'Other' Opportunity

As a way of understanding more about what it's like to be an 'other', we have been given the opportunity to temporarily disable ourselves. As a college we have been given a small handful of wheelchairs, goggles and headphones. All of these items will give us the feeling of being unable to do certain things for ourselves, wheelchair - being unable to move about, goggles - to make us experience being blind or having a sight problem and headphones - to experience being deaf. This gives us the experience of being in a state of having to rely on someone else for a major part of daily life and activities.

I personally didn't use any goggles, headphones or wheelchair but I did help aid a friend who experienced being blind and a friend who experience being blind. As we were watching a documentary, the blind person couldn't watch it (only listen) and the deaf person could only see. This meant we had to take clear notes for the deaf person and describe anything the blind person wanted to know. After the task, comments were made about how hard it was to keep concentrated when blind and how different it felt to not be able to hear. I thought the task was very useful and was definitely a good thing to have taken part in as it gave us the experience to be in a state we couldn't help and needed to rely on aid.