WHAT’S ACTUALLY BEING SEEN BY BLIND AND NOT BLIND PEOPLE?

People with eyesight often have the misconception that being blind means that they can only see a sea of black. But then how can the blind people tell what is black or not, when they never had the conception of colors to begin with?

I have been wondering since forever, about whether the people who were born blind really desire the ability to see as much as we expected them to?

I mean, for a people who could see initially, it would be such a traumatic event for them to have their eyesight robbed away by an accident; and the same may also be true for people with limb disabilities, as they will at some point of their life develop bitter feelings as they see the life of others who are not as handicapped. But for people with congenital blindness, who could never see at all from the start, would they really harbor as intense of a desire for eyesight as the people who have it imagine them to?

Or would they just be like any normal people, who wish for the wisdom to understand what other people tell them, but would be totally fine without it?

1. What is seen by people who’ve been blind since birth.

Imagine if the snakes or geese can speak human, and then one day they ask us “how do you guys even live without being able to feel magnetic fields or infrared light?”, maybe we find ourselves getting dumbstruck for a moment, before hesitantly giving the answer: “Uhh… like… normal?”.

All of us are blind to one type of information or another, when it comes to our ability to perceive information from the real world. For example, we don’t possess the ability to sense magnetic field like migratory bird species, nor do we possess the ability to see the lights beyond our visible spectrum. Or, in a way, our lacking the wisdom and knowledge sufficient to understand ourselves as well as the world can also be taken as a type of “blindness”. The thing in common with these inabilities is that we never really see them as disabilities.

But to compare the blindness as we commonly define it with our blindness to infrared lights or things like that might feel like an overstep, because no matter we look at it, ,evolution has given us humans a much different body than those of the geese or the snakes. Thus, the lack of eyesight, to humans specifically, certainly feels more like a shortage of a function that should be there “by default” for a perfect human body as originally designed by evolution, than the lack of the abilities that we naturally have no need for.

So, here’s another example that might be more relatable: How do we feel, being unable to see anything behind our backs? Our inability to see behind our backs has never been considered as a “problem”, even though it certainly is, in all senses, a blind spot to our visual system. But what about how we actually feel about that? I can’t even begin to see why I am supposed to … feel anything at all about it.

Maybe before you read what we’ve written so far, you have never feel “disabled” just because you cannot see behind your back, even when you have always been so aware of that inability (or you have become aware of it just now). This might be exactly how the blind (the ones who have lost their eyesight completely) feel: They could never see anything before their eyes, just like how we cannot see what’s behind our back, and those inabilities simply get discarded from our mind in very much the same manner [1]. It’s simply an inability, and just like how we can never by ourselves imagine how wonderful it would be for us to be able to see behind our back, the blind people also can never perceive how much of a disability their lack of eyesight could be.

But even then, some people may still be kept wondering by this answer.

So, up next, we will take a look at the hemispatial neglect syndrome, which can be found in people whose one of the hemispheres is damaged, causing their visual perception to be halved as well (most commonly the space perception on the left) [2]. The sufferers of this syndrome are often unable to perceive their left hand side, and pretty much consider their “left hand side” as non-existent (even though they can still turn left or walk leftward).

In more serious cases of hemispatial neglect syndrome, the patient would even ignore the food placed on the left of the dish, and could only see the 12–6h portion of a clock, or even just wear make-up or shave on only one half of their face. When moving, they also constantly collide with objects that lie within the “neglected” space on one of their sides.

So the implication is, when body parts involved in senses and information processing have a problem, our brain will not recognize that deficiency and the things that are supposed to be sensed by though affected parts would be treated as “non-existent”, instead of as “lost” or “missing”.

“So my visualization of a table is just like how that table is in reality, with the same height, the same width and the exact same composition as it should be”, Paul Gabias shared his experience, in his article published by LiveScience, as a person with congenital blindness [3]. “I can visualize all the characteristics of the table at the same time, just like how it is in its entirety, just that without the color”, he said.

