Last week, Trinida­di­ans were sent in­to a pan­ic when it was re­port­ed that maxi taxis would be go­ing on strike for three days.

Over the week, the na­tion’s col­lec­tive worst fears were re­alised. Bus­es filled up in less time than it took to open their doors. Stu­dents were scram­bling to make it to ex­ams on time. Thou­sands of work­ers got to work late, while PH dri­vers were rak­ing in the wind­falls.

No doubt, many peo­ple were in­con­ve­nienced and it was painful, but most fig­ured it out. For­tu­nate­ly, the worst of the strike wore off by Wednes­day.

But, key­word: MOST.

For the few who didn’t, nor couldn’t, fig­ure it out, those cou­ple of days weren’t just a speed bump; it was more like a brick wall in the mid­dle of the road.

Many blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired (BVI) peo­ple de­pend on the max­is for sev­er­al rea­sons, name­ly, their low­er fares are very ap­peal­ing to a com­mu­ni­ty that main­ly lives on fixed in­comes; they run in sub­ur­ban to rur­al ar­eas, and per­haps the biggest ben­e­fit of all (most­ly), their safe­ty. Due to max­is be­ing more heav­i­ly reg­u­lat­ed than taxis, and the dis­tinc­tive sound of their en­gines, they’re seen as safer and pro­vide a peace of mind, as op­posed to taxis, where you have no way of telling the dif­fer­ence be­tween an H car and a P.

Again, al­ter­na­tives ex­ist, but as I men­tioned, trade-offs, trade-offs and this isn’t a case of straw­ber­ry or vanil­la ice cream. It’s clos­er to de­bat­ing be­tween pay­ing the high­er taxi fare with a chance of be­ing robbed (per­haps worse) to get to work or be­ing able to af­ford med­i­cine.

The sec­ond the strike was an­nounced, the coun­try at large felt some­thing unique. Some­thing dif­fer­ent. A new, hith­er­to un­known sense of pow­er­less­ness. The idea of be­ing able to go any­where at any time is a very Tri­ni thing. Hav­ing that abil­i­ty stripped, plus the cal­cu­la­tion of be­ing down a day’s pay, made it that much more painful.

Mean­while, for BVI peo­ple, there was noth­ing new about this. It’s a tale as old as time. That sense of pow­er­less­ness, of be­ing de­pen­dent on out­side forces, is just our re­al­i­ty. Free­dom of move­ment is a big one, of course, but it ex­tends to oth­er spheres of life. Let me give you an ex­am­ple.

A few weeks ago, I went to a pool par­ty with a few friends with vary­ing lev­els of sight. I was hav­ing the time of my life, gal­li­vant­i­ng in the pool and cos­play­ing as The Caribbean’s Next Top Bar­tender.

While all of that was hap­pen­ing, ap­par­ent­ly, there was a shirt­less gen­tle­man next door film­ing us with­out our con­sent. I on­ly found out about it lat­er be­cause one of the peo­ple there has sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sight than I do.

Have you ever been in a sit­u­a­tion where you feel like some­one’s watch­ing you? You look around and see no­body there and your mind feels slight­ly at ease?

Now can you imag­ine hav­ing that feel­ing while lack­ing the abil­i­ty to see if there is in fact, no one there?

And, if we had called the po­lice, as­sum­ing they re­spond­ed at all, would we be treat­ed as if we were mak­ing a le­git­i­mate claim? Or be brushed off on ac­count of the guy ca­su­al­ly walk­ing in­side and pulling in all the cur­tains at the first sight of blue lights or the of­fi­cers ques­tion­ing our com­pe­tence and aware­ness?

I’ll leave you to an­swer that ques­tion for your­self.

It’s al­most as if the foun­da­tion of so­ci­ety is built with the idea of keep­ing the BVI com­mu­ni­ty for­ev­er at some­one else’s mer­cy.

Go­ing gro­cery shop­ping? Of course, you’ll need some­one else there. How else are you able to find what you want to find and make sure your Mi­lo isn’t three years ex­pired?

If you’re for­tu­nate enough to have a guide dog, you’re al­ways left won­der­ing if you’ll be able to en­ter a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness place. Will the maxi or taxi stop for both of you?

At school, from a ten­der age, blind stu­dents are told that they NEED to have a stu­dent aide with them in the class­room. And, this is ham­mered in over and over, straight to adult­hood.

Even a sim­ple thing like get­ting dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits re­quires go­ing through at least half a dozen peo­ple, and then you’re of­ten left in lim­bo for months.

There are some things that we sim­ply can’t do on our own, such as see­ing if we’re be­ing stalked by shirt­less men. But, there’s no rea­son why dai­ly liv­ing shouldn’t be ac­ces­si­ble to us.

Yet, so­ci­ety feels the need to build brick wall af­ter brick wall. Ei­ther be­cause they be­lieve we’re in­ca­pable and think they’re help­ing. Or, be­cause there’s an in­cen­tive to do so.

Case in point, it’s cheap­er for suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to out­source the na­tion’s trans­porta­tion needs to pri­vate op­er­a­tors than to build out a ro­bust pub­lic tran­sit ser­vice.

It’s im­por­tant to think about how so­ci­ety man­dates vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and de­pen­dence in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties or the na­tion at large. It’s just as im­por­tant to think about how we can go about break­ing the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome and putting things in place to make sure all our cit­i­zens can live their best lives.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the mea­sures put in place to bring dis­abled peo­ple up to speed won’t on­ly ben­e­fit dis­abled peo­ple. All com­muters ben­e­fit from clean, safe, re­li­able trans­port to di­verse des­ti­na­tions. Gov­ern­ment ser­vices pro­vid­ed on­line which are screen read­er ac­ces­si­ble and low vi­sion friend­ly aren’t for the blind and phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged alone. Every­one en­joys the com­fort of be­ing able to do busi­ness from home or even at work if they have to.

And, I can go on and on, list­ing ex­am­ples of how both gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor can re­duce the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, but I think you have the idea by now.

We all share a com­mu­ni­ty. Strength­en­ing the weak­est link strength­ens the chain over­all. They don’t call it uni­ver­sal de­sign for noth­ing, af­ter all.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086