Well Cj I actually agree. I have encountered far too many blind people who will only associate with other blind people and simply exist in their own litle spheres, and have also experienced the horribleness of a special school first hand for a couple of years.
the problem however is that A, Britain is not half as good for atitudes towards disabled people generally as a lot of other places like Germany, holland, Norway or america, so often when a blind person attempts to join something standard the reaction is "what?" and huge amounts of prejudice, some people ar just obstructed to any sort of contact with a disabled person.
I can for instance tell of several occasions where i've had the reaction "bugger off we can't have a Vi person on stage" when doing productions, and my brother had a very similar reaction when applying for jobs.
the club thing, it's also worth considdering that there are some activities which simply need! a specialist approach. Look at audiogames, if all our devs just said "making games only for blind people is segrigating" we'd have to make do with playing console games which is deffinately not a reasonable option. So we have specialist devs, but we also have games like Core exiles, smugglers, Muds, If titles etc, where it only takes a couple of changes to the interface to put us on an equal field with everyone else.
sport clubs would be the same. A blind person could not join a conventional baskit ball or football team, but is perfectly capable of canadian canooing or cycling without a problem, thus a range of approaches are needed.
It's also worth remembering that some blind people are less able than others. I myself live on my own and do all my own cooking etc. I do however know someone who is my age and lives with her parents, and can barely use a microwave, let alone a George forman grill, standard oven, or slow cooker as I do. for her, a cookery class specifically aimed at blind people would probably be a good idea, even though for me it would be largely unneeded.
My only problem with cooking is that being as I only have me to cook for, I very rarely do anything particularly illaborate unless I have friends turning up. The most I will do alone is chuck stuff in my slow cooker and make one of my uba chillies, or chuck something in a cook in sauce.
Btw, this is also what I am actually doing my phd on, ---- not the cooking, disability relations.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)