Do You See What I See?

Faces?  Vases?

Initially, which did you see?  How long did it take until you could see both easily and clearly?

Our eyes see more than our brain interprets.  Visual cues all around us are being filtered out, and our awareness is limited to our experiences.

When you encounter a set of stairs leading to a building, what do you see?  How about a soap dispenser attached to the wall above a sink?  What about a store’s double-door entry with no handicap button?  The last question gave it away, right?

If you are ambulant, then you probably don’t give much thought when encountering the above situations.  Oh, you might have a conscious thought as you grab for the handrail, but you probably don’t even see anything worth noting.  For the wheelchair roamer, we see obstacles.  In fact, the situation may be so unsolvable (e.g., stairs and no ramp) that we have to change our plans and turn away.  And that it how it feels.  We are turned away from participating, turned away because we are powerless, turned away because of an oversight.

“(A) public meeting on accessible housing for the disabled in Toronto had to be canceled because the building that was hosting it was not accessible to the disabled.  ‘There was an oversight,’ one official conceded.”  (The Week, December 23/30, 2016, p 6)