October 18 Disabilities Awareness Item

Hi Friends,

Email is saving writing time again. This item is a video about how a hospital can better serve blind and visually impaired patients. The video is well-done. The most important thing: ASK how can I help?

The origin of the video is a nice story, which is why I am including the text not just the links. It’s also a nice contrast to my interpreter list lawsuit of the week email, ironically about another hospital in NH that has had to get sued multiple times about abysmal treatment of deaf patients.

I assume the NH Association of the Blind site has interesting material but I watched the video on Youtube and then poked at some of the other stuff served up by YouTube. The video mentioned here is about 15 minutes long; I of course have quibbles, cavils and annotations below the end of the email.

"How Can I Help You?"
Last year, client members of the Advocacy Committee of the New Hampshire Association for the Blind shared personal stories about difficulties they had experienced as persons who are blind or visually impaired in hospitals and other medical practices and facilities.

The group asked:"How can we change things?" "How can we train hospital staff so we can have the same access as sighted people?"

The decision was made: "Let’s make a training video."

With this goal, the committee got serious, deciding what situations would best illustrate the problems blind and visually impaired people often face while getting medical care.

The committee met with Concord Hospital and discovered they had a partner with a strong interest - and the ability to produce training videos. The Committee wrote the script, acted the roles, and trained hospital staff and volunteers, the hospital filmed the video.

Partnering also with the New Hampshire Hospital Association, the NH Medical Society, and the Home Care Association of NH - total memberships of these partners total over 2,000 medical practices in New Hampshire alone - this video is now available to all.

To Watch and\or Download: Go to: http://www.sightcenter.org/  - on the front page menu open Resources Tab, select Video Links, read the story of how the video came about and select Watch or Download.

You can also see it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlP7mCr3LmQ


It is the hope of the New Hampshire Association for the Blind, that any organization that wishes may use this video for staff and volunteer training purposes and to promote accessibility for persons who are blind and visually impaired. We also encourage others to create similar tools and disseminate them broadly.

Thank you,
George Theriault President & CEO
New Hampshire Association for the Blind

Now some quibbles, cavils, at least one confession, and further annotations due to peculiar focus first of all on my own issues:

Vision Experiences
There is a sequence of images simulating several different vision experiences. They left out floaters and double vision and did not mention changes in color perception, reaction to glare, and various other points that, for me, make mind-altering substances basically superfluous. I was reading the other day about some more things to try about indoor glare but that does not do anything about the stuff fgoing on inside my eyes.

Seeing Eye Dogs:
Different Seeing Eye Dog schools have slightly different approaches and commands. The man in the video at one point uses a Follow command. I have never seen guide dog uses I know use that command and I think it might be a different schools issue.

Seeing Eye Dog confession:
In grad school I read for a colleague connected with my program. She had recently gotten her first seeing eye dog, a big friendly Labrador who almost did not make it through her first year ofwork for chasing squirrels. Sparkle, the dog, would recognize me across the library and start dragging my friend toward me. My friend had no idea what was going on and one day I made the mistake of saying Hi to the dog before I said Hi to her. She INSTANTLY knew what was wrong and after that I always said Hi to my friend and TRIED not to talk to the dog until they were safely at the table and the dog was at liberty to greet.

Sighted Guide / Being Led Around / Mobility:
You are getting this video rather than either a rant about things other blind people and I do that completely annoy each other, about how flocks of blind people sometimes handle getting around in groups, or about all the white-cane related things I spent my White Cane Awareness Day doing before I even left the house.

One IMPORTANT point: if you are even thinking of offering to lead me around, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS ask first. I have lots of issues of stride length and body size. One of the things that made me think about carrying a white cane was making a list of lots of injuries of varying severity related to not seeing things. I just DO NOT have either margin about some safety issue or time and words to argue about split-second decisions. One benefit of carrying a white cane is that I use my eyes to avoid big things and the cane finds stuff I used to look down a lot about. When I started using a white cane and walking more erect, a whole bunch of back and neck pain magically went away!

In the Light

(RantWoman)