Analysis of the movie “Blind”

Often when she walks, she walks quite quickly. Of course, experience makes perfect, but even then, she seems a bit to bold when walking. For example, she walked out of her apartment through the storage area, she walked in a straight line in the middle of the corridor instead of dragging her hand against the wall. She also sometimes walks quite quickly in unfamiliar places.

I was quite surprised that she didn’t want to accept the distance sensor device. Sure, she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she needs help, but the device was something she had a big need for, especially considering the incident when walking through traffic and almost being run over multiple times.

At the end of the movie when they fight outside the building, she has accepted the distance sensor device and uses it for the first time, to wait for the right moment to hit the attacker. She knows that more frequent vibrations means whatever it’s pointing at is closer, but she shouldn’t know how fast it vibrates for what distances, yet she manages to get a perfect hit which is the thing I found the most unbelievable in the whole movie.

Overall, I think the main character is pretty believable, except for minor things here and there, her ability to deduce way to much information with just her hearing, and that she’s a bit to bold, but it’s an entertainment movie so I didn’t really expect otherwise.

— Andreas Wennerberg

Blind at Centralstationen

Outside the central station of Uppsala, as well as between most bus stops and the road, there are paths of tiles that are grooved as opposed to the regular flat tiles. Those are made for blind people so that they can find their way around easier.

I was there to try them out, and for me it was quite easy to feel the difference between the grooved tiles and flat tiles through my shoes. The grooved tiles was also slightly lower than the flat tiles, which helped a lot as well. Since the grooves are directional it is also fairly easy to figure out which direction they go.

Of course, since these tiles are meant for blind people, one naturally has to try them without looking to fully experience how effective they are. With my eyes closed, it is very hard for me to keep track of where I am. I believe that this would be less of a problem for people who are actually blind, since they have much more experience, but I would imagine that it would still be quite difficult, since you’re essentially just walking along a very long straight path in the open with nothing to reference against. Even if you were to be able to use echolocation, it probably wouldn’t be of much use since everything is so open. Also, If you were to leave the path, it would probably be a bit hard to find it again, since it’s a big place and you very little to use as reference. While it’s quite easy to feel the difference between grooved and flat tiles, it’s not exceedingly easy, and the paths are quite thin, so if you don’t know where the path is, you could easily miss it.

When I was there, there wasn’t many people around, but even then I felt very uneasy walking around with my eyes closed. If you’re blind and looking for a thrilling / terrifying experience, walking around the station at rush hour seems like a good choice.

While most people have probably noticed these paths, I wouldn’t think most people have paid much, if any, attention to them. When people walk around, they walk along them or across them like if they weren’t there, and they don’t stick out particular much. Therefor, I don’t think people would pay attention to if someone followed the paths and just think that it’s a seeing person, unless that person has white cane. Even then, I wonder if people would connect it to the paths.

Speaking of canes, I would imagine that swiping your cane over the ground would be an effective way of finding these paths. Doesn’t sound very healthy for the cane though.

— Andreas Wennerberg

“And I’m like, I would not have came to the grocery store by myself if I couldn’t load the groceries back into my car.”

People are very used to doing things the way they are used to. Since most people are more or less the same, it’s easy to forget that there are more than one way to do things which most people have a standard way of doing. Most people carry their groceries with their hands, so if a person has no hands, it’s easy to be surprised and wonder, “Then how can that person carry groceries? Don’t you need hands to carry groceries?”.

Persons who have had no hands for a long time has likely already wondered those questions themselves. You just have be creative and figure out another way, for example, in the case of having no hands, carrying with a bent arm, using a backpack or holding it using ones teeth. Since disabilities are just that — disabilities — the alternative ways might not be as easy or efficient as the way most people does the same task, but it might still work quite well once you get used to it. People have an amazing ability to adapt to situations; Just like your average person would try to overcome difficulties in their life, a person with impairments would try to overcome their disability. Most people just want to move on with their lives by themselves without having to rely on people all the time. Even more so with disabled people, since having people do things for you and pitying you all the time easily becomes tiering and highlights that there is something wrong you.

Since seeing a person with an impairment is not that common, many people might not have thought about the fact that these persons have to deal with this constantly, so it’s a natural reaction to think that that person might want or need help, while they might in fact be perfectly able to handle it themselves, and they might rather wish you treat them like a normal person. If they need help, they’ll probably ask.

In conclusion, don’t take for granted that people with impairments need help with unless it actually looks like they are struggling. People can and want to do things themselves.

— Andreas Wennerberg