Blindness

I've been in a very dark moment, I am living with government aid and it's barely enough. Family is basically pressuring me on getting a job and they don't realize that I try, and I try, and I try! They don't live my reality, although some of my family members are also autistic, they handle it way better than me, since I'm level 2 of support, I am far from able to get a grip and hold tight when things go south for me. I have severe depression alongside with anxiety and PTSD, that in my opinion slow even more my life.

But that's not the worst, although it does harm my career choice or any social related situation. The worst is the prejudice I get... I have a great resumé, full of experience, I speak three languages and I am learning four more for gods sakes! I've been to courses and done a lot of online learning to buff my skills. But as soon as a recruiter see I'm blind, I'm turned away, they think I'm useless, they think hiring me will mean having to basically hire a babysitter to lead me to the restroom when needed, they probably think that all accessibility needs will be expensive when just by installing a free screen reader on a computer (NVDA) is basically everything I need.

I got to work in a library targeted for blind people, but the amount of abuse I got, and an almost death experience that was brushed off and my boss told me that I should have stayed in the library waiting for my allergic reaction to go away, I was in biomedical science uni at that moment and my pathology professor told me I was really lucky to survive.

I apply for job opportunities I'm very capable of doing the requirements, but apparently I'll always be dismissed because I'm disabled, or worse, I recently found a job opportunity that I didn't apply for because our minimum wage is BRL1,518.00 and the salary they were proposing was BRL1,500.00; it feels humiliating and also make me feel in a position that I don't have the dignity of being treated as a human being, because just by being disabled I'm not worth paying the BRL18.00 to achieve a minimum wage. By the way, that job opportunity was targeted for disabled people as here in Brazil we have laws that protect disabled people from not being hired, well at least in theory, because in real life, prejudice will always exist and hiring teams usually will pick the "less" disabled person. Because a person that lacks a single finger is disabled so let's hire the person missing a finger instead of hiring the person on a wheelchair, a blind person, a deaf person, and so on. I don't want to sound bitter against those that are hired because they don't have a finger, that must be very uncomfortable to live without, but it take the chances for people that need higher accomodations to work and surviving by government aid is basically impossible.

I’m here, darling. Lost with blindness and also maternal German measles or rubella and microcephaly and other conditions do this related to reading memory and cognition, learning performance and coordination, balance, and gate specifically and gate issues and coordination issues among other things with other comorbidities. I want to get involved with others who may have had these conditions fallen into the cracks and or have not have opportunities to be diagnosed in childhood and or I’ve had problems during school although I thought I was smart. I have had problems getting around keeping all and navigating and navigating and and reading. I’m also interested in Technologies Therapy and Technologies to help for these types of issues. I’m interested in for other people I’ve had other experiences and what they have had. And I’m 57 years old with no light perception and also with a circadian irregular sleep disturbance and irregular circadian rhythm disorder with sleep and difficulties with executive functioning focus, hyper focus, and switching from one task to another low tolerance for frustration and other mannerisms. I have also had difficulties in adulthood, trying to find professional, occupational therapist and professionals who worked with people with non-vision with these difficulties and to get resources and help. And some wondering what other experiences people have had with these types of conditions and how you get help or how they got help and what they did. I have some difficulties with expression have had speech therapy as a child, but have a speechless that I’m somewhat unaware of that I’ve been told so I have that. I also have difficulties typing and using touch screens and dictating soft keyboards and using AI assistance. So I do have disturbances in the brain no seizures, but disturbances and difficult planning and doing routines and mental scattered and those types of issues. I’m not a role learner and many more since experience perception and Can say action movement hands on motor sensory and other ways of learning, drama and metaphor and association in using association for and I am not a role learner I am not good with memorization so that I am not. So I do learn differently and I’ve had not very good experiences in either residential or public or higher educational settings. Sometimes I have to re-read and listen to things being described several times to pick it up. I have a slow process speed. What experiences of others had in this situations and what and how they dealt with them in what experiences I’ve had. No heart issues or hearing issues of those type of things but no muscle tone I think. In the other questions for me, let me know. Questions for you again what experiences of others had with these conditions or any of these conditions and what do you do? How do you abdicate and how do you doit difficult for me to do because a lot of people don’t listen to somebody unless they are professional, even if they are ex experien And I’ve tried to do some drawing and other things dancing and some other things. Sometimes difficult to learn things with my work memory issues. So how do you compensate for for that if anybody has had those issues? What do you do. So that’s so that’s me. Interested to hear back in any of the forms.

Hello! I haven’t been active in a couple of years! But I think I’m going to be active once again. So I hope you guys don’t mind but I would love to spread awareness about blindness and other disabilities and, I was on next-door and literally they’re not the best for disability. What happened was I was sending informational links about disability and links that led to such as things such as applevis I asked if anyone around my neighborhood would like to volunteer at the Anaheim Braille Institute center, basically my links had no way of staying there and mind you that they were all informational but, that didn’t matter to them so, I hope you guys don’t mind if I do that sort of thing here. Oh and foster sense of community I mean I know it’s not in my own neighborhood which I don’t know if anyone lives in the Orange County area that is on here but if you guys do, I can actually create a group for my neighborhood if there’s anybody in my area.

I thought that this was something I didn't suffer from but having an ear blocked with wax over several days has made me reconsider the symptom. With the wax I can still hear but in a muffled way. It's like the migraine. When I used to have it, it was like it was one eye and although I could see out of it (not blackness like I assumed it was meant to be), it was like everything was two dimensional (no depth/ flat).

Which songs resonate with you when referencing the past experiences that were either traumatic or a major challenge for you?

I personally have a few that I always gravitate to when I find myself coming to terms with specific situations. The words speak my truth, and I emotionally feel the message with every fiber of my being! There is usually a process that I go through for several days as the particular song I play over and over while deep in thought, and usually cry disheartened tears. And when not being played, it is still going on in my head as a background noise because it completely mentally consumes me. Eventually I get to a point where I reach a better understanding, acceptance for what is, forgiveness, and at peace; at which point that song is put back in my comfort vault….until the next time I need it again. Here are my songs, what are yours?
U2 -One
U2-Love is blindness
Disturbed cover of Sound of Silence

I loved this book, especially the chapter 'Recalled to Life' because of its insights into how stroke victims could lose certain faculties but learn to compensate for them by developing tactics in other areas, to cope. It also disclosed how strokes could lead to an inability to either translate sensory data into verbal terms or interpret input, to make sense of the world around them. Some people suffered word blindness - others lost facial recognition as an ability. Some were able to talk in an intelligible manner but when asked analyse what they'd said or done, they couldn't make sense of their thoughts or actions. It affected verbal and visual memory as well as passive (receptive) or active (transmissive) states of mind - in other words input or output. It was like they never reached a perception point of realising what they were seeing or a recognition point because their memories of what they were seeing weren't there anymore or available to them.

Some of these difficulties involved abstract knowledge as opposed to objective reality (written or spoken language as 'representational' data): Could lack of a sense of direction be down to the same magnetic sense in migrating birds, being lost or damaged?

In The Beth Abraham Hospital for Incurables, residents / patients found ways round their disabilities through mimicry - that is using other sensory input to kick start memory in lost areas or to communicate in new ways (visual or verbal mostly as for instance, tracing the shape of letters in mid-air or forming words with their tongues; 'Only connect...' CS Forester): Children's books teach the alphabet by simulcra that resemble the abstract forms of letters e.g's a post for 1, a sail for 4, a catapult for Y etc.

Phil Beadle, the teaching trouble-shooter, says that there are three ways of sensory learning input - visual, sonic and tactile. This reflects the areas of difficulties for stroke victims as they try to relearn communication skills.

As a side issue, people who are deaf, appear to be dumb to the hearing because they associate mental sharpness with clipped speech. The deaf can only approximate word pronunciation which makes them 'sound' like they have learning difficulties. However given sign language, the deaf can appear as swift and erudite as any voiced person can. This is because it builds upon a sense they are strong in (vision) as opposed to one they are not (sound). This is the opposite of the blind of course.

You cannot expect a man in a wheelchair to run upstairs or play football because this is his area of weakness, not strength and trying to force him to fit in under such circumstances, shows weakness on the part of the enforcer, in the brain department. This is why I think positive discrimination is foolish and humiliating to the person with the disability – depending upon their attitude to the situation of course. Ben Parkinson for instance, the Afghanistan combat veteran, has struggled and is struggling now against brain damage and the loss of both legs and it is people like him that push medical science and technology along but on a voluntary level.