(I'm still stuck on the "We can't get any support from these organizations unless we use the expensive software instead of the free software". Problems that do not need to exist but never get resolved are so freakin' irritating -.- )

@JaceK

I've been there where I had no money and was forced to use welfare just to survive. In that mode you take advantage of every free thing you can, but to get the most value out of it, I'd go for what will fill the need, not the top of the line, that's just wasteful of the very limited resources.

Then later when I'm much better off, I probably could have gotten JAWS for free, but didn't want to wait the months it would take to get it, so I paid for it myself, and left the money in the welfare system so that hopefully somebody who really needs it can get it.

My only computer is an ten year old laptop that works just fine and fills my computing needs very adequately, I don't need something shiny and new and probably loaded down with a bunch of extra crap I have no use for.

My iPhone is an SE, I definitely don't need an eight, or a, God forbid, an X. I like the size and form factor of the classic iPhones and have no wish to own any of the newer designs.

It's people like Bob that make it hard for people that really need it to get the help they need from the welfare system because people like him are sucking up all the resources. But as I look at it, you get out of life what you put into it. If you go through life being a cheap ass jerk like Bob, you'll end up with an unsatisfying cheap ass life, and deserve it.

At Orko, I can't recall what the title of that book was. I know I got it from Bard, what was Web Braille then, so it's possible I could track it down again, but it would probably take awhile.

As far as driving goes, it has definitely been something I've yearned for extensively. While I'm not quite as skeptical of self driving cars as I used to be, and in fact, if they provided me with greater independence than I have now, and I could actually afford such a thing, which, let's face it, both prospects are long shots, I would be willing to see what they can do. However, it could never replace the actual experience of getting behind the wheel, and knowing that I am essentially controlling this powerful machine that can be the source of pleasure, pain, and everything in between.

When I was younger, I constantly dreamed of packing everything I owned into a car, or at least my most prized possessions, and driving off to parts unknown. I would imagine every detail, from the songs on the radio to the purr of the car's engine to the scents wafting in through my open windows as I zoomed along, untethered by any expectations, troubles or hindrances. When I was too exhausted to continue, I would simply stop where I was, and attempt to make the place I had found my home. Even if I had to literally live in my car for awhile while foraging for that burger flipping job that is so elusive to us blind folks until I got on my feet, I would be satisfied just knowing that this was my creation, my doing, my wants, my needs. I wanted this so badly at times that the pain I felt was physical.

Then, almost four years ago, I met someone who changed my perspective on many things, and one of the things he showed me is that you don't need to be alone to bask in freedom, or to hope for a better life. I still have that fantasy sometimes, particularly now that he's gone, but the allure of the car and all it represents doesn't have quite as strong of a pull on me as it once did.

I do wonder what my life would have been like had I been able to follow through on such a lifestyle, of course. Perhaps it would have ended terribly for me, I have no idea. It could have been the best thing that ever happened to me, or I could just be shrugging my shoulders and saying meh. In any case, even though sighted people have often tried to make me feel better by saying that it's good that I don't have to waste my money on gas, fight with assholes in traffic, or deal with the anxiety that comes with unexpected and costly repairs, I'll always be haunted by that what if?

Okay, let's see how much I can accomplish here.

I often see this pop up in almost every minority group under the name, if there was a way to cure your Disability or Chronic illness (emphasis on disability and chronic illness ) would you do it). The answer isn't going to be yes or no.

For many people, they have accepted their disability or illness if it happened early in life as a part of their identity. Hence, why we sometimes use identity-first language. Others choose not to let their disability or illness define them, but rather, have it be referred to as a person with an additional characteristic (person-first language).

Most people who are on the identity side of things argue that they feel, philosophically, that they've been made this way for a reason. If you haven't been given this disability, you wouldn't have the experiences you have now. So I would say that you could cure your disability, but it wouldn't overwite any experiences you had. It'd simply amend to what you already have.

But now let's take it a little bit further than that. What does accept really mean? Here's a little Excerpt from Deaf-Blind and Determined.

