Reducing stigmatisation towards blind people

In this assignment I have chosen to talk about blindness and how design can be used to minimise stigmatisation towards blind people. In today’s society stigmatisation towards blind people is very common. Unfortunately, I believe that a likely reason for this is that the tools that are there to help people who are visually impaired are very visible. It is often easy to see that someone is blind before seeing other attributes the person might have. Tools that can be used today are white canes or guide dogs for example. If a person uses a white cane, it is very easy to see that the person is visually impaired since this is not a tool that others use. A dog on the other hand is something that many people have and many are taking their dogs for a walk. The difference here is that a guide dog uses a special harness that a blind person can hold on to, which differs from the normal leashes often used.

At home blind people are not as exposed as they are out in public, but even without other people judging there might be several things that are hard to deal with and makes a blind person feel more exposed even if no one is watching. The fact that there are few good tools that can help a blind person to do simple tasks at home, like for example cooking, is something that helps with increasing stigmatisation. After seeing a movie about blind people cooking in a lecture, we could see that the blind person avoided using a frying pan and instead used a hamburger grill when making burgers. Also, he used a toaster oven to make french fries instead of a fryer. Even if these tools might not be the first choice for people who are not blind, I think that these two tools are a step in the right direction. A hamburger grill is something that is easy and good to use whether you are blind or not, so in my opinion this is a tool that actually has been designed in a good way. I think that a first step towards decreasing stigmatisation towards people with certain impairments is to try and make sure that tools they are to use can be used by everyone, and that everyone wants to use them. A hamburger grill is a very good example of this since everyone can have it at home, everyone can use it and it might even be easier to use than a frying pan even if you are not blind. This means that if you visit someone’s home and that person has a hamburger grill in the kitchen, your initial thought will probably not be that this person is blind. Therefore, tools of this kind that will make everyone’s life easier, not just a person with an impairment, will really help with decreasing stigmatisation.

In many cases though designing things that are to be used by everyone might not be possible. A white cane for example is something that a blind person may rely on heavily, but a person who is not blind would never use one. Due to this, a tool of this kind is a lot harder to try and incorporate into the lives of people who are not visually impaired. So the questions here are, how can a tool like this be made to feel more “normal” and how can the tool itself be designed in order to not increase stigmatisation towards people who are using it? These are very hard things to achieve and the questions are probably never going to be have one single correct answer.

One attempt to decrease stigmatisation towards blind people is to try and make these kinds of tools stand out less than they do today. An example of this could be the new and improved “cane” that was suggested in the Korean Blind movie we watched earlier in the course. Instead of having a long cane she got a small device that could fit in her hand and vibrated depending on how close objects were. This tool probably fulfils a similar function as a the original white canes, but are a lot less visible and therefore will not expose the blind person as much when out in public.

The harness that a guide dog uses might be harder to change into something else though. The harness is a lot stiffer than a normal leash and will therefore give the blind person being led by the dog a better guiding on how to walk and move, and the harness also shows others that the dog is working and should not be disturbed. Since this tool is something that is working really well and is often used, this might be a tool that should not be changed but the focus might instead be to try and incorporate this into society’s image of what is “normal”. Maybe more blind people should use guide dogs and really try and walk around with them outside as much as possible to make people more used to the image and in that way, stigmatisation may decrease as a result of more exposure to the sight.

In more technical tools, like for example smart phones and computers, there are also often features to help a person that is blind. In smartphones today it is common that audio cues are possible to activate in order to hear what the display is now showing, instead of just looking at the screen like a person who is not blind can do. This is really something that is a good feature in mobile phones and that helps with decreasing stigmatisation. This feature is not only used by blind people, other people who have a hard time seeing and people who think that the text is too small on the screen can also use it. In computers though this does not seem to be as common and another aspect to think about here is how a blind person will interact with the computer in a more advanced way than when using a smartphone. There are keyboards that blind people can use and having computers that tell the user what is now happening instead of showing it can be really helpful. The problem here as I see it is that these tools do not seem as common. The audio cues in smartphones are always there, you just have to activate the function. This means that everyone can buy the same equipment and then just choose in which way to use it, which is really nice. Computers on the other hand might be more difficult. A keyboard that is adapted for a blind person will probably have to be specially ordered or bought from a specific store, while people who are not blind can just go to any store that sells computers or computer accessories. In order to make this more accepted, it might be a good idea to try and have these kinds of tools available in more stores. Making the tools easier to purchase might help with making them being used and displayed more. If people see these keyboards in a store as often as they see a normal keyboard, the increased exposure to the product might in itself help with decreasing the stigmatisation towards blind people. Things that must be ordered or bought in special stores can help with increasing stigmatisation since all of a sudden, the thing is not available where the “normal” things are, you have to go to that “special place”.

So, making tools that are as easy and good to use for people who have a visual impairment as well as people who do not is something I think is an ultimate way of decreasing stigmatisation and really broadening the “normality” area. Although, as mentioned above, in some cases this might not be possible. In these cases I think that there are two possible ways to act, one is to try and make tools stand out as little as possible and the other is to try and make society see them as normal things and not as “special tools” that are only for impaired people. Making new and smaller tools that are easy to use can probably help with making a person who is blind feel less exposed to others. Also, a good approach is to try and expose everyone else to the tools that are good as much as possible so that people will not find them strange just because they are uncommon. Making the tools more easily available and to not sell them exclusively in stores where products for impaired people are available is also a good thing. Trying to avoid this division of “products for normal people” and “products for impaired people” in stores, as far as possible, is something I think will really help with decreasing stigmatisation towards blind people.