Scrabbling in the dark

It doesn't take much to yank my chain where language is concerned; I'm a fully paid up member of the Shouters At The Radio Club.

When people with learning difficulties object to the usage of terms like thick, backward or retarded, I'm right there fuming with them. The same goes for mad, crippled, wheelchair-bound and handicapped.

But what equally gets my goat are the roundabout methods people employ to avoid plain, ordinary words. In Canada, for example, blind kids are now referred to as 'children with visual exceptionalities'. No word of a lie. As soon as I heard it, I was on the phone to my blind mates, and our laughter must have been clearly audible across the continents.

Similarly, walking into the bar of the Newcastle Playhouse at lunchtime, a friend of mine gave an uproarious guffaw. He explained that, among the things on the menu, was the newly styled 'Plough Person's Lunch'. I ask you! Whoever thought that the cause of feminism would be enhanced by the renaming of lunchtime favourites? What would become of Apple Charlotte or Eve's Pudding if we took that approach? And as for spotted Dick ... well, perhaps we'd better not go there.

By the same token, does anyone think that, over the past 25 years, we've experienced any benefits from being 'disabled people'? Not, as we plain-speaking Geordies say, on your nelly. And I bet next month's DLA that whoever came up with that particular life-affirming description was a 'non-disabled' person.

Over the years I personally, and others like me, have been variously described as visually handicapped, visually impaired, sight impaired, people with sight problems and even the dreaded 'visually challenged'. The two things that strike me about the latter are, firstly, that whatever term has been fashionable has made not a tuppence-worth of difference to the general attitudes or level of prejudice we've faced and, second, that in my heart and soul I've remained what I am: blind. Yet it's the verbal torture people have gone through to avoid the dreaded B-word, or even allude to the fact that I can't see very well, that has been most comical. "So," they ask, "How long have you been, er, um, dear me, unsighted?"

The fact that I have got a small amount of sight makes it more complicated still. I've been non-sighted, unseeing, partially seeing, the wonderfully confusing visually sighted, and the great catch-all, get-out: 'like that'.

Then there's the whole other area of consternation about what we can and can't do. Do we look at things, for example? Do we watch telly, or only listen to it? Are we able to see what someone's saying, or the point they're making? Are we able to envisage? Do we have a mind's eye? These are all things which have grown-up, supposedly responsible people hopping from foot to foot with - well, with what exactly?

They'll mostly tell you that it's a heartfelt desire not to cause offence. But why should I be offended by someone asking me a straightforward question about watching telly? Why should I take umbrage at someone using a word which describes perfectly adequately what I am and what I've been since taking my first breath?

That's where we come to the real nub of it. It's because to use the word blind in a totally free, unembarrassed way, you have to think of blindness as a positive state. You have to strip the word of all of its negative connotations. You have to accept the fact that the person about whom you're using it is what they are, not something you're afraid of being or becoming. And that's what has people reaching for their thesauruses. It's easier and less embarrassing to refer to people using terminology with which you're comfortable.

I know that there are some blind people who argue that the B-word has become so laden with negative weight and meaning that it's no longer serviceable. Well then, maybe we'd better start looking for something else to call the ruminant with four legs, two udders, a tale and horns, on the basis that 'cow' is used by some people as a derogatory term.

At the end of the day, it would be too big a hassle if we dropped the word blind. What postie (notice I didn't say postman) would have a chance of getting to grips with packages labelled 'Articles For People With Visual Exceptionalities'? That great American singing group, 'The Boys Facing Visual Challenges From Alabama', just wouldn't have got a record deal. And what would love be if it wasn't blind?