RE: FN-FORUM Site Check / Comments.

date posted 19th July 2001 16:32

Well if you are primarily concerned with showing imagery apart from faith
healing there isn't much one can do.

The visual arts such as painting, photography and digital art is by it's
very nature more or less completely inaccessible to a person who is blind
and if someone has been blind from birth no amount of written description
can hope to accurately explain it because people can only truly understand
the meaning of language by experience, where the experience is totally
absent the words are meaningless or take on a different meaning. For example
you cannot explain perspective (an aspect of the visual language) the
process of portraying 3d space on a flat 2d surface to someone who has never
experienced it (this also applies to colours and the words we use to name
them) and probably never will to them it does not exist and is outside their
"reality" like spirits and ghosts may be outside of the experience of a
sighted person and none of us see X-rays and radio waves, some alien beings
may see such things as we can never comprehend like extra colours. How do we
know? we all live in our own little worlds.

That isn't of course to say that it isn't a good thing to be creative with
language in attempt to create an approximation that a blind person can "see"
or experience and enjoy in their own way. But that isn't necessarily about
providing an explanation, it is about creating something else. Besides what
right do we have as sighted people to think we understand what blindness is,
we do not "see" as a blind person "sees" and to think otherwise is
patronising and perhaps highlights what is wrong with "political
correctness"

Nick

http://www.artberry.net





> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL REMOVED]
> [EMAIL REMOVED] Behalf Of Ian Fenn
> Sent: 18 July 2001 21:50
> To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
> Subject: RE: FN-FORUM Site Check / Comments.
>
>
> At 21:18 18/07/2001 +0100, Darren wrote:
> >You learn something new every day....
>
> You mean you don't build web sites with blind or
> visually-impaired visitors
> in mind? That's terrible!
>
> --
> Ian Fenn
> Liang ba shiah dz / Ai chu fong to, Chopstix Media Limited
> http://www.chopstixmedia.com/
>
> Today's fortune:
>
> Confucius say: a merry heart make good medicine.
>
>
>

>