Cameron Scott
Equinox Staff
Food has been a big part of my life. Well, the same can be said for everyone, it is a necessity to live. For someone with a visual impairment, it is always a bit different.
Let’s start off with the different places you can get food. One place that comes to mind is from family members or friends, where the meal is already prepared and served for you. There is no need to worry about looking at menus or trying to calculate a tip for the server.
Luckily for me, a global pandemic has the world by storm and shut down everything making ordering online from apps such as DoorDash and GrubHub way more common. Meaning, the menus are already online so I can take my time looking at the menu and the food is dropped off at my front door and the best part is I do not have to interact with anybody, especially due to the times we are in.
When going into restaurants, it is a whole different story. When I would receive the menu, the print is usually too small, meaning that I will have to take a picture of it with my phone just to see it which takes a long time. This also happens even at college with the digital menus being big but very high up from the ground. This means that I have to take a picture of it, which in most cases would drive a lot of attention to me doing that every day.
I could just ask the person serving the food but then they would tell me to look at the menu that is way up top which I cannot see. Then I must explain to them that I have a visual impairment.
This sounds great doing it one time but imagine doing it every time. Maybe if I do it enough, they will remember me, but what I usually do is order the same things I know they have everyday such as a cheeseburger or a grilled cheese with fries. If I am lucky, I can overhear the person in front of me what they order and just copy what they got.
Thankfully, there are other places that do pickup on campus such as Lloyd’s Marketplace that lets you order through this app called Boost on your phone and it is as simple as just placing an order, waiting for it to be completed and picking it up no questions asked.
Fortunately, eating food does not involve as many visual aspects. For me, there is really no challenge eating food. Eating is the same as sighted people and I am happy about that. Overall, there have been challenges ordering and eating food, but I never let my disability get in the way and I have always found new ways to work around and not let it hinder me in my adult life. I hope I can inspire people in the future to do the same to overcome any obstacles.
Cameron Scott can be contacted at:
cscott@kscequinox.com
