I don’t know the breakdown of the statistics, but yeah there are different kinds and levels of blindness. Blindness can be due to physical damage to the lense, retina, optic nerve, or the visual processing area of the brain. It can be due to clouded lenses like cataracts. It can be due to malformations of the retina, non-functioning cones/rods, or shape of the lens or eyeball itself. Some of those lead to total blindness, but lead to varying degrees of vision impairment, up to and including legal blindness. Some of those can be corrected for with glasses, contacts, surgery or even electronic neural interfaces in some cases. Some are just permanent and can’t be improved.
The kind of blindness I find most interesting is when the eyes and optic nerve function normally, but the party of the brain that processes vision just doesn’t function for various reason, but the part of the brain that processes spatial awareness does still function. Those people have no sight at all, but they are still able to perceive objects and space around them and, for example, avoid obstacles when walking, despite but being able to see the obstacles in a visual sense.
WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is probably more aimed towards the people that are born or go completely blind later in life
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Completely blind later is very much worse IMO.
Knowing what you’re missing, and being able to do nothing about it, really sucks, especially full blindness, not just legally blind.
Don’t get me wrong, legally blind (just seeing shapes and stuff) still sucks, it’s just hard to compare to full blindness.
I say this as my brother’s medical situation is slowly causing his retina to detach which will lead to full blindness. He’s a graphic designer by education. It’s cruel. He’s not quite legally blind yet, he can still drive in good conditions, but it’s degenerative and getting worse, and will not get better, only worse. The only treatment is to slow the deterioration, nothing will prevent or reverse it.
WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m sorry to hear that. That really sucks.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Myself and my SO are helping him and his wife deal with it. We moved into a shared home and we’re all here for whatever he needs.
We moved in well in advance of him losing full vision so he can learn the layout of the house visually and get to the point of being able to navigate the house with his eyes closed.
We put in Google home devices all over so we can use announcements/paging to call out if he needs help. More people in the house means more people home more often, so there’s a better chance someone is nearby to help when help is needed.
It wasn’t cheap to buy a house when we did, but we’re doing ok. We have a plan.