Sometimes I feel that in the blind community when we discover that someone has done something we feel would be personally quite challenging it’s usual to put them on a pedestal and assume they did it with absolutely no help whatsoever.

Don’t get me wrong there are lots of things that I have had to do without any help or meaningful assistance, but there are lots of Times when I have had to ask for a little bit of assistance now and then and doing that has made my particular experience a lot less stressful.

Also I think it’s possible to fall into the trap of thinking you can never ask for help because you need to be some magic super blind person.
Even sighted people need to ask for directions to toilet sometimes and get lost.

Like all of these things it’s about finding a balance that works for you, and the particular environment you are in.

If you can go to a venue early and learn where everything is and then are able to completely navigate that later on when it’s full of people, really noisy then awesome.
But equally if you can’t do that and have to ask for some assistance to find the bathrooms, or play the let’s try every door and listen to the screaming so we know it’s not the bathroom that matches our gender or gender expression potentially then that’s also fine as well.

There are also a few phone apps these days that can help out with locating stuff when travelling alone, but the ones I’m aware of rely on using the camera feeding information to a real human to get reliable fast feedback.
These are great if you can’t find anyone to assist you for whatever reason would rather go down this route, but it does involve having your phone out or mounted to your body in someway.

I believe in the states you can get a pair of glasses which maybe make things a bit easier, but I’m not sure if they are available in the UK yet.

Anyway the reason I’m posting this is because I’ve been thinking a lot lately and I certainly knew a couple of visually impaired people in the past who were very uncomfortable about asking for help, particularly around finding toilets.

One person would just not drink if they were travelling a long way, which is really not good for you, and another person I knew would just get a taxi home as soon as they needed a pee and that was the night over for them.


I’ve also known some people who come across as a bit rude, but it’s because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable to say that they need help locating the bar or carrying drinks for example.


You also do you have the risk that the people asking for help could just be dicks and do something horrible to you like for example send you into the wrong bathroom or guide you to the wrong door, but this is very rare and ultimately I don’t feel that this should be allowed to stop someone being as independent as possible and living their best life.

Anyway would love some more discussion around this point.