History of Blindness Conference: Updates and Impact

The International Conference on the History of Blindness and the Blind which took place in Paris in June 2013 made a huge impact on me both professionally and personally. I learnt an immense amount about the history of the blind in various countries and at various times. I met a wonderful selection of interesting, intelligent and accomplished individuals and have already continued a number of conversations started there.

Below I list (in roughly chronological order) blog posts, webpages and recordings related to or inspired by the conference.

 - All the conference presentations are now available, both in English and in French, on the Singer-Polignac Foundation website.

 - My Blind Spot posts 'Guide Dogs for the Blind' and 'Where has (all the) Braille gone?' were directly inspired by the conference.

 - Author Mike Mellor wrote about his role in the conference for the National Braille Press Blog

 - Selina Mills' feature on the conference was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

 - Heather Tilley's 'Touching the Book' exhibition, which she discussed at the conference, has now opened in London. After I visited the exhibition I wrote a piece for the exhibition blog comparing the British and French approaches to the embossed book.

 - La Ligue Braille have conference reports on their website in French and in Flemish.

 - Selina Mills reports on the growing interest in the history of blindness in the September issue of History Today (p. 7).

 - Conference delegate Dr Brian Miller discusses the conference in Accessible World's Special Program Series (download and listen here).

Guide Dogs for the Blind

This signed photograph showing Blue Peter presenters in 1985 was one of the exhibits in the 'Who is Blind' exhibition organised by the College of Optometrists

One of the most interesting papers I heard at the recent History of Blindness conference in Paris, was Dr Monika Baar's fascinating and thought-provoking presentation: 'Guide Dogs for the Blind: A Transnational History'.

Anyone who grew up in 1980s Britain will remember the Blue Peter Guide Dogs for the Blind campaigns. Blue Peter was a popular children's television programme which encouraged its young viewers to collect silver foil and milk bottle tops to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind and the programme often featured reports on the work of guide dogs and their trainers.

Baar's presentation made me wonder about the unintended consequences of Blue Peter's work with Guide Dogs for the Blind. There is no doubt that guide dogs have changed the lives of thousands of blind and partially sighted people. Indeed I met several blind people in Paris whose mobility and Independence have improved thanks to their partnership with their dog. But the image of blindness conveyed by Guide Dogs for the Blind is far from positive. And this is in danger of having an ironically detrimental effect on the lives of the very people the association is hoping to help. As the sentimental music and condescending tone of this promotional video suggest, blindness is presented here as a pitiful, even tragic state which leads to depression, isolation and misery. Sighted children (and adults) who are exposed to such material might be forgiven for thinking of the blind as a sub-group of needy and pitiful individuals. But none of the dogless blind I met in Paris were anything like these stereotypical images. They were classic conference delegates: clever, funny, disorganised, sociable, irreverent and always up for a drink. Guide dogs certainly have their uses, but they also have their limitations. One blind delegate, an experienced and enthusiastic international traveller from the States, explained to me that he thought having a dog would limit his Independence because 'it would be like travelling with a clingy three-year-old child'.

I can understand why Guide Dogs for the Blind are the most successful UK Disability charity. Their Labradors are unfailingly photogenic and it feels both easy and good to give money to such an aesthetically pleasing cause. And on one level I don't blame them for using whatever material they can to get money for their cause. But if their mission really is about improving the lives of the blind and partially sighted, perhaps they need to think again about the way they represent blindness. But in the UK, generations of children have grown up thinking of blindness as a tragic condition which only a beautiful dog can remedy.

International Conference: The History of Blindness and the Blind

UPDATE: Read my account of the conference's impact here.

I have only recently realised that blindness is a subject worthy of academic research. My previous academic work focuses on the body first in the novels of Emile Zola, and then in the nineteenth-century novel more widely, but I have only 'come out' as a disabled scholar - and a scholar of disability -  in the last 18 months.

My work on blindness is both personal and professional. The wonderful writings of Cathy Kudlick and Georgina Kleege have inspired me to see my own blindness in a positive way, whilst the crucially important history of blindness in France, Vivre Sans Voir (The Blind in French Society) by the majestic Zina Weygand demonstrates how crucial it is that the blind are able to both write and read a history of our own. Thanks to Cathy, Georgina and Zina I can feel an urgency behind my own research into how blindness and the blind are represented in French culture which comes from both a need to change the way blindness is perceived and a desire to finally speak a history which has been neglected for far too long.

