Tri County Community Issues

-Clients and Members- The Tri-County Association for the Blind not only employs those with eye-sight and other disabilities, but they also service them. Members are able to come in for counsiling, group meetings, and various items that make living life day to day with blindness easier. People with visual impairment are also given consideration for jobs at the Association, both at desk jobs and also in the production room.

Not all that is done at the Association benefits the seeing impaired, although they do receive newsletters. The Association also manufacturers items for government agencies such as the mayor's office and prisons as well as packaging foods for airline companies. There are many members and workers at Tri-County with no disabilities at all.

Cultural Assumptions

Society as a whole seems to find it easy to judge people who have disabilities, even those who are afflicted with something as superficial as poor eyesight. Although it is generally easier for someone who is blind to lead a relatively "normal" life as opposed to someone with a more debilitating disability, there is still ubiquitous evidence that people with blindness are still not treated as equals in many cases. The blind are not given jobs, which many are fully qualified for and when they are employed, they are often given positions for which they are, in fact, over-qualified.

People who are blind are confined to a world where they are forced to rely heavily upon all of their other senses. Much of society assumes that since people who are blind do not have their sight, that there are other relevant functions that are absent as well. Many people who are blind had their sight at one point and were able to lead the normative existence which society believes the blind lacks. The majority of people who are blind are completely self-sufficient, despite their condition. However, because blindness is considered to be a disability, they are at times treated as though their mental capacity is negatively affected as well.

How We Can Solve These Problems

Society can solve the problem of rashly judging people based upon their physical appearance by simply understanding that disabilities are not synonymous with being helpless. This assumption is the result of countless years of naivete and cannot easily be eradicated, regardless of its simplicity. People who do not have an understanding of the nature of blindness would benefit from merely speaking to someone who is blind or taking some sort of proactive measures to learn more about the condition. One will find that many of the cases of blindness are comprised of those who are legally blind, but still have some sight.

People who are blind can, for the most part, do the same jobs as those with sight can. The blind hold positions such as teachers, writers, and doctors(http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/04/02/seeing.no.limits.ap/index.html). It is the actual act of understanding that being disabled does not equal incapability that is difficult for some people to reach. Being immersed into a sub-culture of people with disabilities (regardless of how major or minor the disabilities may be) is an important step to understanding more about the nature of disability itself and the people who have disabilities.

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