“Even though the workshop was only 5 days long, I experienced numerous surprises from it. I have felt the precious and beautiful details and moments in life.”
Li Ning, China

PhotoVoice’s Statement of Ethical Practice (pdf)

The following ethical considerations are specific to working with blind and partially sighted people:

• Ensure participants are aware of video or audio recording taking place in a workshop and have given their permission, as they may not realise it is taking place unless informed by a facilitator, and will therefore be denied the power of choice.
• Respect boundaries that certain participants may not want to cross for personal reasons – build contingencies into workshops so if there is an activity that a participant feels uncomfortable doing there is an alternative and they are not pressured by facilitators or other participants to go outside their comfort zone until they are ready to. In most cases the lack of pressure will actually help them to feel able to push themselves further.
• When selecting images for public use in exhibitions or media work, be sure to highlight potential consequences around a participant’s images entering the public domain. They will rely on your description to make a decision about whether to share photos, and if that description is misleading they could end up unwittingly displaying unflattering photographs, or photographs that reveal details about themselves or others that they would not be comfortable sharing. The key thing is that participants are provided with enough information in order that they can make an informed decision.
• Avoid suggestions that, through any of the activities in the workshops such as those involving blindfolds, fully or partially sighted people can understand what it is like to be blind. Needless to say, this is a simplification that could upset those living with blindness, and the exercises are merely intended to help those people with sight to stop falling back on using it when trying to develop the sensory photography techniques.
• Ensure that the participants and facilitation team have the opportunity to feed back about all aspects of the project in private, so that if there are issues that it is stressful to bring up in the group they are not ignored. Terminology used by some participants or facilitators, for example, may upset or confuse others and if this is recognised it can be directly addressed in a workshop to clarify meaning, and so that group consensus can be reached on the preferred language.