Narrated by NILISHA MOHAPATRA - translation and adaptation of "Aziris" - website
One cloudy evening, when the electricity went out in my house as a result of a thunderstorm, and my eyes had not yet had time to adapt to the darkness, for the first time I realized what it was like to exist with a partial loss of vision. Based on sounds and tactile sensations, I gained a unique experience. Then I became interested in learning a little more about blind people and how they perceive the world around them.
This post is a summary of what I have understood. I have collected 13 facts that you probably did not know about blind people. And these 13 things will help you cope with the awkwardness of communicating with people with visual impairments.
1. They may have a different, non-visual, form of perception of the world.
Visual impairment does not always mean complete loss of vision. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 15.88% of people who have vision problems are completely blind. The remaining 84.12% have partial or residual vision and can perceive color, light, movement or even the shape of surrounding objects. They may be able to see objects that are blurry or distorted or have "blind" spots on them. So, as you now see, many have reduced vision, but this does not mean that they are completely blind.
2. They are not ashamed of their visual impairments.
Many blind people perceive their blindness as a simple physical problem. And in no case do they perceive it as a hindrance to their personal happiness. They don't believe that "blindness" is a sentence. This group of people is capable of happiness like no other. And the responsibility for perceiving them as such lies with us. So, the next time you catch yourself thinking, "Oh, poor thing, he's blind," check how personally you are ready to change the public prejudice on the perception of people with disabilities.
3. They don't always need overprotection.
Blind people are much better oriented in space and have a much better idea of the surrounding objects than it seems at first glance. They may need help only to get acquainted with a new area or master new devices. But visually impaired people are by no means dependent on others. I encourage you to approach all visually impaired people with this in mind - if they need help, trust that they will ask for it on their own.
4. They are offended by both hyperattention and condemnation.
Many visually impaired people would like to be treated like normal people, not like people with physical disabilities. Unwanted and unnecessary help is what can make them feel inadequate. For example, helping them cross the road and escorting them to their destination, if they just asked for directions, buying them groceries and counting money on their behalf, picking up what they dropped, carrying their purchases after them is considered excessive kindness, which many blind people consider humiliating.
Ask if they need help. And leave them alone if you hear "no" in response.
5. They are not hypersensitive and do not have heightened senses.
Mass culture depicts that if one of a person's senses stops working, the others become more acute. This is not always true! Although the blind may rely more on other senses, have more developed memory and auditory responses, they may not have a "sixth sense". However, there is evidence that blind people use a so-called "echolocation" process, in which sound waves are used to determine the location and size of objects within a certain area. Dr Gavin Buckingham says: “They either snap their fingers or click their tongues to send sound waves towards objects. This skill is often associated with bats, which use echolocation when flying."
6. They are happy to talk to the rest in a normal language.
You shouldn't be wary of using visually oriented effects when talking to them. They look, see, observe and even anticipate your movements! They normally react to such phenomena and may even be offended if you deliberately avoid them in speech. Instead, just let them be part of your experience as they make you part of theirs. After all, blindness is not a stigma.
7. They react and participate in the world around them just like any other normal person.
Yes. People with blindness enjoy exploring new places, going to music concerts, trying new restaurants, and even doing extreme sports like skydiving. They are just as excited about the world around them as any other person. But some of them are rather shy and prefer to spend time in a familiar environment. Others are more expressive and like to seek new sensations.
8. They are having dreams.
Their dreams are connected to everyday life - with a rich mixture of sensory signals.
In a Danish study of 50 blind adults, 18% of blind participants (both congenital and acquired) reported at least one dream, compared with 7% of sighted participants. Nearly 30% of the blind reported smells they smelled in their sleep. Nearly 70% reported tactile sensations and 86% auditory sensations. However, the emotions and themes of their dreams are known to be similar to those of sighted people.
