Every year, the Braille Institute issues a list of the 10 most unusual questions it receives. We are proud to report that this imponderable made number nine on the 1993 list (edging out number 10: 'Do blind babies smile?').
The Braille Institute's answer to this question stresses that the majority of legally blind do have some vision:
"Not everyone who is legally blind is totally blind. More than 75 percent of people who are legally blind have some residual vision. Blindness is the absence of sight, not necessarily the absence of light"
Alberta Orr, of the American Foundation for the Blind, adds, 'Many visually impaired persons are extremely sensitive to bright light and glare and wear sunglasses to reduce the amount of light on the retina.'
Some blind persons wear dark glasses for cosmetic purposes, because they are self-conscious about the physical appearance of their eyes. Increasingly, blind people are forgoing dark glasses, but we tent to associate dark glasses with blind people because so many of the high-visibility blind celebrities, such as Stevie Wonder, usually wear them. Even this is starting to change-the last time we saw Jose Feliciano perform on television, he was shadeless, despite the glare of the spotlights.
No comments:
Post a Comment