Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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What do you call yourself? (self.Blind)
submitted by ewoktalia14
There are various names associated with vision loss and I was wondering what you guys call yourselves. I call myself legally blind because I feel that it is the most accurate term to use. I have friends who use the terms "low vision" "visually impaired" "partially blind" or just plain "blind". Some of my friends who have vision that is "better" than legally blind feel like they can't call themselves blind because they do have some vision left. Personally, I see no problem with it as it's still referring to vision loss. I honestly don't like the term "visually impaired" very much. It's easily confused with refractive errors and the phrase itself focuses a little too much on what is broken. To me, visually impaired has more of a negative connotation and "blind" is simply more of a denotation. I don't mind when others use it, but I generally abstain from saying it.
What do you guys call yourselves and why? Do you have any preference over what term is used to describe your vision? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If there are any sighted people here, I'd like to hear what terms you generally use for those with sight loss.
What do you guys call yourselves and why? Do you have any preference over what term is used to describe your vision? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If there are any sighted people here, I'd like to hear what terms you generally use for those with sight loss.
bereuxp 2 points
My late father lost a lot of his vision in a car accident when I was 6 months old. So I'd only ever known him that way and as such, like to think I don't have any prior prejudices one way or another (as a kid, my granddad told me not to say that my dad was "blind as a bat" - my dad told him to let me say what I wanted!).
When I was a child up to my teenage years (through the 80s and 90s), "partially sighted" was the term we all used in the family, pretty exclusively. My mum made a point not to use the word "blind" I think, to emphasise that he did still have a bit of sight.
Then, at some point in the late 90s / early 00s that changed to Visually Impaired - probably as a result of him getting a job at the RNIB and all of us learning what the in-fashion phrase was. We heard lots about VIPs and so on.
However, the last few years I'd often say the word "blind" as his sight had deteriorated so much that he didn't have much useful vision left.
He didn't mind one way or the other, though.
When I was a child up to my teenage years (through the 80s and 90s), "partially sighted" was the term we all used in the family, pretty exclusively. My mum made a point not to use the word "blind" I think, to emphasise that he did still have a bit of sight.
Then, at some point in the late 90s / early 00s that changed to Visually Impaired - probably as a result of him getting a job at the RNIB and all of us learning what the in-fashion phrase was. We heard lots about VIPs and so on.
However, the last few years I'd often say the word "blind" as his sight had deteriorated so much that he didn't have much useful vision left.
He didn't mind one way or the other, though.
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