Strangely, one of the things I was most worried about when coming to the Royal National Collge for the Blind was being around blind and disabled people. None of my friends or aquaintances have problems and I'm just as guilty as the rest of us of having reservations about being around people with disabilities. How would I react? What would they think of me, still with useful vision (and what vision I had being pretty good at the time I started)?
When I initially visited the college on an open day and came for my pre-entry assessment, there were people walking around with white canes and guidedogs, obviously totally blind. Would I be thought of as a fraud, being (as yet) not totally blind?
When I arrived at the college I was shown to my accomodation. Rather than being in halls, as I had independent living skills, I would be living in a lodge, a prefab building with four bedrooms and lounge/kitchen/diner and two bathrooms. Something like a holiday chalet. I share it with two other guys, both totally blind.
One guy from Scotland, is about my age and has been blind from birth. He has a guide dog and has lived and worked as a muscian for years. We're both on the Music Technology course. The other is 21, from Sunderland, who lost his sight at an early age. He's doing sports therapy, plays blind football for Hereford and the national team and is a fitness freak.
I needn't have worried about living with blind people. The college itself has students with all ranges of vision problems, highlighing just how many conditions and problems there are associated with the eyes. It was so easy slipping into the routine of saying hello and announcing who you are when, walking to the right, holding doors, giving people a hand if they need it, making others aware you're there, whatever. You realise that most people just get on with things and everybody helps each other out. People laugh and joke about their disabilty, the stupid things that have happened because of it. It's all quite easy. The staff are very helpful and trained to deal with disabilty though half the time everyone just wants to get on with things their own way, as normally as possible.
I couldnt have asked for better lodgemates. The lads I'm with are pro-active, get on with life and are fully independent. I could have ended up in the halls of residence with no way of getting away from the partying youngsters and locking myself away in my room. You can chose a bit of company or spend time in my room without being disturbed. We have a great laugh.
It's actually very inspiring seeing how they live life to the full, just get on with things and don't let their lack of vision get in the way. Having been fully sighted I can understand how easy it could be just to give up and sit around depressed thinking that the days of enjoying things has gone. These guys have shown me that if my sight does go completely then there are ways round the problem, different ways of enjoying things I've done as a sighted person.
We do the things together "normal" people do: argue about football, watch tv, go for a pint. We have music wars, (trying to play music as loud as possible and tracks you love yourself but know the others will hate (just for fun - kids these days don't know a good tune when they hear one!). It's great seeing how they do everyday things in life like preparing food, doing their washing or the dishes. They go shopping and they travel to and from home independently by train.
Sometimes they might ask me that I can see, such as how good looking someone off the TV looks or where they've put something. Not because they have to but just to make things easier or quicker, or confirm some assumption they've made. At the same time, they check my Braille writing for mistakes or answer questions about how they do certain things without vision. It's imteresting, as someone who has experienced the world cisually, how they experience and understand things, how they talk of things and express things in visual ways: watching TV, describing things as a certain colour and such like.
The only difference with my new friends is that they have some degree of sight loss or no vision at all. They still have opinions, different tastes, enjoy sport, entertainement, books. Why shouldn't they? (Shoud I say, why shouldn't WE?). They've shown that they're not people with disability but with plenty of abilty.
