“I can hope for the future and live in the present.”
If you are unfamiliar with the #HowEyeSeeIt campaign by Foundation Fighting Blindness, this blog post is a good way to get yourself familiar both with the campaign itself and the emotional backlash that followed. I have very mixed feelings regarding the campaign, but do believe that it’s bad PR for an organization to block, ignore, or otherwise censor respectfully provided negative or neutral feedback.
That being said, this blog post not only laments the blindfold simulation itself, but offers an alternative solution.
Thanks for providing some much-needed clarity to what has proven to be an emotional topic for many over the past several weeks.
A fundraising drive related to the blind community went viral. The organization finances great medical research, yet the campaign premise doesn’t sit well with me. I’m split, so I’m reflecting on #HowEyeSeeIt from the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB). Yep, I’m diving into the deep end.
FFB’s digital awareness campaign encourages people with vision loss to ask others to wear a blindfold and do a task together. They record it for social media and label it #HowEyeSeeIt. Amateur, professional, and nationally broadcasted stories were created. Some people pushed back and expressed opposition and rejection of the blindfold usage. The National Federation of the Blind released a letter written by President Riccobono admonishing it. People in the blind community reported censored comments or blocks on FFB’s social media accounts. FFB, a private organization, has the right to delete/block communications on their accounts, but has publicly stated it is not blocking or banning…
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Life Unscripted 
Getting other people to wear a blindfold was how we did the blindness simulation stuff when I was at TAFE or school though I wasn’t big on using social media at that time so what was done we kept to ourselves and just did them. this is years ago now but what we might do here in Australia is totally different to how things are done overseas. if I was going to demonstrate how I do things I’d probably be demonstrating the technology I use more than that. a couple of times I did presentations on blindness and had specticals that simulated different eye conditions plus I’d use the technology I use on a daily basis that being JAWS for windows, voiceover although at the time I did the presentations I wasn’t using voiceover but using a blindfold was probably something that we did because it’s the only way we saw to teach about blindness and I know there could have been other more affective and more dignified ways of doing it but sometimes we aren’t always to know these things.
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