6

I am currently supervising a visually impaired student. I noticed that quite often I use phrases such as "from X, we can see that Y" or ask the student to "read paper X" or "you need to look at your maximization problem", etc.. Once the sentence hangs in the room I immediately feel awkward. The student is of course capable to perform what I mean. The student can understand that "from X follows Y", can "listen to paper X", can "revise the maximization problem", etc.. Nonetheless, I wonder what the guidelines in such situations are. Should I refrain from using these words? How would a student who is visually impaired want to be treated?

Buffy
  • 363,966
  • 84
  • 956
  • 1,406
HRSE
  • 1,577
  • 1
  • 12
  • 18
  • 16
    That's an "ask two blind people, get three answers" question. It depends on the person. Most of the affected people I know are in the "say whatever you want, just don't oblige me to soothe your awkward feelings" camp, but they're also low-vision, not blind. – nengel Dec 05 '17 at 07:30
  • 2
    Some blind people I know deliberately use seeing-related phrases, like "You should have seen his face!" – lighthouse keeper Dec 05 '17 at 07:39
  • 6
    When you "see" that Y follows from X, do you literally "see" something with your eyes? "See" has several meanings. –  Dec 05 '17 at 08:36
  • 7
    Those are all "non-literal" uses of your eyes. In my experience they should be fine and no reason to feel awkward. Anecdotally, I had a blind person studying with me and once was sitting with him and other together, solving assignments. He was great at maths. At one point I turned to him for help saying "could you look at that real quick". He smiled and answered "Sure, but that won't help." After I apologized he said that it was actually more of a compliment, that I was seeing him as any other person. – skymningen Dec 05 '17 at 09:35
  • Some people might find this question offensive because it seems to imply that blind people do not understand metaphors. They have the same knowledge of metaphors as everyone else. – Anonymous Physicist Dec 26 '21 at 14:35
  • 1
    @AnonymousPhysicist people who find questions about how to be considerate offensive are probably impossible to please. – Clumsy cat Jul 04 '22 at 16:58

2 Answers2

13

They want to be treated as normal - so phrases like “it can be seen that the result changes X “ are fine but “ take this and divide by this” are not if you are pointing at numbers for example.

One of my friends who is in a wheelchair will say "I walked down to..." it's just part of "normal" conversation...

Solar Mike
  • 28,097
  • 7
  • 60
  • 100
1

Most English words referring to visual concepts also have broader meanings

Most/all of these words/phrases in English have at least one broader meaning than you are using here (but sometimes also the narrower meaning you are using) that would encompass non-visual forms of the concept at issue. Your narrower interpretation of the word takes the visual version of the concept, which excludes blind people, but there is often a broader meaning that encompasses non-visual analogies to what your narrower interpretation. Even in the absence of the latter, communication is highly dependent on context, and the context of speaking to a blind person will generally make it obvious that you intend to refer to non-visual versions of the concepts at issue.

For example, one of the narrower meanings of the word see is to "perceive with the eyes; discern visually", whereas a broader meaning for that word is "discern or deduce after reflection or from information", which encompasses discerning information through non-visual means. Similarly, the word read is broad enough in meaning to encompass the comprehension of meaning from non-visual sources such as tactile symbols (e.g., Braille). In both these cases, the concept can be interpreted in its broader meaning to include non-visual referents for the concept, which are applicable to blind people. Moreover, even in cases where the formal definition of a word is strictly visual, and so would exclude a blind person, the context of speaking to them would imply that you intend to use the non-visual analogy of whatever concept you are talking about.

So, for this reason, I would not stress about your use of words when speaking to a blind person --- if you speak the same way to them as everybody else then the worse that will happen is that you will occasionally use a visual concept/phrase which is implicitly intended to refer to its closest non-visual analogy. I can't speak to the feelings of blind people on the matter, but I suspect that most of them would like to be spoken to just like everyone else, and they are probably extremely adept at interpreting visual concepts to their non-visual analogies. In my limited experience, some blind people have gone to the trouble of developing witty self-deprecating humour to respond to speakers who accidentally invoke a purely visual concept when speaking to them, so if you do make a mistake, you might even get to hear a funny retort and have a good laugh together. (Also, as pointed out by nengel in the comments, this may be an "ask two blind people, get three answers" question.)

Ben
  • 68,453
  • 9
  • 142
  • 263