In Wisconsin, The Need to See Your Eyes Trumps Your Need to See

Twelve-year-old Graham Bartunek has a passion for football and a drive to play the game. Thing is, he also has albinism, which comes with an acute sensitivity to sunlight and partial blindness. When he played in a school district in Kansas City, this wasn’t much of a problem. He was outfitted with a tinted face shield on his helmet, which allowed him to play his little albino heart out.↵↵Now, the Bartunek family is living in Oconomowoc, Wisc. where tinted face shields simply must not be. Even in cases of disability where they are essential for a player to take part at all. Nope. No how. No can do. And such is the problem now facing Graham. While technically the tinted visor is in violation of federal safety standards that say a player’s eyes must be visible at all times, so imposed because trainers had difficulty viewing players eyes when they were injured without having to remove the helmet, his family makes the argument that reasonable exceptions can be and have been made in the past for her son. In fact, Graham was allowed to practice with a tinted visor, but an official forced him to remove it prior to his team’s first game.↵

↵↵So while the Oconomowoc Parks and Recreation Department no doubt has thoughts of liability on their minds should anything happen to Graham in a game while he wore a tinted visor, surely an arrangement can be made where the family acknowledges any further risk that comes with him wearing the shield. It’s not as though the kid poses a heightened risk to anyone else on the field if the department makes the concession. Seems as though, as in most bureaucratic decisions, officials are far more interested in covering themselves than seeing otherwise capable athletes getting to compete.↵

↵↵(H/T to Sports by Brooks)↵

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