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What Do Blind People Actually See?

nautil.us

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Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#101

Post by tptacek »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #28
gliese1337 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not blind, but I do occasionally get migraines with visual auras, as do my wife & mother. Exactly once in my life that I recall, I had a migraine that caused total perceptual blindness (oddly, this has also happened exactly once to my wife, before we knew each other). It's extremely odd- one's visual field (at least in our cases) steadily contracts, until there's just nothing left. It's not an annulus of darknes…

It's extremely odd- one's visual field (at least in our cases) steadily contracts, until there's just nothing left. It's not an annulus of darkness closing in, it's juts nothing- the field you can see is smaller, and there's still nothing outside of it, just like there always isn't. This is the first time I've heard of anyone else experiencing this phenomenon besides myself. Have there ever been any long-term effects…

That sounds like an ocular migraine. They don't always include headaches. Both my wife and I have experienced this.

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#102

Post by cmiller1 »

tallanvor wrote: post #88

I'm mostly blind in one eye. --The center of the pupil was destroyed by a parasite when I was very young, and I have no memories of normal sight. I do have some peripheral vision in that eye, but not enough to read or perform normal activities, especially because I have to turn my head to see, such as it is - I can make out certain objects and get a sense of colors, but nothing is clear - reading would be out of the…

Can't you move your head side to side to judge depth by parallax movement? At least a little bit?

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#103

Post by JasonIpswitch »

skygazer wrote: post #68
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely odd- one's visual field (at least in our cases) steadily contracts, until there's just nothing left. It's not an annulus of darkness closing in, it's juts nothing- the field you can see is smaller, and there's still nothing outside of it, just like there always isn't. This is the first time I've heard of anyone else experiencing this phenomenon besides myself. Have there ever been any long-term effects…

I suffered something similar, just once, about twenty years ago, in high school, and never since. Although, instead of an impression of nothingness, it felt more like a Photoshop content aware fill, similar to the optic nerve blind spot, but moved to the fovea. I was walking the hall to my first period, mainly looking at the bland floor tiles, and didn't realize anything was abnormal. When I happened to look up at th…

I also suffered something similar on multiple occassions in my late 20s and early 30s - growing rainbow zig-zags accompanied by graduals loss of vision in both the center of my field of view and edges of my peripheral vision, although never to the point of total blindness. Incidents would last between one and two hours. But, after several ophatmologist and visits to other physicians, I finally found the trigger: it happened roughly 18 hours after consuming 2 or more glasses of absinthe. Stopped drinking absinthe, haven't had an aura in years.

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#104

Post by bramd »

eranation wrote: post #51
bramd wrote: post #35

First of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. Most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, or can see something. I've been totally blind since birth. Blind people can have a good or bad sense of direction, just like their sighted peers. I think the device described in the article might be more useful on short distances and less relevant for knowing w…

> I've been totally blind since birth. Please forgive me for the naive question, I'm probably full of misconceptions about blindness, but out of pure curiosity, how do you read and write so well without seeing? Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the s…

I'm not a native English speaker either.

> Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same)

Yes, I'm using a regular keyboard and a screenreader. Besides speech output I use a device called a refreshable braille display which can display up to 40 or 80 characters at a time depending on the model being used. I'm sure you will find some pictures if you Google it. However, those devices are quite expensive and many blind people just use speech output. Even with just speech there are options for reading letter by letter, word by word etc. However, I see some people make much spelling mistakes because they just listen and not rreally read how a word is spelled.

> Can you read and write code without seeing? Are there any blind programmers that you know of.

Sure you can. I make a living by programming and doing web accessibility consultancy. Another nice example is the free and open source NVDA screenreader[0], which is developed by two blind guys.

[0]: http://www.nvaccess.org/

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#105

Post by bramd »

leoc wrote: post #91
bramd wrote: post #35

First of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. Most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, or can see something. I've been totally blind since birth. Blind people can have a good or bad sense of direction, just like their sighted peers. I think the device described in the article might be more useful on short distances and less relevant for knowing w…

> Sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic. Indeed! Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ?

> Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ?

Yes, I have played with it. However, I'm not convinced yet if I should invest a lot of time learning it. Another useful and interesting skill is echolocation[0]. I have used that since Iwas a child to survey my environment.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#106

Post by eranation »

bramd wrote: post #104
eranation wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been totally blind since birth. Please forgive me for the naive question, I'm probably full of misconceptions about blindness, but out of pure curiosity, how do you read and write so well without seeing? Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the s…

I'm not a native English speaker either. > Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same) Yes, I'm using a regular keyboard and a screenreader. Besides speech output I use a device called a refreshable braille display which can display up to 40 or 80 ch…

This is awesome, thanks for the reply! p.s. are there IDEA / Eclipse plugins that support accessibility?

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#107

Post by xenophonf »

Katawa Shoujo actually addresses this in-game. One of the game's characters, a blind woman, describes her dreams including sensations from her other senses: smell, taste, touch, hearing. As something I have wondered about, I was really pleased that the game's authors thought of this.

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#108

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #65
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that. My wife has a rare brain disease and unfortunately, it's something she's all too familiar with. If it's happening to you without corresponding migraines (or even with), see a neurologist , there may be something wrong. Her neurologist regularly sends her for opthalmologist exams just in case and they never find anything wrong.

Thank you for the info. May I ask, which disease?

Intracranial hypertension.

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#109

Post by furyofantares »

hentrep wrote: post #5
jareds wrote: post #2

As someone who has been blind since birth this is accurate. I know that people who go blind later in life continue to dream in color since they have the memory of color to reference while I do not. I wonder if someone who goes blind later in life experiences things differently, possibly by automatically filling in what they assume they would see based on what they know of there surroundings from there other sences.

I've always wondered how someone born blind is able to wrap their mind around the concept of color. It appears you've done so -- how would you describe color?

I imagine a blind person can study light just as well as anyone else, and can learn about the eye and can understand that sighted people are able to detect both wavelength and intensity differences. Just like a deaf person could learn about pressure waves in the air and how they can be detected by functional ears.

But it's probably difficult or impossible to understand what the perception is like, and how rich it is, except by analogy when thinking about how they'd try to describe the senses the do have to someone that doesn't have them.

Our understanding of echolocation in bats or the magnetic field in birds is probably similar. We understand what they detect and how they detect it. But I don't think we have any understanding of what it's like to experience that perception.

Re: What Do Blind People Actually See?

#110

Post by Synaesthesia »

robhack wrote: post #95
gohrt wrote: post #7

Strange that the article doesn't mention the blind spot that everyone as. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)

Mind Blown. Not by the fact we have a blind spot, but how, like in the article it's not a black zone, but really the absence of any input that the brain tries to fill in. Now I'm curious to test how the brain interpolate on this area, like trying to put different background color or texture on each side of the blindspot.

Having tested it, it seems to do a linear interpolation from the edges, often retaining the surrounding texture. Kinda like the smart fill from Photoshop
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