Gabias, just like any other blind person, constructed for himself a visualization of the world using the data input by their sense of smell, hearing and touch. “To us blind people, the world is really vivid as well. It’s just that it does not come to mind in the form of a visual image”, he said. The man is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has conducted many research on different aspects of the blinds’ perception and cognition. His own experience along with the results he gained from the researches have led Gabias to believe that the brains of the blinds have to work around the lack of visual data, but still have multiple other means to make up for it to achieve the same perceptual output quality as that of normal people, meaning that they are also capable of visualizing a detail 3D map of the space around them.

We phrased it “believed”, because Gabias himself had never got the chance to experience seeing the world like normal people do, so it was never possible for him to actually verify that conclusion.

Plenty of evidence also suggests that when a person suffers from visual impairment or vision loss, the functionality of their other senses get heightened (or simply that the cues received by those senses were better processed now that the brain no longer had to dedicate a large proportion of is capacity to process visual signals), like how their senses of hearing and touch were reportedly improved [4]. Just like how people with normal eyesight can put on their shoes when their feet are underneath the table without actually have to see them, the blind are also capable of doing other tasks without a sight of the objects involved — just like putting on shoes or a coat. Most blind people can perform daily tasks like cooking, seeing a movie, or reading books. Some are even capable of riding bicycles, doing mountain climbing or playing sports [5]. But of course for these activities to be done in a familiar environment still remains a requirement.

Generally speaking, people with eyesight often have the misconception that being blind means that they can only see a sea of black. But then how can the blind people tell what is black or not, when they never had the conception of colors to begin with? To them, it’s simply “nothing”, just like our devoid perception of what’s behind our back. The visualization we have of what’s behind our back by the clues is in fact an image constructed by our minds based on the analysis of information perceived by our other senses.

2. The role of our conception and the brain.

The way we perceive the world does not depend on the eyes themselves, but mostly on how the brain processes the information received by them [6]. Thus, what’s seen by the eyes is just a form of input data for the brain to construct the perception of reality, in conjunction with the input data from other senses. A person who was blind since birth might very likely be unable to perceive that there was something “missing” in their perception, as their brain still does a perfectly fine job constructing a complete visualization of the world from the data input by other fully functional senses. The deficiency shall only come into light later when they gain a better understanding of how the world actually works for the majority who have intact eyesight.

As a result, even though the blinds might feel a little bit like they are suffering a disadvantage or loss, it would be like for us to try to look behind or back in a world where everyone else can do that.

Tommy Edison — a congenitally blind person, a film critic and the owner of a YouTube about the blinds’ experiences with 700.000 followers — has shared in some of his videos that he didn’t understand much about what of the world he was actually missing [7]. For example, when asked what he thought about getting a chance to be able to see again, he said he would give it a try, but would be very hesitant about it as well, worrying that he might have to spend the first few weeks being completely overwhelmed once his eye became able to see . When asked what he would choose between being blind since birth or getting blind from an accident, Edison said he would choose to be blind from birth like how he had been [8].

“I think that if I actually had eyesight and then lost it, I would never be able to lead as happy of a life I’m doing right now. I think I would become a very discontented, moody and desperate person. I think I’d be better off not knowing what I was “missing”. If I came to know that I was actually “missing” something, I would be very sad. As to how things go right now, I don’t really know what I am missing, and so I can do everything just like how I always do them and everything would be just fine”, he said.

Also in this video presented Christine Ha — the winner of Masterchef Season 3, who was also a blind but only since her 20s — as she collaborated with Edison to make the video. Contrary to Edison, Christine Ha believed that having eyesight before losing it was still the better scenario for her, because during the time when she still got her eyesight, she got to see the face of her husband, to drive a car and to see the world, before everything turned into a sea of black.

When sharing about her experience with dreams, Christine Ha revealed that she still saw things in dreams like a person with an intact lifestyle, and these experiences always ended in a crash as she woke up and realized that everything was just a dream. Edison, on the other hand, while still lived in a vivid world in his dreams (as described by Assoc. Prof. Gabias in the previous part), he didn’t really see anything during those.

