Caroline Casey: Looking Past Limits

Caroline Casey's amazing story is told through her inspiring TED Talk from the TEDWomen conference in 2010; her story is one that emphasizes the wrongs of labeling those with disabilities. She begins with a question, "Can any of you remember what you wanted to be when you were 17?", then moves into an anecdote about her aspirations as a teenager. She says how when she was 17, she wanted to be a biker chic or maybe race cars. When she told her parents of this dream, they informed her that there was no way she could achieve it, because she has been legally blind her entire life. How does someone grow up not knowing they are blind, you ask? Well Caroline Casey explains the answer to this in her speech that discusses how much of an impact labels have on judgements of yourself and others.

Caroline Casey delivering her speech 

Now, the simplest explanation for this is that her parents just did not tell her, so she grew up learning to live with the blindness that she didn't know she had. The important parts of her story, such as this, are emphasized with dramatized hand gestures, lots of eye contact, and lots of humor. Especially during her opening anecdote were these techniques utilized, so that the audience reacts stronger to the fact that she has been blind since birth and didn't find out about it until she was 17. Her hand gestures included lots of pointing, especially when she was showing the audience things that she could and could not see while on stage. The use of these gestures as well as her opening anecdote helped the audience connect with her much more easily. I think the audience was definitely not sure what to expect from the beginning, because you could hear and see their reactions when she told them she was blind. If I were Caroline, the only thing I would have changed about this speech is to have a little less anecdote especially towards the end, and a little more generalization of her story to the entire disabled community because she only had about 30 seconds of that towards the end.

Caroline using hand gestures to get her point across

As the speech goes on,  Caroline explains how her parents avoided putting her in special needs schools. They just did not want her to be labeled as "legally blind" or "disabled" or anything similar to that because they felt that she would fall into a state of self-fulfilling prophecy. With that being said, they didn't want her to be treated differently or change things about herself just because she is labeled as different from everyone else.

So, this TED talk is titled "Looking Past Limits" because Caroline truly wants to show how putting labels on humans with disabilities creates limitations for them, therefore not allowing them to reach their full potentials. This can be generalized to all people with disabilities, especially children, not getting all of the opportunities that they deserve solely because they are labeled as something different than the norm. I think that Caroline's main point here is that these labels are demeaning and the term "special needs" should not be used as strongly as it is now in our society, because that is the sole reason her parents did not send her to a special needs school when she was younger. Also, she never would have obtained any of the jobs she has had in her adult life if they would have known she was considered legally blind. All in all, this sound message combined with her enthusiastic and uplifting delivery created a speech that most definitely resonates in the minds of all who watch it; and in the words of Caroline, "It is extraordinary how far belief can take you".

Link to the TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/caroline_casey_looking_past_limits?language=en#t-31056