I was just trying to help.

[thefuturemesozoic]

I am surely not the first person to write a blog post like this, and I will not be the last. Ultimately, I am just one blind person (I didn't say a "person who is blind," but more on that later) Anyway, there are things that I really would like for people without disabilities to know, so here is my post. If you don't read this entire post or don't take anything else form it, I would say to ask us what we need before jumping into help, and trust that we understand our own needs. Otherwise, your well-intentioned "help" might cause problems. I will give a few examples below.

One time, I was visiting family in Massachusetts and took a train to get to the town where my dad lives. I got off the train, and it appeared that no one was there to meet me. I wanted to wait for my ride at the station, but the conductor said, repeatedly, that he "couldn't just leave me there." To me, it sounded like he was saying that it was out of his hands, that he was simply following policy to the letter, and, since I couldn't prove to his satisfaction that I wouldn't loiter, he couldn't allow me to get off there, since he had an obligation to ensure that the platform remained a safe place for all passengers. He appeared to want me to get back on the train, go to the end of the line, and then figure out some other way to get to my destination, which I was unwilling to do, since I was at the stop that I needed to be at to meet my ride. Eventually, my brother came and found me. It turned out that he was there all along, waiting for the train to leave, since he was on the opposite side of the tracks. I wrote to the transit agency to complain--I figured that they would at least care that the incident resulted in their train being delayed. I mentioned that I am blind but was careful not to insinuate that I thought that the conductor might have been treating me differently than he would have treated a sighted passenger. I was told that there was no policy preventing me from waiting at the station for the ride and the conductor probably saw that I was blind and was concerned about my well-being. If that is what was going on, then he nearly created the situation that he was trying to avoid, where I would have been left miles from where I needed to be. I felt like I was being told that it was seen as acceptable for the conductor to make up rules on the fly (that I'm not allowed to wait for a ride at the station, for instance), where, presumably, it would not be acceptable to treat an able-bodied person in a similar way. The agent handling my complaint probably saw me as a whiny passenger who was upset that a conductor was just trying to look out for me. I know of two other blind people (in two different cities, neither of which was Boston) who have had somewhat similar things happen to them. They were taking a bus that they often took, but they wanted to get off at a different stop from the one they usually used. Maybe they wanted to stop at the store on the way home, or they were just going to a different destination from their usual one. In both cases, the driver was hesitant to open the door to let them out, saying that it wasn't their stop, and they had difficulty being let off the bus, even after explaining that they were, in fact, trying to get off at a different stop from their usual one. It was as though the bus drivers saw them as analogous to children who needed to be looked after.

A while ago, I was getting on a bus and trying to scan my pass from my phone. The scanner made a low, long beep, indicating that it detected a bar code but couldn't validate it. I was about to show my phone to the bus driver. Then a passenger got up and said, "let me help you." He started to move my phone around, then took it out of my hand. If I were sighted, then I wonder if he would have gotten up to try to help, or if he would have considered it acceptable to take the phone out of my hand. He eventually came to the conclusion that I had already come to, that my pass was not going to scan, and brought my phone up to the bus driver.

Last Christmas, I was at the airport, ready to fly home. I was hungry and wanted some food--it was lunch time, and I hadn't had time to get lunch. I tried to get up from the gate to look for food, and then a gate agent came over and asked me to sit until they were ready to board. Something similar happened to me a few years ago when I got up from the gate to use the bathroom, although boarding had not started yet and wouldn't start for another 20 minutes. I get that airline employees are trying to ensure a smooth experience for all of their passengers, that my needs and wants are not and should not be their only concern. If an airline employee asks a passenger not to do something, then the passenger should comply. I don't want to be an uncooperative passenger. People might want me to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they treat everyone the same. But that leads to asking whether an able-bodied passenger would have been similarly scolded for getting up to look for food or use the bathroom. The question seems absurd to the point that it isn't even worth asking. Things like this are a lot of the reason that I don't like flying.

I figure that able-bodied people will want me to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they aren't treating me differently because of my disability. Sometimes, the rules are the rules. If I don't understand the reason for something, then it doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a very good reason for it. People might feel that of course they know to treat everybody the same, and they might feel insulted that I'd think otherwise. But sometimes I feel like we are vaguely not resumed to be competent the way an able-bodied person would be, and this can cause problems for us. And, if this is happening to us, then I can't necessarily make the assumption that I'm not being treated differently because of my disability.