I was visiting Hong Kong some time ago, it feels like every time I visit, there’d be some new mega train stations – while they make travelling very convenient, I often have to ask for directions. 

On this occasion, as soon as I stepped off the train, some random people came up to me to ask me if I was going running, I said no and ran away. 

I discovered some time later that some volunteers were meeting some blind people to go running together from that station – blind people need to be guided when going for a run. I also discovered that in Hong Kong, there are very well-organised volunteer groups to help blind people do all kinds of activities – hiking, running, biking holidays – I heard that it is even possible to ask a volunteer to help a blind couple go on a date.

From what I can gather, this program of matching volunteers with visually impaired people has made it possible for people who are otherwise not active to become active, which is important, as the barrier for disabled people to participate in “normal” leisure activities is very high. Yet there is a flip side – there’s an important difference between support to integrate vs support to isolate – let me explain.

Firstly, for all the activities the volunteering program supports, all of the participants are visually impaired, this heavily restricts the circle of friends visually impaired people can have, a lot of them end up living in a visually impaired bubble.

Secondly, over time, it creates an assumption in the blind people’s mind that they cannot step out to do something, unless they are supported by a volunteer or some organisation. Case in point, a blind university graduate in Hong Kong asked me for advice on what they needed to do to get on to an IT career path. I told them that the reality is, that if there are 1000 graduates like you who want to have a career in IT, all of you having done the same degree, had the same grade, you’d be the last an employer picked because of your disability – this isn’t a pessimism, this is the blunt truth. So you’d always have to do a bit more than everyone else, build and make something tangible – a website, an AI bot, a web app, whatever it is so people can see what you can do.

“Can I do that? Did you learn any of this yourself, and are the software and courses for me to learn accessible to blind people?” was my new friend’s response. 

“If you stop just because I or someone else says you won’t be able to do it, either you don’t want it enough or you really need to change your assumptions.” I told him.

There might be cases where support of any kind is needed, even if it means a little isolation, people need their confidence to be built up. As far as possible however, support to integrate should be aimed for, from my own experience, it takes a few things to succeed:

  1. Sighted people who are in a position to support ought to give blind people a chance, DO NOT default to “when I do XYZ I use my eyes, so a blind person surely cannot do XYZ”
  2. The blind person also has to be willing to try and explore
  3. the blind person has to accept their disability, there could well be compromise, disadvantages despite the best integration.

Many of you know that I play Backgammon; Recently I started learning Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. I have been playing in Backgammon tournaments with sighted people around the world for well over 10 years, I have just signed up to my first Jiu-jitsu competition. In both cases, at the beginning of me joining these communities, the people had no experience in working with / teaching blind people, yet they are incredibly supportive, they just assumed that it’d work – now when I go for my BJJ classes, the coaches would use me as the demo which is how I learn; as for the competitions, I am very aware of the disadvantages I have. my sighted competitors wouldn’t go easy on me just because I’m blind – they also want to win, my acceptance of my disadvantages is almost the same as someone who has to accept that they are tall, short, slow at mental arithmetic – I just have to work on other strengths to compensate, and I tell you, I’m not modest, I compensate well. 

For sure, in terms of competition, someone who is equal to me in everything except that they can see would certainly beat me, but I’d rather be second in an integrated competition than being first in a bubble. 

In the non-competitive context, the benefits of integration over isolation are immense, just the social benefits and general exposure to the world will help a lot of blind people.