Basically…
I’m 23 years old, female, working in
academia, and legally blind.
I began to lose my sight at the age of 15.
I have only a small portion of central vision remaining in both eyes, and blind
spots in my right eye make it near useless on its own. However, the acuity in
my left eye leaves me good sight in daylight to read, write, and generally see
things. I wear glasses with a small corrective prescription of about -1.00.
I don’t always use a cane because I don’t
always feel like I need or want to. I do use
a symbol cane in busy places and in the dark (to find steps and obstacles) to
let other people know I might not always see them. That’s probably the biggest
outward signal of my restricted sight, but not the only one. The mouse on my computer
screen, for example, is absolutely huge so that I don’t spend days looking for
it.
As a young, confident, approachable visually impaired individual I feel that I serve as an ambassador for all VI people around the world. I do my best to answer and entertain most questions people have because I realise that this may not be something people understand or have come across before.
As a young, confident, approachable visually impaired individual I feel that I serve as an ambassador for all VI people around the world. I do my best to answer and entertain most questions people have because I realise that this may not be something people understand or have come across before.
But in my years of blindness, I’ve stumbled
across some interesting situations and the, sometimes quite weird, things that people
seem to think it is ok to say to me. Needing a place to vent, and inspired by Scope's #EndTheAwkward campaign and the RNIB's #HowISee campaign I’ve decided that this is a space where I would like to share
those stories; not out of malice or mockery, but in order to raise awareness of
the odd and, at times, offensive way people can speak to a girl going blind.