Adjusting to Blindness, Visual Impairment: An Interview With Robert Newman

Summary:
Robert Newman, author of "Adjustment To Blindness And Visual Impairment," asserts that a commitment to adjusting fully and healthfully to blindness or visual impairment will empower you for success in life and work.

Meet Robert Newman

Adjustment to Visual Impairment

Your Adjustment And Your Career

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Meet Robert Newman

"You don't want to avoid blindness - not let it have any power over you. You don't dare want to let the blindness freak you out because, if it's got you running, you're not going to be able to help yourself ... in a job situation."

That's the philosophy of Robert Newman, the editor of "Thought Provoker" and a Midwestern Socrates on the subject of coping with life as a blind or partially sighted person. Where others may diminish their expectations due to visual impairment loss and the stresses and strains it can cause, Newman challenges us to accept it fully and turn it into a strength. In every issue of "Thought Provoker," an online discussion group, Newman poses a scenario or commonly accepted tenet and asks his readers to give their beliefs a second look, to question and form personal approaches to being blind.

Newman, totally blind due to an automobile accident when he was 15 years old, works as a vocational rehabilitation counselor with Nebraska Rehabilitation Services for the Visually Impaired. His focus on adjusting to disability grew largely from his experience as a newly blind teenager whose "adjustment came hard and slow." His family did not have access to "counseling or major support to assist us with our understanding of and adjustment to blindness."

He has chosen to supplement his work as a vocational rehabilitation counselor by taking advantage of the Internet's far flung audience to reach people with his web site and with "Thought Provoker" so he might help "others to learn about their own potential to live with blindness," he says. "Using the (Web) in this effort, I believe, is a smart move toward that end."

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Adjustment to Visual Impairment

Newman believes that, in order to succeed as a blind person in every aspect of our lives, we must accept our disability and get really "good" at it. Everyone is a collection of skills and abilities as well as lack of them, but, unlike disabled people, few think twice about accepting non-disabled people's unique collections as a matter of fact. Only with disabled people is the minus side of our skill collections extended to label individuals in total.

Just like the person who can't sing but can teach might become a math teacher, a visually impaired person should, according to Newman, develop every skill he or she has without regard to the ones he or she doesn't. Knowing what you are good at allows you to be "more apt to take risks and make more gain."

It is difficult enough to deal with sighted society's negative beliefs, he points out. "If you have the #1 person against you, which is yourself," he says, "then you really are going to have a hard time. A visually impaired or blind person just really can't afford not to understand their own blindness, their own abilities ... you can't afford not to have that going for you. There's just no part of blindness you should allow to freak you out - to get in your way."

Addressing the conflict those with partial sight may face, Newman quips, "You gotta know your sighted part and your blind part. That makes you a whole. It is the whole person who really does the best job out there." For both totally and partially blind persons, he believes, it is the confidence and competence of the whole person that leads to acceptance by others and to success. "There is nothing to be ashamed about blindness," he explains. "It is part of the normality that is mankind. It is part of the human experience."

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Your Adjustment And Your Career

He continues, "It's just the reaction to (blindness) that's changed down through time; (yet, we're) still battling uphill." We are in an unprecedented period in history, he adds - thanks to technological advances that impact the prospects of disabled people. "There are so many things that are equalizers now," he says, referring to computers and the Internet. Newman advises taking full advantage of these new tools and getting very good at using them. In building your own confidence and competence, he says, "you exude it to others."

How do you reveal one's visual impairment during a job interview? Newman suggests not only refraining from hiding it but being the very model of the adjusted blind person. Prepare well, he advises, so you know what the job entails and how you would do the work.

"You've gotta bring up (blindness) in the interview," he maintains, "if they don't bring it up - 'Oh, I understand this job requires the use of a computer. Well, this is how I do ...' If blindness isn't discussed, you really haven't had an interview."

He recommends subtly demonstrating your competence by bringing along visual aids such as a Braille'n'Speak or Braille book or a professional journal and a magnifier. "You will look productive and (show) you use your time well," he points out, "and you can use those devices in the interview to show how you will work."

Don't, Newman suggests with a laugh, hide your blindness - but rather show off your competence and confidence as a blind person. "Blindness can be an asset, if you use it right," he advises. "You'll get an automatic double-take and right away show some brightness within yourself."

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