I hope that the International Colloquium on the History of Blindness and the Blind which takes place in Paris next month will change both public and academic  perceptions of blindness. As a member of the organising committee I have been able to put my new-found belief in the importance of blindness into practice by helping to organise a major historical and cultural event which pushes blindness to the forefront of the academic agenda. As a speaker at the conference I will have the chance to meet and talk with leading historians of blindness from around the world. Now all I have to do is write my paper.

Attendance at the conference, which takes place in Paris from 27-29 June is free but advance registration is essential by emailing: histoire.cecite@singer-polignac.org

The Voice: Blind Auditions

Andrea Begley during her 'blind' audition

(from bbc.co.uk)

At first glance BBC One's The Voice appears to be just another Saturday teatime talent show. Yet what sets this particular programme apart is its intriguing format, a format which has the potential to make the Great British Public think differently about blindness (and the blind).

In the early stages of the competition - the so-called 'blind auditions' - the four celebrity judges must decide whether or not they want to back each singer purely by the sound of their voice: they sit with their backs turned and focus only on what they can hear. Once they commit to supporting a performer, their chair turns round and they are allowed to watch the remainder of the audition.

When I came across the first series of the show last year I was very taken with its early stages. I liked the way these 'blind' auditions create a level playing field for the performers where age, size and shape no longer matter. I also liked the way that the judges' 'blindness' became a virtue: it seemed to make them more discerning, more focused, more 'real' in their choices.

I don't remember last year's episodes addressing the concept of 'blindness' head on: the term 'blind auditions' was nothing more than a phrase coined to help market the show.  But this year, the presence of partially blind singer Andrea Begley at the auditions gave the first episode a whole new dimension.

Public perception that blindness is a tragedy is so pervasive that it is almost impossible to find stories of blindness in the media which do not talk of bravery or courage, struggle or overcoming. But this is not Begley's story. On her website and in her performances Begley is first and foremost a singer. Her blindness is secondary to her career; it is an inconvenience, not a limiting or defining feature. If Begley is disabled, it is not by her lack of sight, but by society's attitude to it. Begley wanted to appear on The Voice because she wanted to be judged for who she is, not for who people think she is. And the fact that two judges turned proves that her blindness is neither here not there.

But however much The Voice claims to value 'blindness', this sightlessness is only temporary. Once the audition is over, the appearance of the performer is revealed. And it is no coincidence that as soon as the judges knew about Begley's blindness, their comments became tinged with that mixture of pity and awe which is so often found in discussions of the disabled. As with press reports of her performance (which found her 'heartwarming') it was hard to tell whether the judges and the audience were applauding Begley's singing, or the fact that they thought she had succeeded despite her blindness. It is a dismal reflection of society's persistently negative attitude towards blindness that Begley felt she needed to use a 'blind' audition in order to be judged on her own merits. But it is an even more dismal irony that the very show which has the potential to recast 'blindness' positively, appears to have done the precise opposite.

I am delighted that Begley has made it through to the next stage of the competition. It is hugely important for society to see images of happy, talented and successful blind people. But I worry that public reactions to Begley's blindness will undermine her own positivity by constantly assuming that she deserves pity rather than respect.

Blindness in Fiction 4: Reprobate: A Katla Novel

It is notoriously difficult for non-blind writers to depict blind characters in fiction. Although anyone can close their eyes and imagine blindness for a few minutes, living in a world where sight has lost its meaning is incredibly hard to imagine. For this reason, blind characters in fiction are relatively rare. Where they do exist, they are either secondary and therefore always described from someone else's point of view (as in Adrian Mole) or evil and not described sympathetically at all (as in Ratburger). Like Star Gazing which I blogged about last April, Reprobate is a novel of shared viewpoints, in which a blind character, Bram, plays a crucial role.

