My Experience as a Visually Impaired Person | The Blurred Line Between Blind and Sighted

When you are not fully blind and not fully sighted you find yourself in a strange space. This reality comes with the challenge of facing misunderstandings and assumptions from others and forces you to struggle with your identity.

Living at the blurred line between blind and sighted

The term visually impaired can be a complicated term to understand because it is used to refer to different aspects of vision impairment from blind to some usable vision. 

I am visually impaired. I am not completely blind but I am not fully sighted. I am completely blind in my right eye so I can not see anything out of that eye. I have limited vision in my left eye and I use glasses with a very high prescription so the lenses are very thick. 

I can see some things but I have many limitations. I can not see in dim lighting or at night and in very bright sunlight. I can not see small details in any lighting. I can read large print but only with high contrast. I can not see steps or curbs so I use a white cane when I am out on my own. 

Growing up partially sighted

I have had low vision my entire life and I have had some interesting experiences growing up. I have always been able to see enough to pass off as a fully sighted person. I refused to be treated differently and refused any accommodations in school. I did not use a white cane, I refused to learn braille and even large print materials. I could get by just enough but in the end I made things much harder for myself. 

This is the struggle that arises when you are between fully blind and fully sighted, you do not have a clear place to fall into. I chose to fit into the sighted world because I could but it hurt me a lot in the long run.

When I look back I wish I had been open to learning braille in the third grade, I wish I had used large print and audiobooks instead of straining my eye. I wish i had used a white cane instead of tripping and bumping into others.

I think that it was a good thing that my parents put me in regular education but I wish that I had not tried to push my vision issues aside because it made things harder for me. As I grew up into an adult I did have a mindset shift and eventually started to use a white cane as I shared above and I also began using assistive technology such as a screen reader to access a computer. 

Dealing with expectations and misconceptions as an adult with low vision

I think it was easier for me to push aside my vision impairment as a child as I was very sheltered at home and the schools I went to were small for the most part but things changed as I became an adult. I think that it is easy for people who are around me to forget that I have low vision and forget the limitations I have, maybe this is because I tried to hide it for so long as a child that they just got used to me being like everyone else. This situation can be frustrating at times because I find I have to explain that I actually can not see things clearly.

I am in between blind and sighted so this often confuses people especially because I use glasses many people assume I can see clearly. Some may think I am faking when I use my white cane.

I am now realizing that this is something that I will have to deal with my entire life and I will just have to be patient and educate others on my situation but it can be frustrating to do it over and over. I shared about this in a video you can watch on TikTok

Some extra thoughts

I hope that this will encourage you if you also find yourself between the blind and sighted world. I would like to hear from your experiences, leave them in the comments below.