Blurred: What’s In A Name?

People love to place others into groups when describing certain traits.  To be sensitive to people with low vision, these terms change all the time so as not to offend anyone.  Though sometimes I wonder, as the terms keep changing, did the people who came up with the new ones even consult with those who are Blind, Visually Impaired, Low Vision, or Partially Sighted before they came up with this new one?

Ready to hear what the new most non offensive, politically correct term to describe us has been deemed?

Perceptually Disabled.

Here is an example of how it is used in a sentence.

Notice how they did not end this sentence with a period.  I know It’s horrible but I still have enough vision to pick that up at the time of this writing.

I found this statement in my reading for school some time ago.  It’s taken from a segment that explains what is allowed to be copied under current Copyright laws in Canada.

Here is my problem with this new term. You can perceive with your eyes, but you can also perceive with your brain.  Which one are they really talking about here?  I understand that some want to take the impairment aspect away, because having low vision should never stop a person from accomplishing things

But…

Perceptually Disabled

It causes much more confusion to me, and I don’t have much depth perception along with the fact that I am legally blind.

Just call it what it is… Blind or Visually Impaired (I’m visually impaired and neither of those are offensive to me). Sometimes people try to be so politically correct that they don’t even make sense. “Perceptually Disabled” makes it sound like we don’t understand what’s going on around us ever.  I understand people are trying to be intelligent and come up with new phrases for things…but this one doesn’t make much sense.  However, it did give me, as well as several friends a good laugh.  On a serious note, there is a huge difference between being visually impaired and being brain dead.

So, call me blind (I’m close enough anyway), visually impaired, low vision, none of these bother me one bit.

If you still want to be on the safe side in conversation.  Ask the individual person how they would describe it, and use those terms.

Then nobody gets misrepresented in the name of political correctness.

***

This is expanded from a blog post I wrote previously when I was originally annoyed with this concept.  Sometimes it’s interesting to revisit old material and re work it for new purposes.

You can find the original post here.

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