frustrated with blindness (read post if you want context)
Hi all,
Before I start, please keep trollish or one-word replies behind; I would like to keep this thread constructive if it actually goes anywhere.
My intention here is not at all to be in a bad mood or to bitch and complain on Christmas day. I had a great Christmas actually, and I try every year to enjoy it. But something has come up which frustrates me a little, and I can't decide whether the frustration is justified.
Ever since I started using appliances with batteries, I wished I knew of a way to see how much charge they had left. Eventually I started using rechargeable batteries.
Around that time, someone found an audible battery tester. It was a very simple unit; just stick batteries in and it beeps. The louder the beep, the more charge the batteries had. It wasn't very precise as the beep didn't change much, but it was enough to make me feel like I could find my own system for gauging the battery capacity. But somehow it got lost, thrown out etc. I haven't seen it in years.
In the meantime, I ran into issues with chargers seeming to be dead, batteries not holding a charge etc. I don't exactly know what happened, but I couldn't trust any of my batteries or chargers. I got tired of that and eventually decided to replace everything. I spent a little extra money on a good charger and batteries, and have exclusively been sticking to that, and so far I haven't had any issues. But I'm still paranoid about the battery testing thing; I lost plenty of good recordings when I was having issues.
An accessible battery tester was among the things I would gladly receive as a Christmas present. My mom was on the lookout for one, but we both knew our options may be limited. Eventually, she did find one though, the EZ test. It's available through APH, though it's out of stock, so I don't know how she managed to find one. I do know she waited weeks to get it, and didn't expect me to have it today, but as it turns out, it arrived just in time.
In a nutshell, the tester comes with 2 AAA batteries which power it. You stick them in, then insert the battery you want to test. Once it gets a reading, it produces either 1, 2 or 3 beeps depending on the battery's strength. If the battery is practically depleted, only 1 beep is heard, and if it is very strong, 3 beeps are heard. An in-between state is signified by 2 beeps. Easy, simple. No sweat. Within 5 minutes I had found batteries which produced all three signals, so I knew what they sounded like and they were very different. All my dreams should be answered, right?
I know I should be completely happy... but I'm not, and this is where I want to stress again that I'm not writing this to bitch and complain. But I felt uncertain when I heard two beeps. Did that mean it was close to full charge, or near being dead? My recorders can last at least 6 hours on a full charge with my current batteries (haven't really timed it precisely yet, but it's a while,). And that's just for recording. For playback, the time is probably longer. So, if I hear two beeps, does that mean I only have an hour or two, or 5 or 6? I have virtually no way of finding out.
I wanted to see some intermediate state. A percentage, a voltage, even that imprecise beep which I'd have to listen to for several seconds to be sure I was confident in what I was hearing. But there's nothing like that, just three states, and it just bothered me a little. I decided that the best approach would be to keep as many of my batteries charged as possible, and to accept nothing less than 3 beeps on any of them.
This might not have bothered me if it was all I had. But, after discussing my failing batteries with a hobbyist nature photographer, I started to realize that he has a lot more than I do. His tester gives him voltages and can test many more batteries I think. I don't know what else it does, but it just, felt like a more advanced unit. Do I need one of those? Probably not. But I take comfort in numbers and in progression, and his tester would give me such comfort. Yet, because I am blind, I don't have the option of getting one even remotely like it.
And that one little issue, and those thoughts... they did something to me. Brought out all the frustration I have with being blind. Especially when it comes to using technology. I've mentioned this on other threads, but I have a lot of, probably unjustified, resentment toward blind-exclusive equipment. I am a firm believer that many things can be adapted, not reinvented, to be accessible. For instance, I'm happily using Windows and IOS on a daily basis with help from screen readers. Take the screen reader away though and you have a fully mainstream piece of equipment. It gives me an immense sense of belonging to remind myself of this fact, that I can show people I'm not some blind outcast you must feel overly inspired by and sorry for because I live in my own little world and I somehow manage to get by. I think avoiding this stereotype as much as possible helped me finally come to terms with being blind.