Saturday, November 29, 2014
DB speech by scott stoffel
(This is a long document but well worth the read. Information 
about Scott's books can be found at the end of this email. Please 
feel free to share.)

Scott Stoffel's Speech "Listen to the Vision"
(AKA: Deaf-Blind Monsters)
November 2, 2014
Fourth Anniversary of DeafCAN! Banquet

For more information on DeafCAn, the SSP program or to make a 
donation visit:
deafcanpa.org

SCOTT STOFFEL:  Okay.  Testing, one, two, three.  All right.

I am Scott.  I will be your Deaf-Blind speaker for the evening.

So we have a Deaf-Blind person up here speaking to you.

     7

What are you expecting me to say?

Supposing I was Helen Keller, the most famous Deaf-Blind person 
standing here now, what do you think the first thing Helen Keller 
would say?  It would probably be the same first words you get 
from Hannibal of Carthage.  You know what I mean, of course.

Is this thing on?  Can you hear me in the back? Did you feed my 
elephant?

Maybe Helen would skip the elephant.

Joking aside, what do you expect from a Deaf-Blind speaker?  Are 
you expecting any of the usual speech?  Yeah.  I will tell you 
about how it was very hard growing up with disabilities.  And I 
had to struggle to the brink of despair.

But then one day, I decided to accept my disabilities.  I 
overcame them.  I accomplished some great athletic feat, like 
tying my shoes.  Hey, that would be a great feat.  These shoes 
have no laces.

I also wore blue and red pajamas with a big "S" on the front, 
conquered the world and lived happily ever after.

Is that the kind of speech you were expecting?

You don't know how many times I've heard that speech from 
Deaf-Blind people.  It seems like everyone gives that same speech

over and over again.

And the audience loves it.  Every time, 15-minute standing 
ovation.  They say you are incredible.  You should be

     8

president and you are standing there in pajamas.

(laughter)

It is so redundant.  Sometimes I feel like society is expecting 
some kind of show.  If Deaf-Blind speakers are like Phineas 
Barnum's 19th century human oddities.  They do a show.

Come and see the amazing Deaf-Blind man!  He is faster than a 
speeding driver, more powerful than duct tape, able to lease tall 
buildings with a single bond.  It's a class E savings bond.

But honestly, would you take a guy seriously standing here in 
pajamas?  With the big "S" on the front?

What is it with that speech?  You get it over and over and over 
again and it's always the same.  There is something about that 
"I accept Deaf-Blindness" routine that people want to hear.

But what does it mean?  What does it mean if somebody says I 
accept being Deaf-Blind?  Why does that make us amazing?

We are so amazing and incredible, they tell us that.  Why?

What do the words mean, "I accept?"

I don't think there is a good definition for I accept.

I acknowledge my deaf-blindness.  I try to understand it and cope 
with it.  But that doesn't seem to be society's definition of 
accept.  People treat it like it means cure.  The person says, "I 
accept" and that means they are no longer Deaf-Blind.  They live 
like they are not Deaf-Blind.  The disabilities are gone.  We 
have overcome them.  So they no longer exist.  No problem.

If you want the whole text, let me know. So let me ask you this question. I've started asking this question because I've been having arguments with people who were totally blind versus those, like myself, who have combined disabilities. Would you rather be deaf, or would you rather be blind?

Most people would say they would rather be blind. That would be a logical answer. And Helen Keller is right, in a way. She once said, being blind is like being cut off from things, while being deaf is like being cut off from people. So, being deaf blind must be like being cut off from the world. So, naturally, you would rather be cut off from things. We, as humans, are social creatures who, no matter if we're introverted or extroverted, want to bond with other humans in some level.

This is why I hate having to depend on others to cruss busy lighted intersections. But, until a cure for my hearing loss is found, I will still be subject to needing assistance crossing streets. Someone once said,it's not the hearing aids that is causing the problems. It's the ears. Think of purchasing the most expensive, high-quality TV antenna for your very old television. You find that no matter how good your antenna is, your TV still displays a crappy output signal. That's because it's the TV itself, or in this case, the cochlea.

