Saturday, November 7, 2009 . Public Blog on DiD Experience - ZQ
9:37 PM

As we gathered at the waiting area outside the exhibits, a staff at Dialogue in the Dark (DiD) gave us a briefing on the dos and don’ts in the exhibition room. After which the staff handed us a blind cane to each of us that we will be using to help us to navigate in the darkness. With a stick in our hand and all lined up, we entered the dark room.

Before the trip we all heard about the DiD exhibition. We knew beforehand that we will be navigating around the exhibition in complete darkness with the guidance of a blind guide. But the darkness that greeted me upon entering the exhibition was not exactly what I had imagined it to be. I tried squinting my eyes in an attempt to make out who or what was in front of me but it was futile. I began feeling uncertain and helpless about how the “journey” ahead would be like.

The DiD staff gave us directions to help us navigate through the twist and bents of the initial part of the exhibition until we were greeted by a loud and clear voice. It was a man’s voice and it had a calming and reassuring aura to it. “Hi, I am Wesley. You can call me West for short. I will be your guide for the tour.” announced the voice that seems to belong to that of someone slightly over thirty years of age.

I find that I tend to form judgement and opinions of people based on what I see on the “outside”. More often than not, those judgements and stereotypic impressions that I come to associate with what I see are probably not true and it influences to some extent how I may interact with the individual. One of the advantages of not being able to see is then that we would not be able to make judgements about others based on how they look which might help facilitate interaction that is genuine and free from prejudices towards another party.

After a few minutes into the exhibition, my eyes were beginning to adapt to the darkness. I was also learning the importance of relying on my sense of hearing and touch in navigating through the exhibition. Throughout most part of the journey, our guide was our main source of information on where to go and on the details of our surroundings. Our guide was able to navigate through the exhibition with ease and was able to give such a detailed account of our surrounding that I even suspected that he was able to see in the dark and/or was using a night-vision device.

The experience at DiD has made me realize that sometimes the labels, in this case, such as “able” and “disabled”, that we may apply on people are often arbitrary. Being in the dark exhibition hall, it doesn’t really take long to realize who are truly the “able” and “disabled”, as we usually define them. Being so much reliant on sight in my everyday life, I felt “disabled” when I could not depend on my sight to navigate in the dark exhibition hall. This time I find myself fitting the description of someone who we would often label as “disabled”. While our guide, who was supposedly visually handicapped, was truly what we would have “labeled” as the visually unimpaired. When put on equal ground, or rather put in the dark, the blind guides are probably even more “abled” than most of us due to their stronger sense of hearing, smell, taste and touch.

Furthermore, through the experience at DiD I felt that it would serve to dispel certain stereotypes many people may hold of the visually handicapped and to advocate to the public that individuals with disability can be contributors in the society and, to disprove the commonly held stereotype that persons with disability are “burdens” of the society.

Moreover, DiD could also serve as a great learning model for Business and Social Enterprise (BZSE) and Psychology and Community Services (PCS) students. This is especially so for students from both groups who will be working at DiD as interns. As a saying that goes, “Experience is the best teacher.” By being involved firsthand in its operations, student interns would be able to learn firsthand about DiD and how an social enterprise actually operates on a daily basis.

In addition to being an avenue for learning by having students to work as interns, DiD could also be an appropriate outlet for students to conduct various social research and experimental studies.

The light from the outside shone in as someone opened the curtain at the exit, and I could only keep my eyes partially opened as my eyes were still trying to adapt to the light that it has been deprived of for the past one hour in the dark exhibition hall. After everyone from the tour group made their way out through the exit, a man, probably in his forties, with distinct features and threads of white hair on his otherwise black clean-cut hair appeared out of the exit. “You all can call me if you see me outside, just remember to tell me your name”, the same familiar voice, that gave us directions in the dark, spoke with a smile.

With that, our guide said goodbye and slowly walked back into the darkness. While the rest of us walked through another exit after a debrief, into the DiD reception area, with new found perspectives.



Chew Zhi Qiang
BZSE T02


------