Confession

...It's good for the soul, right? Recently every time I turned around, there seemed to be a person with a cognitive disability. Whether passing on a sidewalk, riding on the same bus or the person helping me in the store, there they were. Everywhere. Over and over. I am noticeably uncomfortable around people with cognitive disabilities. I never know what to say, do or think. Though not my finest trait, is my own discomfort a parallel experience able to teach me something about TABs? A useful distinction can be made between my feelings and actions. My unease comes from a complete inability to figure out the person in question. I have absolutely no way of knowing the nature of their disability let alone their functional limitations. This means I don't know if I should use simple language, speak slowly, ask questions to confirm understanding, repeat myself, or..... You get the idea. I don't know how to relate and that feeling leads to my get-me-out-of-here impulse. And, okay, I also have internalized a belief about people with cognitive disabilities behaving unpredictably. It's not that I would be hurt out of malice or intent. Rather, they might do something that would be fine if I could see but disastrous since I cannot. That increases my unease. And my actions? I take a deep breath, set my feelings aside and treat the person LIKE what they are -- A PERSON. My only unusual behaviors involve word choice and meaningful eye contact. (Believe it or not, you can do meaningful eye contact without working eyes. I can't explain how, but I've recently realized I can instinctively do it.) While I probably don't manage to entirely hide my feelings, I do my best to minimize them. Why? I know my reactions are based on stereotypes, misconceptions and ignorance. That is really the only thing distinguishing me from a non-disabled person who behaves sub-optimally around me. I recognize my feelings are not fair, reasonable or appropriate and take steps to remove them from my decision-making about behavior. I think my point bears repeating in a slightly different way. How you feel does not need to be how you act. My own vast experience around issues of disability makes it possible for me to understand my own internal reactions. Because most non-disabled people lack such a background, they don't have a framework to guide them. Can they be given one? While the bottom line about changing non-disabled people's attitudes and actions around disability comes down to education and exposure, perhaps the message needs to be different. If my primary motivation starts with a desire to treat the person before me like a person, then maybe non-disabled people need to first be made to recognize our shared humanity. That lesson must simultaneously come with the message that they probably possess little to no accurate information about disability. Unfortunately, when people feel ignorant, they tend to avoid the situation. I'm not sure how to convey shared humanity, ignorance and a necessity to not run away all at once.

Follow Up

I wanted to finish the story of my class Power, Privilege and Visions of Justice.
After the first meeting, a cooling off period was in order, so I waited until Friday to take any steps. Through the point person at my LGBT center, I got an electronic copy of the syllabus and Later the instructor emailed me electronic copies of the readings.
Still quite upset, I tried a couple more days of calming down, but it didn't work. Finally, I emailed the instructor thanking him for the readings and expressing my frustration with how the class was conducted. I bluntly asked how I could learn about privilege from someone who created an exclusionary classroom environment. We emailed back and forth, but he continued to feel the only issue was the readings and their accessibility whilst I thought there were broader issues at play. He wanted to talk about how he was used to Disability Services handling everything. I wanted to discuss how his actions reflected able bodied privilege. Talking at cross-purposes never works and this case was no exception.
My other email exchange had a far more productive outcome. I again contacted the point person at my LGBT center and her almost immediate response was a request to talk about it. In that phone conversation, I found someone to add to my list of people who have an open mind and are willing to learn. It looks like she will be an ally in any other future efforts I undertake to educate my LGBT center on issues of accessibility.
Armed with the syllabus, I then began to use google and other methods to search for the readings in alternative formats discovering that less than one third were available. Given a couple of weeks, I might have managed to work things out, but within the time constraints of a 6 week course, I felt it was not a reasonable endeavor nor was it a reasonable accommodation for my LGBT center to make.
I attended one more class, to get a sense of how the readings would be used and decided they were too central to the discussion for me to simply skip them. I explained this to both the instructor and the point person.
I have learned a couple of lessons from this experience. First, simply telling someone a blind person is going to be in their class is not enough. They need to be educated as to what that means. Explicitly. My mistake was to assume it was clear. As one friend has often told me, "Educate. Clarify. Remind."
Second, don't assume who will and will not understand disability issues. My surmises in this situation were totally off.
There have also been a lot of reminders of lessons I should have learned long ago. When you identify a problem related to access, the next thing out of your mouth should always be the solution. The formula is identify the problem, try to relate it to something familiar to the target individual, and give a preferably simple solution.
It has also become clear that I need to cultivate calm. Educate from a place of calm. Meditation here I come.