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BLINDNESS

Blindness: Legal blindness is defined in several ways. One is that a person has vision of 20/200 or less. This means that this person sees at 20 feet that a normally sighted person can see at 200 feet. Many people have this condition and it can be fixed with glasses. A person who is blind in this way has vision cannot be corrected with glasses.

Most blind people have a little sight of some sort or can sense light. However, their vision may make it difficult to recognize people by sight, read easily, or makes them have problems with different lighting etc. Many of them have what is considered low vision and use magnifiers, special lamps and other visual aids to allow them to use the sight they have.

Another way a person can be blind is to not have a total "visual field". This means that a person cannot see the whole scene as a normally sighted person can. This is measured in degrees. A person with a visual field of less than 20 degrees is considered legally blind. Normally sighted people have a visual field of 180 degrees in a normal eye.

A loss of vision means that you may have to reorganize your life and learn new ways of doing things. If you have some vision, visual aids such as special glasses and large print books can make life easier. There are also devices to help those with no vision, like text-reading software and braille books.

Symptoms of Blindness:

• Deterioration in school performance
• Difficulty in recognizing people
• Change in personal appearance
• Bumping into objects
• Finding light to bright or too dim
• Squinting to see or disorientation may be clues that a person’s vision is seriously disturbed.


Positives/Strengths of Blindness:

• Use senses such as smell and hearing for better awareness
• Increased memory

 

 



 
           

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