9. They perceive colors in their own unique way.
Some people whose blindness is acquired treat colors in the same way as people with normal vision. For others who have not seen the color with their own eyes, they relate to it through associations and the construction of various concepts, such as, for example, fire is yellow or the sky is blue. They also associate it with forms of energy: blue is cold, white is frozen, red is hot. Sometimes they may only perceive bright colors, or it may take them a long time to explain the difference between blue and black or brown, or white and pink.
Be that as it may, colors have meaning for all people, and the blind understand them in their own way.
10. The blind have more nightmares than the sighted
This is the result of a mental impression or interpretation of stressful situations, because blind people usually experience more anxiety in everyday life than others. It is more difficult for them to avoid stressors, and therefore their nightmares are closely tied to reality - falling into a ditch, getting hit by a car, running into a tree, or being chased. Dr. Amani Meadi, who has studied the phenomenon very closely, says that such nightmares do not affect the quality of life of blind people, but are a true indicator of the experience they have had.
11. Not all of them use a cane.
Because there are different degrees of visual impairment, some people may use white or red canes, the color of which indicates the degree of blindness. Many choose to use trained guide dogs to help them cross curbs, doors, or crosswalks. They follow their wearer's right shoulder for collision protection.
12. Many of them calmly and openly tell the curious about their situation.
You may not know how to deal with people who are blind, or you may want to understand them better. This is a great opportunity to ask them about their lives. The key here is curiosity, the desire to learn to understand and appreciate the uniqueness of visually impaired people. As I said earlier, many blind people don't see themselves as inferior, and they can come up with a lot of great ideas if you just ask.
13. Their well-being depends on how you perceive them.
Psychologists say that success in life, the quality of education and the number of jobs for visually impaired people are directly proportional to the expectations that others place on them and the degree of positive attitude towards them. The more you believe in their capacity, the more confident they will feel. Self-esteem and self-confidence are partly formed through social interactions, and it is important that people experience positive experiences. Be that experience for them!
If you want a positive interaction, just remember that blindness is not a defect or a stigma. It's just a characteristic, like sight itself, as Helen Keller said beautifully about this situation: “I see, and that's why I'm happy. What you call darkness is gold to me. I can see the world created by the Lord and not by man.”
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A person receives 90% of information about the world through vision. Only ten remaining are reserved for other senses. But how do blind people perceive the world?
Dive into darkness
When we close our eyes, we usually see a black color, sometimes with an admixture of luminous spots. By this picture, we mean "not seeing anything". But how do those whose eyes are always “closed” see the world? What is darkness for a blind person and how does he see it?
In general, the picture of the world of a blind person largely depends on how old he lost his sight. If this happened already at a conscious age, then a person thinks in the same images as sighted people. He simply receives information about them with the help of other senses. So, hearing the rustle of leaves, he imagines trees, warm sunny weather will be associated with blue skies, and so on.
If a person lost his sight in childhood, after the age of five, he can remember colors and understand their meaning. In other words, he will know what the standard seven colors of the rainbow and their shades look like. But visual memory will still be poorly developed. For such people, perception is based, for the most part, on hearing and touch.
People who have never seen solar vision imagine the world in a completely different way. Being blind from birth or from infancy, they do not know either the images of the world or its colors. For them, vision, like visual perception, means nothing, since the area of \u200b\u200bthe brain responsible for converting visual information into an image simply does not work for them. When asked about what they see before their eyes, they will most likely answer that nothing. Rather, they simply will not understand the question, because they do not have a developed association of the subject with the image. They know the names of colors and objects, but they don't know what they should look like. This once again proves the inability of the blind, who managed to regain their sight, to recognize objects familiar to them by touch, having seen them with their own eyes. Therefore, a blind man will never be able to explain what color is real darkness, because he cannot see it.
Tactile dreams
The situation is similar with dreams. People who have lost their sight at a conscious age, according to their own stories, still have dreams “with pictures” for some time. But over time, they are replaced by sounds, smells, tactile sensations.
