Okay unpopular opinion time.
As somebody who knows a blind-from-birth person, itās kinda pissing me off that people are acting like the Doctor going blind is tragic. It might suck for him for awhile because heās not used to living that way, but ffs if heās taught how to do things the blind way as opposed to the sighted way and borrowed other people to be his eyes when vision is necessary then not much would have to change.
If the Doctor can memorize a map in a few seconds, I doubt itād take him long to learn just about every form of Braille or raised reading material for blind people all over the universe.
Imagine if the TARDIS made him a sonic white cane that could do all the cool stuff his sonic screwdriver could do and more. Imagine it having aĀ āhomingā signal where the cane will gently tug him back to the TARDIS if thereās danger or if he gets ālostā on an adventure. (And imagine him having to resist it and be allĀ ābe quiet, you!ā)
Disability doesnāt have to be tragic, yāall.
āposted by an autistic person who headcanons the Doctor as autistic.
Heās already doing this, too. He flew the TARDIS to the stationworkersā corporate office and then home to Earth without anyone (including any viewer who hadnāt been spoiled) realizing he was still sightless.
hi tacking onto this as a real life blind person and not just āi know a guyāāop i do appreciate where ur coming from, but also, like, chillāitās actually gonna be disgustingly easy for dr.who to get used to being blind, because gallifreyansā primary sense is telepathy; hell, theyāre already prosopagnosic (link: x, x). dr.who is and was able to navigate the Tardis in part for the same reason why i dont use my cane in my apartment, but also in part because the Tardis, as a gallifreyan technology, is really fucking highkey telepathic and is/was thus more easily navigable than something designed by a generally psinull, generally sighted species, like, yknow, humans.
of course the problem that weāre probably going to run into is that the writers are either gonna get stuck on āthis is terrible and horrible and awful and 12 will never be able to functionā and itāll be a super ableist pity party thatāll probably feed into some self-hatred of actual blind people⦠(link: x) or theyre gonna overuse gallifreyan telepathy so they can have a blind character, but not, like, a blind character who needs help with things
occassionally, or who needs to use assistive tech, or in any way canāt pass for sighted.or both! thereās always both.
but like, listen, this is a fantastic opportunity for dr.who to be able to raise awareness of some things that actual, real life blind people do ā things like the sonic white cane you mentioned already kind of partially exist (link: x), and oh man thatād be killer. iād have comicon down this year let me fucking tell you. they could show dr.who working with the Tardis on the equivalent of JAWS or VoiceOver. they could also, though, pull a daredevil, and oh my god i am sick to death of daredevil. real people in real life have asked me if i can read a computer screen by touching it and feeling the heat of the pixels. thatās daredevilās fault.
anyway the long and short of it is basically ādr.who could be really cool with this, but probably only if i was the one writing it, and im not, so itās gonna be an ableist disasterā. regardless of how the show decides to take this, though,Ā
@fandom be fucking respectful. going blind is not the end of the world. it doesnāt make you incapable. it definitely doesnāt make humans incapable but-oh-not-dr.who-theyre-fine.
and also, hereās a concept, put fucking image descriptions on your gifsets and fanart.
Friendly reminder that The Doctor needs you to put image descriptions on your gifsets and fanart. Ā #DoItForTheDoctor
oh my fucking god dont do it for the doctor do it for real blind/vi people why the fuck is accessibility only important when it effects a fictional character i hate yāall
