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Offsetting The Handicap Of Blindness

Creator: Lucy Wright (author)
Date: May 1, 1918
Publication: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Source: Available at selected libraries

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OFFSETTING THE HANDICAP OF BLINDNESS

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By Lucy Wright, Associate Director, Boston School of Social Work.

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The present stringency of the labor market has opened up opportunities for the present, at least, for use of handicapped labor, as never before. Among returned disabled soldiers it is so probable that there will be a certain number of blind men, that the government has already prepared a plan for their reception and special training. It is especially worth while, then, at this time, to try to formulate some fundamental principles of social case work in readjusting industrially men handicapped by blindness.

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Foremost among these is the principle that all the work must be work with and not for the blind. If the "give and take" relation is the essential working basis of all good case work, it is doubly so in work for the physically handicapped. It is quite usual for blind men to ask: "Will you see what you think of my case?" A man of rare ability with oncoming blindness may put this to you: "I have a year, they say, before I shall be totally blind. I expect you people to tell me how to use that year to the best advantage." Another may say: "I am willing to do my part, but I cannot manage alone against such heavy odds. What will society do about my case?"

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If we are to work intelligently with the blind we must first find the man behind the handicap. That is, I believe, the only hopeful basis on which it is possible to equalize his chances in such a way that he may make the contribution he has to make to society, be it small or great. To find the man behind the handicap is not, however, so simple a program as it may seem.

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There are, first of all, certain obstacles in the minds of the rest of us. Blindness is a very obvious handicap. We who are relatively whole cannot help dwelling on what is gone rather than on what is left in others. It takes a blind person to say, as one cheerful, successful blind woman said to me, "Why, it's not the fact that you're blind that counts, but only how you take it!" We sighted ones even "speak up loud" to people who wear smoked glasses, so vague is our concept of what may be going on behind those glasses in the mind of the person who simply cannot see with his eyes. We do not trust and understand the intellectual life without sight or the use of other senses as well as that of sight, and so we class together men who cannot be classed together in any other respect than that of the physical handicap they suffer in common.

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The very existence of organized work with the blind from nursery to special work shop, encourages the tendency to lump the blind in a class. The best efforts of the best workers, blind and sighted, have not been able to offset the danger, and will not be unless, at this moment, when a share of the world's attention is turned to the physically handicapped, we succeed in "putting over" some such idea as I have suggested.

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This idea will not be particularly pleasing to those among the blind and their sighted champions who believe that blindness is in itself a qualification for special consideration for it cuts right through the whole exploiting design. It removes the basis for either emotional or exclusively political handling of the industrial affairs of the blind. Without doubt the most serious obstacles to the development of a plan of work with the blind, on what a blind man has called "the something for something" basis, as against the "something for nothing" basis, lie in tendencies of both blind and sighted supporters of this cause to exploit the situation of the blind for emotional and political values rather than to develop it on the basis of a reasonable efficiency. This is regrettable, not only on economic grounds, but because it puts the blind and work with the blind on a false, unstable and temporary basis, and cannot, in the long run, bring them happiness and usefulness. Emotional exploitation is usually the fault of the sighted. Political exploitation is more often the fault of the blind, and the measure of success or failure of work with adults depends very largely upon the leadership in this respect within these two groups.

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The great advance made in every department of social work in the direction of tests and estimates of individuals has greatly improved the quality of social case work with the blind. This is illustrated in the department of education of blind children, by the work of Robert W. Irwin in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio. Here we see the prospect of equalizing chances in life for physically handicapped children, not only by giving them equal opportunities with sighted children, but by sifting within the group the sub-normal from the sound and training them appropriately. These are first steps. The principle needs only to be carried further in work with adults, and made to cover character as well as mental and physical tests, until we acquire a basis for and skill in estimating the possibilities of individuals, in time to be of service to them and to the community. One example of a move in the direction of this testing-out principle is illustrated in work for adults, under the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, by the effort to use home-teaching of the blind as a preliminary try-out before shop training. This plan makes occupation therapy a test, if not a step, in pre-vocational training of blinded adults.

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