Now, when the cochlear implant first came out several decades ago, it was seen as a menace to the deaf community. People, especially hearing parents who got children implants were shunned by the rest of the community. Their sign for a cochlear implant was two fingers held together, making a stabbing motion in the neck. I guess it was supposed to represent a vampire or something. I read this in a book called I Can Hear You Whisper, by Lydia Jones.

I can imagine how some members of the blind community would react to the retinal implants, which are currently being developed by Second Sight. Strangely enough, many people who belong on the vOICe mailing list were okay with it, but people from the National Federation of the Blind might not be glad about it.

The reason I'm posting this now is because yesterday, I had the opportunity to go down to my local university's eye research institute. I submitted some genetic samples which a lab will study over the next year or so. It is primarily meant to benefit me, though it'll hopefully give the lab some useful information to add to their collection.

My doctor told me that I would need a multi-step process to have either vision and or hearing restored.
First, I would have to look into optogenetics, which uses a light-sensitive protein that stimulates the last layerof cells in the eye that respond to different wavelengths of light.
Next, I could look into a vector that would repair the gene on the retinal cells. The only problem with that is that it won't change the mutation in the rest of the human body.
If I wanted to fix all the proteins in my body, I could look into a special kind of medicine, or pill, that would cause the skipping of a special signal that would normally cause the sequence to truncate to continue building.
But, since a lot of damage has been done by the malformation of the proteins, I'd need a stem cell or eye transplant procedure to fully benefit. I heard that they're working with certain species of quale, as they're known to regenerate cochlear cells.

Now, ask me this question six or seven years ago, and I would have said, no, I do not want a cure for my disability. When Itook an anatomy and physiology class in my last year of high school, however, I completely changed my mind when I read an article about how some people expressed hearing things whenever they saw certain forms of colours.
Now, if you had read the Giver, by Lois Lowry, I I walsy like to use this example because Jonas and everyone else was engineered to not see colour. Unfortunately, Jonas had a flaw, which turned out to benefit him. The giver also had this flaw. The birth mark was simply having pale eyes, while everybody else had dark eyes.
One day, Jonas and Asher were tossing an apple around. Once, when Jonas had tossed it into the air, he noticed something peculiar come about the apple, but when it was back in Asher's hand, it had remained its dull nondescript shade.He noticed everything else was this way as well. In the auditorium, during the ceremony of birth, when the chief elder had skipped his name, Jonas finally went on stage, where he noticed the audience's faces have that same peculiar quality as the apple.
When Jonas and Fiona were going down to the House of the Old, he caught glimpsed her hair, for it had turned into that mysterious quality he had seen in the last two occasions. This prompted him to ask the giver, who tested him. He had Jonas look at the books on the highest bookshelf, and then he instructed Jonas to look down at the sled in his memory. Both of these things had the same hue that had puzzled him. The giver told him he was seeing the colour red.

So, when I was growing up, I imagined associating various events with certain musical keys. For example, the fourth of July was always in C-sharp major or D Major, depending on whether it was sunny or cloudy. I always imagined Twilight in the form of B-flat major, and that's the key I associated with my high school graduation. It's very possible that I might have seen colours when I was very little, but nobody told me what those colours were that I made my own associations in my mind.

Once I learned that there was an actual name for it, synaesthesia, I vowed to find some way to complete the rest of the puzzle so I could finish describing the way colours look like through sound.  I've come across lots of videos, like Neil Harbisson and his Eyeborg back in 2013, and I hope things are still being worked on.

Here's something else I've been interested in. If a person born deaf never heard voices before, and they were schitzophrenic, would they still hear voices even though they never heard voices talking in the language they learned? Likewise, if you gave psychedelics to a blind person who had never seen before, would they have any visual experiences? I've been interested in finding this out for myself, but unfortunately, psychedelics are illegal in the US, unless there happened to be some kind of study out there where it was done in a controlled manner.
Anyhow, hope this gives you some of my views on the subject.

