JEDDAH, 15 March 2006 — “Arwa”, as she calls herself, has a simple request to Saudi society: She would like too see more awareness and empathy for the blind, to be shown the direction so that they can walk down the path on their own.
“We just need to be introduced to the thing and then we can do it on our own,” said 23-year-old Arwa, which is not her real name. “Just like anybody else, even if it takes us a little bit more time.”
Arwa said that she feels marginalized, even in comparison to others with different disabilities. And sometimes, she says, the people that want to help her most aren’t aware that they’re part of the problem.
“Though my mother is an educated woman, I still hear her telling the doctors that she wished that she could give me her sight,” said Arwa. “This is not helpful,” she added, “it’s not constructive or realistic, and it makes her feel guilty. People need to look at the bright side.”
Arwa says she tries to maintain a hopeful spirit, in spite of her issues with how much public awareness and assistance she and her peers get. She says that she only receives SR1,000 a year from the Ministry of Education for her disability.
With electronic equipment for assisting the blind costing into the tens of thousands of riyals, SR1,000 doesn’t come close to facilitating the needs that would help blind people like Arwa develop marketable skills. Furthermore, she says that people with other disabilities get considerably more disbursements, SR6,000 to SR7,000.
In fact, according to the Ministry of Education, physically challenged Saudis are eligible for annual disability assistance that ranges from SR1,000 to SR10,000 per year, which puts Arwa at the bottom of the scale.
Raid Nassar, owner of a shop that sells electronic devices for the blind in Riyadh, said that there are various tools available for blind people, children and adults alike. There is speech-recognition software that enables the blind to surf the Web, Braille-writing machines, and watches for the blind. This equipment can be costly, however. Braille-writing machines cost in the range of SR3,500 to SR15,000, for example.
According to Mohammed Ballu, executive director at Ibsaar Rehabilitation Center for Blind, there are more than 200,000 visually impaired people of both sexes in the Kingdom, of which blind people make up 29.9 percent. According a 2003 study conducted by Ballu, 69 percent of blind Saudis are illiterate, and the number is increasing due to many factors, among them poverty, lack of social awareness and lack of adequate public assistance.
Ballu concludes in his study that the Kingdom needs to establish more charity institutions for assisting the blind, such as Ibsaar, a non-governmental organization that is under the patronage of the center’s honorary president, Prince Talal ibn Abdul Aziz. “One of the most important things we provide here is information for parents to secure a balanced upbringing for blind children,” said Ballu.
The Education Ministry’s Consulting Committee of Visual Impairment and Blindness in Riyadh, which was formed last year, has been working to solve the dilemmas of people like Arwa. Committee spokesman Tamam Al-Sadoun told Arab News that the committee was put together to come up with awareness programs and conduct social research on how to integrate the blind into society. The committee, which functions partially on donations and the pro-bono work from professional consultants, acts as a kind of think-tank for creating programs that assist the blind.
Al-Sadoun said that in an upcoming meeting to the committee they would discuss three major issues: creating social awareness campaigns, providing updated electronics to the blind and establishing social clubs.
With emphasis on spreading social awareness Al-Sadoun said that the media should be better utilized for raising awareness. “This would hopefully help people to be more open to the idea of socializing with the blind,” said Al-Sadoun.
Arwa admits that she’s consulted psychiatrists in the past to help her come to terms with her disability.
When she asked the doctor about not having marriage proposals from normal men, she said that a doctor once tried to convince her of accepting proposals from divorced men or men with children. “I’m still young and have never experienced anything yet so why should I have to sacrifice just because I’m blind?” she said.
Another psychiatrist urged Arwa to study Braille in school. She convinced her parents of its importance and was able to learn it while studying in the university.
For her it was a new window opened to the world in which she can read about many topics. The most important thing, she said, “it made me able to read the Qur’an on my own ...,” said Arwa who is now in her second year of Islamic Studies at a university in Riyadh.
Arwa says one of her biggest challenges besides her disability is that society isn’t aware of the employment potentials of blind people.
“How are they going to hire us if society doesn’t accept us or aren’t aware of our capabilities?” asked Arwa, who pointed out that blind people can learn to type and transcribe, which, for example, with some word-recognition software, makes them capable of holding data-entry positions.
Arwa, just like anyone else, has ambitions and hopes; among them is learning languages that would help her learn more about other countries. Another one is the hope of being able to write.
She has been fortunate to be provided a computer that enables her to read Internet websites, type and also check her e-mail. After experiencing what technology has to offer the blind, Arwa said she hopes other blind people less fortunate than her can get access to technology that can improve their lives. But, she said, without more participation by society, especially in terms of funding, many of them will continue to be left in the dark.
“These electronics helps us a lot because it gives us the feeling that we can depend on ourselves; unfortunately it is too costly,” she said.
