Public Transit / "Can You See the Rainbow?" / Not Blind Enough

     These three articles describe various hardships that people with disabilities face. The first article documents the struggles of a wheelchair-bound man, the second a color blind woman and the third a legally blind woman. Although these are all different disabilities, they all face similar challenges and have lives that are affected in similar ways.
     John Hockenberry's article describes what it's like for him to access public transportation, more specifically taxis, in New York City and the difficulties that come with it. Basically, the majority of taxi drivers see a wheelchair as a burden and will skip over him in order to avoid having to load his wheelchair into their trunk. They all have similar poor excuses and tend to make the author extremely angry. He recounts one episode in particular where he ended up damaging the taxi purposely following being denied a ride. He literally broke the door off and scared the driver so that he could experience having the upper hand for once.
     Sally French recounts her experiences growing up with the inability to see color. Not being able to see colors leads to additional vision difficulties and decreases the overall ability to see clearly. Since she wasn't blind, people were often in denial and expected her to be able to function just the same as they did. Unfortunately, this was impossible and often left her feeling very alone. It would've almost been easier if she was completely blind because then people would at least not have unrealistic expectations for her. Fortunately she was able to go to a special school for children with vision impairments which allowed her to flourish in a world designed for her.
     Not Blind Enough documents the struggles of the author who is considered legally blind. The problem for her was that legally blind does not imply total blindness, rather it means that her vision is impaired enough for her to fit into a particular classification system for disabilities. Oddly enough, this has caused people to react adversely to her, often expecting her to be completely blind. She discussed that people would often be angry with her once they realized she could see to an extent - for some reason people thought it was disrespectful to use the term blind in reference to someone who isn't 100% blind.
     For these three people, their disability has caused a myriad of emotions throughout their lives. What makes it most difficult is that many of these emotions are in response to other's ignorance and harassment regarding their disability. These people all understand who they are and are accepting of it; it's everyone else who is making their lives more difficult. I never really thought of this perspective and how a disability is almost not so until others begin to judge and compare you. These people were all fine with who they were and understood their physical differences and the implications. It's not until society begins comparing them to others and expecting things that their lives become more difficult. This makes me think of how wonderful the Universal Design for Learning is since it aims to not point out differences, rather it makes differences obsolete by catering to all one one level. This is the only true way to level the playing field and to prevent those with disabilities from feeling isolated.