Invisible & Hypervisible

I am often both invisible and hypervisible, in a paradoxical and misunderstood dialectic. Through the brilliant, witty, and endearing podcast AcadaDames, I was introduced to this terminology of invisible and hypervisible from black feminism to describe the experience of many women of color in academia. One of the hosts, Whitney, explained how she experiences this paradox as a tenured professor at a competitive research university. On the one hand, people often ignore or forget she’s in meetings and question her status, assuming “oh you must be a post doc.” There is an invisibility about who she is. At the same time, she experiences hypervisibility as a “token” person of color who literally stands out in white spaces.


I empathize with this paradox as a disabled woman in able-bodied spaces. I feel invisible when others forget about my disability and related access needs, express disinterest in how I access the world, or when people in my building avoid or ignore me when I’m using my cane. Though my cane is meant to signal that I may need space since I can’t see, I still want to socialize when passing in the hall - I just have to know you’re there! At the same time, (I'm told that) people stare at me. I stand out because there aren’t norms or models for how to accommodate blindness in able-bodied spaces. When colleagues instrumentalist my disability status by asking me to “speak on behalf of the disabled” or evaluate the accessibility of an event or platform, my disabled identity is made hypervisible.


Beyond the invisible and hypervisible aspects of my disabled identity, there is a hypervisibility and invisibility about how I work. At surface, my work is literally hypervisible to others with sight: my magnified screen can be seen from quite far away. I can’t subtly check my email without others seeing me bring my screen to my face, being able to read my magnified content or hearing my text-to-speech. My work is also invisible because I do everything, and I do mean nearly everything, differently than someone sighted. I “read” by listening. I adapt the conventional roles of clinical work by requesting that my clients read worksheets and responses out loud. The ways I access the world are often invisible to those around me.


I still succumb to pressures to appear able-bodied; at times I strategically seek to make my disability invisible. I laugh along when I haven't seen what's funny, I turn my screen away so others cannot see my magnification, I use headphones when using VoiceOver or text-to-speech so no one hears how I’m accessing materials, and I won’t use my cane if it’s not needed. I often don’t want to call attention to my disability because it may mark how I don’t fit in with academic or social norms. I find this to be one of the most tragic consequences of this visibility paradox. We are shamed into believing we don’t belong. Why is my way of doing things worse than yours? Why is my body not worthy of being seen as it is? Why do I need to change myself or how I access the world to help the able-bodied feel more comfortable? I've learned that my attempts to downplay my disability often backfire and promote additional invisibility and pain.


At times, I need to make my disabled identity hypervisible. An unfortunate lesson about reasonable accommodations that I’ve had to learn repeatedly is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This means that I need to announce my low vision early and often to ensure others’ accommodate my needs. This hypervisibility comes at a cost: it can be both exhausting and limiting. Pre-empting access needs and alerting all relevant parties requires attention to detail, coordination, and lots of nagging. I am more than my disability and related accommodation needs, and the often imbalanced hypervisibility of this aspect of my identity, although necessary for communicating access needs, can trigger lack of belonging and perceived burdensomeness.


As seemingly contradictory as it sounds, I experience sight in a similar paradox of hyper visible and invisible. One of the complicated parts of being somewhere on the low vision spectrum is that I cannot relate fully to the sighted or the blind experience. In many ways, I have sight: I see colors, shapes, and textures. In other ways, I lack sight: I cannot read words strung together or recognize people or faces. To the blind, I am hyper sighted; to the sighted, I am hyper blind. Consistently inconsistent, I am blind and sighted, invisible and hypervisible.