In Het Donker Gezien

You’ve been to plenty of museums; right? We all have. We’ve wandered around among things and at times not even sure what we were seeing. Right? Some of those visits included seeing familiar things but in ways we had not seen before. We’ve all seen loads of paintings, but until we come face to face with a Vermeer do we understand light or form or tone quite the same as before.

What if I told you there is a museum near Amsterdam where you can truly wander around, and I guarantee that you won’t see things like you had before. In fact, you won’t see things at all. You won’t be able to see…period. So it is at In Het Donker Gezien, known as the Blind Museum.

The museum staff is entirely visually impaired, some completely blind. Visitors gain knowledge and appreciation through a number of activities. For example, visitors can play “Blind Bingo” as it was called, a tactile-dependent game in which the leader describes an object he or she cannot see while players attempt to find the same object among their collection—all the while with no visual input. Visitors can experience first-hand the use of a “stick,” the elongated cane used by visually impaired people to detect obstacles in their paths. Others can learn to type on a “brailler” gaining an improved appreciation for “reading with one’s fingers”.

Sam, our tour guide

The true highlight of the Blind Museum is a walking tour. Nothing could have properly prepared me for my twenty minutes of total blindness. The walk is a simulated tour from one place to the next, across busy streets, to the grocery store, and finishing at the disco. Perhaps I should back up a moment…

Although there is a lot of traffic in the Netherlands by almost anyone’s standards, you almost have to visit to properly understand that in this country the streets are more like anthills than most anthills. Every street has three features: the road, a sidewalk, and a bike lane. Imagine this in your neighborhood. Next to every road is a separate two-lane path for bikes and small vehicles. In every direction, from every direction, people are walking and riding bicycles. There are mopeds, and motorbikes. There are electric and two-cycle engine vehicles in the bike lanes. There are metro trains and tram tracks everywhere. And there are cars and trucks. No kidding, it must be a living nightmare for blind and visually impaired people.

Two-cycle "cars" like this are allowed in the bike paths

Inside the museum, visitors are taken into a part of the converted church (believe me, requesting divine intervention crossed my mind) designed to recreate the blind experience. In 100% pitch-black darkness, visitors are led along a typical, albeit extended walking tour. Along the way we stopped at the “restaurant” to “see” the twin statues at the entrance with our hands. Along the way we were “greeted” by an unhappy sounding dog, and eventually we “shopped” for our groceries, but the part that resonated with me was crossing the street.

Here’s the thing: I do this every day. Along my way I do what all walkers in Holland do. We approach the crosswalk after clearing the bike lanes, we press the cross button, and we wait for the crossing lights to turn green.

It’s not what you think though. If you are imagining any American street anywhere except for New York City then you might not get it. Here a person must never, ever, under any circumstances cross against the cross walk lights. It might be too complex or unnecessary to explain here but stepping into the streets without right-of-way can be and probably would be lethal.

The yellow portion leads to the highway/crosswalk.
The bumpy white part signals a warning that the street is next.

The crosswalks use variegated pavement to indicate proximity to the roadbed. The crossing lights have an auditory signal that changes speeds to indicate when to walk and when time is expiring. Honest to goodness, when crossing most roads anyone has barely enough time to make it across before time runs out. For impaired people, it is nearly impossible. For blind people, well, I could hardly have imagined how difficult…until now.

In the museum we were taught to feel the sidewalk. We learned to sense our proximity to the street itself. We were taught to listen. We tried to hear the things we could not see. Cars slowing sound different than cars accelerating. Engines idling sound entirely different, and despite the secure knowledge that we were actually safe and sound somewhere in an old church, it was a leap of faith to step off that simulated curb. That is how frightening it was when I could not trust what I could not see.

The view from the median of the Beneluxbaan

This morning as I approached the Beneluxbaan, a four-lane highway with two sets of metro train tracks running down the median, I remembered my walk in the Blind Museum. Although it is not the same, as I stepped toward the street, I closed my eyes. Knowing full well the relative distance to my certain demise is not at all like the approach of a blind person who would have no such advance warning, but for what it was worth, I walked blindly. I eventually felt the variegated portion of the crosswalk underfoot, and knew I would soon be near the pole on which the switch was located.

I found the pole and felt for the button. Sure enough the slow click of the crossing indicator started. The clicking changed to the rapid succession that accompanies permission to cross. I stepped forward. I felt the smooth surface of the highway and knew I was playing with my safety. In a split second I opened my eyes.

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After spending parts of three hours in the Blind Museum it is nearly impossible not to feel an increased sense of empathy for visually impaired or sightless people. I remember my conversation with the Tinah Visser, one of the curators, who was teaching me to use the brailler. I told her about a friend in college who, despite his total blindness, would say, “See you later.”

“Yes,” she said. “That is what we say. We say ‘See you later’ but its only because we see differently than you do.”

http://www.inhetdonkergezien.nl/foto-centrum-wakan.html