I've planned to film the members at an NFB training centre or convention to prove that they do not treat deaf-blind people the way they should. Not like Helen Keller National Centre, for instance.
Many members of the NFB are against guided travel. I know, because when I went to an NFB-sponsored event, I was not allowed to rely on a human guide, despite attempts to explain that I cannot follow people due to my hearing loss. The NFB is entirely fixated on showing society that blind people are independent they forget that there are people who genuinely need assistance
And Big Balls to who misgendered me in post 136.

Also to add to yer point about the NFB members being against....here's  a short list of things they are against:

Everything

Well everything bar being 'independent'

Guy I know out in RI who works with a band I'm friends with had a blind roomate who was taught by the NFB. He couldn't do anything in the real world from washing food before preparing it (supposedly the NFB had taught that wasn't required if you bought food...the fuck? I took high school cookery classes and that was the first thing we were taught) to not knowing how to work a button oven or a stove or microwave at all, and of course....refusing any help. It culminated in the Proidence FD being called because the smoke alarm went off since said blind guy decided it'd be a wonderful idea to cook fries on the stove. Without help or supervision, because, independence. Cue a whole apartment building being evacuated into a fall evevning at around 6 or 7....and a hell of a lot of angry people turning their hate on that blind guy who genuinely couldn't understand why people were angry at him. Oh I don't know...forcing them out of their homes into 40 degree weather while firefighters put out a pan fire maybe?

While I believe that the NFB is rather militant in the way they go about some of their campaigns, that's not to say that I object to what they are doing and should be disbanded as some here are saying. I applaud what they are doing for the blind and visually impaired, I just wish they weren't so militant about it. You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.

Here's what I fail to understand about the hypocracy of the NFB. They say they want blind people to be independent, and they turn down people who ask for assistance. The problem is, sighted people ask for assistance all the time. If sighted people can use a GPS, ride Uber Lyft, or whatever, why shouldn't blind people be the same? Why does the NFB want to forbid the use of audible and tactile pedestrian signals, human guides, or discourage blind people from using GPS, Uber or Lyft?

I spoke to one person who said they didn't want to rely on others to drive them, that they preferred to cross streets and take rebular public transit. They are in Australia. I did hear that Australian lights are comprised of devices that have a pulsating sound, partly due to the relay circuits, similar to those found in an MRI machine or a mechanical thermostat. This same person said they wouldn't mind having a guide dog. So, here's what puzzles me. Why would you let an animal guide you, but not a human? Does it have to do with the fact that dogs are fully devoted to you, without expecting anything from you in return?

I might be going to the convention and I might pretend to only use American Sign Language to convince people I am completely deaf. That way, I would get a human guide. At the end of the convention, I would reveal that I do in fact, have some residual hearing, but only when I have hearing aids or a personal sound amplifier.

I once read a book about a blind business individual named Michael Hingson, who, with his guide dog Roselle, evacuated the 78th story of the World Trade Centre, North tower on 9/11. On the back, he included some text by Kennith Jernigan, who said that blindness was like being left-handed.

To answer the point about the book series.....

Got in touch with the author after I posted that to clarify. Here's the CLiffs Notes version:

1. The character in question is written a certain way for plot and character reasons and she's not rewritten it to please the NFB

2. The NFB also objected to the mere concept of the character having a seeing eye dog, completely missing the point that it...ya know, helps with the very thing the NFB  are preaching.

3. Said character is ensconced in a Victorian-era society and is very high up in the social order, so yes people do things for him, which the NFB objected to a king (which the character in question is) having servants and a butler who help out and cook and do housework. Which is, by the way, how things were, if you had servants and were high up in the aristocracy in, say, Victorian era times....you didn't lift a finger, the servants did all the work and you took the credit. So that's accurate.

Also the NFB objected, at least in part to the idea of that character hitching a ride with other characters. their general mantra was well he should drive. To which the author responded no, he's blind for a specific reason as far as the backstory goes. He's not driving, he rides with the rest of his people and that's that.

Oh also siaid author in question was heavily invovled with hospitals up in NY/Mass/Boston area by the way so she knows first hand how blind people are.worked

Additionally...the ADA doesn't cover every single eventuality. though, if you check the specific wording, there's a crapton of loopholes and issues with it. If the NFB wanted to not give out, say, a harness for a guide dog, they'd find the specific part to justify not giving it out according to the ADA and wave that around.

