The Relationship between Blind and sighted Persons

After filling many pages on the subject of the blind, I would like to tell you a little about the relationship between the blind and the sighted.

I often wonder whether sighted people and blind people live in two different worlds. Here the world of colors, shapes, visual beauty and ugliness. There a world of air and obstacles, of pleasant smells and smells, of birdsong and the noise of construction machinery.

The world of the sighted often consists of strange metaphors. It says, “The eye eats with us” or “His eyes shined”. Many of these metaphors are likely to remain puzzling to blind people. In some cases we learn that sighted people do not eat with their eyes. Other mysteries remain unsolved forever.

Blind people and communication

Communication between two people is very complex. In addition to what is exchanged verbally, there is also the non-verbal level: How are the bodies positioned relative to each other, does one look down on the other, what is the body language? We can read a lot from a conversation on the non-verbal level without hearing it or knowing what it's about. Just try it out, for example turn off the sound on a political talk show. Not only on this occasion, the non-verbal level may be more enlightening than the actual discussion.

Unfortunately, the non-verbal level is largely unavailable to blind people. However, there is a certain amount of non-visual feedback in direct communication. People who are bored become restless: they shuffle their feet, rummage in their pockets, play with their cell phones, and so on.

I suspect that blind people have a stronger sense of nuance. They notice tiny changes in their voice or posture. A person's voice reveals a lot: whether they are stressed, annoyed, tired, defensive... You can tell from the rustling of clothes, the creaking of the chair or the shuffling of the feet whether a person is leaning forward or leaning back, whether they are restless or... is relaxed. The lack of visual means that one is not distracted by external things such as clothing, hairstyle or make-up.

Facial expressions and gestures play an important role in human interaction. A fleeting eye contact can mean many things: an invitation to a conversation, the beginning of a flirt or even a rejection. With eye contact, many things are communicated that would never come up in a real conversation between strangers.

Many blind people confuse their conversation partners because they do not make eye contact. The blind person often looks at the floor, the table or another object of little interest. This makes perfect sense for the blind person because they cannot read any information from the body or face of the sighted person. The sighted person, on the other hand, misunderstands this as aversion, boredom or lack of interest in him or the topic of conversation.

Almost all people who become blind at an older age automatically make eye contact. To be more precise, they look into the face of the person they are talking to, using their voice as a guide. It is difficult to subsequently teach blind people how to establish eye contact or facial reactions to verbal and non-verbal communication. Many frustrations and misunderstandings between sighted and blind people could be avoided if people forego the ritual of eye contact and address each other directly.

Facial expressions and gestures are very complex expression systems. The strong facial expressions are genetically anchored. Laughing, for example, is a physical process that is expressed both in the body and on the face, just like crying. While strong feelings such as joy or anger are hard to ignore, things look rather bad when it comes to more complex feelings. The lascivious smile, the punitive look and so on are largely learned from the caregivers.

This is even more noticeable when it comes to gestures. Our gestures are highly culture-specific. A gesture can mean something positive in one country and be an insult in the next. The facial expressions, however, are similar all over the world. The child learns gestures from those around him by observing and imitating them.

For most blind people, body language is rather weak. Talking with your hands makes no sense to them. It is also difficult to teach gestures to a blind person because they often seem artificial and unnatural.

My theory is that people who later become blind can gradually forget complex facial expressions and gestures. This is because in communicative situations we “mirror” the behavior of the other person. We orientate ourselves on the behavior of others, imitate their gestures or offer a kind of echo. If you watch video recordings of a conversation without sound, you can clearly see that the bodies of the interlocutors are constantly and imperceptibly adapting to each other. Of course, blind people can't do this, which is why they are often perceived as cold. People with late blindness have learned the appropriate reactions, but since they no longer have the visual “mirror” in others, they automatically reduce their expressions to what they do instinctively. For blind people, people with monotonous voices are the most difficult people to talk to because they cannot read their mood from their voice.

Camouflage and deceive

All disabled people gradually develop strategies for dealing with non-disabled people. The American sociologist Erving Goffman examined this impressively in his book “Stigma”. A man with walking difficulties always left the door of his office open when he expected visitors. People could see his wheelchair from a distance and had time to prepare for the “shock”. It was a different time and today many people deal more relaxed with the disability. On the other hand, I have certainly heard of applicants who were invited to interviews and then disinvited when the potential employer found out about their blindness.

