by Hannah Fairbairn
During the pandemic everything went online, and a lot of it stayed there! Many committee meetings, support groups, courses, and doctor’s visits are still virtual. This has obvious benefits, but we have lost practice asserting ourselves in the world of sight.
How to speak up effectively when sighted people are using visual cues is a skill that takes learning and practice. Non-verbal communication among people who see conveys more than words; they express intention, feelings, exchange invitations to connect, and of course can see who is there.
How to respond to invisible incoming cues has been left out of skills training. This is a serious omission! Acquaintances, receptionists, and cashiers invite us without speech, and expect us to know where they are standing. Because speak-up skills are rarely part of training programs, we learned to manage these almost daily interactions — often awkward, sometimes distressing — by ourselves. And the result can be coping mechanisms that aren’t productive.
In a couple of introductory discussions, an instructor can explain the concept of speaking up and offer basic tools including what rights we have under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). After this, role-playing is an excellent method of putting the ideas into practice.
A small group of people who all live with blindness or low vision can work on solutions to common situations by role-playing them. It’s dynamic and often hilarious as participants start acting the parts, trading roles as the blind person, obtuse cashier, and the irate customer at the front of the line. It relieves the interaction stress and, most importantly, the group comes up with great ways to tackle the issue fast. After a few sessions, some participants will be ready to continue independently.
Assertiveness is defined in “Your Perfect Right” (check end of article) as “expressing our needs and feelings honestly and comfortably.” We have to speak up with a tone and demeanor that is assertive: “direct, positive, and firm,” and with blindness we have to be specific, too. This is quite a skill and takes practice and preparation, coaching the sighted person we are talking to how to communicate with us while keeping things relaxed.
Practicing assertive speech when you are the customer or patient is a good place to start, because you are paying the bill! Family, especially extended family, can need a more strategic and long-term approach, and employees whose blindness is not a feature of their employment have to have extra assertive and strategic skills.
Social events are important for everyone. We humans need the company of others. We absolutely need our blind friends, but we also need to have skills to engage in the sighted social world. As you know, social events for 6 to 10 people often work well for blind and sighted people alike, especially if guests are mostly sitting down. Large events where people are standing and moving around are far more sight-dependent.
If your hearing is good, you can pick up on breath, fabric movement and other subtle indicators and distinguish the tone, distance and direction of a voice, but still cannot perceive the non-verbal cues that start interactions or know who is standing where.
After staying home so long during the pandemic, it’s no surprise if some of us have forgotten what assertiveness in social settings feels like. It’s uncomfortable to express our needs out loud. But people who cover up and cope can end up depressed or angry.
Of course if it’s a birthday bash for you, or you are the speaker at an event, asserting yourself is easier. But if the event is for someone you don’t know, or you haven’t arranged assistance in advance, it takes confidence and clear thinking to have a satisfactory time.
We do practice whenever we open the front door or walk into a store, but it’s more effective and much more fun to practice with a few other people who share the problem. Here are situations that come up pretty often:
- Getting to the back of the line
- Finding out who you are talking to and where they are standing
- Mentioning your vision loss in a few words
- Deflecting intrusive questions about your vision
- Joining a group already talking
- Asking for accommodation before or during an event
This fall I will be working with groups and workshops to find out what people want to practice in speaking up, and what has changed post-pandemic. I am beginning to work on a short practice book of speak-up skills and role-plays, a companion to “When You Can’t Believe Your Eyes: Vision Loss and Personal Recovery,” 2019. (NLS 11619, and Bookshare)
Cited in this article:
“Your Perfect Right: Assertiveness and Equality in Your Life and Relationships, 10th Edition.” Alberti & Emmons. NLS 90308