u/Stefolog

You're standing at a traffic light, waiting to cross the street, when someone comes up beside you.

Normally, they would not catch your attention. But then you notice the white cane and dark sunglasses.

A blind person.

And immediately, a stream of questions starts running through your mind.

Should I ask if they need help? Can they cross safely on their own? If I offer help, how should I do it? And what is actually helpful?

By the time you are halfway through that internal monologue, distracted from the podcast you were listening to a moment ago, the light turns green. You hear the sound signal at the crossing, and the blind person is already a few steps ahead of you.

If you have not spent time with blind people, this is probably a familiar kind of encounter: brief, awkward, and full of assumptions.

Three years ago, I decided to do something bold, maybe even a little reckless.

Without any prior experience working with people with disabilities, I started a company that trains and hires blind people as accessibility experts and provides accessibility services.

At the time, I thought I was mentally prepared. I had a team around me handling much of the operational work, so in the beginning I was at least one step removed from many of the direct interactions. But only for a while.

Sooner or later, you have to stop thinking about a topic and start being fully present in it.

I still remember the opening day of our first training program: a QA course for eight blind participants.

I was proud of everything. The team, the organization, the preparation, the countless small details we had tried to think through. I stood in front of the group, welcomed them, and started sharing some of the arrangements we had made for the venue.

One of those details was the coat rack.

We had put hangers in place, and on each hanger we had attached a paper Christmas decoration in a different shape. The idea was simple: one decoration would stay on the hanger, and the matching one would be taken by the participant as a token, so they could later find their coat easily.

I thought it was clever.

Then one of the women laughed and said, "Oh, that's so cute. But you know, we can easily smell our coats."

I was speechless.

It was funny, but it was also a real moment of realization for me. The solution had felt thoughtful from my perspective, but only because I was solving the problem from my own mental model, not from theirs.

>That was one of my first big lessons: I cannot understand blind people just by imagining their lives. I have to talk to them, ask questions, and stay open-minded long enough to realize how limited my assumptions are.

That mindset has shaped almost everything I've learned since.

The easiest metaphor I can use is this: it felt like entering a very different culture.

And I do not mean visiting a neighboring country where things are mostly familiar. I mean entering an environment where the norms are different enough that you become hyper-aware of your own behavior. You are careful not to say the wrong thing. You worry about offending people without meaning to. You second-guess ordinary habits.

That was my internal state in the first months.

Was that feeling entirely accurate? Probably not. But as a metaphor, it still works. Because when you step into a world you do not yet understand, the best thing you can do is stay consciously open-minded and ask honest questions.

>In other words: don't assume.

For example, one of the questions I genuinely worried about was this:

Can you say to a blind person, "See you again"?

When I asked my blind colleagues that, they laughed.

"Of course," they said. "Unless we see you first!"

That answer was useful, but only up to a point. The deeper lesson was not really about one phrase. It was about the danger of looking for universal rules where there often are none.

Blind people, like everyone else, are individuals. They have different preferences, sensitivities, communication styles, boundaries, and senses of humor. Some will care about certain expressions. Others will not. Some will want help. Others will prefer not to be helped unless they ask.

>Just like with anyone else, the answer is respect, curiosity, and attention.

Ask when you are unsure. If you make a mistake, apologize. Learn. Move on.

>That is not disability etiquette. That is human etiquette.

Another thing I have found unexpectedly difficult is reading emotions.

I consider myself a fairly empathetic person, but with many of the blind people I work with, I still sometimes struggle to understand what they are feeling in the moment. Maybe it is because facial expressions play a smaller role. Maybe it is because some people are simply very good at masking discomfort. Maybe it is because I am relying too much on signals I am used to reading in sighted people.

Whatever the reason, I have learned not to assume that if someone is quiet, they are fine.

One experience made that very clear to me.

Our team was attending an event where Access Drum had been nominated for Agent of Change (and we did win that night!). There were more than 100 people in the room. Everyone was talking. Emotions were high. There was excitement, tension, noise, movement, stories, applause.

At one point, I noticed that one of my coworkers seemed visibly distressed. She was shaking.

I went over to her and tried to understand what was happening. At first, she brushed me off. But it was obvious something was wrong, so I stayed with her and kept gently checking in.

Eventually, she told me she felt extremely uncomfortable and, if possible, wanted to go home.

Of course, I called a cab and helped her leave.

Only later did I fully understand what had happened. She had become so overstimulated by the environment that her body was starting to shut down. She was in real distress, even pain. But she also believed she needed to stay, because she was representing the company and did not want to let us down.

That hit me hard.

What I realized afterward was that we had failed to align properly on expectations. We had not made it clear enough why we were there and what was actually expected from each of us.

From my perspective, the event was simple: show up, enjoy the evening, celebrate the impact we are making, and go home proud.

But that context was not necessarily shared.

And that matters.

In Bulgaria, many blind people are still not well integrated into the workplace. Attending a formal event, networking in a crowded room, representing your company in a public setting — these are not experiences everyone has had the chance to build familiarity with. Something that feels routine to one person may be completely new, stressful, and high-stakes to another.

There is also a more practical layer to this.

For many blind people, orientation depends heavily on sound. In a crowded environment with dozens or hundreds of overlapping voices, that auditory map can collapse. What feels lively to a sighted person can feel disorienting, exhausting, and even frightening to someone navigating primarily through listening.

That means preparation matters.

If you are bringing a blind colleague into a busy event or unfamiliar setting, it helps enormously to explain in advance how the event will work, what is expected, how long it may last, what the space will be like, and where they can step away if they need a break.

It also helps to identify anchor points: a quieter corner, a known person, a clear routine, or a place where they can reset for a few minutes when the noise becomes too much.

>Sometimes inclusion is not about grand gestures.

>Sometimes it is about context.

>Sometimes it is about removing uncertainty.

And sometimes it is simply about understanding that what looks like confidence on the outside may still involve a huge amount of effort on the inside.

One final lesson has to do with the surrounding environment.

Going back to our first training program, one thing that surprised me was how quickly the blind participants developed a feel for the space around them.

We would describe the room to them — probably not very well — and then they would start exploring. They would find a desk with their cane, go back to the entrance, leave their jacket on the hanger, sometimes even leave the cane there, and then return to their seat with complete confidence.

I was amazed.

What I learned is that once a blind person has built a mental map of a space, consistency becomes extremely important. If you change the layout, even slightly, you are not just moving furniture around. You are changing the logic of the environment. That means a new learning process has to happen.

So if you are arranging an office or event space, one simple rule helps a lot: the fewer unnecessary changes, the better.

What may surprise many sighted people is just how confident blind people can become in a familiar environment.

Our office is in a shared workspace, and the bathroom is at the end of a long, straight corridor. One day I noticed that when one of our colleagues goes to the bathroom, she does not walk down the corridor.

She runs!

Yes, actually runs!

I always joke that one day she is going to scare the life out of someone. But the truth is, she is fully in control of her surroundings. If there is someone in the corridor, she will most likely hear them before they even notice her.

And honestly, every time I hear someone say that a blind person "cannot" do something, I think of that moment.

I picture them standing at one end of the corridor while my colleague comes charging down the other side with her cane and perfect confidence.

>That image captures something important: we are often far too quick to confuse lack of sight with lack of capability.

I could share many more stories, and there are many more lessons in them, but this article is already long enough.

So I will end with this:

Working with blind people has taught me to assume less, ask more, explain context better, and respect forms of competence that do not always look familiar at first glance.

If you have worked with people with disabilities, I would love to hear what you have learned too. And if you have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.