Paul Watzlawick's most famous saying was: You can't not communicate. Depending on how you deal with your disability, you also communicate it. In particular, people who have recently become blind or are in the process of becoming blind develop various strategies for camouflage.

Illiterate people use similar strategies: When they're supposed to read the menu, they've forgotten their glasses. When they run over the chair, they feel dizzy because of the flu. But the easiest thing is to avoid situations where they need to be able to see. Then they don't go to the restaurant or the park with their colleagues. A few years ago, the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine reported on a young woman who was almost blind and tried to hide it from her colleagues.

The motive is understandable: blindness is often perceived as weakness and helplessness in society. In older disability cards, blind people are officially certified as being “helpless” and “reliant on constant accompaniment”. An adult who is blind can receive child benefit for the rest of his life if he has no income. Blind people are often treated like little children, called by their names or touched without asking. The blind cane becomes a symbol of need for help instead of a symbol of freedom. Unemployment among blind people is very high, regardless of whether they have training or a degree. One reason for this may be widespread prejudices about blind people.

I know this so well because I used to be exactly like that. The pitying looks from my fellow citizens - which I no doubt imagined, since I can't actually see them - caused me to run around without a cane. Now I'm a little wiser and have enough self-confidence to show off my stick everywhere. It is not the cane that creates the impression of weakness or strength, it is the personal appearance that has the greatest influence.

Blind people and the visual World

Blind people certainly have a sense of visual aesthetics. Many blind women put on make-up or make it a point to carefully match the color of their clothing, even if they have never seen themselves in a mirror.

At least the clothing thing is easier than many sighted people might believe. I know the color and cut of every piece of clothing that I wear regularly by heart. Most blind people will have received help from a sighted person at some point in their life to find out what clothing suits them. Blind women exchange ideas about make-up with each other and with sighted women. And since women go shopping together anyway, there is also regular feedback. And of course reading women's magazines is not just reserved for sighted people. The blind presenter Jennifer Sonntag went into the topic of fashion and make-up in more detail than I could in her book “Invitation to a Blind Date”.

Relationships and sexuality

Relationships and sexuality are just as important for blind people as for sighted people. In this section I would like to focus primarily on relationships between blind and sighted people. The relationship between blind partners is no different than that of sighted people, so I don't need to look at them separately.

For most blind people, visual appearances are not that important. The voice and the smell are important. The voice tells us a lot about a person. It reveals how old a person is and whether they are relaxed or hectic or dismissive. There's no need to say so many words about the smell. Olfactory plays a large, often underestimated role in sexuality. Most people are more concerned with masking their own body odor. But the expression “not being able to smell someone” is no coincidence and rarely has anything to do with poor hygiene. Rather, smell seems to play an important role in choosing a partner. What matters is not the intensity of the body odor. In some cultures people prefer subtle smells, in others intense smells are a sign of vitality and eroticism. Rather, it is important that your own body odor and artificial fragrances match. Anyone who has bathed in aftershave or perfume often arouses more disgust than someone who hasn't showered in two days.

If voice, smell or another factor led to getting to know each other, other things naturally play a larger role. You feel each other out for similarities or differences and check whether it could be something for one night or longer. At this point the differences between the sighted and the blind are no longer so great. When it comes to sexual contact, haptics play a greater role for blind people than visual attractiveness. In the end, what matters when it comes to sex is that both partners feel comfortable.

Many blind people also keep to themselves in relation to themselves. There are different reasons for this. As already reported, blind people often kept to themselves to this day. They attend common schools or complete their training in vocational training centers. They have regular meetings or leisure activities together. Since most temporary and long-term relationships begin early in life, it is not surprising that in many couples both partners are blind. Although blind and visually impaired people often attend the same schools or educational institutions, relationships between blind and visually impaired people are not as common as one would think.

More and more blind people are attending regular schools, undergoing classical training or completing university studies and are therefore meeting other blind people less and less often. On the other hand, if the sighted grow up with the blind from childhood, the fear of contact decreases and a relationship between the blind and the sighted becomes more likely.

