Huh. I know we have an active, vibrant blind culture...at least online, anyway. I do enjoy taking part in it. But am I proud? I...don't think so. At least, I'm not proud to be blind the way I am proud to be a Canadian. And yet, both Canadianism and blindness are things I was born with.

As for curing blindness, $1 sums up my feelings pretty well. Accept that the author of the article could see previously. I was born blind. So take that terror and triple it. I have no idea what gaining sight would be like. I don't really understand how I would adjust to it, or how I would need to change my life to cope as I adjusted. Before I could be convinced to accept some sort of magical cure, I would need to know that there would be months, maybe years, of support available to me as I went through the struggle of learning how to use my sight. Unfortunately, I suspect that society would be like "You're cured now! Go and get a job tomorrow." And I wouldn't accept a cure under those terms.

I'm not proud of being blind and consider it a mental disorder to be proud of a disability.

Regarding regaining sight, I would give anything I have to have it back, even my legs.

Pride is a rather clumsy word in this context. It has different meanings.

In the most literal sense, no I'm not proud of my disability. I can't help that I'm blind any more than sighted people can help that. I'm proud if how I've managed to adjust to my disability, but that's pride in an achievement, not a characteristic.

However, I'm "proud" in the same way that some LGBT people are. I accept the way I am and believe in fighting for a future where society accepts it as well. That isn't to say self-improvement, training and trying to find a place in sighted society is bad, just that it's very much a two-way street.

As for medical treatment, I dunno. I'd probably stay the way I am. Then again, I was born like this (legally blind) so I have no idea what I'm missing, in a sense. I'd be afraid of gaining vision and then losing it again, Flowers for Algernon style.

Deaf people aren't a monolith, but those that identify with the label tend to kind of think similarly about things.

Blind people, however, tend to have more variance, even amongst the people that identify with the "blind" label.

For example, many blind people are very proud of their blindness, even to the point of viewing it as a gift or blessing from their particular God.

On the other hand, many blind people would jump at the opportunity to be cured. Many people will raise tens of thousands of dollars for any attempted improvement, even at the risk of losing more vision.

Yet, still, there are people who would turn down any and every offer of a cure. They're happy with who they are, and how they are, and wouldn't want the extra stress of vision, and the learning that would come with that.

Basically, some blind people resent the idea of being cured, and some people jump with joy at the thought of it. Mostly, people who have been totally, or near that, blind since they were small kids, are the ones who would refuse treatment, while people like myself who were older would jump at the chance.

Hi. I'm not proud to be blind or British. i've never understood this proudness thing to be honest. It seems quite strange to me to be proud of a country or a disability. I can understand Being happy when you achieve what you can in life but being proud like that of a place you live in or a disability does not make sense to me at all. There is no cure at the moment for my type of blindness and even if there was, I doubt I'd take it. By the time it came out, I'd probably be quite old and my body may not accept the cure. If my body didn't accept the cure; I could loos the light perception I have. I'd not want that at all.

I'm proud of my visual impairment in the same sense that some people are proud of their home towns. That is, i know that i did nothing to earn it, but its mine. I also am proud of it in the sense that I reject the notion that my visual impairment should be considered shameful or taboo. Its hard at times, but i know that i still have value as a person and that my eyes don't diminish that value.

That being said, i would definitely consider treatment. It would be awesome to drive or read small print or avoid (some) dumbass people! But, i would only take treatment if it had a 99% chance of completely working. If it was something that would only maybe bring me from 20/400 to 20/90 it just wouldnt be worth it in my books. And i'd wait until scientists have repeated their experiments enough to work out the kinks.

Also, it kind of makes me uncomfortable that there is such an emphasis on "the cure." Like, the only time blindness/visual impairment is ever discussed in a positige light is in the context of medical cures. People tend to assume that we'll never be whole until our eyes can be fixed, and though it would be nice to see, most of us can do alright without it.

