[nfb-talk] NFB centers

[T. Joseph Carter]

Steve,

Blindness itself imposes limitations.  We have gotten very creative about
working around the problem.  Now, sometimes our alternative techniques are
somewhat less effective than what a sighted person does--I've come to hate
the notion of using a shopping assistant, for example.  Other times, our
alternative techniques meet or even exceed those employed by sighted
peers.  It pretty much balances out in the end.

My point was that an additional disability will impose additional
limitations on the person.  I said that our training centers will do
whatever they can do with a person that has additional disabilities.
Perhaps I did not emphasize the point that what they can do is probably
a lot more than the average person might think.

One thing I do believe is important to realize though is that even with a
person who is "just blind", our centers can only do what the person is
willing to do.  As much as the training costs, and as good as our centers
are, an unwilling student will learn very little.  Determination tends to
play a much larger role than disability in the outcomes we see.

Hopefully that more accurately reflects the situation?

On Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 08:53:56AM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
> Joe,
> 
> One thing that I think our centers generally do pretty well is to be careful of labels.  Often, people see someone with CP, 
> for example, as having multiple disabilities and suddenly the expectations are lowered.  This is true of other disabilities as 
> well.  Just as blindness covers a wide range of vision problems, other disabilities also cover wide ranges, and I think we 
> generally are pretty good at realizing that a person is really a unique combination and not the sum of the worst cases.