Bill McKeown tells a cute, if slightly embarrassing, story of an incident earlier this month in an Edmonton office.

McKeown is blind, and when he arrived for a meeting he was helped to a seat in the waiting room. Unlike some people who panic when a blind person arrives, the person helping him was at ease.

Sitting down, he was told there were a couple of seats next to him. McKeown said thank you. He was pleasantly impressed.

Carrying his computer, he then swung the carrying case onto the next chair. Much to his surprise, someone was in the chair.

Darlene Colton photo
CNIB division executive director Bill McKeown brings a unique perspective to visual awareness.

“It landed right in the middle of a woman’s lap,” he recalls. “I knew there were chairs there, I just wasn’t told that anyone was sitting in them.”

It was an uncomfortable moment for McKeown, the executive director of the Alberta/Northwest Territories/Nunavut division of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. He tells the story to help make a point.

“The person helping me was great, but didn’t describe the entire situation,” says McKeown, who is almost completely blind, but can make out shapes.

“The room was poorly lit, so it didn’t help that I couldn’t make out anyone else in the room.”

At the beginning of February, the CNIB held its annual White Cane Week to create awareness about issues affecting the blind and visually impaired. Specifically for businesses, it provides an excellent list of ideas on its website (www.cnib.ca) to help improve meetings, presentations and conferences that include blind participants. The list is illuminating, offering helpful hints that help all people share equally in the experience.

The list details small things that greatly improve matters, says McKeown, who spends much of his working life in meetings, often in unfamiliar buildings.

For example, McKeown can read large type, but he says that many buildings don’t have signs that are clear, large enough, or provide contrasting backgrounds that make it easier for people such as himself to find their own way around.

Elevators, too, can be frustrating. Getting into an elevator is so much easier if it has braille or raised print, he explains. And once inside the elevator, the good old-fashioned protruding knobs are the best.

“Those other (recessed) ones that are sensitive to heat or touch, well, all of a sudden you’ve lit up eight floors,” he laughs.

Having sat in on hundreds of meetings and presentations, McKeown, 53, has a unique perspective on the needs of people with varying degrees of vision.

He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at age 23, a condition that worsens with age. In his case, the problems began with night blindness, then tunnel vision, and “very slowly” deteriorated to complete blindness.

In his professional career he has listened to many presenters refer to a chart on the wall and say, “As you can see the trend is this way.” He has met people who “panic” when he enters a room; others who turn silent; those who become flustered because they’ve used words like “see” and “look” in his presence; and those who act appropriately.

Overall, businesses, communities and government are doing a much better job of recognizing the needs of the blind and visually impaired. And as Baby Boomers age, he suggests awareness will only accelerate.

“In meetings, you often hear people shouting out to the presenter to speak up because they can’t be heard,” says McKeown. “You never hear someone say, ‘I can’t read that overhead or PowerPoint’ . . . but I think it’s coming.”

He notes that more businesses today are asking for the CNIB’s help. The best organizations are the ones that, in advance, ask if there is anything they can do differently.

In most cases it’s simple awareness with little cost attached. Accommodating a blind person at a presentation might mean ensuring that printed material is large enough; that room glare is reduced; or, if people are meeting at tables, to keep the groups small so the blind person can keep track of the participants.

It also means that if you help seat the blind person, that you take one extra step – and point out whether the chair next to them is occupied, or not.