I used Lego to design a farm for people who are blind – like me
bbc.co.uk127 points by ColinWright 4 days ago
127 points by ColinWright 4 days ago
Sensory disabilities like deafness and blindness are disabling because the world is not oriented to people with sensory disabilities.
I am reminded that the Deaf have their own mythology. American Sign Language is distinct; it's not English. Accordingly it has its own culture, including its own myths. Many of them are fables and stories from the western tradition slightly adapted. But some are original.
One common theme in American Deaf mythology (but I'd bet it's told elsewhere too) is stories about a world which is visually oriented. There's an ASL word for this world but English doesn't have one. Sometimes it's translated as Eyeth a.k.a. "Eye-Earth".
It's more than just a world where everyone is deaf or where everyone communicates in ASL. It has something like spiritual meaning to some of those who tell stories about it; in that world the Deaf are not disabled, not in the social way that matters.
Reminds me of The Country of the Blind by HG Wells.
It’s about a guy who finds his way into a valley in a mountain range where everyone has been blind for generations. At first he thinks that he’ll have “a superpower“ because he’s sighted. Instead the people of the valley view his sight as an illness.
That think him mentally ill because they do not believe he can actually see and think him deluded.
If he had kept quiet in the face of scepticism he would have had a huge advantage.
I see it as a story about people's unwillingness to believe in something that is outside their own experience and that of their society.
That's fascinating, is this explained in detail somewhere? How did you learn about this?
I'm learning ASL. That led me to learn about Deaf culture in North America. The stories that the Deaf have told each other, and have passed down. A world where everyone is deaf is one of the first stories you'll learn about; I'm not even sure when I first encountered it, but it was in that context.
One common modern version of the fable is told with an astronaut who finds that they've landed on a parallel Earth where everyone is Deaf and sign language is the norm.
The book A Study of American Deaf Folklore by Susan D Rutherford is a bit dated now but interesting in exploring the functions and roles of myths here.
No, deafness and blindness are disabling because they provide critical long range data. Being able to see is essentially a superpower if you are blind. Same with hearing.
Maybe, but that isn't really what the GP post is talking about. At the level of mythology, the eye-earth is place where people of that group belong without judgment or limitation. No different from Harry Potter or Narnia or any other fantasy place one might imagine going where they can be with their people.
In any case, I'm not sure this even survives transposing to other senses that humans are weak in, such as smell (like prey animals) or magnetic direction (like migratory birds). A human who randomly had these would indeed be seen as superpowered, but that wouldn't become a statement that all regularly-abled humans are now disabled for missing the "critical" long range sense.
I wonder whether all the animals of Eyeth are also deaf, and how they are doing?
Deaf predators must have a field day sneaking up on deaf prey.
As life evolved on Earth, so did the senses that life forms possess, and that happened for a reason. If you hare missing some senses, there is a sense in which you are set back millions of years of evolution.
It's not just about human society, but biology.
Someone with no sensory disabilities, sent into the wilderness, has better chances of survival than someone with such disabilities, other factors being equal. That has nothing to do with society, which is absent from that scene. Civilization is the best place for people with disabilities, even if it is geared toward those without. For that matter, it's better for animals with disabilities. People help disabled pets lead quality lives; wild animals with disabilities don't live long.
That's all factually correct. Though both things can be true: Disabilities can be a disability in themselves and additionally the disabled can also be disabled by the society around them. Someone fully blind might not be able to distinguish some poisonous mushroom from an edible one with the same shape and smell but different color. That is a fundamental limitation of the inability to see. But blind people can for example still read. They are often just not provided by others with writings that are accessible to them, although that would be possible and is not a fundamental limitation of their condition.
Also ableism and othering are very much a thing that disables peoples' ability to function in a society and come exclusively from the social environment rather than from the disabled themselves.
I’d like to add a quick sidenote .
I wouldn’t read too much into the logic of mythological worlds and realms.
Their purpose is narrative, not scientific. They don’t even need to be internally consistent.
No one expects Greek mythology to make scientific sense. Other mythologies should be seen from a similar perspective and understood that they are narrative, not logical.
