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A Hull man says he was "shocked" by a letter from council contractors addressing him as Mr Blindman.
Paul Harris, of the Wincolmlee area, who was only registered blind late last year, received the letter from Kier Building Maintenance on Feb. 18.
"I just couldn't believe it," said Mr Harris. "Words just can't explain how I feel, I'm really upset." The company apologised saying the error happened when Mr Harris's disability was mistakenly entered on its database.
The letter was sent to Mr Harris to inform him that modifications were to be carried out on his home as part of the Hull City Council's Decent Homes programme.
"I was literally horrified that they can send anything through the post saying 'Dear Mr Blindman' about your disability," said Mr Harris. "I was just so shocked.
"You wouldn't send a letter to a person who's got Down's Syndrome saying Dear Mr Down's Syndrome would you?"
Ann Massam, from Hull and East Riding Institute for the Blind, said: "He has recently been registered as blind and that in itself is enough to come to terms with.
"Then to get something like this through the post, it just shouldn't happen."
A Kier spokesperson said: "We sincerely apologise to Mr Harris for the distress caused by this error.
"The letter was part of a routine mail-out about Decent Homes work being carried out in his property.
"Any information relating to customers' personal circumstances are entered into a remarks column on a database.
"Unfortunately, information about Mr Harris' disability was accidentally entered into the name column, which was not noticed prior to the letter being sent."
He said an internal investigation was under way to determine how the error occurred and ensure it did not happen again.
"We have visited Mr Harris to apologise and explained the error, and a letter of apology will be sent to him," the spokesman added.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From the BBC:
