An international team lead by Dr Walter Wittich and Ricard Lopez, developed ICF Core Sets for Deafblindness. The ICF has over 1400 codes; an ICF Core Set is a shorter list of the most important codes for one specific health condition, meaning such sets make it easier to evaluate and address the most important ways a condition might impact someone’s daily life.
Title: Please Walter
PLEASE WALTER, DON’T CONSIGN ME TO NUMBERS
There is a script that the world hands to people like me — a script written long before I ever had the chance to speak for myself. It is a script made of assumptions, projections, and fears. It is a script that begins with a single word: No.
I have heard it in many forms. Sometimes whispered. Sometimes shouted. Sometimes wrapped in pity. Sometimes disguised as concern. But always the same message:
“No music I’M DEAF BLIND”, “NO SEX I’M DEAF BLIND.” “NO RESPECT I’M DEAF BLIND.”
These are not my words. These are the words society tries to place in my mouth. The world imagines a life stripped of intimacy, dignity, agency, and joy — as if deafblindness is a full stop rather than a comma. As if my body, my mind, my desires, my humour, my intelligence, my relationships, my work, my creativity simply evaporate the moment someone hears the label.
The list is long:
No money. No exercise. No company. No brain. I can’t.
Each one a verdict. Each one a cage. Each one a way of shrinking a human being into a stereotype that fits neatly into someone else’s comfort zone or a number.
But here is the truth: these “No” statements reveal far more about the people who say them than they do about me.
They reveal a society that cannot imagine a life outside its own sensory habits. They reveal a culture that confuses unfamiliarity with impossibility. They reveal a world that still believes disability is a subtraction rather than a different configuration of being alive.
The tragedy is not my deafblindness. The tragedy is the poverty of imagination that surrounds it.
People assume that if you remove sight and hearing, you remove the person. They imagine a blankness, a void, a shutting down. They imagine silence and darkness as annihilation rather than transformation.
But my life is not a void. It is not a blank page. It is not a list of losses.
My life is a different sensory landscape — textured, layered, intimate, and rich. It is a life that requires attention, creativity, and adaptation. It is a life that has taught me to read with my hands, to see with my skin, to think with my whole body. Yes! And my eyes and ears still work wonderfully for me.
The world says “No brain I’m deaf blind,” as if intelligence is stored in the eyes and ears. As if cognition depends on the senses that dominate their world, not mine.
But my thinking has never been sharper. My curiosity has never been deeper. My understanding of human behaviour, power, vulnerability, and connection has never been more nuanced.
Every “No” is a small act of violence. A dismissal. A flattening. A refusal to see the person standing in front of you.
When someone assumes I have no sex life, they are not commenting on my body — they are revealing their own discomfort with disabled desire.
When someone assumes I cannot exercise, they are not describing my capabilities — they are describing their own lack of imagination.
When someone assumes I cannot enjoy music, they are not talking about my sensory world — they are confessing their ignorance of how vibration, rhythm, and resonance travel through the body, aiding my limited hearing.
When someone assumes I have no company, they are not observing my relationships — they are projecting their own fear of isolation.
These assumptions are not neutral. They shape policy, services, education, healthcare, and social attitudes. They shape how people speak to me, how they touch me, how they include me — or don’t.
This piece is not about correcting each “No” one by one. It is about exposing the entire structure that produces them.
Because the real problem is not that people think I can’t. The real problem is that people never stop to ask how I do.
How I communicate. How I move. How I learn. How I love. How I create. How I thrive.
The world sees limitation; I live adaptation. The world sees deficit; I live ingenuity. The world sees tragedy; I live reality — complex, textured, fully human.
I began with a list of negations — a stark, painful mirror of what society imagines my life to be. But the truth is this:
I am not defined by the world’s “No.” I am defined by my own “Yes.”
Yes to intimacy. Yes to respect. Yes to agency. Yes to creativity. Yes to connection. Yes to intelligence. Yes to a life that is fully mine.
Deafblindness does not erase humanity. It reveals it.
And perhaps the most radical act of all is simply this: To insist on being known — not as a collection of losses, but as a whole person whose life refuses to fit inside anyone else’s small, frightened “No.”
So Walter, please don’t consign me to numbers.