A person who is blind from birth will see absolutely nothing in his dreams. But he will feel. Suppose we have a dream in which we are on a sandy beach. A sighted person, most likely, will see the beach itself, the ocean, sand, and the oncoming wave. The blind will hear the sound of a wave, feel the sand falling through their fingers, feel a gentle breeze. Vlogger Tomie Edison, who has been blind since birth, describes his dreams as follows: “I dream the same thing as you. For example, I can sit at a football match and in a moment be at my birthday when I was seven years old. Of course, he does not see all this. But he hears sounds that evoke appropriate associations in him.
Echolocation
Sighted people receive 90% of information through their eyes. Vision for a person is the main sense organ. For a blind person, these 90% or, according to some versions, 80%, are by ear. So
most of the blind have very sensitive hearing, which the sighted can only envy - in their midst there are often excellent musicians, for example, jazz performer Charles Ray or virtuoso pianist Art Tatum. The blind can not only truly hear and follow sounds closely, but also use echolocation in some cases. True, for this you need to learn to recognize sound waves reflected by surrounding objects, determine the position, distance and size of objects nearby.
Modern researchers no longer classify this method as a fantastic ability. The method of using echolocation for the blind was developed by Daniel Kish, an American blind from early childhood. At 13 months old, both eyes were removed. The natural craving for knowledge of the world in a blind child resulted in his use of a method of reflecting sound from different surfaces. It is also used by bats living in total darkness and dolphins using echolocation to navigate the ocean.
Thanks to his unique way of "seeing", Daniel managed to live the life of an ordinary child, in no way inferior to his more successful peers. The essence of his method is simple: he constantly clicks his tongue, sending a sound in front of him, which is reflected from different surfaces, and gives him an idea of \u200b\u200bthe objects around him. In fact, the same thing happens when the blind tap with a stick - the sound of a cane on the road, bounces off the surrounding surfaces and transmits some information to the person.
However, Daniel's method has not yet become widespread. In particular, in America, where it originated, according to the American National Federation of the Blind, it was recognized as "too complicated." But today technology has come to the aid of a good idea. Two years ago, Israeli scientists developed a special Sonar Vision system that is capable of converting images into sound signals. It works in the same way as the echolocation system in bats, only instead of chirping, a video camera is used built into the glasses. A laptop or smartphone converts the image into sound, which in turn is transmitted to the headset. According to the experiments, after special training, blind people using the device were able to identify faces, buildings, the position of objects in space, and even identify individual letters.
world to the touch
Unfortunately, all of the above ways of perceiving the world around us are not suitable for all blind people. Some from birth are deprived not only of eyes, but also of ears, or rather hearing. The world of the deaf-blind is limited to memory, in case they have lost sight and hearing not from birth, and touch. In other words, for them there is only what they can touch. Touch and smell are the only threads that connect them with the world around them.
But even for them there is hope for a fulfilling life. You can talk with them using the so-called dactylology, when each letter corresponds to a certain sign reproduced by fingers. A huge contribution to the life of such people was made by the Braille cipher - a relief-dot tactile way of writing. Today, raised letters, incomprehensible to a sighted person, are ubiquitous. There are even special computer displays capable of converting electronic text into raised lettering. However, this method is applicable only to those who lost their sight and hearing after they had time to learn the language. Those who are blind and deaf from birth have to rely only on touch or on vibrations!
Reading vibrations
Quite unique in history is the case of the American Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing as a result of a fever as a child. It would seem that she is destined for the life of a closed person who, due to his disability, simply will not be able to learn the language, which means he will not be able to communicate with people. But her desire to know the world on an equal footing with the sighted and hearing was rewarded. When Helen grew up, she was assigned to the Perkins School, which specializes in teaching blind people. There, she was assigned a teacher, Ann Sullivan, who was able to find the right approach to Helen. She taught the language to a girl who had never heard human speech and did not even know the approximate sound of letters and the meaning of words. They resorted to the "Tadoma" method: by touching the lips of a speaking person, Helen felt their vibration, while Sullivan marked the letters on her palm.
