"Giving a description of yourself for the benefit of blind or visually impaired people – when meeting a group of people for the first time; when speaking at a conference or seminar – is good practice, and part of your professional responsibilities."

I'm reading "Self-description for inclusive meetings" (at VocalEyes), which gives some insight into what was going on in the video we were talking about a few days ago, in which a couple Microsoft employers, introducing themselves, let us know that they were "Caucasian" and (in one case) had long blonde hair.

In the comments at my post, Lurker21 said:

Even if you accept that saying your race and gender before large groups of people is now appropriate and necessary you might puzzle over why physical descriptions of the face became necessary before references to sexual orientation. Maybe a large part of the audience is blind (but not blind from birth since visual appearance wouldn't mean so much to them)?

And it turns out these extended descriptions of looks do seem to be motivated by a desire to include the blind. I'm sure the blind are aware that they are missing something other people are getting, but do they appreciate extra explanations that are just about how people look (as opposed to explanations of nonverbal communication like gestures or things written or drawn on a whiteboard)? 

At that VocalEyes website, you're told that, when introducing yourself, you should "restrict yourself to three key elements and one or two sentences." And it's "a political and personal act." There are suggestions about which elements to choose:

You may choose to refer to your ethnicity or race. It is important for an inclusive meeting that this is not solely done by people from minoritised or under-represented groups. Whiteness should not be assumed to be a default.... You may prefer to give a visual description of your skin colour instead of, or in addition to, reference to your race / ethnicity.... You might refer to your hair colour, length and style. This is something that is often over-described....

If there's a danger of assuming that anyone who doesn't announce their race is white, it creates pressure to make announcing your race — if you are white — one of your elements — one of your 3 elements. Otherwise, you seem presumptuous. That is, one could say it's white privilege if you don't make your whiteness one of your elements of self-description.

I wonder how much blind people care about race. How do they feel about hearing the scoffing at the notion of "color-blindness"? What's wrong with blindness?

 

"I don't care so much about how things look. I mean, I can see past how a person is dressed or how a person appears and really judge a person by their actions or their words or by what they're doing." Or, one might say, by the content of their character.

ADDED: Here's the trailer for the 1965 movie "A Patch of Blue" — about race and blindness: