From John Dragona, Cliffside Park, NJ:

I was surprised by the letter from President Bush in the March Readers Forum, referring to us as "people who are blind" and not as "the blind," which I've always known to be a window covering. I am a person who happens to be a male, an author, a husband and father--to name a few--and by the way, I also happen to be blind.

We often complain that people who are sighted have misguided assumptions about the limitations they perceive to be secondary to our blindness, while some even ridiculously assume that we can't do anything without sighted assistance. Yet we help to perpetuate that myth by identifying ourselves as being "blind" upfront while making skimpy attempts to prove differently.

So, how can we rectify that? We can start by watching our own language if we really want to be accepted as equalsdespite our minor differences. If all of us, including sighted people, recognize ourselves as "people" or individuals who happen to be blind, those who are not visually impaired will also focus on our capabilities and not on our disabilities. Would it be so terrible were we to put our racial, religious and physical differences in the background?

I've read flippant and sarcastic comments to the contrary in the Ziegler, and do not deny the people who wrote those comments the right to disagree with me. But when I was studying for my graduate degree in rehabilitation counseling at New York University, the literature was permeated with logical rationales for my insistence on the aforementioned terminology. So, continue calling yourself a window covering if you wish --I am a person who happens to be...