Not wanting to offend the woman in the slightest she asked a bit hesitantly: “Um, what is the politically correct way to describe somebody who cannot see?”
The woman promptly responded: “Blind!”
Thereafter a lovely conversation followed, with the woman, Wanda, giving some insights (excuse the pun) into one of the challenges of being blind.
But let’s clarify something first.
The woman is Dr Wanda, and she’s an astrophysicist, who, amongst other things, really enjoys developing interesting lesson plans to teach kids about astrophysics.
She has not allowed being blind to restrict her in the slightest and continues to reach for the stars – literally.
Except Wanda listens to them instead of looking at them!
She reckons the most irritating thing is when somebody sends her a PDF file to read.
PDF stands for “portable document format” and it’s a way of saving a document from any application into a format that most systems can read – unless you are blind.
Wanda explained her special software that “reads” the document cannot comprehend a PDF file.
It just picks up random words and strings them together.
Obviously, this could lead to major confusion.
She gave us a hysterical example that went something like “The moon was in the bathroom exploding.”
The numbers at the table swelled with Alfred from Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown (Johannesburg) joining the ranks.
Wanda asked Alfred what his favourite exhibit was.
His answer was the one that explained sound waves.
Of course, she did not leave it there – she had him explain to her just how he got the concept across to the people visiting Sci-Bono.
Initially, Alfred waved his hands around a lot, which Wanda could not see, but he quickly got the hang of it and used his words – very simply and effectively to explain how sound waves work.
We all take many things for granted and our sight is one of them.
By the way – how often do people check the toys that their young children play with for sharp bits they could potentially stick into their eye (or somebody else’s) by mistake?
Double check that toy box please, just to make sure.
Reach for the stars people – don’t let anything hold you back.
Sibo
