What does blindness mean?

Blind people are not necessarily blind. This statement may sound a little contradictory, but it is easy to explain: In popular parlance, blindness is equated with not seeing anything. The German law defines blindness as less than two percent vision in the better eye or a field of vision of no more than 5 degrees. The field of view is what we see when we look straight ahead, it is usually 180 degrees.

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Two percent doesn't sound like much, but that's the crucial difference. One person can still read books, another has a blurry perception of his surroundings, another can no longer distinguish between light and dark. They can all be legally blind. For example, I can still read printed texts, even if I move at the speed of an ABC shooter. But I can't read bus timetables or recognize faces.

There are also blind people who literally cannot see anything; We call these people completely blind. I would also include people in this group who can still distinguish between light and dark, but can no longer see colors and shapes.

The severely visually impaired must be distinguished from the blind; although they see very poorly, they are clearly seen and will therefore not be discussed in more detail.

Blind people are not systematically recorded statistically in Germany, so we have to use indirect numbers. In Bavaria, 14,655 people receive blind benefits. Almost two thirds of these blind benefit recipients are 65 and older, 42.1 percent are 80 and older. These numbers are likely to be similar for the rest of Germany. The blind association DBSV assumes that there are around 100,000 blind people throughout Germany.

Congenitally and late-blind people

Most people in Germany are not born blind, but sometimes become blind at a young age, often at a more mature age. People who are born blind or become blind in the first few years of life are called birth blind people. People who become blind over the course of their lives are called late-blind people. The distinction is not entirely clear; people with late blindness are generally people who have consciously seen and often still remember visual impressions; It doesn't matter for the definition whether you go blind as a child or as a senior.

However, distinguishing between these two groups is important because the timing of blindness often determines how those affected deal with their blindness. People who become blind most often have more problems than people who are blind from birth because they have to adapt to a world that is new to them. People who are blind at birth have never had to learn to cope visually, but are adapted to a non-visual world throughout their lives.

The child's brain is very adaptable. In the first few years of life, the essential wiring of the nerves is established. Therefore, a child who is born blind will, with appropriate support, learn very quickly to cope with its blindness. The brain can still adapt well even at an older age. But we know this from ourselves: the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to cope with new situations.

The number of people born blind in Germany is steadily decreasing due to better medical care. On the other hand, there are many eye diseases such as glaucoma or retinopathy pigmentosa that are difficult to treat and often progressively worsen vision. Due to increasing life expectancy, the number of blindness in old age is also increasing, often due to other diseases such as diabetes or clouding of the lens (macular degeneration). In fact, this will pose a challenge to society in the future due to demographic change. Today's support systems are aimed at young or middle-aged blind people. There is currently little support for seniors who may still be hard of hearing or have walking difficulties.

Is it better to be born blind and not have to adapt to blindness or is it important for us to have seen so that we can exchange ideas with sighted people on an equal footing? There is no clear answer to this question. Almost all people who are on the borderline between seeing and being blind have at least the opportunity to prepare for becoming blind. Those who become blind at a late age share a common visual world of experience with those who can see. When someone talks about green forests, blue lakes and gray mountains, it triggers different associations and memories for those who have become blind than for those who were born blind.

How do blind people see?

People with visual impairment in particular are often asked how they see. For most people, blindness is difficult to imagine, but poor vision is even harder to understand.I always answer with concrete examples: I can see one thing clearly, the next thing out of focus, I can see that but not read it and I can't see that at all. This is difficult for sighted people to understand, but our vision can only be inadequately described verbally. You would have to look through someone else's eyes and also have their perception and experiences. Only people who have seen well know what it means to see normally. At least they have the comparison with their past.

Even simulations only help to a limited extent. Many disabled people reject disability simulations. On the one hand, they lead many non-disabled people to believe that they now know what disability is. This leads them to give disabled people tips on how to behave, which is of course completely absurd. On the other hand, simulations can lead to unrealistic ideas. The sighted cannot find their way around with their eyes blindfolded and cane and end up believing that all blind people live in darkness and are completely helpless. What is overlooked is that blind people are usually adapted to their situation and can cope very well with it through practice, experience and intelligence.

I don't see simulations as critically. Ideally, every simulation should be accompanied by a conversation with someone who has been affected themselves. Or even better, the “blind person who sees” allows himself to be led by a “blind person who is blind.”

Examples and metaphors are the only way to explain to sighted people what blind people see. If I say that my vision is extremely blurry, many sighted people will think that I might look like someone looking through a frosted glass. But that's not the case, at least that's what I believe. Subjectively, I see completely clearly, only when I notice that I can't see the details of a face, for example, do I know that my vision is out of focus. There is this nice feature called “unsharp mask” in Photoshop that eliminates facial blemishes and wrinkles. I see something similar, as if everything were drawn softly.

Neither hearing nor seeing

Officially there are around 6,000 deafblind people in Germany. A significantly larger group is made up of people whose hearing and vision are impaired, the hearing-visual impaired.

You can certainly appreciate how important the remaining senses are for the disabled. The consequences are all the more serious if two essential senses are disturbed. The complete loss of both senses is not that common, but hearing-visual impairments, deaf-visual impairment or hearing loss-blindness are not that rare.

The problems can sometimes be significant. Blind and deaf people, for example, have a higher risk of accidents than non-disabled people. However, if both essential senses are restricted, the risk of not seeing or not hearing a car, for example, increases. You don't hear any warning calls, no bicycle bells, no speeding trams...

It is considerably more difficult for someone with a hearing or visual impairment to follow a conversation in a noisy environment, because sighted people can - without even knowing it - read a lot from lips, head movements and gestures. Blind people usually recognize other people by their voices, unfortunately very few people are nice enough to have a noticeable smell. This is more difficult for a hearing-visual impaired person because the spectrum of their hearing is limited. They often recognize people by their walk or their clothing.

For deaf-blind people there are only a few ways to communicate with the environment. They can work with the Braille display on the computer. They communicate with other people via the Lormen. This is a tactile language. The speakers draw gestures with their fingers in the palm of the interlocutor's hand.

The Berlin Design school is working on the development of a Lorm glove. This glove should make two things possible. On the one hand, the developers want to ensure that deaf-blind people can communicate over the Internet. This is not yet possible for people who cannot speak written or spoken language. A second goal is the translation of spoken language into Lormen and vice versa. The Lormen are transmitted to the hand using small motors in the glove.

The situation is particularly complicated for those who are deaf-blind from birth. They cannot learn spoken language and therefore have particular problems learning to read and write.

These forms of multiple disabilities also often occur in old age, i.e. at a time when it is most difficult to adapt to the new situation. The most famous deaf-blind person is certainly Helen Keller; she even managed to learn verbal language well enough to write books herself and be politically active.

Deafblindness is not blindness plus deafness. It is a disability of its own, but this has not yet been recognized in social law. That's why the representatives of this group are fighting for their own symbol TBL = deaf-blind in the severely disabled person's ID card. They want to ensure that deaf-blind people are better supported in everyday life.

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