Imparting Social Etiquette to the Visually Impaired

It’s said you learn something new every day, and I certainly did this week.  The National Federation of The Blind’s National Student Division is designing a website where they can post tips for students on subjects including what to expect in college, how to deal with college disability offices, and the minimal and ideal levels of skill you should have in areas ranging from travel to home management before you leave for college. If the skill list had been a test, I’m sure I would have failed. Later I’ll tell you about my shortcomings in these areas, and what I intend to do to overcome them, but for now I want to focus on another issue: the difficulties of explaining to visually impaired individuals the necessity for what we would call social/business etiquette.

While it was proposed that there be a page of the website devoted to listing generalized points of social etiquette, there are a couple of factors that make this nearly impossible. The first is the wide range of things that one needs to learn in order to fulfill proper etiquette at business/social functions.  Etiquette that may apply to one situation may not apply to another.  For example, your speech differs slightly in tone and diction and vocabulary from when you are speaking to a professor to when you are speaking to a friend.  However, these nuances are far too difficult to explain on a website and have them be of use.

Another factor is motivation. What we are trying to create is a pool of knowledge from which people can draw in order to improve their technique.  The problem is that, intellectually at least, many blind teens understand what sort of etiquette is expected of them within a social situation, but simply don’t care what society’s conventions say is socially appropriate. They are either natural inverts, like me, or they are simply fearful of rejection. This requires intensive personal mentoring, which is something a website simply can’t provide.

For me, I was and still am a natural introvert. Don’t get me wrong; I like people. Far too many people confuse introverted either with someone who dislikes people, or who is incredibly shy. Though I am shy, the bigger issue for me is that I am naturally a loner. I do have close relationships with two or three people, but I simply don’t actively seek out friends. And friends aren’t going to seek you out. So I finally realized that in order to have acquaintances to chat with, I had to learn some social etiquette.

The two things I worked hardest at were learning to keep up the thread of a conversation (as my mom will tell you, I have a tendency to leave a conversation dangling in the middle because I’ve started thinking about something else and forgot I was having a conversation) and code switching, which is the ability to go from speaking in the articulate polished voice you might use in a classroom to speaking ordinary teenage vocabulary.  I am slowly learning to keep the thread of a conversation going, and not wander away down another thought process. As for the code switching, I haven’t picked it up and have quite frankly given the entire thing up as a lost cause.  

There will be those who are willing to be my friend even with my sometimes daunting vocabulary, and it is those people I have begun to seek out. In fact, I have found a couple of other people within my age range who have many of the same problems I have. I can see how the way I talk sometimes makes people think I feel superior to them. I suppose to certain people I come off as snobbish or even arrogant. However, I find it impossible to turn my vocabulary on and off like a faucet, one minute speaking articulately and then using teenage slang.

And so I, too, provide a prime example of what plagues blind teens. I would rather limit my circle of acquaintances than change. Mentoring is also out of the question, as I couldn’t tell a person to do something I didn’t believe in doing myself.  I could not tell someone who had a large vocabulary to code switch when with their friends because I couldn’t practice what I preach. However, I could warn them that their vocabulary could limit their circle of friends.  

It will be incredibly enlightening and incredibly frustrating getting past our own issues with social skills to compile a Web page that may indeed help the next generation.