However, a second, more psychological factor plays a major role. Today we expect a relationship to be on equal terms. Although there are still relationships in which the man has to say the word and the woman has to obey, hardly anyone would consider such a relationship to be healthy or desirable. An equal relationship between the blind and the sighted or visually impaired is often difficult. Many non-disabled people have a helper syndrome compared to disabled people. There is generally nothing to be said against this, but unfortunately the helper can quickly become the controller. The efforts of relatives or partners to get all problems out of the way may seem laudable at first glance, but they quickly degenerate into control. The disabled person gradually loses the opportunity to shape his or her own life and ultimately flees this relationship. Or he becomes dependent on his caregiver because he gradually forgets how to live independently. It's about very elementary things, like going shopping yourself, dealing with authorities or going to the theater. If you don't do this for a long time, you'll gradually forget how to do it and won't be able to do anything anymore. He becomes dependent on his partner and his goodwill. There are actually people who specifically look for a disabled partner so that they can mother or dominate them, depending on their perspective.

These are of course drastic cases. In my observation, relationships between blind people and sighted partners tend to increase. And they are usually unproblematic when it comes to visual impairment.

Another factor that can stand between partners is the very different world of experience. A blind person tends to enjoy audio books and radio plays, while a sighted person prefers printed books or the theater. However, this is not an obstacle as long as the common base is large enough. Doing everything together is probably the number 1 relationship killer. However, there are certain advantages when a couple shares a world of experiences. Let's take an example: One of the partners is in a wheelchair and can see, the other is blind. In this case, the barriers are doubled: one person doesn't want to go to the theater because he can't see anything, the other can't go to the museum because there are too many stairs. Such relationships are not impossible, but they are often difficult.

Blind people in popular culture

The deaf have developed an independent culture based on sign language. There is nothing comparable with the blind. This may be because verbal exchange between blind and sighted people is not really that difficult. Braille has only limited use as a cultural medium. However, there are a striking number of prominent blind musicians: Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Vanessa Mae, Bobby McFerrin, Andrea Bocelli and a few more.

The number of blind authors is even more striking. There are a large number of autobiographies written by blind people. The most famous person is certainly the deaf-blind Helen Keller. There are also many other authors such as John Hull, Zoltán Törey and Sabriye Tenberken. Of course, none of them are literary figures, but their books probably wouldn't have been as successful if they couldn't express themselves well. Homer, the ancient author of the Odyssey and the Trojan War, was also said to have been blind. From my observation, there are not as many authors in other disabled groups such as wheelchair users or the deaf.

The loss of the sense of sight could result in an increased concentration on verbal and musical expressions. If you already have an artistic streak and are blind, it may be more obvious for you to deal with text and music instead of sculpture or photography.

But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There are blind people like the Frenchman Evgen Bavcar who take photographs with artistic standards; he also wrote an autobiography. The blind artist Silja Korn enjoys a certain level of fame in Germany. In Cologne there is even an association for blind artists.

Blindness and inclusion

The self-confidence of the blind gradually changes. Blindness used to be something people were ashamed of. This is still the case in many countries today. In Tibet, for example, blindness is viewed as a divine punishment.

An important factor for the increasing self-confidence of disabled people is likely to be the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. This convention calls for the equal participation of disabled people. Through the process of inclusion, disabled people are encouraged to take their place in society.

This is a slow revolution. In the past, disabled people who worked outside certain niches were an absolute exception. Most disabled people worked in the civil service, in workshops for the disabled or not at all. Today we naturally expect that we can do almost any job.

Another factor is the improved supply of medical aids. Ten years ago, no one would have believed that there would be a smartphone that could be used by blind people out of the box. Today it makes the lives of many blind people easier because it combines numerous expensive aids into one small device. But the smartphone is also very important on a symbolic level. Perhaps for the first time, blind and sighted people use the same device without much difference, symbolically putting them on equal footing.

Inclusion is already on many people's lips, although not on everyone's lips. But what does that actually mean? Inclusion means that there should no longer be an artificial separation between disabled and non-disabled people. They go to the same schools, watch the same films and, of course, work and live together. They decide together what a livable society should look like, and they curse together about incompetent politicians, slow bureaucrats or expensive rents.

You have to know that disabled people were cut off from society for a long time and in some cases still are today. There are literal barriers such as the lack of a ramp for wheelchair users, but also social barriers such as fear of contact with people with intellectual disabilities. Many special facilities for the disabled, such as vocational training centers, are located far outside the city centers, and the spatial separation also symbolizes social exclusion.