“In my dreams, I don’t see anything. Because subconsciously I never knew how to see in the first place, so I couldn’t see in my dream either. Christine’s brain still remembers how to see, but mine doesn’t. Thus I would only dream with the other 4 senses, like for example I can smell, taste, touch or hear things in my dream. But I cannot see them. But of course the dream would still feel very real”, Edison said. His experience matched with the results of previous research on the blinds’ dream [9]. But then the dreams of the blinds after getting translated by them into something comprehensible for normal people, along with the erroneous our attempt to visualize our own dream may get as we try to describe them to the blind people, both could lead to errors in the research of one party on the other’s dreams.

The perceptual gap called “unable to understand what the other perceive” could be so large that it might actually exceed our capacity to visualize, because it is virtually impossible for us to set up a controlled experiment (for example, we cannot set up an experiment where congenitally blind people regain their eyesight, or vice versa). But the researches did discover that the visual cortex of the blind people still functions like that of normal people. Meaning that the brain could still construct an image using the data provided by other senses as input [10].

In addition, sometimes a normal person with all senses fully functional could suffer from certain types of brain damage that could render the data received by the senses useless. Apart from the hemispatial neglect syndrome mentioned earlier, we also have:

- Aphantasia: The inability to visualize mental images. The people with this condition will lose their ability to memorize sounds, smells or touch feelings. This can also sometimes cause prosopagnosia syndrome — the inability to recognize faces. Of course these all occur with all the senses intact [11].

- Agnosia: the inability to perceive information from one or more senses. Agnosia can be categorized into the losses of the ability to recognize objects, people, sounds, shapes or smells, emotions, colors, feelings etc. while the memory and the senses still function properly [12].

- Allochiria: the confusion of left and right sides, mistaking the stimuli on one side of the body for those on the other side, for example, feeling pain on the left hand when being hit on the right hand[13].

- Anosognosia: the inability to perceive the realities of one’s own condition. The people with this disease often refuse to believe that the parts on their body are that of their own, and tend to not use them. For example, there are people who forget about or don’t believe that a limb is theirs [14].

- Hemimotor neglect: is the neglect of voluntary movement. People with this condition often underutilize their own limbs even though they still function properly. This neglect can lead to muscle atrophy or actual loss of limb function [15].

- Cortical blindness: Blindness induced by malfunction of the cortex. Contrary to blind people, the people with this condition have fully functional eyes, but in their brains the cortex region responsible to process visual information is damaged. As a result, they are unable to see even though the eyes, even though the brain still receives information from the eyes. Another thing notable is, multiple experiments conducted on individuals with cortical blindness (mostly monkeys) had shown that the brain still reacts to the visual perception received through the eyes, even though the individual couldn’t perceive that [16].

…

Overall, “blindness”, or any other kind of loss of perceptual capacity are in most cases caused by the brain. As a result, having an intact brain and a damaged sense would still be more desirable than the other way around.

But of course that notation is purely theoretical, because, in a perfect environment, the reality of life can be a lot more complicated than just what is perceived by the brain. Because if the world is full of blind people, maybe they could still work around it to build up a society without ever knowing about their deficiency. But even then, there would lie …

3. Obstacles.

The society we are living in is an environment teemed with complications and danger, even for those with perfectly functional senses. We need a certain level of perception and awareness in order to engage in activities in such a risky environment. And thus, it makes sense that life in this world is even more difficult for the blind.

For example, the squarish building architecture, the high level of building concretization, electronic devices, angular interior accessories and furniture, traffic roads running along the sides of residential clusters, … while all feel ever so common for people with eyesight, turn out to be not nearly as user-friendly to the blind.

The complexity of modern day urban structure is in fact just a drop in the well when it comes to the difficulties the blind have to face in their lives.

Back to our talk about biological and social instincts, since the very beginning children would count on their ability to observe to explore the world around them, for observing the environment as well as the people around them so they could imitate their behaviors. As a result, children with congenital blindness tend to have a harder time developing their language, thus leading to their speech development being much delayed, even when they are faster to learn pronunciation and develop vocabulary, as the development depends entirely on listening [17].