Applying a scientific viewpoint to such mythologies results in a new narrative. The scientific view is always wrong unless scientific correctness is part of that world’s narrative.
I add this because a lot of people don’t know narrative purpose.
To put it briefly:
Other peoples worlds aren’t wrong when they don’t match “what makes sense in the real world”.
So it's all just vibes?
No. It’s actually philosophy. Let me put this in another terms.
The whole purpose of the world they are describing is to imagine a place where they are not limited.
The fact that this place doesn’t make sense or can’t exist is irrelevant.
It was made to be aspirational, not realistic.
Meh, my formidable powers of foresight aren't really a superpower. Few people listen until things have progressed far enough that they see the things, too, by which point there are rarely many interventions available. And every time we do intervene early, that's "you said this would happen and it didn't happen!", making it harder to convince people the next time. And when things do turn out more-or-less as predicted, I "made a lucky guess" because "there was no way you could have known that".
In the land of the blind, why would anyone pay attention to this weirdo's ramblings about "rain-clouds"? Obviously they're just feeling changes to temperature, pressure, and humidity. Oh, and they know what shapes things are? Wow! So does everyone else who's touched the things. Sure, that "how many fingers am I holding up?" party trick is pretty neat (probably cold reading), but not something we should make policy decisions on the basis of.
You underestimate the extent to which humans are social creatures. See also: H. G. Wells's story The Country of the Blind. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind
Vision is absolutely a superpower if everyone else is blind. Just think how far you can shoot something with a rifle and scope. Guns are useless to blind people. A person who can see has an enormous advantage over a blind person in a fight. Try to imagine a military where everyone is blind fighting against another where everyone can see.
In a blind culture there probably are no guns at all - so your hypothetical sighted-person-amongst-the-blind would need to be able to make his own.
Then again, just throwing rocks might be pretty effective.
A slingshot or bow and arrows would be amazingly effective if everyone else was blind.
And, again, is one person going to develop those? A person with access to elastic rope might invent the slingshot, but I wouldn't expect them to invent the far superior sling: it's not obvious that the sling is better, since the learning curve is steeper. And a slingshot is not a particularly effective weapon: it's an inefficient bow that can't fire arrows.
You're still thinking in terms of "sighted society versus blind society", which is not what we are discussing. (Unless you're thinking "sighted and superintelligent", in which case I'd say sight is probably redundant.)
Ok. Just evading blind people would be absurdly easy if you can see. You could accurately throw rocks and run away from them all day.
Only in that narrow viewpoint. Most people talk about disability in the context of a society because much of what we encounter in our day to day is created by other people. The sights, sounds, smells, and experiences in our world are frequently because of others. So in that context, if the dominant culture makes it a point to create experiences that require hearing or sight to consume, then yes it's a disability. But if we adapt some or all of what we do for people who don't have those senses, then we can make it less disabling.
Sight and hearing evolved to incredible acuity because they give enormous survival advantage.
While it's good for society to accommodate those with disabilities as much as possible, we shouldn't pretend it isn't detrimental to be unable to see or hear. You don't need to believe obvious falsehoods in order to accommodate people.
I’ve always found this semantic argument somewhat silly as being blind or deaf is an obvious disadvantage in natural contexts, but one of the more compelling ideas here is that the fitness boundary isn’t fixed. It would probably be a fitness advantage if I could sense electromagnetic fields, but no one would describe me as disabled for not being able to sense these fields—unless, perhaps, everyone else could.
So what we consider to be a disability does seem to be a function of what we consider to be normal.
> if I could sense electromagnetic fields, but no one would describe me as disabled for not being able to sense these fields—unless, perhaps, everyone else could.
Light is EM fields. A possible scenario is a battle at night with others having night vision equipment and you don’t. You can absolutely be described as disabled or being at a significant disadvantage.
Because, like you say, what we consider normal in that scenario is to have a proper night vision equipment.
If it were a fitness advantage if you could sense electromagnetic fields, then why have you evolved over billions of years to get where you are, without it?
