Perspectives from a Blind Man: What Blindness Is, What It Isn't

This is a draft of a letter that Daniel Kish prepared in response to the article "Kindness Beats Blindness." This pointed but diplomatic proclamation about blindness places blindness in a whole new light

To Whom This May Concern:

My name is Daniel Kish. I am totally blind from birth, and the President of World Access for the Blind - a nonprofit organization using a modern, No-Limit approach to equalize opportunities for the success of blind people. I hold Master's degrees in Developmental Psychology (where I focused on children at risk) and Special Education. I am the first totally blind, nationally certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist, as this certification was withheld from blind people until very recently. I refer to myself as an Alternative Perception Specialist, because of the highly sensory nature of what I teach. I do not blow my own horn out of fanfare for myself, but fanfare for a few of the achievement possible with blindness - to set the stage for what I wish to share with you. Anyway, 4 years ago, I quit my full time job as a coordinator of educational and enrichment services, to start this organization when I realized a way to teach blind people how to see without sight, and to master their way in darkness.

I commend your wonderful work. Your efforts and good intentions stand tall as an inspiration to us all. I have a concern about the new campaign, Kindness Beats Blindness, which I feel a need to share with you with the expectation that you will understand and appreciate my perspective.

As a blindness professional, I monitor several blindness related mailing lists. When the article, "What Kids Can Do" about Harrington's Heroes came to my attention, I read it with a highly ambivalent reaction. This project is certainly filled with heart and the very best of intentions, but touched me, not with hope, but with a sense of foreboding. I posted a response to the list, and have since been urged by multiple subscribers, sighted and blind, to take the lead in addressing what we perceive to be a well-intended but somewhat misguided (forgive me) threat to the dignity and integrity of blind people, and our ability to gain a position of respect in society. "I wish the staff at Good Morning America could hear these sentiments as they covered this project" said one colleague from the list. I do not claim to speak for all blind people, only myself as a blind person. My concerns arise from a life's dedication to helping blind people find their own strength. I present my response here, not with any intent to criticize, but to raise points concerning blindness that you may find useful and interesting as one who clearly wishes to make a respectful impact on our behalf. I would also like to offer you some insights about blindness from a No-Limits perspective that can set right and further empower this new movement you have sparked. I have found that the best achievements are often wrought through joint efforts in good conscience. Please accept my contribution in this spirit.

When I first encountered this incoming message, my tension was immediately raised by the subject line "Kindness Beats Blindness." Indeed, I have felt beaten and pummeled by many things - misplaced kindness foremost among them. So, my negative reaction was somewhat reflexive. As a blind individual self-dedicated to helping blind people throughout the world gain a place of dignity, respect, and self-reliance in today's difficult, sight dominated society, I read the article with a mixture of chagrin and admiration. In today's society of stress and self-centeredness, who can argue with the need for kindness, camaraderie, solidarity, respect, and all those good things? It seems clear to me from this account that the intention here of promoting compassion is well meant, and is finding well deserved fruition and popularity. My heart-felt congratulations. Is that wrong? If the intention is to promote kindness toward blind people, I respectfully pose this question: Is it kindness that we blind people need? (Perhaps this depends on how you define kindness, and the results of it.) I ask this with genuine respect, because I appreciate the positive endeavor here.

In my experience, what we call "kindness" or "compassion" has stood among the biggest threats to blind people. It is compassion with lack of understanding that has landed many blind people in institutions and kept us out of the mainstream "for our own protection" over the years. "Killing with kindness," as a woman wrote on one of the lists in response to this fine article. It isn't compassion that necessarily benefits blind people any more than others, unless it's well blended with understanding and respect for blindness as a gainful opportunity, not a shameful condition of deficit. Compassion without understanding of human strength and respect for dignity and purpose becomes a dangerous and hurtful thing. I know. I and my students world wide confront this reality every single day. Some have told me after losing their vision, "It isn't the blindness that most bothers me, it's the way I'm now treated." They're not generally referring to people being cruel, callous, or insensitive, but rather too helpful, smothering, condescending, and often lacking recognition of personal potency.

In my experience, blindfold experiences typically raise more fears and doubts, and affirm more myths and misconceptions about blindness than they put to rest. The results have always been disappointing, disheartening, and demeaning. I haven't seen this campaign in action, so perhaps I am missing something important here. But, it seems to me that kids leading each other around for a day with a solemn "the lights go on" ceremony as the finale may do little to promote productive understanding of blindness, and may serve to cause harm toward blind people by way of sending a message of neediness rather than capacity. This approach runs the risk of re-enforcing the destructive idea, already too rampant, that blind people need the eyes of others to reach fulfillment, or even just to get by. In truth, we who have adapted to blindness as a viable way of life often find that notion disdainful and hurtful. Please, forgive my strong choice of words. I mean no offense at all to the wonderful spirit of this project and of your much needed work, and I hope I can help make it the kind of project you seem to intend. Please understand, for many blind people, blindness isn't at all about being lead around, relying on others' kindness, or craving the light of day. Blindness isn't about fear of the dark, vulnerability, or suffering. It is definitely not about what we can't do, or wish we could do. Blindness is about adaptation and resourcefulness, about effective, purposeful, dignified, self-directed living in the dark, about achievement through perseverance. Blindness is about the joy, freedom, and beauty of making our own choices by exercising our own sound judgments and capabilities. It is about the gratification of embracing the world and making the unknown known. Those of us who have seen the New Light that shines in darkness are leaders, givers, and doers, not waiting to be lead or enabled by the kind hands of a warm heart. I fear that, with the very finest of will, this campaign as it stands may serve to backfire by presenting and affirming a twisted perspective on blindness to the children involved, and to the public at large.

