Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Tips and ideas for interacting or making friends with blind children (self.Blind)
submitted by djent_bumble
Hey guys, hope you all are having a great day.
Tomorrow I will be visiting one of the schools of the National Association of Blind in my country. I will be travelling along with the youth from my church.
These children belong to the age group of maybe 10-12 years.
I am a bit nervous about it, I was looking for tips or ideas on:
1. how to interact with the children ?
2. how to make friends with them ?
3. what they may like to be asked about ?
Tomorrow I will be visiting one of the schools of the National Association of Blind in my country. I will be travelling along with the youth from my church.
These children belong to the age group of maybe 10-12 years.
I am a bit nervous about it, I was looking for tips or ideas on:
1. how to interact with the children ?
2. how to make friends with them ?
3. what they may like to be asked about ?
Real_Space_Captain 3 points 3y ago
1. Interact with them the same way you do with any kid. Learn their names quickly so you can properly address them. While a seeing person can tell you are talking to them in a large group, a blind kid might need an external clue you are talking to them. However, if it is a small group, then they will likely follow the converstation and understand who you are talking to.
2. Talk to them! Ask them about what they are doing at school, who the best teacher is, what sports teams they like, what TV shows they are watching, etc. As long as you treat them like equals, you will be fine. Don't act like you are doing them a huge favor by helping them find something or go someplace. Also (this is somewhat debated on Reddit) remember that you are at their school, they likely won't need your help so I would suggest not offering it unless they seem to be really struggling. What might seem like struggling in your eyes, is just a normal thing to them. If you offer help when they don't need it, it might make them feel bad or annoyed. For me, I know it takes me a little longer to find something on a computer screen, it makes me feel stupid when someone take their finger and points to it on the screen. I would rather just take the extra second to find it.
3. I touched on this above. You don't have to avoid the topic of blindness, in fact they might be excited to teach you about the lifestyle. But don't treat it like a brave or exotic thing. For example, I love explaining how VoiceOver works and seeing my friends nerd out over the technology. What I hate is when they go "oh I can't believe you do this! This is so hard! You are so good at it! Wow! This must be so difficult, I'm so proud at you for learning how to use your phone!" I personally don't like extra attention, so this makes me cringe.
Trust me, you'll be fine! The blind community is pretty fun and laid back. Honestly, one of the funniest and most outgoing communities (maybe I'm stereotyping us, lol).
2. Talk to them! Ask them about what they are doing at school, who the best teacher is, what sports teams they like, what TV shows they are watching, etc. As long as you treat them like equals, you will be fine. Don't act like you are doing them a huge favor by helping them find something or go someplace. Also (this is somewhat debated on Reddit) remember that you are at their school, they likely won't need your help so I would suggest not offering it unless they seem to be really struggling. What might seem like struggling in your eyes, is just a normal thing to them. If you offer help when they don't need it, it might make them feel bad or annoyed. For me, I know it takes me a little longer to find something on a computer screen, it makes me feel stupid when someone take their finger and points to it on the screen. I would rather just take the extra second to find it.
3. I touched on this above. You don't have to avoid the topic of blindness, in fact they might be excited to teach you about the lifestyle. But don't treat it like a brave or exotic thing. For example, I love explaining how VoiceOver works and seeing my friends nerd out over the technology. What I hate is when they go "oh I can't believe you do this! This is so hard! You are so good at it! Wow! This must be so difficult, I'm so proud at you for learning how to use your phone!" I personally don't like extra attention, so this makes me cringe.
Trust me, you'll be fine! The blind community is pretty fun and laid back. Honestly, one of the funniest and most outgoing communities (maybe I'm stereotyping us, lol).
SLJ7 2 points 3y ago
This is only me, of course, but I think about this stuff a lot. The reason I'm personally bothered by the "this is so amazing" thing is because it's a perpetuation of the idea that we are extraordinary for doing what we do, rather than just being normal people who adjust in normal ways. I think the admiration is not only misplaced; it leads to unhealthy attitudes about blindness itself being scarier and us being more removed from reality and less like the people around us. Using VoiceOver is truly no more amazing than using the phone visually; it's just a different way. If you want to admire me for reading the source code of a page to figure out an inaccessible portion and then filing a technically correct report, go ahead. But I'm not special for learning to use a device in a different and arguably not more complex way.
yourmommaisaunicorn 2 points 3y ago
Don’t touch them without saying you’re going to touch them. IE: “Can I shake your hand?” vs just outright grabbing for one. You can also do something like “When I come over to look at your work, I’m going to tap your left/right shoulder so you know who it is that is by you.”
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