I mean, I don’t care what people are wearing unless it’s pertinent to what’s going on, but I don’t get why anyone felt like this article needed to be published. It makes fun of her for the sake of making fun of her and blind people who may enjoy these descriptions-which is rude. Why have we become so rude?

What's funny is that Microsoft did this months ago at Ignite, and people lost their minds over it as well. I don't see what's wrong with trying to make things more inclusive. If it doesn't apply to you, move on.

Language changes because we change it. I can see this being awkward, especially for people who are totally blind and don't know colors, but I understand the intent.

As a visually impaired person, I'm not offended.

To be honest, a description doesn’t bother me. If I forget the person’s name, I can say “the man with the red tie” or whatever. As my vision started going, I’d use clothes and hair to remember names of people when I first met them to give me enough time to see their face from enough angles to learn it.

I think it would be funny to come up with some extra useful descriptions that I’m sure people would never give about themselves:
“I’m Linda. My gunmetal blue eyes keep sweeping the reception hall to see if my kids are picking fights or tripping the elderly.”
“I’m George. My hips are pointed toward the door because I really want to leave this party. I’m also forcing a smile to form on my very thin lips.”
“I’m Clide. I’m wiping my excessively clammy hands off on my pants just in case you offer a handshake. Also, I’m seven feet tall, but slouching to six so as not to snag my nose on the chandelier.”

The idiot Atlantic author is entitled to her unwelcome opinions. Helps me assure my decision to not read or pay for a subscription.

I honestly fail to see what was wrong with what Harris did. There are people, including me, who find such descriptions helpful.

That was all over the place. Not sure it even made a point…

They could have made their points from a perspective of curiosity, or perhaps jumping right in with their desire to hear more about politics rather than what the person is wearing. But the way this is written, I agree, it comes across as a condescending and insulting condemnation of something she was trying to do for the sole purpose of providing accessibility and spreading awareness.

I was born blind, i'm not really bothered what a person is waring but if others like it, great! On the other hand, I'd not want people to be forced into describing themselves if they felt uncomfortable.

I think I see where the author is coming from, but an entire article might be a little too much for the point made. Harris indeed could use a more creative and less simplistic description I agree with that. Hers just sound mechanical, but I none the less appreciate the effort.

The part of that article that I find the most interesting is where the author points out that just race and sex and clothing are really only the tiniest part of what you get from someone by looking at them. You get way more information than that, particularly things about how rich and senior they are and how laid back or uptight they are. That is very true and it's way more important than sex and race, which after all usually don't make much difference.

Holy shit this takes a crazy direction midway through wtf. I don't really get bent out of shape over these kinds of descriptions, mainly because I grew up not being used to them, its really not the end of the world to me.

Surprised at the response to this piece. I don't need to know what someone looks like to communicate with them. That's how speaking works - you don't need your eyes for it.

I completely agree with the author. This practice is strange and doesn't help. Unless they're gonna start describing subtle facial expressions that they don't even know they're making and do this more often then at the beginning then it's impossible to communicate useful information with these intros. It doesn't matter if you're wearing yellow or red and screw you for thinking I should care.

I read the whole thing, and yeah it's not a good piece, but has a few points.

...

Okay how in the world does any of that describe anything


Like at the end it says that people should self-describe by mentioning factors of their personality when that have nothing to do with appearance



I've honestly never heard of this self description thing but I kind of like it and well I don't really care about clothing it is kind of cool to imagine and when I think about what a person looks like I generally default to hair skin and eye color and maybe height so those would also be you were worth including and then the outfit make the context of that particular meeting and complete the visualization since I'm a very visual person who likes to imagine what everything looks like when I read books every description is relished because it allows me to imagine the theme in my head



We can read emotion in tone most of the time we don't need people to describe what their Faith is doing that doesn't help us imagine them like a picture of what they look like


I think this is kind of missing the entire point of self description like it says people should describe if they're ugly or not but that's not how anything works people are attractive based on what people find attractive


For instance some people are more attractive to one body type and some people think that same body type is hideous


Up and down so that this particular description probably wouldn't be the most helpful as it really only mentioned her suit
And not anything about what she looks like like her hair color



I also wouldn't quite get someone using race in the description since I don't know what the different races look like it took me years to figure out Asians weren't Brown like Mexicans lol



But seriously who criticizes an accessibility gesture during an ADA anniversary


No matter what point they're trying to make that is completely tactless smh

Wow, this writer is an idiot.

It amazes me how they can train the dumbest people to use a thesaurus.

Ew! Wtf.

This annoys me like I’m visually impaired and I like these sorts of descriptions so people making fun of them when it’s not meant for them annoys me. I also think generally speaking that people who don’t have a blind person in their life are so oblivious to everything about blind people and really don’t care to learn about it that when stuff like this comes up they are ignorant to how helpful it could be to so,eone

I have never so strongly felt the need to say just how stupid I thought something was. This article is convoluted in many ways and serves no purpose whatsoever.

Totally blind and I completely agree with the article. I can care less you are wearing a blue suit. So say something a bit more useful?

I read the piece. What's condescending?

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This has nothing to do with mocking blind people, just typical out of touch cynical journalists desperate to criticize **anything**. This is why I refuse to pay for newspaper subscriptions.

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Good god, I had to stop reading after the feeling music bit. The writer is clueless and the editor is a dunce.