Additionally, a comment I saw on Twitter has blind people up in arms that sighted announcers are caling goalball games. The reply from somebody working for a TV network was priceless, pointing out announcers need to see what they're talking about. Hey, college radio could take a hint from those guys....

hi,
Sure. Here is that post.
(3) the physical condition of blindness is nothing more than a normal, human 'characteristic,'
This is one which really is out of touch with reality. There is nothing normal about blindness.  Furthermore,  blindness is not a characteristic. It is arguably one of the most serious disabilities. This view of blindness as a neutral characteristic is dangerous. It can encourage people to have disabled children over  regular children,  which some among the deaf are doing, using IVF, to implant specificly chosen deaf embryos, and then forgoing treatment to make them perminently deaf. Here is also a blog post from jonathan mosen, where he talks about how excited he is  about the possibility of having grandchildren with norrie disease, which is a disease that causes blindness, and possibly deafness and mental impairment.
http://mosen.org/why-im-excited-about-h … dchildren/
This should demonstrate my point.
(4) given "proper training" and opportunity, the average blind person can do the average job in the average place of  business, can have a family, can be a tax paying and participating citizen and can be in every way a contributing member of society who can compete on terms of absolute equality with his or her sighted neighbors;
This is also disconnected from reality. The truth of the matter is, even if blind people have access to everything a sighted person has, we will never be on equal footing with sighted people. Having access does not make one equal. We do almost everything slower than a sighted person with comparable skill. Having a screen reader does not make the disability disappear.  This time difference will always be there, unless in the distant future everyone gets brain implants, in which case  this conversation can be had again.
(5) with proper training and opportunity, blindness is not a tragedy. It literally can be reduced to the level of a physical 'inconvenience' or 'nuisance';
This is also completely false. As been stated numerous times, by me and others in this topic, blindness is most definitely not a minor nuisance. It is a major disability which affects everything you do, as well as the way you choose to do it, and even in some cases, e.g, driving, whether you can do it at all.
(6) the actual, physical limitations associated with the characteristic of blindness can easily be overcome by using 'alternative techniques' for doing without sight what you would do with sight if you had it;
Same as previous.  Firstly, blindness isn't a characteristic. Second, there are not always alternative techniques in doing everything, reading the body language, or facial expressions of people around you for example. In the remaining cases, it can take a longer amount of time to accomplish the same.
(7) the concept of the 'hierarchy of sight' ... is nothing more than a myth and is completely false;
Out of all of the creeds of this cult, this one is by far the dumbest.  Science has consistently shown that there is indeed a hierarchy of  senses, with sight being at the top. It is estimated that 80% of environmental information  obtained by a sighted person comes from sight.  Furthermore, it is also known that sight overrides all other senses, in terms of processing in the brain. I will believe the word of science, not the myths of a crackpot ideology.
(8) ... 'IT IS RESPECTABLE TO BE BLIND,' and the blind, themselves, are primarily responsible for pushing back the frontiers of ignorance and changing what it means to be blind in the broader society;

There is nothing respectable about being blind, just like there is no respect in being born in a certain place. Also, I am not an ambassador of the blind, I am only responsible for my own well being. Noone has the right to impose ambassadorial duties on me.
... (10) the "real" problem of blindness is not the physical loss of eyesight at all, but rather is to be found in the wide range of societal misunderstandings and misconceptions about blindness shared by the blind and sighted alike ..."
While it is true that society's atitude does have impact on a blind person's life, a majority  of  the hardships experienced by the blind are unrelated to society, and are completely due to the actual physical limitation of the disability.

Hmm. I stand corrected. That list could use some "almost"s. 6 in particular is hyperbolic without an "almost" or "nearly" or "the vast majority of", due to things like nonverbal communication and visual art. 3 is outright wrong, and 7 is not all that clear but I think Enes covered that pretty well.
But the rest seem fine at face value, even though you know there are plenty who use 10 to irritate everyone.