It usually starts with something like this:
“Can you give this form to Sam in HR please?”
Not an unreasonable request to most people, just a mundane part of a day in the office. As you pop over to Sam’s department, maybe you’ll make smalltalk or even flirt with them, or perhaps you’re in a hurry and will brusquely hand over the paperwork with a quick “here you go”. In any case it’s no big deal.
That’s unless, like me, you suffer from prosopagnosia. Commonly known as face blindness, it refers to the inability to recognise faces and it turns interactions like above into a terrifying ordeal.
I met Sam (not her real name) at my induction last week. I’m supposed to know what she looks like. Yet I know when I walk into that part of the office, there are going to be rows of desks with colleagues sitting in front of their screens and as I approach I’m supposed to pick out Sam from several similar looking candidates.
How would you solve this problem, if you couldn’t recognise people’s faces? What would you say when you approach? Who would you make eye contact with?
If I’m lucky, Sam was the one who dyed her hair bright purple — and didn’t decide to throw a spanner in the works by completely changing it over the weekend.
I have yet to find an easy answer to the above question, but over the years I’ve developed coping strategies. We make a conscious effort to recognise faces, using the brain’s mechanism for identifying common objects, but it’s not very effective so we look at hair, build, height, weight, gait, along with any distinguishing features, how the person dresses and so on. It’s not easy to remember all that, especially as prosopagnosia is believed to affect memory in relation to people. So we cheat. Where does that person sit? (Coupled with, is the office seating plan up to date, or are they going to play cruel tricks?)
As a result of my condition, I have to learn how people look. It takes time and many interactions. If I try to explain it to people they’ll be polite, maybe brush it off “oh don’t worry, we all have difficulty sometimes”, and to some extent that’s true. Ability to recognise faces varies — and I am in the bottom 5%.
What if we were working from home instead?
It’s easy to imagine the attraction of Zoom calls for someone in this situation. Hover the mouse over someone’s image and you can see the name of the person who’s talking. Sorted! Same goes for Slack, you can look up everyone by name.
For me, face blindness is only half the story. My impossible mission to identify the correct person as “Sam” and avoid total embarrassment has to overcome another hurdle: nystagmus.
There’s no common name for nystagmus. Around 1 in 1,000 people are born with this visual impairment caused by constant, uncontrollable eye movements. Fortunately my case is not the most severe, but its effect on visual acuity makes it hard to see things at a distance — yes, even with glasses; the world is full of unqualified opticians ready to offer free advice. With nystagmus it also takes longer to read text or locate objects and, just to top it off, in stressful situations it gets worse.
The government, wisely, will not allow me behind the wheel of a car. At least nobody will die when I fail spectacularly and give my form to a rather bemused Kim.
I realise I’m more fortunate than some. I can move about as independently as can be with public transport. I don’t need a wheelchair or a guide dog, nor did I need to learn sign language. Nevertheless, my largely hidden disability makes everyday life in an office challenging.
Take meetings for example. For years I have been rushing to get there first so I can secure a seat near the screen. Usually I would manage it and thank goodness, because it’s more awkward than you can imagine asking people to give up their prime spot. Who knows, they may even need it. Even so, I have often found myself at the front of the room struggling to follow the presentation, begging the speaker to make the text bigger or hoping to get a copy of the slides afterwards to review in my own time. Meanwhile, those at the back can’t understand my predicament. I have the best seat, I must be able to read it!
Another example: as a software engineer I’m a big proponent of pair programming. Whether it’s a few hours per week or constant “XP” style, the benefits of pairing include much better knowledge sharing, faster decision making and fewer defects. I advocate this despite the fact that for someone with nystagmus, it’s another office nightmare.
For me to read text it needs to be big, it needs to be close, and it needs to stay still. After scrolling, I need time to read it. It’s hard for someone to pair with me if my face is right in the screen and I’m constantly telling them to slow down and make the text bigger. I’ve worked with some people who can cope with that and help me, but most can’t.
That is the world I lived in, right up until March 2020. Then my world changed.
Of course, Covid-19 is a terrible disease and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. The lost lives and loved ones, the misery, the hardship bestowed upon many people is beyond awful. But, out of every bad situation we can still find some good. The natural environment gets a short breather, the streets are reclaimed for people to enjoy, and those of us privileged few in office jobs no longer need to cram ourselves into packed trains every day.
It isn’t for everyone, but for someone with disabilities like mine, the move to working from home is life-changing.
We are all equal now. I attend meetings and presentations in the same way as everyone else. I don’t have to rush and grab a spot at the front while others socialise and sit down whenever they’re ready. No longer do I need to carefully plan certain interactions in order to avoid embarrassment. When I walk to the bathroom, I don’t have to stay alert to every person I pass, sizing them up as I approach to try and figure out if I’m supposed to recognise them.
Sure, I enjoy many face to face interactions. I miss going to the pub occasionally, even though I don’t miss the part where I have to try and arrive with a colleague because picking out the group already there is a huge challenge.
As for the work itself, this got so much easier. Sitting close to a large screen, nobody will judge me because I’m looking at it from strange angles (head tilt is a common side-effect of nystagmus). I have privacy at last; no longer can people from the other end of the office read what’s on my screen.
During a presentation, I receive information at the same time as everyone else. If the text is too small, I can enlarge it on my own screen thanks to the Mac accessibility tools. Suddenly, pair programming is practical for me. Sure, some people still manage to make the fonts too small or scroll too much, but most of the time it’s fine.
The experience is liberating. I no longer need to work that extra bit harder to compensate for the disadvantages I face.
How about the future though? If we all return to the office, can’t I ask employers to accommodate my needs? To be sure, I always ask for a bigger screen, but as soon as I leave my desk and go into a meeting that advantage is lost. Otherwise, adapting a typical office to my needs would be like allowing me to drive. Sure, it can be done safely, if they drop the speed limit by a third, make all the signs twice as big and reconfigure half the junctions. Not going to happen.
That’s not to say I won’t ever venture into an office, once it’s genuinely safe to do so. But to do so daily would be to voluntarily become disabled again.