After mastering the language, Helen was able to use the Braille cipher. With his help, she achieved such successes that an ordinary person would envy. By the end of her studies, she had fully mastered English, German, Greek and Latin. At the age of 24, she graduated summa cum laude from the prestigious Radcliffe Institute, becoming the first deaf-blind person to graduate. Subsequently, she devoted her life to politics and the protection of the rights of people with disabilities, and also wrote 12 books about her life and the world through the eyes of the blind.
It is common for a person with excellent eyesight to wonder what blind people see. Blind people, in turn, are interested in whether all blind people have the same perception of the world, or whether some perceive the world differently, or maybe even see something.
There is no universal answer to the question of what blind people see. First, there are different degrees of blindness. Secondly, since they “see”, that is, they process visual information, not with the eyes, but with the brain, the fact that a person has ever seen in his life, or was born blind, is of great importance.
People born blind
A person who has never had sight does not see anything, because he is simply unable to see.
Samuel, who was born blind, answered questions during the interview about how he perceives the world around him. He argues that the expression that a blind person sees the world around him as black is not at all true. The fact is that a person blind from birth simply does not know what blackness is, he has nothing to compare it with. He quite seriously does not see anything, he sees emptiness.
For a sighted person, this is difficult to understand, but imagine what you see with your elbow. Nothing, right?
Another useful exercise is to close one eye and use the open one to focus on something. Now tell me, what does your closed eye see?
Completely blind people
For people who have completely lost the ability to see, the experience of perceiving the world is different.
Some describe complete darkness as if they were in a dark and deep cave. Some people see bright sparks or experience vivid visual hallucinations. These hallucinations can take on recognizable shapes and colors.
Charles Bonnet Syndrome
Processes of perceiving random shapes, colors or flashes of light with complete loss of vision are symptoms of Charles Bonnet syndrome. This syndrome may be long-term or it may appear for short periods.
Charles Bonnet syndrome is not a mental disorder and is not associated with brain damage.
functional blindness
In addition to absolute blindness, there is also functional blindness. Definitions of functional blindness vary by country or medical organization.
In the United States, functional blindness is defined as visual impairment when the better eye, already at maximum correction, sees worse than 20/200. The World Health Organization defines blindness as the best eye, under optimal conditions, seeing no better than 20/500 with less than 10 degrees of vision.
What functionally blind people see depends on the severity of the blindness and the type of impairment.
legal blindness
The person may be able to see people and large objects, however they are out of focus. A legally blind person can distinguish colors or see objects at a certain distance (for example, can count fingers right in front of their eyes).
In other cases, a person loses the perception of colors and sees everything as if in a thick fog. In cases of legal blindness, symptoms of Charles Bonnet syndrome may also appear.
Light perception
Sometimes with functional blindness, people can have light perception. That is, even if a person does not see anything, does not distinguish colors and shapes, he can say whether it is light around or dark.
tunnel vision
With tunnel vision, a person loses the ability to see the periphery. In a certain narrow radius, a person's ability to see the world around him with tunnel vision can be quite good, but the periphery is black. In fact, a person sees only what falls on the central part of the retina.
What do blind people see in their dreams?
A person born blind dreams, but he does not see images. The dreams of people blind from birth consist of sounds, tactile information, aromas, tastes, feelings and sensations - everything that they perceive in reality.
On the other hand, a person who has lost sight during their lifetime may have dreams with images and visual information.
The expression and perception of objects in a dream depends on the type and history of blindness. In fact, all people in a dream see the world as they are accustomed to perceive it in reality with the range of vision that is inherent in a person during life. For example, a person with color blindness will not be able to see colors in a dream, even if they really want to.
A person whose vision has deteriorated over the course of a lifetime may see in a dream clearly, as before, or blurry, as now. The same goes for people who wear corrective lenses: they dream both clearly and blurry. Even visions caused by Charles Bonnet syndrome can become part of dreams. In fact, dreams are a reflection of reality.
Curiously, REM sleep, which characterizes REM sleep, also occurs in some blind people, despite the fact that they cannot see images in their dreams.
