Challenges Blind People Have to Face When Living Life

 Dear readers! It's nice to see you again!👋

This week, I'd like to share you with some online researches about the obstacles of the blind. What are the challenges blind people have to face when living life?


1. Navigating Around Places

The biggest challenge for a blind person, especially
the one with the complete loss of vision, is to navigate around places. Obviously, blind people roam easily around their house without any help because they know the position of everything in the house. People living with and visiting blind people must make sure not to move things around without informing or asking the blind person.

Commercial places can be made easily accessible for the blinds with tactile tiles. But, unfortunately, this is not done in most of the places. This creates a big problem for blind people who might want to visit the place.

 

2. Overly helpful individuals

It’s very common for sighted individuals, strangers, friends or family, to be overly excited to help a visually impaired person. Very frequently, this behavior holds the assumption that the blind or low vision individual requires assistance, although this might not reflect reality. Blind people might perform a regular task slower but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of completing it. Rushing to help the visually impaired without asking or being asked to do so, might make them feel helpless instead of independent. Moreover, not allowing a visually impaired individual perform a task by themselves, does not give them the room to learn how to do so independently.

 

3. Finding and keeping a job

Work is a whole different matter if you’re visually impaired. Considering the lack of accessible work and working spaces, one can already imagine why hiring a visually impaired individual would be considered a liability for a company. This has a negative impact on the confidence and emotional well-being of the visually impaired, while it totally cripples their economic independence. Having little to no opportunity to support oneself, blind or low vision individuals are incapacitated from their independence.

 

4. Leisure

The lack of accessibility for the visually impaired is central to a number of the issues the blind or low visual individuals face. Leisure is another one on the list. There is a limited number of inclusive/accessible activities for the visually impaired, which are as simple as a museum visit. Moreover, accessible books are not abundant either. According to the World Blind Union, “more than 90% of all published material is not accessible to the blind or partially sighted.” The internet, as in the new era we all surf the internet for fun, is not fully accessible either, since numerous websites disregard their visually impaired visitors and do not curate content that is accessible for the blind and low vision individuals. Considering these points and many more that are not listed here, one can clearly see how limited leisure options there are for the visually impaired.

 

5. Often living in isolation

Considering all of the above, it’s not a surprise that living with a visual impairment might signify, often, living in isolation. Dealing with sight loss, already, is a challenge in itself. The lack of emotional support at diagnosis centers, the limited accessibility to activities and information, the societal stigma and the lack of unemployment, are all factors frequently leading blind or low vision individuals in isolation. This last point illustrates how the problem for the visually impaired is not their blindness or lower vision in itself but their segregation from anyone else.

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