If you’re a person with any kind of disability you’re always aware of two different worlds: there’s the one for people who are physically normal and one for folks who need to negotiate in alternative ways. And of course saying this is like announcing there’s a crow in the poplar: the observation is so customary it scarcely calls for reflection. But sometimes, even if you’ve had a disability for years, the inequality of worldly environments comes over you, you see that 20 years after the passage of the ADA your local university still doesn’t have accessible restrooms in its major academic buildings. Or you see how in the digital era software and hardware devices for blind and visually impaired people are lousy compared to the “out of the box” technologies that everyone else can buy at their local cell phone store. And the whole thing sticks in your throat. A world of true access and equality still seems far off.
The idea of full inclusion for people who have disabilities still feels like a fitful illumination. The notion is conjectural. We can imagine it all we want.
However one way to think of imagination is to say that it is “want” raised to a power. Imagination is not passive. The man or woman who possesses imagination doesn’t wait to be rescued. Imagination is the answer to a question that hasn’t been properly asked.
“When will you get there?” becomes, through imagination, “How will you feel when you get there?” Imagination is the anodyne to despair since it doesn’t admit of the passive conditions of subdued citizenship. Another way to look at this is to say: “When the world is finally equal will you still have your soul?”
Most days I find myself engaged in nearly unintelligible quarrels. But the last question is the true one. It takes some strength to stay hopeful, but hope has its own rewards.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Imagine, if you will, true universal access. It would probably need to be some sort of direct connection to the brain. As a low vision rehab specialist, I have come to envision the brain as a conscious entity encased in a dark, silent, fairly impenetrable skull. It uses the various senses to bring it external information. When the senses cannot do its bidding, it relies on either the internal landscapes that it already possesses or the assistance of others for its comfort and sustenance. But perhaps we are already working toward the day when the conscious brain will reside within acquisition and dissemination tools that are eternally renewable. It’s interesting to imagine. But right now? I knock gently on the side of my skull, and a voice inside says, “Stop it! That’s not funny.”
LikeLike