able-bodied people don’t seem to realise the nuances of disability, they look at it as such a black and white issue when it’s really not. like, i don’t need a wheelchair in the sense that i can’t physically use my legs and i don’t need a walking stick in the sense that i would fall over without one. but i do need a wheelchair in the sense that it could make the difference between my being bed-bound for a day and being bed-bound for a week and i do need a walking stick in the sense that using one today might enable me to do more tomorrow. disability and chronic illness aren’t black and white; using things out of necessity can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
All this goes for most other disabilities too. For example, many people don’t realize that many deaf people have at least a little hearing. And many blind people have at least a little vision. And so forth.
So if you’re deaf enough that you cannot understand speech just by listening alone (because there is too much of the sound missing) then you most likely really NEED captions to have any chance of understanding anything said in a video, TV program, movie, etc.
If you have enough hearing to hear SOME speech, well, hearing 10 percent of what is said still won’t help enough to do without captions. (Some of us might hear vowels without really hearing consonants, or may hear only certain consonants and not others, because some speech sounds are higher pitched than other speech sounds. For example, “s”, “sh”, “ch” are all higher in pitch than “m”, “n” or any of the vowels, etc. Some of us may hear lower pitch sounds better than high pitch sounds. So, yes, many of us hear SOME speech but not enough to understand.)
But suppose you are not deaf, but only hard of hearing, i.e. only a mild hearing loss? So that you can understand most speech by listening alone, without needing visual input? Well, if you’re hard of hearing (and not hearing) then you need completely PERFECT listening circumstances (everyone is speaking clearly, there is no background noise to distract you, etc.) because even minor problems that would only annoy a hearing person can completely disrupt your understanding speech. And even in absolutely perfect listening conditions, a hard of hearing person still needs to invest a LOT more concentration and physical energy into listening. That can make it harder to really process the content of what is being said simply because there’s no bandwidth left over after all that listening.
This is bad if you’re trying to learn really complicated new ideas because then you need to both listen AND do a lot of thinking simultaneously. It’s also harder to really relax and enjoy a movie if you have to work so hard just to understand. So all of this is why even people who can still understand most speech most of the time may still NEED captions.
This is so, so important for blindness and white canes, too. This concept applies so broadly to all of us.
Because you know what? I went 16 years without a cane.
The first 16 straight years of my life were spent without even the shortest singular lesson on using a cane and my vision was no better then than it is now. And you know, I survived. I never broke any bones or had a catastrophic fall down the school stairwell or got hit by a car, and if I wanted to go somewhere without my cane now I could probably live, if it was somewhere familiar and during the day and the weather was just right. I could probably make it to my school and back without any major issues and I would get home in one piece.
But you know what else? During those first 16 years I was terrified. Not actively shaking and consciously thinking about how afraid I was, but it was there, every time I avoided going somewhere new or going out at night or when I stared down at the sidewalk while walking down the street and wondered if people thought I was depressed about something. I didn’t explore, I didn’t try new things, I didn’t feel like it would be easy to go out and check out something new to handle unexpected changes or changes in plans. I stayed inside a lot, and in order to get around somewhere new I had to take a whole day and have a teacher or a parent walk me around it first so I could do it later myself. I didn’t like new places and I didn’t like going out, because there were too many poles and staircases that blended in and broken cracks in the sidewalk and trash on the ground and children running around.
When I got training and learned how to use a cane and gather information from my ears it was life-changing. Using a cane meant the difference between being careful and cautious and avoiding new things, and being out at any hour of the day and walking confidently and comfortably and exploring my neighborhood. It meant the difference between being worried about tripping down the steps at a new place and being able to decide on a whim and I feel like going to this new place because it’s cool and I can. It meant the difference between constantly overthinking and planning my whole day around how I was going to get around and being able to just be normal and just BE without even having to think about whether I’ll be able to get around. It meant the difference between waiting two weeks for somebody to finally be free enough to give me a ride and hold my arm throughout and being able to go where I wanted, when I wanted, without inconvenience to myself or others. It meant the difference between sheltering myself and being actually free.
So yes. I suppose you could try to argue that maybe a cane is not an absolute necessity for me to exist and do the absolute bare minimum, but you would be wrong, because life isn’t just about the absolute bare minimum. Thousands of blind people have this exact same journey with canes and realizing the difference it makes, blind people ranging from those who are completely blind to people who just barely crossed the threshold into legal blindness. So yes, I don’t need a cane in the sense that I am completely blind and entirely unable to do anything without it, but I absolutely need my cane in the sense that most of us do, the sense that that came makes the difference between a stressful experience that was avoided until it couldn’t be and an incredibly comfortable experience that allowed me to do way more, travel way farther, and get a whole shit ton more out of it.
Disability is never a black and white thing, and both abled and other disabled people alike would do well to remember that. and
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