Growing up, I was so used to being reminded every day about the challenges, differences and trials I would have to prepare for. I was occasionally told that blind people are disadvantaged. But for all the cautions I was given (which I do agree with wholeheartedly btw), I never felt safe voicing my desires to just be like everyone else. Every time I did voice such a thing, I was always met with a "But you can't!" With little sympathy. The most I would get was that they understood I was frustrated, but I just had to accept I was different. Yes, they speak the truth, but it left me feeling like I was just wasting my time with such desires. I have no doubt everybody meant well, but it was still hard to take.
I was also reminded I'm blind, not incapable, but I am different and I have to do things a certain way. It made me want to give up sometimes. But that of course wasn't an option either. So in time, I grew to resent every challenge associated with blindness.
But now, now that I've made a sort of commitment to fulfill that childhood dream of being blind but not discrete, I don't feel so much hatred for it. In fact, I've turned it into a sense of pride. I'm blind, but I'm proud of myself for trying to minimize how much it shows. I now find it easier to make a blindness-related request, because I can brush it off more easily, instead of feelin glike I'm just weird for existing.
I also would rather fight my way through a barely accessible experience than cause a big ruckus about it because I am blind. Of course there are exceptions; if my productivity, safety or job performance is in jeopardy, I'll have to fight a battle or resign myself to a really bad situation. But overall, I prefer not to draw attention to my blindness, and I've gotten so attached to this idea that going the all-out special blindness route is hard for me to take sometimes, even when, in situations like finding a battery tester, I feel like it's my only choice.
My intent here is not to preach and get cringy... in fact it's just the opposite. It may be cringy for blind people to look at this rant of mine, but my goal here is to explain my perspective, and to explain why I've chosen not to turn my blindness into a bigger chip in my coating. They can see it's there by how I act and look, but I can be approachable in other ways. However when I'm confronted with a situation where options are limited and I'm forced to face this head-on, I become quite upset as the old emotions come back to me.
I know my younger self would've said "It's so great that us blind people have accessible battery testers! I love it!" And there's still a part of me which does say that. To be honest, there's even a part of me which doesn't care that you can spend either the same amount or slightly more on amazon and get something with waaay more features but which isn't accessible. Yeah, there's a part of me which still doesn't really care about that, because caring about that makes it even harder for me to process my way out. All the same, I did get curious enough to look it up, and it's eating at me now, and I almost regret looking.
I know I know, a stupid nitpick with a battery tester should not have brought this on. I hate myself for taking it that way. This was a freeking Christmas present. Why am I being so nitpicky? I have a tester, it works, it gives me more than what I had before. So I should shut up and like it, because really, apart from my own stupid thoughts, I have no reason not to. And even money isn't a big concern; we're not in a big debt crisis because some extra money was spent, so I, the person who's never been overly concerned about finance, should be the last one to care about that angle. Besides, my mom had to go out of her way to find this practically extinct accessible battery tester. I don't know if other ones exist, but from the brief amount of research I've done, it doesn't look like they're commonplace, so finding one that I can actually get hold of sounds like it would be difficult. So, if I write this tester off and say I don't like it, then I have nothing. I mean it's not going to end my world either way, whether I have one or I don't, but still the frustration is real.
I just wish I could get a professional model, mod it with a cheap synthesizer and an on/off switch for it so it can be used normally if desired. I wish I could connect it through Bluetooth to my phone so my phone could log results, or through uSB to my computer or something, so I could see the results with a screen reader. If I could, I would. I know both ideas are kinda out there, and it probably wouldn't be very profitable for any company to put something like that in but, when this frustration hits me, I almost don't care. I just want more accessibility in things, and if the additional features benefit everyone, then all the better. But of course, these extended features I'm proposing would only be self-indulgent, so why should I expect anyone who could actually make the change to listen to me?
When I'm not fired up, I'll maybe do some research and investigate some of those ideas. Maybe it's been done. I kinda doubt it, but now I'm curious. Right now though, I'm going to relax and enjoy Christmas. I hope all of you had a great holiday! Hopefully I didn't sound like a whiny entitled child or something. I just had to get this out, otherwise I was going to spend the rest of the day a mess in my own broken thoughts, and that's the last thing I want, especially at the end of the year when everyone is jolly and happy!
Edit: fixed spelling mistakes, clarified some stuff.
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