Sighted Interaction Orders: Tacit Interactional Preferences that Presume Sight Exclude and Stigmatize Legally‐Blind People 1

Our research on interaction between Legally‐Blind and Sighted people finds that well‐documented “Sighted‐expectations,” tacitly embedded in what we call “Sighted Interaction Orders,” exclude and stigmatize Legally‐Blind people. While social interactionism has been criticized for ignoring structure and neglecting issues of inequality, we maintain that interactional expectations are structures in their own right that embed inequalities which an “Interaction Order” approach can reveal while structural approaches cannot. This article draws on narratives about interactional trouble reported by 60 Legally‐Blind research participants to explore how reliance on visual‐cues creates Sighted‐obligations that can make it impossible for those who cannot see to competently talk , producing embarrassment, blame, exclusion, and stigma. While this is a problem for Legally‐Blind people, it also violates the underlying prerequisites for sensemaking, disrupting interaction and making trouble for everyone. Because these interactional expectations are tacit, however, Sighted people rarely notice that their preferred way of interacting is producing the troubles they have interacting with Legally‐Blind people. While the prioritization of Sight is well‐documented, its role in increasing inequality and exclusion for Legally‐Blind people has been largely overlooked. Our aim is to show that an “Interaction Order” approach reveals tacit stigmatizing inequalities that are missed by macro and structural approaches, while raising awareness of such tacit structures of interactional obligation as a neglected theoretical and research issue.