whatis

What is blindness?

One of the first and biggest misconceptions the sighted world has is what is blindness.

Many people think blindness is the total absence of sight. Close your eyes, cover them with a blindfold- you got blindness.

If you hold a magnifying glass up to your eye- you could still see, but everything would be very blurry unless close. You might be able to see something held right in front of your eyes, but everything else would be hard to make out. If that was how a person saw the world, would you still consider them to be blind?

Have you ever looked through a peep hole in a door- those little devices they put in doors so you can see who is outside without opening the door? What you see is distorted, and you have a limited area that you can see. If a person’s vision was like that, would you still consider them to be blind?

Ever looked through a cardboard tube, like paper towels come on? You can only see the small circle of the vision range- nothing from the sides unless you turned your head. What if that was how a person’s eyes worked? Would they be blind?

Hold a quarter up about 18 inches from your eye. My aunt has a spot of clear focus about that size. Everywhere else is blurred beyond recognition. Would you still consider her blind?

I have a co-wrker whose vision allows them to see if there was a light turned on or off in the room, but not enough to tell if a person was in the room or not? They still “see” some light. Would they be blind?

Most of you would agree that anyone with vision as described would not be able to function without some adaptation and that their vision was impaired. Legal blindness usually refers to clinically measured visual acuity of 20/200 in the better eye with best correction, or visual field of 20 degrees or less. Generally these people would be blind, or a wide encompassing term often used because of the general public- visually impaired.

Some of the public have a difficult time with the concept of blindness. I have had a person not believe a child was blind before because the young man moved around with ease in familiar territory. They saw them walk quickly down a hall, go up stairs, and turn into a bathroom and was quite adamant the child must be able to see. When the child was able to remove his glass eyes showing two empty sockets- the person, besides being a little shocked, finally had to admit the person had no vision.

Many visually impaired persons related of sharing the experience of someone finding out they have a visual impairment only to have that person hold up a hand and ask, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Sighted people process a lot of visual information based on past experience. They see eyes, they assume they work. People see portraits and talk about how it feels the eyes in the painting are following them around the room or how a statue seems to be “watching” them. If people feel paintings and statues are watching them- imagine the problem they have accepting differences in vision with actual people.

If some of the public has a difficult time understanding blindness of those who have no vision, you can imagine the confusion with those who have some sight. Even those of us familiar with the blindness community have a hard time knowing right away the vision levels of people. I have seen a student shoot baskets, rebound the ball, and keep shooting. It isn’t until he doesn’t get to the ball before it stops bouncing so he couldn’t hear it- and the ball is two feet in front of him and he can’t find it- do you realize the functional limitations of his vision and how much he has adapted to those limitations. Someone coming in before that might have a hard time accepting that person as visually impaired.

So blindness does not mean absence of sight. There are even legally blind people who drive cars. They have enough distance vision to pass a drivers test, but may not have enough vision to read the driver’s manual without a magnifying glass. Blindness is a thing of degrees and varies often from person to person.

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