Blindness need not be a thing that we must regard as a condition of "suffering." The suffering part of it is ultimately a matter of personal choice as is true when faced with any challenge. While most blind people would probably rather see than not, at the same time many would not regard their circumstances as "suffering." We see and live blindness from a "gain" perspective, not a "loss" perspective. That is the only way we can find and own our power. I think the purpose of fighting blindness isn't so much to combat it as an affliction, but to bring a positive light to the situation of blindness. I call it the "new light." Blindness may be eradicated in a few instances, and good riddance to it, but more realistically and importantly, I submit that the afflictive nature of blindness can and should be addressed in positive, respectful ways without casting aspersions on the condition.

World Access for the Blind, for example, teaches blind people world wide how to "see without sight", and how to approach life with a perspective of success and purpose, not loss. Our main message is "No-Limits", and we mean it. Our students learn to use sound and sonar imaging natural to humans, together with belief in their own capacity, to interact with their environment gracefully and energetically in astounding ways not previously imagined. Solo bicycling, competitive ball play, and wilderness survival without need for the eyes of others are just a few things that become readily possible, not to mention finding quality and enrichment in one's day to day life. The impact on self-worth and confidence is immeasurable in this positive light. In our public and professional presentations, we never conduct a blindfold experience without ensuring that participants leave with a knowledge of how to adapt to the dark, and appreciate blindness, not as a condition of deficit or affliction, but one of strength, capability, and promise. The blindness remains, and the capacity is restored and celebrated.

Imagine an 11-year-old boy named Daniel from Mexico, spurned by his peers and lamented by his loving grandma after being struck blind by a truck at the age of 6. The urgent hope held before him that his vision would surely return was perhaps most confusing and devastating to him. Once angry, bitter, and bewildered, he offered us his heart-felt thanks for showing him how to use "the click of the mouth" to see again, and has returned all smiles to the soccer field and play yard where he has forcefully earned the respect and admiration of his companeros and community. His warm-hearted grandma now regards him with hope and pride, not sadness or pity - engaged in the pleasure of who he is and how he has grown. Not only has he won respect, but he has reached the top of his class in his neighborhood school, and earned the acclaim of the local media for his shining No Limits example to all. As Thomas Baldrick would say, small bodies do, indeed, have big hearts." The strength of Daniel's heart and the fire burning from it is one of the greatest inspirations of my career, and the finest testimonies of our work.

Two of our former students and now good friends (one of whom serving as a key employee) say that losing their vision is the best thing that ever happened to them - that they like who they have become as a result of the blindness. Both have appeared with me on national TV to demonstrate their new found ability to see without sight. One of them, Brian, was called "the world's best, totally blind mountain biker" in Mountain Bike Action Magazine, as he navigated rugged mountain trails on his own bicycle without need of a tandem pilot. Brian will be one of our lead riders in our "TeamBat Over America" campaign featuring blind cyclist riding solo. An avid young athlete, he lost his vision suddenly during the summer before his 8th grade, and his sports gear went into storage. A few years later, he removed his old bike from storage after hearing of our program, and came with us to learn to ride it in the dark, and learn to see again. He is now our most agile rider. He is graduating Pepperdine University with honors, having traveled Europe as an exchange student. While both of these guys would doubtless give up their blindness for sight as it becomes available at some point in the future, both have told me that they would not trade what they've learned and how they've grown through adapting to blindness for a life time of seeing. Neither would I, though I've never seen.

As you can see, we see blindness from a perspective of gain rather than loss, action rather than reaction, taking care rather than being cared for. So, I think before we start beating blindness with kindness as if it were a dastardly thing to be scourged, please consider that it may be more productive and respectful to take a look at shedding the light of understanding on what we propose someday to conquer. Let's not make blindness the scapegoat. In the mean time, we can focus on what we can do right now - making it a viable, livable, even enjoyable and enriching circumstance of living. As an expert in the field, I can assure you that many decades stand between us and the fabled cure for most forms of blindness. I can also assure you that there are many ways to see without eyes, and these ways can be applied immediately with very powerful and exciting results by those who believe and achieve. For the near future, World Access for the Blind is involved in mobilizing the
development of an artificial eye that will make visual information available in detail through hearing and touch. I was inspired to do this after a visit with Prof. Steve Mann, a top scientist at Toronto University, who told me that, given the resources, detection and sensory technology and knowledge are at a point that we have the ability right now to create a device that would allow blind people to "throw away their canes, and take up tennis as a hobby." Preludes for such a device have already been created by my organization, and by Dr. Leslie Kay from BAT LTD in New Zealand, and others. But, for the capacity of blind people to be fully realized and accepted, with or without technology or special training, I submit that we must work with rather than against blindness in a positive way without disrespecting or dishonoring the condition. To do otherwise throws a pall over everything that we blind people strive for - to stand as equals with our sighted comrades, not because of their kindness towards us, but because of our own intrinsic capacity to achieve and to shine. It seems to me that this is, indeed, consistent with the mission statement set forth by Harrington's Heroes.

I mean no offense or disrespect to you or to this fine cause. You clearly intend a wonderful thing here, and finding cures for blindness is a noble and much worthy cause. I think with a little thought, this could be turned into a powerful message of affirmation and respect, rather than one about the meritable easing of another's afflictions. I would be honored and very pleased to help you with this.

With Appreciation and Respect,

Daniel Kish, M.A., M.A., COMS, NOMC

President, World Access for the Blind