When the reader first encounters Bram, it is easy to mistakenly think that he is nothing but a fascinating plot device. We initially encounter him just after assassin Katla has finished a job. When he interrupts her as she is cleaning up the crime scene, her first instinct is to kill him, as she normally would an 'additional' who might later be able to place her at the scene. But when Katla realises Bram is blind she decides to spare him. Her reasoning is that he poses no threat to her because he will never be able to make a positive identification of her.

Katla, like most sighted people, imagines at first that a world without sight is a world of darkness and confusion. But Bram is not the kind of passive, low-functioning blind person who is frequently found in fictional representations. Unlike the blind man in Amelie, for example, he is always well aware of his environment. He picks up clues from the sounds, smells and atmospheric conditions he senses and is never described as having a lesser experience of life because of his blindness. This is wonderfully demonstrated in the scenes, such as the episode in the diner at the beginning of the 'Luncheonette' chapter, which are told through his perspective. In these scenes, the author focuses only on what Bram can hear, touch and sense. But the reader nonetheless gains a complete understanding of the scene. In fact until you look closely at the language of the scene, you probably won't even notice the absence of visual clues. Bram's presence in the novel, and the part he takes in its narration, brilliantly shows that sight is not essential to a full and happy existence. Bram is clever, funny, sexy and sporty. In fact very soon the story becomes so gripping that the fact of his blindness would easily be forgotten if it weren't for the detail with which the narrator describes the practicalities of his life.

If you want to know what it is like to be a blind person living in a sighted world, then you should read this book, especially if you enjoy complex and multi-layered thrillers with unexpected twists and a truly triumphant ending.

The Legacy of Helen Keller

Helen Keller is without doubt the most famous blind person alive or dead. But it is astonishing how many blind people have very mixed feelings about her legacy. I remember when we studied her at primary school along with other 'inspiratinal figures' like Florence Nightingale and Martin Luther King. I was embarrassed  and upset by her story of triumph over tragedy. She made me feel at once inadequate and angry: inadequate because I knew I'd never have her patience or tenacity, and angry because her story was told with a sentimentalising pity which assumed that blindness was a horrific affliction which only superlative amounts of courage and determination could help you escape from. Yet at the same time it felt confusing and disloyal not to like her when her story seemed to be saying that all blind people (myself included) should try to be like her.

When I started encountering other blind academics last year I realised that I was not alone in my misgivings. Both Cathy Kudlick and Georgina Kleege have written about the problems of the Helen Keller Legacy.

So when I was asked to write a blog post about a Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign which is making a film inspired by Keller's essay 'Three Days to See' I wasn't sure how to respond. The film aims to raise awareness about the nature of blindness and the difficulties faced by young blind and partially sighted adults as they leave the protected world of education and head out into the sighted world. I have no doubt that the film will present a more positive image of blindness than other recent films. And of course it is crucial to raise awareness of the reality of blindness by showing the general public that blind people are not deficient or lacking individuals who should be pitied, saved or cured. But I was worried that the film would (unknowingly) reproduce some of the insidious myths of triumph and tragedy which continue to haunt representations of disability.

The film will only be made if enough money is raised, but a trailer already exists. As I watched I was relieved to see that the film-makers seem to have avoided (almost all) sentimentality. They focus instead on the articulate and thoughtful blind student whose story structures the film. We hear her thoughts and fears alongside images of her and her classmates studying, relaxing and exploring the world around them. What comes across most strongly is the sense that these adolescents are just like millions of adolescents all over the world. They are individuals on the brink of adulthood. Their blindness does not define them: it is part of who they are, like hair colour or body shape but it is not a limit or a hindrance. It is a way of relating to the world which is just as valid as the more well-known sighted way. It turns out that blind people are not all the same.

The film combines images of today's teenagers with Helen Keller's words. Some of these quotations, particularly those that focus on humanity, made me think that I had judged Keller too harshly. Or perhaps I was only shown one side of her at school. I am still uneasy about her insistence that she is missing out on something by being blind, but in the end her legacy must be a good thing if it creates confident and articulate adolescents who have perceptive opinions about their place in the world.

This is a film that needs to be made because it will show the world that blindness is not a disabling affliction. It is people's attitudes to the blind that disable them, not their blindness. To help make this film happen go to their fundraising page.

Offensive Portrayal of the Blind Goes Viral

What do Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, an image by photographer Paul Strand and a recent web-based publicity campaign have in common? They all exploit the stereotype of the blind beggar for their own ends.