Inclusion is therefore one of the many topics that are currently being discussed, especially in schools. What is certain is that inclusive schools are coming, but the details are still controversial.

The resistance to the inclusion of blind and visually impaired people in the classroom is less great than with other disabilities. They are generally considered to be easy to include if they are sufficiently supported.

The fear of blindness

When a blind man, a deaf man and a wheelchair user walk into a bar... Well, this joke has no point. You can have all-night discussions about which disability is the worst. Not that everyone sees their disability as the worst, on the contrary. The deaf person cannot imagine being blind, the blind person would rather forego his sight than his hearing and the wheelchair user may prefer to be disabled rather than visually or hearing impaired. Even though they have had to do without many things throughout their lives, they have come to terms with their situation enough to be able to cope with the disability.

However, for many non-disabled people it seems worst to have to forego their sense of sight. The world is largely captured visually. Hardly any other being places as much value on visual aesthetics as humans.

Many blind people wonder why they are not invited to an job interview. In many cases, it will simply be the potential supervisor's unwillingness to “hassle” a disabled person. Often those responsible probably don't know how to deal with blind people and that's why they don't invite them.

But I also believe that many people are confronted with their own fear of being blind when they meet a blind person in person. Disabled people are largely banned from everyday life, and even older people are almost only seen in the morning. This is not only due to the barriers in everyday life, but also because they are simply considered undesirable. The removal of physical barriers gradually reveals mental barriers. If you are blind from birth, you may not feel this as intensely as those who become blind later, but you can certainly feel it and it is not always entirely pleasant.

The blind hero

If everything is as easy peasy as I portrayed it in the first chapters, then blindness isn't so bad, right?

It's not quite that simple. Blind people are often under enormous tension. Let's take a fairly everyday situation, like walking on a normal street. The blind person has to do many things at the same time: He is not allowed to walk too close to the wall of the house because there could be objects there or people could come out of the house. He can't walk too close to the road, otherwise he'll take all the rear-view mirrors with him or get tangled up on bicycles. He sometimes has to cross a street in extreme noise and in a nasty crowd of people, with neither passers-by nor turning cars paying any attention to him. Well, shall we swap?

Eating in public is a lot of fun. Of course, you only notice when you get home that your kebab has spilled and you've been walking around all day with stains on your shirt.

Society, but also many blind people themselves, have very high expectations of blind people. If a sighted person walks around with grubby clothes, a three-day beard and a shaggy hairstyle, that might be a fashion statement. When it comes to blind people, you immediately think: “The poor guy can’t even look after himself.” When it comes down to it, there is no blind man's bonus, it doesn't matter how tolerant people think they are. If you don't look the other person in the eyes during the interview, you probably won't get hired, no matter how nice your CV or how convincing your demeanor. The hiring manager doesn't care that someone is blind.

This is not necessarily meant maliciously. Sighted people instinctively distrust other people if they are different or violate conventions. From an employer's perspective, it is also understandable that they would not want to send someone into a customer meeting who cannot make eye contact with the business partner or who stares into space with a fixed face. Of course those affected can't do anything about it, but unfortunately such things don't count in business.

Blind people have to try to orient themselves according to the rules of the sighted world. Of course, everyone can dress or roll their eyes however they want. However, violating such common rules should be done consciously and not because you do not know these rules. Many blind people are not aware that they are violating unwritten conventions because, as already mentioned, they lack the mirror, both the mirror on the wall and the mirror that other people represent to the sighted.

This is one more reason for inclusion in school and outside of it. The sooner blind children receive critical feedback, the better their opportunities will be to adapt to the rules of the sighted. Of course, it would be desirable for there to be more tolerance for deviant behavior among sighted people, but inclusion is also the best means for this.

Unemployment is very high among the blind. The reasons for this vary: A large proportion of the disabilities arise in old age and the previous job is often no longer possible.

People who become blind at an older age are often affected by several tragedies at the same time. The partner can turn away because he cannot or does not want to deal with the blindness, the old friends gradually withdraw because it is somehow easier with non-disabled people, you can no longer recognize the faces of your own children or your surroundings needs to be completely restructured, the old job and many of the old hobbies are no longer an option.

All in all, the psychological and physical strain on blind people can be enormous. Are you not blind, but feel the same pressure to always be perfect? Welcome to the club.