Have you ever wondered how blind people know when to stop wiping their butt?
Don’t feel so bad if you have, because it is natural to have many weird questions running through your mind when you see a blind person.
Blind people are usually a subject of admiration when you study their lifestyle and how they live and do every activity as a normal person does. The most interesting part is that they can simply be independent and do many amazing things.
But before I talk about how blind people know when to stop wiping their butt, I must mention blind people’s toilets.
Table of Contents
- What is a Blind Person’s Toilet?
- Toilet Adaptations for the Blind
- How Does a Blind Person Know When to Stop Wiping their Butt?
- How Blind People Know When to Stop Wiping their Butt (Video)
What is a Blind Person’s Toilet?
Just like other assistive technology meant for visually impaired people to have an easier life, a blind person’s toilet is made to help a blind person comfortably use the toilet.
From a bidet toilet seat to a motion sensor and a smart shower system, a bathroom/toilet can be easily accessible for a blind person.
Depending on your preference, you can decide to get a blind person toilet or a bathroom adaptation. Whichever you decide, ensure that it is accessible to the blind person whenever they need to answer nature’s call.
Quickly, let me show you some toilet adaptations to consider for your blind friend, colleague, or family.
Related: Here’s How a Blind Person Knows If It’s Day or Night
Toilet Adaptations for the Blind
Install a Safety Rail by the Toilet
Accidents can occur even in the toilet, so you must ensure that the toilet has necessary safety features like safety rails to prevent falls and slips. You’ll find several safety rails that fit into your toilet size.
Also, use nonskid rugs and mats on the floor covering the toilet entrance. It is also part of the necessary safety features.
Use Product Identification
This is where you need to use strategic measures to help a blind person identify varying items in the toilet. For example, you can place a headband around the shampoo container to help them easily identify it.
The same goes for the hand wash or soap. A soap-on-the-rope technique is a great strategy to help blind people identify a hand soap after using the toilet.
Related: How You Can Help a Blind Person to Cross a Busy Road
How Does a Blind Person Know When to Stop Wiping their Butt?
After nature’s call, a blind person will wipe their butt like every other human to ensure no fecal bacteria.
Not wiping your butt can cause itching, anal discomfort, and increased urinary tract infection.
So, it’s expected that blind person wipes their butt after using the toilet to stay healthy and bacteria-free. But because of their disability, it will require certain techniques to know when to stop wiping their butt.
Blind people can use wipes, toilet papers, bidets, and water to wipe their butt after using the toilet. It all buzzes down to the person’s choice and the technique they find most convenient to use to wipe their butt.
So, here are some ways a blind person can determine when to stop wiping their butt.
1. How the Toilet Paper Feels
If a blind person uses toilet paper to wipe their butt, they can know when to stop using it by how the toilet paper feels.
What this means is this.
The rougher the toilet paper is used to wipe fecal matter the cleaner the anus.
If the toilet paper feels slippery after wiping, that means there’s still fecal matter and there’s the need for more cleaning. But when the toilet paper starts to feel dry, the blind person is good to go.
The wetness technique is a primitive yet reliable way for blind people to know when to stop wiping their butt.
2. The Consistency of their Poop
The more the quantity of their poop, the more the number of times they need to wipe their butt. It’s a simple logic that blind people use. If they poop lesser, then they know that they have lesser fecal matter down there and need only to clean a few times.
3. Their Stronger Senses
The rule of thumb is that once one sense is lost, another is usually strengthened. So, a blind person can use smelling or feeling to know when there is no more fecal matter in their butt.
They can use their hands to feel their butt and check for the presence of poop. On the other hand, they can also sniff the toilet paper or wipes to check for the presence of poop, thanks to their highly increased smelling ability.
Related: How to Take a Deaf Person’s Order
4. Asking Someone to Check for Them
Another way a blind person knows when to stop wiping their butt is to ask someone else to check for them. It could be their caregiver or a friend. Although, a blind person will not make this request from someone they are not comfortable with.
Note that a pet dog can also fit into this context. It all buzzes down to the training it has been given.
A pet dog has high smell senses and can confirm if the butt is free from poop.
5. Echolocation
Echolocation involves a process that sends audio signal to the ear.
Here’s how it works.
A toilet paper with poop reflects sound in a different way from a toilet paper without poop. The blind use the difference in the reflected sound to determine if there is leftover poop on the butt or not.
A blind person takes a specific amount of toilet paper and folds it in a certain way that makes it convenient to wipe their butt.
They then blow some air on the clean paper and listen to the reflected sound.
After wiping the butt severally, the blind person then blows air on the most recently used toilet paper.
The reflected sound allows them to test the toilet paper to know if there is still poop on the paper. This cycle is repeated until there is no more poop.
6. The Sticky Technique
Blind people also know when to stop wiping their butt when the toilet paper starts sticking to their butt. If the tissue paper doesn’t stick to the butt, it implies the presence of fecal matter that has stuck to the butt.
This technique works and has helped many blind people.
There’s NO way they’re using echolocation for poop. That is WILD. Lol I have seen no other information on it either.
Hello Hunter,
This is very realistic.
It’s simple physics.
A dry toilet paper with poop absorbs sound waves more than toilet paper without poop. This results in lesser sound waves bouncing back on toilet paper with poop when air is blown on the surface.
The difference in the reflected sound may be difficult to detect by the sighted. But will be easily detected by the blind because they have higher hearing capacity since they depend more on their sense of hearing than the sighted.