In order that our colleagues can understand and be more concerned with the situation and needs of the visually impaired people (including students) within the community, the Personnel Office and Student Affairs Office jointly organized a workshop: "A journey to understand the visually impaired." We invited representatives from the Hong Kong Blind Union and two others who are visually impaired to share the situation of visually impaired people in daily life through their personal experiences. It is hoped that our colleagues will have a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by the visually impaired in everyday life as well as their wisdom of living, aiming to build up a caring and inclusive community.
In fact, the life of visually impaired people is not as boring as we would imagine. After training, the visually impaired can live independently, cook, travel, do sports, surf the internet, brew coffee and even take photography and so on. There are also some supporting tools in the market such as note-measuring templates (to measure the value of banknotes), talking watches and phones, etc., which are providing convenience to visually impaired people in all aspects of life. The speakers also showed the participants how to act on their own initiative to provide appropriate assistance for the visually impaired on the road. Towards the end of the workshop, the participants were blindfolded and given a white cane to experience walking outdoors in the dark, to put themselves in the shoes of the visually impaired and try to understand the journey of their mind, and also to reflect on how precious it would be to have normal vision.
Our two visually impaired friends in the workshop – Ah Fai (totally blind) and Ah Tung (amblyopia) may have lost their vision, but the smile on their faces, their sense of humor during the talk and the countless incidents that bore witness to their life, gave a major boost to our colleagues who participated in the workshop --- physical deficiency do not bring despair, as long as we face it in a positive manner with a never-give-up attitude, life can still be full of colours and meaning.
Beginning from today, count your blessings one by one for the normal vision, hearing, speech, limbs and everything in your possession!