As part of their 'Change Your Words, Change Your World' campaign, online marketing company Purplefeather made a video a couple of years ago which I have only just come across. This video has been widely circulated via e-mail and has had over 15 million hits on youtube. I am guessing that most people like its sentimentality and apparent happy ending. I think it tells an entirely different story.

In fact there is so much wrong with this portrayal of the blind that I hardly know where to start. Firstly, it suggests a natural association between begging and blindness, as if begging is all that the blind are good for. This may have been the case for some blind people in Scotland a couple of hundred years ago (and is still the case in some developing countries), but it is certainly not the case in the UK now. Blind people are no more likely to beg on the streets than anyone else. But this film insidiously suggests that being blind will limit your life-choices, career path and earning power. It will mean you can't make friends, have a family or buy a house. Blindness, it implies, will leave you lonely, poor and at the mercy of society's do-gooders.

This man's blindness has reduced him to a passive object of pity. All he can do is sit. He is not even given the power of knowledge. Unlike the sighted viewer he does not even know what has been written on his sign. For someone who believes in the power of words, the young advertising star is not very communicative. Not only does she rudely fail to introduce herself, obliging him to recognise her only by her shoes, she also refuses to read out the changed sign to him. She both undermines his autonomy by changing the sign without his permission, and also insults him by failing to properly answer the direct question he asks her. Maybe she thinks he is stupid as well as blind.

As well as assuming that the blind are prone to misery and helplessness, the film also suggests that being blind somehow limits your enjoyment of life. The incredibly lucrative new message, 'It's a beautiful day but I can't see it' reduces a person's appreciation of life to merely what they can see. True, the blind man cannot see the street which surrounds him, but he can feel, smell and hear it. Sight loss is not the tragedy this sign suggests. It means that people relate to the world in different ways, perhaps realising that the world is not quite as occulocentric as the sighted would have us believe.

It is a horrible irony that this film is almost entirely inaccessible to the blind. It relies completely on sight to tell its story, with only the sentimental music and sparse dialogue as aural clues to its atmosphere. It perhaps unsurprisingly does not come with audio description. Can you imagine how mortified the audio describer would be at having to describe these images of debasement and vulnerability for the blind?

I am pleased to see that I am not the only person who objects to this video. This blog post is a great example of its impact on the disabled community. And yet inexplicably this film is still in circulation, ensnaring more uncritical viewers in its pernicious lies of pity and pwerlessness.

Blindness in Fiction 2: Adrian Mole

Adrian Mole, Sue Townsend's celebrated diarist, has been chronicling life in middle England for thirty years.

Adrian's best friend Nigel was registered blind in 2002 and Townsend describes Adrian's response to Nigel's sudden sight loss in Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004). When I first read this volume, shortly after it came out, I was still in denial about my own blindness and so didn't pay any attention to 'poor blind Nigel' (p. 37). But I've recently gone back to look again at how Adrian deals with his best friend's situation.

Adrian's first reaction to Nigel's news (pp. 19-20) is a mixture of the inappropriate and the selfish. He makes quips about Nigel's love of dark glasses and is disappointed that his friend will no longer be able to advise him on interior decoration. Lovers of the Adrian Mole diaries will not be surprised by these apparently flippant comments. It is fair to say that Adrian has a rather self-centred approach to life and has a sense of perspective slightly out of kilter with those around him. He can struggle with the finer points of  empathy and is often awkward in social situations. Despite Nigel's shock, we find ourselves laughing at some of Adrian's responses precisely because they tell us more about Adrian's skewed priorities than they do about Nigel's sight loss.

