{"id":4988,"date":"2014-09-15T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=4988"},"modified":"2025-03-04T13:43:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T19:43:55","slug":"what-ive-learned-from-working-with-blind-and-visually-impaired-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/what-ive-learned-from-working-with-blind-and-visually-impaired-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve Learned from Working With Blind and Visually Impaired Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Annika Konrad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Annika
Annika Konrad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Annika Konrad is in her third year as a Writing Center tutor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate in Composition and Rhetoric. She has taught undergraduate writing courses and is a TA assistant director of the first-year writing program.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Tim<\/a>
Tim Davis, who works at the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired, enters the building. The Council is located at 754 Williamson St. in Madison, Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I was always wary of stepping outside the classroom. As someone who moved straight from college to graduate school, I\u2019ve felt most comfortable working with students. I had a lot of questions about what it would mean for me to bring my skills as a writing instructor to communities outside the university: Would people trust me? Would they view me as a know-it-all academic? Would my university experiences actually translate into helping community members with their writing? For a long time, questions like these prevented me from taking the leap. But when I joined a support group at the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired<\/a> in Madison, Wisconsin, I quickly realized I had walked into a relatively unheard community.<\/em><\/wp-block><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was struck by the stories that people told, but I was also struck by the fact that these stories were only being told within the confines of the meeting room. I hadn\u2019t heard these kinds of stories before. Most of the stories I had heard about blind people involved superhuman feats of strength, like biking across the country or scaling a mountain; in contrast, these stories were about everyday experiences like losing a job due to vision loss, instructing strangers on guide dog etiquette, or dealing with marital strain due to vision loss. I appreciated the opportunity to speak freely in a safe space, but I wondered what would happen if these stories circulated outside of the meeting room. What function could these stories serve?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the rest of this post, then, I\u2019ll reflect on how my teaching and tutoring experiences within the university informed the ways I approached the community-writing project, and in turn, how working with community writers has taught me a great deal about writers in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recruiting Writers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"Cloud<\/a>
This tag cloud, taken from our blog, demonstrates the range of topics we’ve written on. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

To avoid going it alone, I applied for a Public Humanities Exchange grant from the Center for the Humanities<\/a> at UW-Madison and I utilized their resources to brainstorm possibilities. Having little experience in community or disability work, I began from what I know best\u2014teaching and tutoring student writers. I imagined that we would draft, share, provide feedback, and revise. I would supply readings and helpful tips and we would follow a schedule much like a syllabus. So in my recruitment announcement, I described the project as a \u201cnew and exciting writing group.\u201d I defined the project as \u201can opportunity for people who are blind or visually impaired from across Wisconsin to connect, share, and explore their creative talents.\u201d An outreach coordinator at the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired helped me publicize the project in almost ten different newsletters, websites, and email lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all was said and done, I got only one response. Panic set in. I started wondering, \u201cDoes anyone out there even want to write?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did some revising. After consulting with the Public Humanities Program Manager, I came to the conclusion that a slight shift in language might elicit more interest. My second recruitment announcement started with the following line:  \u201cEveryone has a story to tell.\u201d I explained the purpose of the project is \u201cto create an archive of stories about the life experiences of people who are blind or visually impaired in Wisconsin.\u201d I ended the announcement with, \u201cAll kinds of stories from people of all ages, experiences, and levels of interest are welcome.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I publicized this version, I got almost thirty emails from interested individuals. Only half of those people<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ended up participating in the project, but the difference in the amount of interest between a \u201cwriting group\u201d and a \u201cstorytelling project\u201d speaks volumes about the words that motivate writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where to Begin?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Once I had managed to get people interested, I had to figure out how to run the group. First, I wanted to see what the group members wanted to do. This is something that I always intend to do with student writers in composition courses and in the Writing Center, but things don\u2019t always happen that way. First I asked the group members to describe what they wanted to do and why they joined the group. Some described that they are published writers, others write newsletters for their church; others write for their job; others have written unpublished memoirs; and others have never written for pleasure or for work at all. Their reasons for joining the writing group were equally as varied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling motivated yet perplexed by how I would accommodate such a variety of interests, I reverted to the plan I know best. I introduced the idea of drafting. I supplied a copy of Anne Lamott\u2019s \u201cShitty First Drafts.\u201d I started encouraging writers to give feedback. I supplied a \u201cbest practices for feedback\u201d tip sheet. I asked writers to read their writing aloud. I gave short lectures about \u201cshowing versus telling\u201d and the importance of communicating a message in a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, though, I started to feel like something was amiss. But it wasn\u2019t the same feeling you get when you know your students haven\u2019t done the reading. I sensed that something else was going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renegotiating the Agenda<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From a logistical standpoint, I learned that a number of things I was asking the writers to do simply don\u2019t work in the same way for people who are blind or visually impaired. The assistive technology many of the writers were using to view each other\u2019s drafts made it more difficult to give in-the-moment feedback. Using a screen readers or magnifier makes it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

harder to be on the phone and give feedback about a piece of writing that they could not listen to or read in the moment. So we naturally shifted from giving feedback over the phone to giving feedback over email. Similarly, I started to realize that asking writers to read their writing aloud was not necessarily the best strategy for a group in which many writers cannot read their writing without a screen reader. So I started to read their writing aloud for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I sensed that there was something else happening, possibly on the level of rhetoric. I noticed that much of the feedback I was giving was not translating into revised drafts. Many times I suggested that writers tell stories about specific moments, rather than speak about experiences in general. But I sensed that this wasn\u2019t happening for specific reasons\u2014many writers seemed to be making a conscious decision to not make their stories overly descriptive or emotional. Instead, many authors have written instructive pieces (see for instance how to be a self-advocate<\/a>, how to navigate job interviews<\/a>, and what to do when you learn you have a disability<\/a>). At one point a writer told me that she knows from her own experience of being blind since birth that when a sighted person encounters a blind person, they need to be told what to do\u2014not made to feel sorry or scared.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Online<\/a>
The Outlook From Here is the blog where we publish our stories about blindness and visual impairment. Screen shot of the home page. It has a light blue banner at the top with the title “The Outlook From Here” stretching across it. On the home page you can see various titles of posts, one of which includes a picture of a person volunteering.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It was at this moment that I realized that these writers were teaching me<\/em> how to write about disability. The recommendations I tend to make to student writers were not working because I was not thinking about how writing about disability might call for different rhetorical choices. Cultural narratives of blindness overemphasize fear, pity, and deficit. And even I, as someone who is visually impaired, did not fully comprehend how these forces might influence the way one might choose to write a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here are some lessons I\u2019ve learned from this experience that I believe can be applied to any teaching or tutoring situation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n