The world at your finger-tips : understanding blindness

I conducted in depth-interviews with 6 men and 6 women living across Canada. The study is framed around Erving Goffman's theory of stigma and "spoiled identity" as well as the more recent Disability Studies that stresses "the normals" as being the "identity spoilers" or the "problem." The participants revealed victimization from various sources including classmates, teachers, employers, colleagues, and the public in general. Focus is placed directly on the strategies that respondents have devised in coping with these adversities and that often accompany a highly visible disability. Eight principal methods and response to the discrimination against people with blindness can be distinguished. These strategies varied depending on the circumstances of the interaction and the informant's coping skills. These typologies are mutually exclusive and do overlap. They include: (1) The Isolates, (2) The Rebels, (3) The Self-Entertainers, (4) The Talkers, (5) The Experimenters, (6) The Positivists, (7) The Activists, (8) The Self-Acceptors. These eight type of responses and reactions to resistance to the stigmatization of blindness are essential elements of personal change, and even possibly social change. (Abstract shortened by UMI.