What Losing Vision Teaches Us About Independence

By Brad Blair

            When someone begins losing vision, one thought they almost always have is about the loss of independence. This is a very real, often emotional fact that can be destabilizing in the short term. The person grieves lack of access to driving, perhaps lack of access to reading their mail, or a diminished ability to see colors and shapes. Out of these three, no longer driving is the one that tends to hit the hardest.

            In this post, I consider three key steps that often shape how a person goes from being sighted, to losing vision, to adjusting to life with vision loss, but it will not be the usual discussion of stages of grief or adjustment, important as that is. Instead, I will discuss how losing vision, as a process, surfaces an interesting fact that is true for all people, sighted and able-bodied, or else not. Along the way, I will discuss skills training somewhat, but even skills training is not the key move of this piece.

From Independence to Felt Dependence

            Giving up the car keys is very hard. In fact, I’m not sure that for formerly sighted people, there is anything harder than coming to grips with no longer being able to drive. As someone who could never drive, I sat down and began to think about why. What is it about driving that makes people grieve its loss so intensely?

            First, structurally, the United States can’t be said to do mass transit very well. Although in a handful of places, you can get by without a driver’s license just fine, most of us don’t live in those places. If you live in eastern Nebraska, central Illinois, southern Oregon, or most of Tennessee, not being able to drive imposes immediate structural burdens on your life: burdens of time (everything takes longer to get to and has to be pre-planned), burdens of cost (there may not be a way to get from point A to point B without paying a lot of money), or burdens of access (there may not be any form of transportation at all to get me from point A to point B no matter how much I’m willing or able to pay). In fact, lack of affordable or even available transportation is one barrier that excludes many folks with low vision or blindness from the workforce—there’s research on that.

            What I have described is the structure, not the reason for it. The truth is that in our country, we have built up the profile of the rugged individualist. It started on the frontier, when a person needed to be able to hunt their own food, build their own home, mend their own wounds, because law, medicine, and the general store were miles away or nonexistent. The problem is that we are still modeling a frontier society when there is no need for one.

            Consider: what would Tennessee, Nebraska, or Oregon look like if there were high-speed rail service connecting most towns, if there were solid bus systems in towns and cities that everybody used, because people didn’t want to clog up the roadways just to go to work? Supposing that public transit were the norm rather than the exception, encouraged and expected rather than underfunded and, at times, stigmatized? It’s difficult to imagine, but nothing about America makes it impossible. The fact is that even in a country where millions upon millions of people don’t have a drivers license according to the Department of Transportation, people who cannot drive are still, structurally and culturally, often treated as less than by the rest of society.

From Felt Dependence to Interdependence

            As someone who teaches, among other things, technology and travel skills to adults with vision loss, I often find myself talking about bus systems, GPS apps, rideshare, and the very real barriers we just talked about above. That is where skills training comes in, and it is also where self-advocacy and helping to rebuild self-confidence comes in. That is crucial work, but here is one more piece of it.

            We are a truly interdependent society, and it is the person with low vision or who is blind who truly, deeply understands this fact. Most others do not feel it in their bones. Consider, you spontaneously decide to go to the grocery store. Good enough. On the way home, you fill up the car. Yet, if delivery drivers didn’t bring the goods to the store, if stockers didn’t put them on the shelves, if technicians didn’t make sure the electricity was working and that the self-checkout kiosks were working, and if the cashiers didn’t show up that day, you’re not buying a blessed thing. Similarly, if the fuel hauler didn’t bring the gas to the gas station, you’re not filling up.

            The difference between the person who is sighted and able-bodied and the person losing their eyesight is simply this. Our interdependence on one another is often structurally invisible to the sighted person running errands. They would see it if they thought about it, but day-to-day, people just don’t think about it on that level.

            The person with low vision starts to see interdependence immediately. Rideshare requires drivers to drive, stores often need human assistance to get around, and learning new skills often requires someone to teach them. It’s not that the person who is visually impaired is more dependent. They don’t have to be with the proper adaptive skills training. However, they perceive interdependence operating on levels most of the rest of society doesn’t think about.

            So, what should we do with this? I want us to rethink independence not as, “I can do it all myself as opposed to Brad over there who can’t,” but as, “I have agency inside an interdependent system.” Agency includes things like choice, mobility, access, and the ability to meaningfully contribute. Exactly where that agency shows up, when, and how we deploy it, those are points of training and sometimes personal preference. The thing to take away is that interdependence is not weakness—it is reality. Finally, vision loss does not equal loss of personhood or dignity.