Not only not having the option to learn by imitation, the children with congenital blindness also had no way to tell whether their face were showing the emotion needed for the situations. The inability to see their parents’ or others’ facial expressions also contribute to the difficulty for them to learn emotional facial expressions. As a result, even when the capacity for emotional facial expression has already been partially written in our genes, the blind people would sometimes be seen making “odd” or “unnatural” expressions without them doing so intentionally [18].

The loss of eyesight, apart from taking away the ability for eye communication, also render the blind more frequently commit the following don’ts of social interaction, namely [19]:

- Insufficient facial expression and body language.
- Unintentionally making gestures that normally suggest discontentment or disinterest.
- Taking another person’s turn in the conversation while missing their own.
- Intruding another person’s personal space.

The normal people while interacting with the blind, apart from getting confused by the mentioned unusual communication behavior, also found themselves feeling reservation and guilt, and also walking on eggshell not to remind the person of “the pain of being blind”, all of which cause them to feel uncomfortable engaging in those conversations.

The blind also have to work harder than normal people to keep up with other social etiquettes that they themselves could never understand why they are needed, such as taking care of their appearance, or choosing the right apparel or interior decoration. They would still have to shave frequently even though they never know how they really look, or how their looks are compared to others’, as well as have to decorate their homes even though they never understand the society’s standard for aesthetics. The blind also have to keep keen attention on their apparel in order not to cause discomfort to others, even when they have no conception whatsoever about colors, or fashion sense in general.

But the challenges in terms of facial expression, communication or dressing … are all possible to be consistently overcome by the blind, as they gain a clear awareness of the significance of the said aspects, and with them learning and practicing a lot. Ironically enough, the devoid of manners or fashion sense are actually even more prevalent among normal people, as the neglect of learning and the ignorance of the importance of the said factors in social communication are the things that truly have the final say in this matter. Those things need to be learnt, and while the blind know that better than anyone else, the people with eyesight actually either make light of those aspects or handle them very recklessly with little or no research whatsoever.

So the loss of eyesight, in some sense, might as well create for a great vantage point for an individual to observe the world from, without being heavily bombarded by the existing views of the rest of the world. This certainly can be considered as an advantage, as the person is naturally free from external stereotypes, as well as completely unaffected by the society’s definition of beauty represented by existing models, symbols and various other visual products which have always been heavily expansive and propagandistic [20].

As answered by Edison when he was asked about “the advantages of being blind”, he believed it was he never noticed nearly as much about other people’s age as people who are not blind do. Christine Ha also shared that ever since she lost her eyesight, she no longer judged people based on their looks.

So, with effort of their own, along with the assistance from society, blind people certainly can become capable of lots of fundamental living activities, such as reading books, playing sports, seeing movies, solo travelling and even more. As for Edison’s case, he even became a relatively accomplished movie critic, and for that of Christine Ha, she became a Master Chef winner. As for normal people, it seems to be the case that having all the senses functional is not necessarily a prerequisite for lifetime success and fulfillment.

But even then, it is still undeniable that there exist lots of obstacles that the blind need to overcome in order to become a part of the same world with normal people. For example, some blind children can have a difficult time getting along with their peers, which in turn leads their parents to shelter them more than needed, both altogether can hinder the children’s development. Another obstacle is the existing seemingly-benevolent-but-actually-not-much so” stereotypes on the blind (people with other disabilities), constraining them in a very narrow, stereotypical pathway for progress, thus indirectly deny them the chance for outstanding personal development.

In conclusion, in one way or another, all of us are blind to the world and to ourselves. And thus, the misconception that the eyesight we have can show us everything can actually become a nasty blindfold that causes us to miss a lot of things.

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*The article is based entirely on the experience of people with congenital and complete loss of eyesight. For the cases of “blindness by legal definition” or blindness caused by accident, the information provided here might be not as applicable.

**The article’s texts and the illustration are not meant to ridicule or insult any individual or organization. If you find the said contents disturbing or inappropriate, please do notify us so we can discuss together and identify what adjustment should be made.

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References:

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