When i first started losing my vision i spent hours pouring over research in medical advancements. That type of "hope" really fucked me up and it hindered themy ability to just move on with life. Cures are great, but the obsession with them just isn't healthy

i am proud to be low vision because people want me to not be. they want me to be ashamed of it because i'm not productive and i'm ugly and i can't be independent and i need air conditioning to live. a lot of blind/low vision/disabled people in general are proud in the same way that i am, just proud that we can make it and even survive in a world that isn't made for us at all and that oftentimes hates us.

and i personally don't want a cure, but that's because the cure would be surgery and because of other conditions i have i can't get surgery or it would be a risk that i don't want to take. i can't speak for anyone else, because i am relatively pretty well seeing.

Yes, we have all those issues for sure; plus, the blind community can, sometimes, be just as ablelist has the "able bodied" community. When I was a teenager I was dragged to several conferences that were organized by blindness groups. Some of the talks at such conferences were about genetics and inheritability, and had strong eugenics leanings.

I am not sure about blind architects; I do know one blind civil engineer who designs bridges etc.

I'm not proud to be blind. Blindness is not the end of life or the world but it certainly diminishes opportunities and reduces one's scope for action.

That said, I also wouldn't take a cure, or the chance of a cure, at any price. I'd have to weigh the risks of it, the difficulties in learning to deal with sight and to use it functionally to a point at which it is as good or better as what I can do with my existing adaptations, and so on.

At any rate, development of sight is bound to certain age ranges, beyond which, if you didn't have it at the time it will never be how it should be. This is my case being totally blind from birth, so a cure would have somewhat ambiguous benefits for me.

Yes, “blind pride”, or something that is equivalent to “death pride”, is a thing. Let me just start by saying there is no simple right or wrong way to look at blindness or disability. As previous commenters have illustrated, there is a wide variety of perspectives around this kind of thing in the blind community. Lots of blind people have pragmatic reasons for not wanting sight, but people who express a truly congruent perspective to “death pride” are probably the minority in the blind community.

Your question is very interesting, and to truly consider it we must compare the medical model of disability to the social model of disability. The medical model of disability is what most people are familiar with, and it is currently hegemony for sighted and blind people alike. Basically, the medical model of disability sees blindness, or any other disability, as an inherent problem to fix. This is an understandable viewpoint for doctors, because it is their job to “fix” disability. On the other hand, the social model of disability sees disability as a social identity, similar to race, gender, etc. For this model the problems of disability are primarily outward issues with society, such as discrimination and ignorance.

In order to better understand these two models, it might be helpful to relate them to how people viewed race in the 19th century. Back then many people would argue that some races were inherently inferior. Such people might look at poverty and low literacy rates as proof that a groups racial makeup is a biological problem. For our flawed comparison, this biological view of race is similar to the medical model of disability. On the other hand, the viewpoint of race, which has thankfully become hegemony, approaches race as a social construct. People who share this perspective argue that issues such as poverty and low literacy rates are results of societal forces, not inherent shortcomings of racial groups. I just want to make it clear that this comparison is simply meant to help explain the two models of disability, I am by no means trying to say that doctors etc. are comparable to racists.

I’m sorry for that long-winded lecture on disability studies, I just think it’s a key element to the question of blind pride. I believe what you are describing as blind pride is an extreme believe in the social model of disability. In other words, there would be no problem with being blind if our society was designed with blind people in mind, and there was zero ignorance and discrimination. I know this believe exists, because I use to strongly hold it myself, and I attended a training center where it was taught. I lost my sight when I was 18 and I received training at an NFB training center. After this experience, I was an extreme believer in the social model of disability, and I was a very proud blind person. However, in recent years I have become more of a moderate when it comes to the two models of disability; my own current thinking is not very relevant to the question of whether or not blind pride is a thing.

The bottom line is, yes there are people who have “blind pride”, people who believe there is no inherit issue with blindness. Most people, however, are somewhere in between the medical model and the social model.

If you are interested in strong examples of “blind pride, check out the National Federation of the Blind. The NFB is a large organization, who’s members have a wide array of beliefs, but the Federations official perspective is full of “blind pride”; I would point at the recorded speeches from https://nfb.org/banquet-speeches as rhetorical examples of “blind Pride”.

The first thing I thought of when you mentioned Blind Pride is some sort of LGBT event.