Blind­ness Aware­ness Month al­ways makes me think about what recog­ni­tion ac­tu­al­ly looks like in re­al life, not just in aware­ness cam­paigns. 

On May 18, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion marks 112 years of ex­is­tence. 

One hun­dred and twelve years of blind peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go work­ing, study­ing, rais­ing fam­i­lies, build­ing ca­reers, form­ing re­la­tion­ships and cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ty long be­fore ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty was ever treat­ed as stan­dard. 

It al­so made me think about how that kind of recog­ni­tion does not come out of nowhere. It ex­ists be­cause blind peo­ple have been recog­nis­ing each oth­er’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties, long be­fore any­one else learned how to de­scribe them prop­er­ly. 

A con­ver­sa­tion I had re­cent­ly with my boyfriend stood out to me for just that rea­son. 

“When I look at you, I don’t see your dis­abil­i­ty. I see a woman who can do any­thing that a nor­mal woman can.” 

He said this very ca­su­al­ly, which I think mat­ters, be­cause peo­ple tend to imag­ine con­ver­sa­tions like this hap­pen­ing in slow mo­tion with emo­tion­al pi­ano mu­sic play­ing faint­ly in the back­ground, as if some­body near­by is film­ing a doc­u­men­tary called Love Be­yond Sight. 

That was not the at­mos­phere at all. We were just talk­ing. 

Be­fore any­body gets stuck on the word­ing, yes, he is blind too, which changes the en­tire shape of the con­ver­sa­tion. 

He wasn’t try­ing to re­as­sure me about my blind­ness or prove any­thing. He was talk­ing about ca­pa­bil­i­ty, and about the fact that he gen­uine­ly be­lieves I can han­dle things. Solve prob­lems. Build a life. Move through the world prop­er­ly. 

It came from some­one who knows what blind­ness ac­tu­al­ly looks like out­side of aware­ness cam­paigns and in­spi­ra­tional speech­es. The lived ver­sion. The or­di­nary ver­sion. The ver­sion where your screen read­er sud­den­ly de­cides to speak at the speed of an auc­tion­eer for no rea­son, and you just sit there try­ing to de­code it like it’s a for­eign lan­guage ex­am you did not study for. 

The way strangers speak to you like you are ei­ther five years old or re­turn­ing from war. The way peo­ple be­come deeply in­vest­ed in whether you can make tea in­de­pen­dent­ly. The way ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is still treat­ed like a favour in­stead of a base­line. 

He un­der­stands all of that be­cause he lives it too. 

And be­cause of that, his cer­tain­ty stood out. There was no hes­i­ta­tion in it. Just be­lief, stat­ed like fact. 

Blind peo­ple spend a lot of time ex­ist­ing around hes­i­ta­tion. From em­ploy­ers. From strangers. From peo­ple who think they are be­ing re­al­is­tic when they are re­al­ly just un­fa­mil­iar with blind­ness. 

Some­times it is sub­tle. Peo­ple ask ques­tions care­ful­ly, like they are try­ing not to of­fend you while al­so cal­cu­lat­ing your en­tire life abil­i­ty in re­al time. 

“You trav­el alone?” 

“You work?” 

“You cook?” 

“You use pub­lic trans­port by your­self?” 

Cu­rios­i­ty is fine.

I would rather that than si­lence. But the ques­tions still re­veal some­thing un­der­neath them: the as­sump­tion that blind­ness places a ceil­ing on a life. 

Es­pe­cial­ly for women. 

Blind women of­ten get trapped be­tween ex­tremes. Ei­ther they are treat­ed as frag­ile and de­pen­dent, or turned in­to in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries for do­ing things that are ac­tu­al­ly just… liv­ing. 

There is not much space in be­tween for be­ing or­di­nary. 

For be­ing in­tel­li­gent with­out sur­prise at­tached to it. 

For be­ing ca­pa­ble with­out it be­com­ing com­men­tary. 

For be­ing hu­man with­out ex­pla­na­tion. 

Mean­while, most of us are just try­ing to live reg­u­lar lives. Work. Study. Pay bills. Fall in love. Avoid phone calls. Ar­gue with cus­tomer ser­vice sys­tems that in­sist they are “very user-friend­ly, ac­tu­al­ly.” 

Hu­man things. Noth­ing cin­e­mat­ic. 

For 112 years, blind peo­ple in this coun­try have been liv­ing that truth in dif­fer­ent ways, long be­fore the rest of so­ci­ety caught up to nam­ing it. 

When you live in a world where peo­ple speak about blind­ness as though ca­pa­bil­i­ty among blind peo­ple is some­thing new, some­thing mod­ern, that kind of his­to­ry mat­ters.  

We have al­ways been ca­pa­ble. 

The re­al is­sue has al­ways been whether so­ci­ety was will­ing to recog­nise it. 

Aware­ness alone is not enough any­more. Most peo­ple are aware blind peo­ple ex­ist. Ex­cel­lent. We have achieved vis­i­bil­i­ty. Won­der­ful news for all in­volved. 

Un­der­stand­ing is dif­fer­ent. 

Un­der­stand­ing means recog­nis­ing blind peo­ple as com­plete hu­man be­ings in­stead of re­duc­ing us to ei­ther tragedy or in­spi­ra­tion. It means un­der­stand­ing that blind­ness does not can­cel out in­tel­li­gence, am­bi­tion, hu­mour, com­pe­tence, sex­u­al­i­ty, lead­er­ship, or pos­si­bil­i­ty. 

Blind peo­ple are not spend­ing our lives wait­ing qui­et­ly to be res­cued by mo­ti­va­tion­al speech­es and pub­lic sym­pa­thy. 

We are al­ready liv­ing. 

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