Almost everyone I interviewed found a polite way to mention her ease at attracting men, but potential boyfriends don’t tend to respond well to Usher’s. Sam Swiller, who is still close to her after their failed romance, gamely explained his hesitancy. “The unfortunate thing about her disease is you don’t know how quickly it’s gonna get bad. And while things were perfectly great then, I was always thinking about the future, and it didn’t give us enough time to develop the present. You ask yourself, ‘Am I going to be able to get what I need from this individual?’ I was idiotically overcome by a relationship where neither of us could make restaurant reservations by phone.”

Portrait der 29-jährigen New Yorkerin Rebecca Alexander, die an einer seltenen Krankheit namens Usher-Syndrom (nicht) leidet und dabei ist, ihr Hör- und ihr Sehvermögen zu verlieren. New York, erfährt man in diesem Stück auch, ist eine Stadt der Blinden: "The New York area is home to 6 percent of the country’s legally blind, creating a subculture of roughly 80,000. The young flock here for the opportunity to play on a level field, where everybody is dependent on public transportation, cabs, deliveries, and Internet ordering. “It’s very attractive that most of New York is on a grid system,” says Matthew Sapolin, the city’s disabilities commissioner, who as a young blind man came here to attend NYU. “If you can count, you can get around.”"

Quelle: New York Magazine, 1.2.2009 > Arianne Cohen: Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights