!
Sincerely;
Susan Craves

Well, here are a few thoughts.
Most blind people have been trained to "look" at the people they are talking to by addressing the voice. An older person who has gone blind recently will tend not to do this because they are used to using visual cues as to who is talking, they may turn later than a "trained" blind person does.
The cane is used completely differently when one is progressing in some direction - down a hall, side walk or aisle - and when one is in a more crowded situation, between desks or tables or mingling with people. If you can find a school that has people using canes it will certainly help. When progressing, the cane is swung from side to side in a low arc with the hard tip touching the ground on occasion so the user can hear what is ahead-concrete, wood, dirt, carpet and ideally feel out posts, walls, etc., that are obstacles or guides. When in a closed in situation, the cane users I know tend to hold the cane upright in front of them with the tip near the ground to a) keep from tripping people, b) detect edges that might hurt like tables, counters, doors, etc.
A blind person does not have more acute hearing than sighted people, but under certain conditions will pay more attention to it. You can see what I mean by sitting quietly in a relatively quiet room in the dark or with your eyes closed. After you identify ordinary sounds, very gently turn your head and you will discover that sounds you hadn't realized were there are changing position - the refrigerator around the corner in the kitchen makes a sound that allows you to locate the door to the kitchen, the airplane or traffic far away is uneven because it is coming through windows in some places and walls in others. Many electric lights and small transformers make a slight frying sound.
A step beyond this the detection of walls. If you can, stand in a fairly quiet space where there is an obvious wall and obvious open space - a gym near one wall, a long commercial hallway with a high ceiling, or a lot with a building along side. With a little care you will quickly be able to sense the wall when you move your head - there are echoes off of it, there are sounds missing where it is, it may be warm from the sun, etc.
The cliché most often misused for the blind is that they "look" with their faces when trying to hear. So we get the wide eyed unseeing look as the person turns from sound to sound. Since some people who are blind have some vision (light and dark), they may close their eyes to focus the listening. Most people I know shift the head from side to side, making the sound move in the binaural hearing we have but are likely to not end up facing the sound.
Many blind people, especially those who have never seen, have body habits that make sighted people more or less uncomfortable. Sighted people learn to avoid them by other people's reactions or by using visual cues In some cases, the blind people have had "training" to recognize that they are doing it to avoid it. For example, many blind have eye movements that are random (nystagmus) and many bob the head when not trying to avoid it.
Blind people may have their own eyeballs or may have had them removed. Most who have them removed have plastic prostheses because the empty eye sockets look red and raw (like the inside of your mouth.) Since you are presumably going to have not play with open eye sockets, you will have to choose whether the character has her own unseeing eyeballs, prostheses which look quite natural, or something uncomfortable to look at so she covers them with sunglasses. Some blind people wear sunglasses because light hurts while giving no useful vision.
Your portrayal will depend on what you have to do in the scene, where the scene was properly written for blind behavior (do sighted people identify themselves to the blind person when walking up), and whether the place is familiar to the blind person or not. Like a drunk, acting a blink (blind community term, be careful how you use it) is best when underplayed. If the blind person is called over to the table by the sighted person, almost missing the table, being slightly cautious is better than being blatantly clumsy or rude, which most people don't want to be anyway. If this is a part of the blind person's territory (she comes here often, people know her, she knows the place, furniture is screwed to the floor) then she will move more briskly, touching lightly familiar corners, having oriented herself at the start of the trip. If the person she is talking to bobs around, bends down to get things from her purse, leans across the table for salt and rolls, etc., then the blind person is going to be slightly out of sync with the movements. If you have ever discovered that someone sighted is following your every hand movement and gesture while you speak, so you restrain your movements because they are being distracted from your words [most sighted people take in the whole body, focusing on the face and watching gestures with peripheral vision] then you can understand that a blind person, when dealing with a flibberdygidget will probably not follow all their movements, but stay with an average location.
Part of how you play blind will depend on what the other person gives you to play with. When I am around blind people at a dining table, I constantly edit both my behavior and the table - I may move unnecessary things out of the way and move desired things (salt) within reach. I may move a napkin that is about to fall. When passing something, I put it back just where it was. Without great stress on it, I may mention that the waiter has very quietly delivered the bread or a glass of water. Almost automatically, with friends, if someone is reaching for the salt, I will move it within reach and touch their hand with it. When handing something over, a blind person will never let go until the item is directly taken - as we sighted sometimes put something out toward a person's seen hand, but they are not ready to take it and it gets dropped.
So part of what you will be able to make of the scene will depend on what the other actress gives you or you work out together - is it part of her character to arrange or disarrange the table, etc.
I will give you two acting details from my ancient history.
In the late 60's, I auditioned for a play at the U of Iowa. In arranging tryouts, a scene was setup and I was told to be the bartender. Now I tend to be pretty stiff in any case and get into parts slowly, but worse I had spent zero time in bars - I had no idea what bartenders do while waiting to take an order (wipe the counter, wash glasses, arrange the bottles) and no prep and I was the first one up and I am not sure I would have asked one of my fellow actors what they do if I had not been up. Felt humiliated and walked out.
About the same time, before or after, I did the role of Pozzo in Waiting for Godot at Iowa State. In the early scenes Pozzo is an obnoxious guy, very sure of himself as he passes through. In the later scenes, he has been blinded and is blundering though, but he still has that forceful background and blunders forcefully. Our set had "rocks" fastened along the edge of the stage, which was perhaps four feet above the floor and at the knees of the front row. I chose to charge on to the stage from one side, "fall" off the ramp, skitter around on my hands and knees and blunder off the edge of the stage, "falling" but not leaving the stage because I was pivoting off one of the rocks. I chose to play with my eyes mostly closed but not clinched, so I knew where I was but couldn't really see. In one performance, every time I rocked off the edge, there was laughter, unrelated to the rather horrendous words Pozzo was saying. I learned later that there was a woman in the front row - well lighted by the stage lighting - and every time I tilted, she started to reach out to catch me then realized she should not and withdrew, getting a laugh from people in the balcony who could see the interplay.
Best of luck with your scene.

Mike Firth