Category: Let's talk
I'm curious if anyone has a place that they don't like for accessibility reasons. For me, that place is Atlantic City. We used to go there all the time. When I was little, it was one thing. I used to gamble in the archade for children, used to go on the boardwalk, used to enjoy just being with my family. I loved the sound of the coins coming out of the machines in the real casinos as we passed them. Now, I'm 23 and legally able to gamble. But everything's changed. The give stupid pieces of paper. So you have to go up to the desk or to another machine to get it cashed, and of course, you have to see to be able to do all this. Sometimes, a machine will have things on the screen that you have to see to understand, and some don't have any sound at all, so if you can't see, you don't know if you won or lost. But it's not just the slots. You go into one of the hotel rooms, with sighted assistance of course because how can you really find it on your own, and turn on the television, only to discover that there are a million choices you can't use. You can't, for example, choose movies or games or anything from the menu. Then, you find a book of all the local things in the area but can't read it because it's in print. So you decide to go downstairs to the buffet, only to realise that, again, without sighted assistance, you don't know what's there or what line is what. So you go outside to catch a jitney, but can't do that either because you don't know the difference between one of them and a regular car and the drivers don't always shout where they're going.
I've never been directly in those hypothetical situations because I've always had my sighted family there to help me, but I've felt it. I've felt it every time one of them had to read the screen on the slot machine. I've felt it when Joanie would read the breakfast menu or the tv menu. I remember Grandma and I went there alone once and she left me in the bus station. She was very near, close enough that she could see me, but not right next to me, since she was getting tickets and then keeping an eye out for the bus. I'll never forget the noise, the feeling of being so alone, of realising how big the place was and that I personally probably couldn't do this at that stage in my life, to just go and take a bus to who knows where... Since then, we've gone back and it's been better, but for someone who never really sees blindness as anything but a part of her, Atlantic City always makes me feel, well, blind!
So do any of you have a place like that? One that you wish would go away, but you know that there'll always be others to take their place? How do you deal with it? How do you view it, as something bad or as a learning and strengthening experience?
wow. Sounds introspective... well, a place like that here where i like are all the parks )disney, universal studios= which are a pain for most blind people to navigate. I remember my family doing all of this stuffÑ Filling papers, getting tickets, reading things from menus.... I didn't realize how tedious this got once i left to go with a group of friends. Some of them were completely blind and others had low vision. The places are uviquitiously noisy and disperse; things become a pain after a while. Usually I'd ask for help but you never know if the help you are being offered is trustworthy or not.
I've never done anything yet like use public transport on my own, but taxi drivers are sometimes annoying because they don't guide people properly. I know it's not their fault, but still. If I want to buy something from a shop, I either take a sighted person with me or someone who can see quite well to read for me, or might ask someone at the counter in the shop.
This comment does and doesn't apply. Recently we made plans on how to get xmas shopping done. We were going to go and take a friend to help (especially to help me buy xmas for my husband)... However, "the best laid plans of mice and men"...To say the least those plans fell through. So, we did the shopping for the family, and everything was fine (my husband is completely sighted). But, how the hell was I going to shop for him? LOL. I'd tried going into a store and getting assistance, and it worked, but it ended up being more difficult than I felt it should be, so, my husband made a suggestion. Shop online, find what you want, call the local store and see if it's in. If it is have them put it at the customer service counter and then we went in and picked it up. How did we keep him from seeing it? LOL. He walked me in and left me standing there while he went outside where he wouldn't see a thing and I had the clerk double bag it. I got everything I wanted to for him this way, and the one thing I couldn't find cept online I ordered and it will be here no later than the 24th. Like I said, it does and doesn't relate. I dreaded xmas shopping, but thanks to a suggestion from a completely sighted individual it was easy.