Back around 1971, the parents who ran the Guild for Fairfield County’s visually impaired students, in Connecticut, arranged for a group therapy session for six high school students, including me. Each of us was the only blind student in our
Disability
No Numbers, No Stories: Disability and the Harm of Secrecy
1. Without Facts …? It is impossible to obtain objective information about the quality of a college’s services for disabled students. For other identifiable groups, we can get numbers, but not for disabled students. Members of those other groups are
Rarified Bubble
“Super blink” might be the harshest insult inside the so-called blind community. It refers to a visually impaired person who has done so well in mainstream society that they’re out of touch with other blind people. The mainstream equivalent might be
Speech Therapy
In this short recollection, I am attending a school in London at the age of eight or nine. I’d had a cleft palate surgically repaired when I was too young to remember, and now I was required to undergo speech therapy. Looking back, I marvel at the
Superbloke: Publishers’ Summaries and the National Library Service
1 Publishers’ summaries are promotions for readers looking for something new. You find them on Amazon, Audible, Goodreads and most other bookseller websites. Their most notable characteristics are cliches, exaggeration and urgency—altogether,
A Time for Euphemisms
1 Toward the end of eighth grade, when kids turn fourteen, a girl I’ll call Delia volunteered to visit my home one afternoon a week to read class assignments to me. I was new to America and to blindness. During our reading sessions, work gave way to