But at the end of this same episode, on p. 21, Adrian lapses into the kind of patronising behaviour which all blind people will have experienced at some point. When Nigel's cab arrives, Adrian gives the address on Nigel's behalf. This might seem like a rather trivial incident; after all, Adrian is only trying to help. But we, like Nigel, interpret this genuinely well-intentioned slip as a manifestation of the widely-held belief that the visually impaired also lack other physical and mental capacities. Nigel's grumpy riposte: '"I can still speak, Moley!"' is misunderstood by Adrian. His response, 'I hope he is not going to become one of those bitter blind people, like Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre' is revealing for two reasons. Firstly, it makes a sweeping generalisation about the blind which is rendered all the more erroneous because it is based on a fictional character (one, indeed, whose blindness has important metaphorical implications of its own). Secondly, it fails to notice that Nigel is not grumpy about his blindness as such. Instead it is Adrian's rather thoughtless treatment of him which has put him in such a bad mood. By both speaking for him, and subsequently failing to understand Nigel's irritation, Adrian unwittingly communicates his deep-seated belief that going blind somehow makes Nigel a lesser person. In this one incident, Townsend underlines one of the most common misconceptions faced by the blind.

Adrian certainly is well-meaning in his attempts to understand Nigel's blindness. Later on in the story, he decides not to help Nigel 'look' for his keys, coat and white stick because he "has often heard blind people on the radio going on about how much they resent other people doing things for them" (p. 94). Adrian's problem here, of course, is his inability to put his knowledge into context. Whilst Nigel does not need help to give his address to a cab driver, he probably would appreciate some help finding that pesky set of keys.

Several more episodes of this kind occur throughout the book. Aside from giving us additional insights into Adrian's character, they are significant because they allow Townsend to denounce the way people treat the blind. Townsend was registered blind in 2001 and given some of the reactions I've had, especially when out and about with my white cane, I'll bet she has been on the receiving end of similar comments. Putting such comments in Adrian's voice means she can demonstrate their dangerously negative reach without ranting or whining. (And we've already seen how any blind person who does that is in danger of being dismissed as 'bitter'.) Furthermore, by showing Nigel's reactions alongside Adrian's misreading of them, she (ironically unlike Adrian) gives Nigel his voice back and encourages the reader - who is already aware of Adrian' s flaws -  to see things from Nigel's perspective. By experiencing some of his outrage, readers will hopefully internalise how it feels to be treated as part of a generalised, marginalised and misunderstood group rather than as an individual. Perhaps this new-found knowledge will come into play next time they meet someone who is experiencing sight loss.

Looking at the Blind

This striking image of a blind beggar was taken in New York by Paul Strand and published in 1917. It raises fascinating questions about the politics of looking at the blind. This women's use of a large written label immediately puts her on display. She is positioning herself as an image to be interpreted, a text to be read. She is an object to be looked at. She is also positing herself as a victim of misfortune. The assumption here is that her label will encourage people to pity her and thus to help her. This woman's use of a textual clue demonstrates that despite (or perhaps because) of her blindness, she has a profound understanding of how the sighted world works. People are always looking, always interpreting and always responding to what they see. This  beggar's use of visual clues knowingly exploits the way the sighted relate to the world.

The fact that this woman has been immortalised in a photograph raises another set of issues. Photography is of course a profoundly visual medium. And by making a blind woman the subject of a photograph, the artist suggests that blindness is not necessarily the opposite of vision, it is (or it gives rise to) another kind of vision. Or, to put it another way, blindness has led to vision because it has led to a photographic image.

I'd like to know how this woman would feel about being looked at and photographed in this way. Her use of the sign and her situation on the street already position her as an object of the public gaze. But she is doing this for a reason. Does she know that she is being photographed? Does she even know what photography is or implies? Another way of reading this photograph is to say that it emphasises - indeed extends - the gulf between this woman and the sighted people who look at this photo. The viewer's difference from her is encapsulated in their very act of viewing. As soon as someone sees this photograph, they are reminded that they possess the very thing whose lack has led to the creation of this image. It seems very fitting that it is this woman's blindness which reinforces the sighted viewer's sense of his or her own superiority over the subject of this photograph. The viewer can see her blindness precisely because he or she does not experience it. In another way, of course, vision lets us down in this picture. We cannot tell by looking at this woman that she is blind. It is only by reading the textual clue that we know this. But what if this clue were a lie? What if this woman were not blind? When we look at this picture we trust what we see and we assume that the written sign refers to the woman it is attached to. How would our reading of this photograph change if we knew that this woman was looking back at the photographer?

My thanks to James Kent for introducing me to this picture during his talk on the flaneur in Cuba as part of RHUL's seminar series.

Click here for more on Paul Strand's photo