In­de­pen­dence Day is com­ing up, which means Trinidad and To­ba­go is get­ting ready for an­oth­er long week­end. Some­body is plan­ning a back­yard lime, go­ing some­where, eat­ing some­thing, def­i­nite­ly ar­gu­ing about traf­fic, and gen­er­al­ly en­joy­ing the fact that Mon­day is a hol­i­day.

It al­so got me think­ing about the word in­de­pen­dence, and how dif­fer­ent­ly that word can sound when you’re blind.

For some rea­son, peo­ple have a very spe­cif­ic idea of what in­de­pen­dence is sup­posed to look like for a blind per­son. Ap­par­ent­ly, true in­de­pen­dence means be­ing able to do every­thing by my­self, all the time, with­out ask­ing any­body for any­thing.

If I ac­cept help, that must mean I can’t man­age on my own. If I ask some­body to de­scribe some­thing to me, I must be strug­gling. If some­body of­fers to guide me some­where and I ac­cept, well, I sup­pose I have of­fi­cial­ly failed the in­de­pen­dence ex­am.

I don’t re­mem­ber sign­ing up for that ex­am, by the way.

The fun­ny thing is that sight­ed peo­ple don’t seem to have the same rules. No­body thinks twice when a sight­ed per­son asks for di­rec­tions, gets some­body to read over a doc­u­ment, asks a friend to help car­ry some­thing, or says, “Can you tell me what that sign says?”

Some­how, when a blind per­son does some­thing sim­i­lar, it’s ev­i­dence that we aren’t in­de­pen­dent enough.

Maybe we’ve just got the wrong idea about what in­de­pen­dence is sup­posed to mean.

Be­ing in­de­pen­dent doesn’t mean do­ing every­thing alone.

I can do plen­ty of things for my­self. I can get around, use my phone, read and write Braille, work, make de­ci­sions and gen­er­al­ly get on with my life.

I can al­so ask some­body for help when I need it. Some­times I could fig­ure some­thing out my­self, but ask­ing some­body would save me 20 min­utes of un­nec­es­sary frus­tra­tion. There is noth­ing es­pe­cial­ly im­pres­sive about mak­ing life hard­er for your­self just to prove that you can.

Tech­nol­o­gy is a good ex­am­ple. We’re of­ten told how tech­nol­o­gy has made life so much more ac­ces­si­ble for blind peo­ple, and that’s true. My phone does a ridicu­lous num­ber of things that make life eas­i­er.

But some­times I just don’t want to use tech­nol­o­gy.

Some­times I’m try­ing to take a pic­ture of some­thing, and I have to get the thing in­to the cam­era frame even though I can’t see whether the thing is ac­tu­al­ly in the frame.

So now I’m mov­ing the phone around, try­ing dif­fer­ent an­gles, wait­ing for the app to tell me some­thing use­ful, and won­der­ing whether this pic­ture was re­al­ly worth all this ef­fort.

Even­tu­al­ly I might de­cide that ask­ing some­body near­by to take the pic­ture would be faster.

That doesn’t make me less in­de­pen­dent. It just means I have bet­ter things to do with my time than wave my phone around hop­ing I’ve found the right spot.

If some­body of­fers me their arm while I’m walk­ing some­where un­fa­mil­iar, I might take it. That doesn’t mean they are now re­spon­si­ble for me. It just means they’re pro­vid­ing some as­sis­tance while I re­main per­fect­ly ca­pa­ble of de­cid­ing where I’m go­ing.

The same goes for ask­ing some­one to de­scribe some­thing I can’t see. If I ask you what colour a shirt is, I haven’t hand­ed you con­trol of my life. I just want to know whether the shirt is pur­ple or whether some­body has once again tried to con­vince me that some­thing is “kind of pur­ple” when it is very clear­ly pink.

Some­times the prob­lem isn’t me at all. The en­vi­ron­ment sim­ply isn’t ac­ces­si­ble.

A web­site can be im­pos­si­ble to nav­i­gate with a screen read­er. In­for­ma­tion might on­ly be avail­able vi­su­al­ly. Signs might be placed in ways that don’t help some­one who can’t see them.

Some­thing that takes a sight­ed per­son 30 sec­onds can turn in­to a much big­ger job for a blind per­son, not be­cause we for­got how to be in­de­pen­dent, but be­cause some­body didn’t think about ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

If you want peo­ple to be in­de­pen­dent, give them rea­son­able ways to do things in­de­pen­dent­ly. It’s dif­fi­cult to do some­thing on your own when the in­for­ma­tion or tools you need aren’t ac­ces­si­ble in the first place.

I don’t mean that blind peo­ple should nev­er need any­one. No­body lives like that. We all de­pend on oth­er peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways. We ask ques­tions, ac­cept favours, get ad­vice, bor­row things, share in­for­ma­tion and oc­ca­sion­al­ly ad­mit that we have no idea what we’re do­ing.

Blind peo­ple are peo­ple too. Shock­ing, I know.

I think re­al in­de­pen­dence has more to do with hav­ing choic­es than with do­ing every­thing alone.

I want to be able to de­cide what I do, where I go and how I han­dle things.

Some­times I’ll do some­thing com­plete­ly on my own. Some­times I’ll use tech­nol­o­gy, my cane, or ask some­one for in­for­ma­tion. Some­times I’ll ac­cept an of­fered arm be­cause it is con­ve­nient and I have some­where to be.

None of those choic­es make me more or less in­de­pen­dent.

There is some­thing quite in­de­pen­dent about know­ing your­self well enough to say, “I can do this my­self,” when you can, and “You know what? Can you help me with this?” when you need to.

So while every­body is cel­e­brat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­de­pen­dence this week­end, I think I’ll keep think­ing about my own ver­sion of the word.

A coun­try be­ing in­de­pen­dent doesn’t mean it nev­er needs an­oth­er coun­try, nev­er works with any­body else or has to do every­thing com­plete­ly on its own. It means hav­ing the free­dom to make its own de­ci­sions and de­ter­mine its own di­rec­tion.

Maybe peo­ple aren’t so dif­fer­ent. Af­ter all, if a whole coun­try can be in­de­pen­dent with­out do­ing every­thing alone, I think the rest of us can man­age it too.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086