Cases in which REM sleep is absent during REM sleep include loss of vision from birth or at a very early age.
Perception of light in blindness
Some experiments conducted with completely blind people confirm that, despite the lack of perception of visual information, they are still able to respond to light.
Evidence of this began to emerge as early as a 1923 research paper by Harvard graduate student Clyde Keeler. Keeler bred blind mice that, due to a certain mutation, lacked the photoreceptors in the retina.
Even though the mice did not perceive visual stimuli, their pupils still responded to light. In addition, the mice adhered to circadian rhythms set by round-the-clock cycles of day and night.
Eighty years later, scientists discovered special light-sensitive cells related to the retina, and more specifically to the nerve ganglion (ipRGCs). These cells are found in both mice and humans.
ipRGCs are found on the nerves that carry signals from the retina to the brain, not on the retina itself. Cells react to light without contributing to vision. Thus, if a person has at least one eye that can perceive light, regardless of the level of vision, he is theoretically able to distinguish between light and darkness.
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With this article, I open a series of articles about the achievements of ordinary people who are among us. They are the same as us, they have the same desires and opportunities, they set themselves the same goals.
Only to achieve them they need to make a little more effort, a little more difficult to overcome themselves, a little more difficult to prove their right to.
And when it’s hard for me, when my hands give up and it seems that the movement towards the goal has stopped or even turned back, I remember these stories, these people, I feel ashamed of my weaknesses and I move forward further.
I hope they will help you in overcoming difficulties on the way to your personal success, they will give you a boost of energy.
This story was told to me by a close person who came one day after a lecture in great enthusiasm. We sat at a lecture in the library for the blind, he said, lecturers succeeded one another.
It was very interesting. Among the lecturers, a young man in a neat elegant suit was waiting for his word. He did not stand out among the others and we did not pay attention to him at all, but now it was his turn.
He got up and confidently walked to his seat in front of the audience and told us what opportunities modern technologies have for blind and visually impaired people, and specifically about the possibilities in the field of the Internet. At the same time, he actively and deftly showed how his own personal gadgets work.
Then he had to show how a stationary computer works. He went into another room and confidently sat down at the computer and very quickly, gliding over the keys with the fingers of his right and left hands, walked around various sites, showing us Internet resources for the blind.
How blind people live. Blindness is not a hindrance to success
Our surprise was great when we realized that Sasha, that was the name of the young man, was completely blind himself, that is, he could not see anything. He does not even feel the light, that is, he cannot approach the window, guided by the source of light, only by ear and with the help of a cane.
What does a blind person see? Try it, blindfold your eyes with a thick cloth, and you will understand how a blind person feels. Black haze.
Somewhere in Europe there is a restaurant where people sit and try to eat in total darkness.They say that few endure until the end of the meal, but Sasha lives like this all the time.
We were shocked how he walks alone, without the help of other people. Our surprise became even greater when we found out that he lives quite far away, at the other end of our millionth city and every day makes his way from home to work with two transfers.
How he does it is mind boggling. We just complained to each other how hard it was for us to get to the place of the lecture in the cold, how slippery it was, how hard it was to go through snowdrifts after a night snowfall.
And how could he, blind, be able to overcome all this. Our complaints now seem ridiculous to us. Everyone fell silent and respectfully began to listen to Sasha's story.
The life of blind people. The story of the blind boy
Sasha went blind at the age of 12, after an absurd accident when he played with firecrackers with other boys. There was an explosion and Sasha received severe burns in both eyes.
Along with his vision, he lost two fingers on his right hand. The question arose how to live on. Together with his parents, he decided not to give up, but to become an educated person and use all the possibilities of modern civilization.
“Yes,” says Sasha himself, it was very difficult. At first, I was completely attached to my parents. They met and escorted me to and from school.
But by the age of 16, I realized that if this continues, then I will remain attached to someone, I will not be able to live my own life, become independent and not achieve success.
I put in front of me , achieve everything that ordinary people want to achieve and help other blind people achieve their goal. I decided to start with the simplest for all other children, but very difficult for me goal - to become a free person in my movements.
And one day, getting up early in the morning, before my parents got up, I quietly packed up and went to school on my own, which I had never done before. As it turned out later, my mother heard everything, but, having understood my idea, she made an effort on herself and did not stop me.
She just followed me out the window. It was also a victory for her, because it is very difficult to let go of your loved one in such a situation, to understand and give him the opportunity to go towards his goal in achieving success.
Without interfering with me, thus my mother supported me in difficult times.
Before Alexander was a picture, like a photo, what he would like to achieve and he decided to go to this picture, to this happy photo. Blind people do not dream like sighted people, their dreams seem to healthy people without value.
And for them, just walking down the street is akin to a feat.
Strength of will. Life of a disabled person and life with a disabled person
Sasha went to school. It was his first small victory, his personal success, the first rung on his long and difficult ladder of success.
But, I was not going to stop there, Sasha continues, I have always been fascinated by computer technology. I spent a lot of time at the computer while I was still sighted.
And I entered the Institute of Information Technology and graduated from it. He became the chief IT specialist in the library for the blind. And I also work on the Internet, using its huge possibilities.
I recently got my wife involved in this. By the way, she has a webinar tonight, he admits. In general, she is a massage therapist, but so far she does not work in her specialty and I attracted her to .
Very comfortably. She sits at home, but does not turn into a housewife, but works and feels confident. And, here's the clue, we thought, probably, after all, his wife helps him. But, to our great surprise, it turned out that the wife is also blind and they live separately from their parents.
By the way, they themselves earned an apartment and bought it. They also recently had a baby. He is sighted, and of course, his parents will do everything to make him successful.
And how could it be otherwise, when such parents are in front of your eyes. Such a family, such a path to success.
So, friends, nothing is impossible. If you want something, set goals one by one. Build your . Go to them without giving up. Use all your possibilities at 100%.
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About 80% of the information we receive is from the organs of vision. Not surprisingly, the visual cortex occupies almost half the area of the cerebral cortex - significantly more than other sensory analyzers. Most people, imagining themselves blind, are immediately horrified. It is as if an impenetrable abyss opens before them: all colors go out, all images dear to the heart go into darkness. But in fact, blind people do not live in this bleak place at all.
To venture into the world of the blind, try a little experiment. Imagine a place where you cannot navigate in the usual way, with the help of your eyes. Try to forget at least for a while what vision is.
While you settle in this world, knocking on furniture, you gradually begin to hear not only specific sounds - for example, the sound of a chair falling - but also the space itself around you. When you reach out your hand, you already know that you will find a wall on the right. You smell the food behind the next door. You can even distinguish individual tones in it. You feel a light breeze on your face; it tells you what space you are in and where you need to go.
You find other people here too. Even though you can't see their faces, you can feel all the shades of joy, boredom and longing in their voices. You understand everything they say, except for certain expressions - such as "red dress" and "beautiful landscape"; you don't fully understand them.
When your eyes regain the ability to see, it does not immediately dawn on you why you needed it. You already know that other senses can give you their own idea of reality. Yes, you got a lot of bruises while learning to navigate in space. But you also learned something new. You've realized that "reality" doesn't have to be the way you're used to seeing it.
Since 1988, thousands of sighted people in many countries of the world have already done a similar experiment. It was this year that the exhibition "Dialogue in the Dark" opened in Germany, which is designed to give sighted people at least a vague idea of the world in which the blind live. In Russia, this role is played by the Walk in the Dark Museum, which opened in Moscow in 2016.
Most of the museum space is immersed in darkness. Visitors are guided by the blind and visually impaired. The creators call it a sensory interactive exhibition and emphasize not only its entertaining, but also its social role. At first it seemed to them that visitors might not be ready for such an experience. “But it turned out that they are not just ready, but want to know more about the life of the blind than we expected,” one of the founders of the project admits.
