Currently on Twitter a wilfully ignorant person is sharing a TikTok video of a confident white cane user crossing a busy road on a pelican crossing and then consulting their phone. The video has a caption that reads “What in the universal credit is going on here?” The tweet itself reads “It’s a miracle”
The tweet replies are full of people as ignorant claiming that the blind person is faking for the Universal Credit (UC) which is available for those out of work and on low incomes.
For a start from DWPs own figures those fraudulently claiming PIP (which is for all disabled people for extra expenses that come with disability) and claiming the disability component of UC is almost 0% and there’s far more people not claiming the benefits that would help them.
When reminded that phones have accessibility features that increase text size, and read aloud what’s onscreen the OP of the tweet declare but “she’s whizzing along”. I wrote a reply in 4 parts
“photo shows what a person with 20/20 sight would see at 6 feet away and from a slightly different angle using an app what I a medically blind person sees at the same distance. However 4 inches from my nose when my phone isn’t talking I read smudged text” 1/
“As for the speed this person is walking the cane method they are using is constant contact. I use this technique and through my cane I can feel the bumps in the pavement, I’m a confident cane user now with a cane the right length for my pace which is 3 miles/hour” 2/
“3 miles/hour is slower than when I was fully sighted when I walked at 5 miles/hour. My sight loss diagnosis was 8 years ago and I’ve been using a white cane for 7.25 years for the 1st year of using my cane I walked a lot slower about 1 to 1.5 miles/hour” 3/
“Of course I’ve also got wear and tear on my body which is part of why I’ve slowed down (I’m almost 63, and have joint and back issues due to osteoporosis caused by meds I’ve taken over the last 13 years).
Watch this” /4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxqXEt5tuQs
The video shows various progressive causes of sight loss and how it effects the people living with sight impairment.
Here’s the medical criteria for a Certificate of Visual Impairment which people get when their sight is impaired enough to be life altering
And here’s a list of eye conditions (mostly causes of sight impairment but some like Charles Bonnet Syndrome are caused by sight impairment and some like Anti VEGF treatment are treatments to slow down the damage caused by the particular disease
https://www.rnib.org.uk/your-eyes/eye-conditions-az/
This should give you some idea of the complexity of sight impairment.
For instance my sight loss has the symptoms of several conditions:- Glaucoma, Wet AMD, Cataracts, and was initially thought to be PIC though has recently been discounted as such because the symptoms aren’t “text book”.
Apart from trying to educate people there’s not a lot that can be done about the bigotry on Twitter and TikTok but maybe this blogpost will help those who want to learn and not wanting to remain wilfully ignorant.
Until next time
Was that a dinosaur? 2.0 
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