But wait, you do sense electromagnetic fields in the 380 to 750 nm wavelength range, and remarkably well, to great profit.
The only fitness advantage that matters for evolution is whatever gets you to pass down your genes, versus someone else not passing down theirs. If sensing low-frequency electromagnetism, or static magnetic fields, were advantageous in the context of everything else that you are, for passing down your genes, you would have it by now.
Migratory birds can sense the Earth's magnetic field for navigation; if you needed to migrate thousands of kilometers every year (due to lacking other advantages to make that unnecessary), you might evolve that.
Evolution is highly path dependent and stochastic, so I’m not sure your logic follows.
Eg, the laryngeal nerve in giraffes is ridiculous — but having gone down that path before their current form, there’s little way to fix it. They’re now stuck in a local optima of long necks (good) with poor wiring (bad).
Vision has evolved numerous times, with estimates suggesting eyes or light-sensitive spots have appeared independently at least 40 to 65 times, possibly even 100 times, across different animal lineages.
Hearing has evolved numerous times independently, at least six times in major vertebrate groups (mammals, lizards, frogs, birds, crocodiles, turtles) for airborne sound and at least 19-20 times in insects
Vision and hearing have evolved so many times because they give an absolutely huge survival advantage.
Do you have sources for these claims?
To my knowledge, photosensitivity has arisen a few times independently and eyes again a few times from shared photosensitive receptors in animalia but I'm fairly sure hearing in the groups you mention is a tetrapod synapomorphy.
>So what we consider to be a disability does seem to be a function of what we consider to be normal.
Obviously? How could it be based on anything else? People are just much more uncomfortable with making normative statements than they used to be.
> How could it be based on anything else?
The point is that the capability is measurable but the capabilities we consider to be essential are based on normalcy and thus effectively arbitrary. Eugenicists make the argument that evolution demonstrates that the classification is not arbitrary because deafness and blindness confer measurable fitness disadvantages, but they don’t actually bridge the gap of deriving an ought from an is.
> Obviously?
If the answers to these problems are obvious to you, perhaps you’d consider writing a book instead of participating in a discussion forum. I would encourage you to review the site guidelines.
You've set up a straw man here - nobody in this thread is claiming that it's not detrimental to be missing a sense.
The point is that disability exists within the context of the world we live in, and the society we've built is one that largely assumes people have both sight and hearing.
> Sensory disabilities like deafness and blindness are disabling because the world is not oriented to people with sensory disabilities.
Implying that they wouldn’t be detrimental if the world was “oriented” differently.
Since I'm the person who wrote that I can explain what I meant.
I have never had to deal with a giant cat stalking me and being unable to hear it. I do routinely have to deal with intercom systems which I cannot hear, though.
The world most humans inhabit is human-made. And the human-made environment can be remade.
Ah, I see the disconnect. In this discussion, "disabling" is not the same as "detrimental." Disabling is when you are unable to do important activities that others can do. I'm not an expert here on the subject, but this is my understanding.
For a simplified example, imagine two government buildings, one with and one without an accessibility ramp. A person in a wheelchair is able to access the former, even if going up the ramp takes longer than the stairs. Not having the option to take the stairs is still detrimental to the person, but they're still able to access those services. The second disables the person, as they're no longer able to access important services because they are unable to take the stairs.
Accommodations help keep "detrimental" from meaning disabled. The voice at the street crossing that says "walk", curb cuts, and closed captioning all help people participate in daily normal life, despite having those sensory disabilities.
There are other designs that are more holistic as well - for example, if those same government services are accessible online, or the agent makes house calls, it naturally makes the services more accessible to more people. (Note: I'm not saying that this specific example is a good idea - just as an example of "how we design our society affects how people can participate in it.")
This is great, but boy I'm glad I took the time to actually read the article.
I assumed it was about someone who took a huge number of standard rectangular LEGO bricks with the 6/8 raised studs, then laboriously shaved them off to create all the necessary braille patterns, and used them on large LEGO boards to quickly assemble messages/notifications for blind readers.
Reality - it's about using lego to help "visualize" architecture.