For a long time, blindness was perceived either as an incorrigible defect that completely deprives a person of a normal life, or as a sign of exceptional talent (hence the belief that the best masseurs and musicians are made from the blind). Sometimes it was believed that blindness contributed to the development of intuition, "sixth sense" or spiritual contemplation. Thus, it was said about the philosopher Democritus that he blinded himself in order to devote himself entirely to philosophy. But not all blind people are gifted musically or have exceptional intuition.
Those who lost their sight at a very early age or even before birth do indeed live in a world different from ours. They do not represent the world in visible images: their "representations" and memories have other qualities. Colors for them are only abstract designations. They also dream, but these dreams are filled not with faces and images, but with sounds, smells and sensations.
But for many other blind people, the world is saturated with visual images. Even if they no longer see anything with their eyes, their imagination still works. Some even develop synesthesia and literally "see" voices and sounds.
The human brain is very plastic. If there is no vision, he will rely on other senses. Therefore, the visual cortex in the blind, as shown by fMRI studies, is involved in the perception of sounds and speech. This plasticity, however, can turn into another side. When replacing a damaged retina in an adult, vision is never fully restored - precisely because the brain has already reconfigured to other streams of sensations. And we cannot turn off a person’s hearing and touch so that the brain stops being lazy and learns to see again.
About how blind people perceive the world, the blind themselves can best tell. The staff of the Walking in the Dark Museum kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions.
It is said that the blind understand the world of the sighted better than the sighted understand the world of the blind. Is it really? Which side is more likely to be misunderstood?
Dmitry Klyukvin
blind, guide of the museum "Walking in the Dark"
Naturally, this is true, and this is quite normal. Blind people live in the same world as sighted people - they still come into contact with it, whether they want it or not. But for sighted people, this is not the case. It is unlikely that ordinary people understand the world of doctors better than doctors themselves understand the world of ordinary people. By itself, the world of the blind is narrow, so it is much easier for the blind to understand the sighted.
Vladimir Gladyshev
visually impaired, guide of the museum "Walking in the Dark"
In fact, there are enough misconceptions on both sides. Often blind people do not always correctly represent the surrounding reality, and sighted people do not always understand how this or that fact is perceived by a blind person.
Most of us have our own ordinary ideas about blind people: for example, that they have a high tactile sensitivity or musical abilities. How true are these stereotypes? What are the most common misconceptions about the blind?
Dmitry Klyukvin. Developed tactile and auditory sensations for the blind is absolutely normal. It's just a compensatory function of the body.
This is not only for the blind, it is for all people. As for musical abilities, this is an incorrect stereotype. Musical ear is given by nature: either it is, or it is not. It cannot be said that all the blind have the ability to music.
As for misconceptions: several times I heard such a story that blind girls do not need to make up, take care of themselves, and so on. That the blind cannot use gadgets. That every blind person should have a guide dog or companion. But this is more likely not a delusion, but ignorance.
Vladimir Gladyshev. Indeed, the need to navigate in space without relying on vision forces the use of other senses. But if a person does not work to develop hearing, tactility, etc., then unusual abilities are not formed independently.
It is customary to treat the blind with some pity and compassion. Can you name the pros of being blind: something that other people don't have, and that you wouldn't want to lose even if you could gain sight?
Vladimir Gladyshev. There are no benefits to being blind. But I can definitely say that the difficulties that I have to face helped shape my character.
Dmitry Klyukvin. That it is customary to treat the blind with some kind of pity is the most terrible thing. Normal people who develop, who do not get hung up on this state, do not like it categorically. I urge you to forget about pity in principle, pity is a feeling of the weak, at least in the way it usually manifests itself.
There are no advantages to being blind. If someone says “but something else is developed”, then this is not entirely correct. Let's separate a full life and the conditions to which the blind adapt. It's like saying: "The flu is good, you can take a break from work." But if I were now given the opportunity to be born again, and I had the choice of what to refuse, I would definitely leave the rumor. I wouldn't even think about it. And music, and many other things - I would not want to lose all this.
