Brandie Sebeniecher

October 28, 2002

Dear Access Board,

I am writing to register my strong objection to portions of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published by the Access Board concerning public rights of way. My objections relate to two provisions of the proposed rule regarding access for blind persons.

Before mentioning my specific objections, I want first to set the scene within which those objections are placed. I am a sighted person and have now worked alongside a blind co-worker for six years. Prior to taking this job, I didn't think much about blind people. I mean, they weren't an issue, weren't a topic of cogitation for me. To the extent I ever thought about them, I suppose I figured they needed lots of extra help and had a hard time. Since taking this job, I have found out how wrong I was. In my observation of my blind co-worker and other blind people, most of the problems of blind people are really caused by misguided sighted people.

What I observe is blind people learning how to do the things we normally do with sight another way. They call this their "alternative techniques," and I must say that some of them are actually better than the way we sighted people do things. Others work just as well and are different from the way a sighted person would normally do things. Still others aren't quite as efficient but are nonetheless safe and effective. In other words, as a blind friend of mine says: "If you don't know how I'm going to do something, hide and watch!" Blind people who have taken personal responsibility for their own lives figure things out. Always.

When do-gooders step in and try to help, they often mess things up.  Sometimes, do-gooders erase or blur the information my blind friends are used to getting and using efficiently. Sometimes, do-gooders act offensively, trying to insist on doing things for a blind person that that blind person and everyone else can do for themselves. In other words, attitudes about blind people's competence held by many sighted people are often the biggest problem in a blind person's life. As another of my blind friends says: "I don't mind offers of help. I just want people to take me seriously when I say NO! But, so often, the offer of help is followed by the help being forced on me, and that's the problem."

One other thing I have observed: Some blind people don't take responsibility for their own lives. They want others to do everything for them. It even seems sometimes that some blind people think the "sighted world" owes them anything they want and should provide it regardless of cost and without ever mentioning the reason. For example, I heard one blind person say that he was sort of shy about his disability and wanted all sorts of environmental changes so he could be secretly disabled. How offensive to my capable blind friends and to the person who said that!
Blindness is not embarrassing or repulsive, but a person's attitude about himself or herself can make the blindness a problem it otherwise wouldn't be. And, failing to take responsibility and insisting that someone else has to "fix" the world for the blind person when the blind person can perfectly well "fix" himself or herself with a little personal responsibility is offensive to me.

I pay taxes. I work. So do many blind people I know. It's offensive to me and to them for someone to claim that our tax dollars should be spent to make fixes in the environment that are unnecessary because the individual seeking the change isn't taking personal responsibility or wants to hide his or her disability.

In that light, I find the proposed rules requiring wholesale installation of accessible pedestrian signals and truncated domes offensive. They are unnecessary in the huge majority of instances where the traffic pattern and the intersection topography give a blind person sufficient information to stop, discern the traffic pattern, and cross safely.

I find it equally offensive to say that, because sighted persons have walk-don't walk signals, there should always be a signal accessible to the blind right there as well. The existing signal produces information readily accessible to the blind in most instances. What's not accessible?
The blind person can hear the traffic and the pattern. It's as obvious to him or her as the lighted sign is to a sighted person.

Likewise, it's offensive to say that most intersections cannot be found by blind persons unless bumpy strips are laid down before the corner. Most intersections are obvious now because the curb is left for most of it and because the ramp is obvious to a blind person walking down it.

There are probably some very complex intersections and some poured-flat intersections that could use the extra information not otherwise readily available to blind persons. Why not spend the extra time to figure out what these are and require installation of these devices or modifications only there? It's much less expensive, and it recognizes the ability of blind persons.

On behalf of my blind and sighted friends who take seriously the responsibility to care for themselves, I find the proposed rule offensive for blind persons. It's like saying that, despite all the efforts at rehabilitation and taking of personal responsibility, blind people are helpless and always will be unless the Great Kindly Parent in Washington requires re-building of the world to take care of them. That's offensive, and it's also expensive. We have national priorities far more important than sinking millions and millions into unnecessary changes at intersections. If you want to spend more money on blind persons, why not require that all books have to be in Braille? That's one simple suggestion, and there are plenty more. But pretending that intersections without these changes are all looming hazards for the blind and then swiftly switching to a claim of civil rights to justify the expenditure (that is, ANY expenditure) is merely another version of that old do-gooder behavior that holds blind persons back.

Please don't waste my tax dollars. Please don't insult the blind by finalizing this rule. Please don't pretend that old-time do-gooderism is really modern civil rights. Instead, take back the rule, think more carefully, and come up with a rule that addresses the few but real intersections that are truly a challenge for the blind. Then, instead of creating yet more barriers for my blind friends with do-gooderism, you will be recognizing their true worth and respecting their tax dollars along with my own.

Brandie Sebeniecher