EDIT: Apparently this already exists!
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/play-with-braille-english...
Your description reminds me of a blind guy I know who is interested in architecture, and began to collect scale models of famous building so he could feel them and experience their architecture. Eventually he took an interest in buildings that were less famous or didn't have high quality models, and started commissioning an artist to model them in CAD and 3D print them. Now he has a business producing and selling these tactics models.
Oh no.
I'm a blind guy. I have a distinct interest in starships -- I have every Eaglemoss model, and many many more.
If I click this link I am totally going to get sucked into having people design and print me starships -- I need another project like I need another hole in my head.
If you live in the US (and possibly other countries) and are blind, you can probably get See3D to model things and print them for you for free.
I have always wondered how blind people "visualize" (I can't think of a better term) large scale objects.
I've no idea. But flipside, I know quite a few sighted people who can't walk around a rectangular block without losing track of which way north is. Or can't visualize that (say) their master bedroom closet backs up to their kitchen. Or other facepalm-worthy visualization failings.
> without losing track of which way north is.
I blame my childhood. Everyone always said the Pacific Ocean is to the west. So naturally the direction I went to go to the beach on the pacific ocean should be West. Especially when the north/south freeway crosses the street I take to the beach at a pretty good angle (well it's more like 45 degrees). Turns out I actually go south to go to the beach, the freeway is roughly parallel to the coast and north/south freeways sometimes travel due east/west and I have a real hard time with cardinal directions, and even if I understand where the directions are when outside, when I enter a building, especially if I go up stairs or an elevator, my sense of where the cardinal directions from inside the building is likely to be way off.
Thankfully, there's not a big impact from not knowing where room walls are relative to each other. :P
Similarly, I live in Seattle with hills everywhere, but the main path I used to go uphill was Southbound. But on maps, up is always North. I haven't recovered since!
> Thankfully, there's not a big impact from not knowing where room walls are relative to...
Let me tell you about the friend-of-friend, who was cutting holes in his dining room wall to install [whatever], oblivious to the bathroom on the other side, and the water pipes for that bathroom...
Don't they make special anchors for mounting your TV on PVC sewer pipes? Should be fine. ;)
I have never been able to use cardinal directions but I am very good at mental visualization and manipulation of 3d objects
This is super cool. Apparently he also creates tactile topographical maps with various landmarks, terrain, etc.
https://evengrounds.com/3d-tactile-maps
I'm not at all confident in my ability to take an unknown object, run my hands over it, manipulate it, and even get close to being able to describing / recreating it though it does sound like this has the makings of a fun Cranium board mini-game.
Lego created a specific series of bricks in the 1960's for this exact purpose, called Modulex.
Originally designed for architects etc, it's still going. https://youtube.com/watch?v=I_OUxVuoxjk
I know the part of Scotland where he has set up shop. There used to be a lot of toy farmers and small holders popping up round there and failing within a few years. Most of them were from big cities and from England, and pretty clueless about farming. They would often try something exotic like quail (if they had little money) and alpacas (if they had more). Mr Duxbury seems to be going down a similar line, although he does have a farming family background.
My son is very interested in this. I am building an application to create designs online. Mainly to keep him away from video reels :)
I wonder how the non-random color patterns in the pictured LEGO build came to be. Maybe he’s not 100% blind?
As the other comment mentions, it might be due to brick size, but also note that many people considered blind still have some non-zero vision (just e.g. extremely blurry, or a tiny field of view etc.). Although this guy had a glaucoma at the age of six, so there would be extremely little left by now.
From what I can tell in the image:
2x6: white
2x4: blue
2x2: grey
This makes interesting patterns, since you are more likely to use certain bricks in certain positions.
I was thinking the other day that there should be wearable bangles for blind people with ultrasonic sensors or something that encode a 360 degree view of the world into vibrations.
If each bangle had 40 or so pixels, you’d get 80 pixels with one on each arm.
Ggf
Was not disappoint when I saw the photos of the models he built. I had expected a hodgepodge of brick colors due to color not being a meaningful constraint on a blind person's Lego build.