[nabs-l] Low Vision

[Arielle Silverman]

I don't quite get what the green cane is supposed to represent either.
Is it showing that people with low vision don't "suffer" as much as
the "blind" people who use white canes with no green stripe on them?
Or do they suffer more because they are misunderstood? Or is it
supposed to represent some hope that the people with low vision might
be able to see someday whereas the full-on blind people can't?
If this is happening in Argentina, there might be cultural differences
we Americans don't quite follow, too.
I have a couple reactions to this article if it is indeed saying what
I think it is. First of all it is very difficult to differentiate
between blind and low-vision. Where does one end and the other begin?
Clearly "totals" are blind, but what about folks with light
perception? I have light perception and I usually just refer to myself
as a total because for most functional purposes I am, but today I was
able to move around a truck on the sidewalk without tapping it with my
cane because the lighting was good and I could see it. So am I
low-vision? And then at the other end, if we call people "blind" who
can see a few feet in front of them, what about people who can read a
print book if they press it against their face? Are they blind or
low-vision? It's very unclear.
Second, I think there is a lot more we need to learn about what it is
like to have "low vision" and whether it makes life better or worse to
go ahead and call oneself "blind" and use blindness skills even if one
has enough vision to go either way. Many sighted people and blindness
professionals think that having "low vision" is automatically better
than being "blind" but some research I've read suggests that people
with "low vision" are at greater risk for self-esteem issues and other
difficulties than "blind" people. And I worry that encouraging
"low-vision" folks to eschew blindness skills actually creates more
challenges for them. Many of us in the NFB have had these kinds of
experiences.
You may recall that last summer I did a survey of legally blind adults
to assess what predicts well-being and employment outcomes for us. I
have started looking at the data and am planning to release a full
report to all the listservs by January. However, one interesting thing
that turned up in the data is that people who reported having some
usable vision were less content with their lives, on average, than
people who reported being totally blind or having light perception.
Not surprisingly, people with usable vision reported using Braille and
cane skills less frequently in their daily lives, on average, and this
discrepancy appears to underlie at least part of the happiness
difference between totally blind and partially blind folks. Again,
this is just preliminary and I haven't finished analyzing all the
possible reasons for this finding, but it is very interesting and
something we should think and talk more about. It suggests that
partially blind folks who get training and use blindness skills on a
regular basis should be just as content with their lives as totally
blind folks, but that folks who are struggling to pass as sighted end
up feeling the pain of their efforts at the end of the day when they
think about how happy they are with their lives overall.
Best,
Arielle