Make some noise!
…your silence makes you invisible.
I have tried to make it a habit to walk through my neighborhood and community a couple of times a day. Lately, I have started to notice a disturbing trend of people stopping in their tracks and going silent as they see me passing by. I am never quite certain if they really stopped or if I missed something and we are now on a collision course. I try calling out a greeting. Sometimes there is really someone there. Others there is no one there to answer leaving me to wonder if there was ever anyone there in the first place. I even get a “were you talking to me?” from somewhere I didn’t expect it sometimes. Having someone go invisible like that can add a bit of uncomfortable excitement to those walks.
Message to people that see me walking by
If I cannot hear you I cannot see you so please make some noise. Anything will work. For example you could try:
- Saying hello
- Tapping your leg
- Shuffling your feet
- Even dancing a jig or singing a song
Do anything that lets me know where you are so I can stop worrying about colliding with you. My safety is ultimately my own responsibility.
I promise that you cannot catch my blindness by talking to me.
Thank you and have a god day.
About this post
This new site and the whole Lemmy/Fediverse thing is new to me. This post was more an exercise in how I can best use my screen reader and other tools to write and post here than anything else. I just decided to write out a thought that has been that has been building in the back of my mind to help give me somewhere to start.
Thank you and remember to take time out to enjoy the day.
noted! I’ll hum some tom’s diner
I would love it! I think I would have to thank you by by going back almost another decade and replying with 99 Red Balloons…not quite as good for getting stuck in your head but not far off either
If I heard a random person, “Do-do-do-do”-ing some Tom’s Diner in public it would make my day!
Interesting, I don’t think I ever thought about it that way.
I don’t recall changing behavior as a blind person was walking by, but I could see myself intentionally being quieter to make it easier for them to concentrate on the data they’re getting from the cane … or something.
I’m not sure. Either way, I’ll make sure that in the future, I make sure I don’t do that and make a bit of noise if I was already being silent.
Thanks for the tips!
Also – you said the post was an exercise in testing your screen reader against the Fediverse to see how it works out … what were your results?
From my sighted perspective, it looks like a post that someone intentionally put some effort into with headers at different sizes, quotes and some bullet points, so, from this end it looks like a success!what were your results?
They have been pretty positive. I will need to practice more to help learn the quirks but am really enjoying it so far. It really helps me that markdown support seems to be the default.
Fantastic!
It’s amazing how well things can work when things are built to standards rather than (seemingly) purposely making things inaccessible!
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Interesting that you have this experience. I don’t use a cane for my vision issues, but I do use tall hiking poles because of my physical disability. The last ones I had were mainly red, and the last time I used them a lady who came up behind me shook her keys so they were jingling and she said it was because she didn’t want to startle me. Apparently she’d been doing it a while but I didn’t hear it until she was practically next to me since I don’t hear well either.
