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e experience the world with our sensory perceptions. Ever wonder what our experiences would be like if any one of the five senses i.e. seeing, hearing, taste, touch and smell is out of the equation? I am not talking about the experience based on a temporary loss of a sensory perception but the one based on a permanent or prolonged loss.
I experienced the world with all the sensory perceptions till the age of 34. For last 22 years, I have done so without sight. In my case the loss of sight was not an event but a process spanning over 14 years. The doctor broke the news when I was 18 years old: I might lose my sight in ten to twenty years. Over the next four years the sight loss actually occurred, gradually but surely. This article is about my experiences after the sight loss and not about the process of sight loss.
After the sight loss is complete, one is dependent entirely on the remaining sensory perceptions. In other words, hearing, touch, taste and smell have enhanced roles in performing tasks ordinarily associated with sight.
Of the congenitally blind and the late blind, the former learn to live without sight from childhood, whereas the latter have to reinvent themselves and learn to rely on other senses.
For instance, despite having a master’s degree in English literature, I needed to learn how to read and write, again. For this, I needed to rely on touch and hearing. I learnt how to read and write on a computer using a software called Job Access With Speech (JAWS), which helps perform all tasks on the computer through voice output.
While learning reading and writing with hearing and touch was relatively easy, learning to walk with a white cane, hearing and touch proved to be a quite a challenge. I noticed that the simple act of walking required prior planning whether at home, at work place or during the work-related travels within and outside the country. I learnt how hands and feet, through touch, and hearing through sound identification, play a pivotal role in identifying and navigating objects that you come across in moving from one place to another.
I found out also that people in Pakistan are extremely generous with their time in providing help to a blind person but there is no institutional support. In the west, individual people rarely have time to help but there is institutional support available catering to all kinds of mobility needs of persons with blindness.
While nothing can replace sight, the loss of sight does not necessarily mean that the blind cannot experience life as it unfolds in front of them through their remaining senses. It can be an enriching experience in myriad ways.
I also found out that in Pakistan when people come across a late-blind person like me for the first time, you can sense that they are itching to ask you within couple of minutes of your interaction as to whether you have been blind by birth or did you lose the sight later? The invasion of privacy does not stop there. You hear them expressing deep sorrow over your loss through sighs and tut-tut sounds, without realising that the object of their pity is a real person—out and about, managing his affairs despite his disability. This is invariably followed by medicinal advice or a fantastic anecdote about a miracle worker who can restore sight. Some well-meaning folks even offer to take you there. They do not realise that you have already come to terms with your disability, and your main concern is putting food on the table for your family, not the restoration of your sight.
Interestingly, children have innate wisdom and are wiser than many grown-ups in interacting with blind people. They quickly observe and adjust their responses accordingly. For example, when my two-and-a-half-year old daughter was trying to learn the alphabet, she did not know how to pronounce the letter ‘m.’ Instead of pointing to the letter and asking me what it was, she took my hand, drew the shape of the letter ‘m’ with her finger on my palm and asked me what it was. It is such a pity that we, through education, fill the minds of our children with information at the expense of their innate wisdom.
After the sight loss, I switched to touch and sound for spatial awareness and to identify objects that earlier I used to do with sight. For instance, while heading out for office, the act of touching stuff like laptop bag, mobile, wallet, charging cable will give them shape and help me locate and identify them.
It is generally assumed that a person who cannot see might be bereft of spatial awareness. That could be the reason why my colleagues at the Pakistan Information Commission found it surprising when we were looking for office space for the nascent institution. While visiting different buildings, I would comment that this place seems too small and this one seems quite spacious. They wondered how I could make a fairly accurate comment without being able to see. The proximity of the sounds and echoes gives one a fairly good idea about the size of various sections of a building. This spatial awareness based on sounds also helped in arranging a taxi by navigating towards the road before ride-hailing services, and in guessing from the sounds of incoming vehicles whether it was a bus, a truck, a motorbike or a car.
At times, for a blind person, identifying an object may involve more than one sense—for instance, using touch, smell or taste to tell items apart when choosing from several, or figuring out what’s inside a packet or bottle.
In short, while nothing can replace sight, the loss of sight does not necessarily mean that people who are blind cannot experience life as it unfolds in front of them through their remaining senses, for it can be an enriching experience in myriad ways.
The writer is a former federal information commissioner and author of Disabled by Society. He can be reached at zahidisdpkgmail.com. His X handle: XahidAbdullah.