Identity first is my preferred.

"Blind" is just an adjective. You'd never say "person who is tall" or "person who is strong," "man who is handsome" or "woman who is beautiful." If you treat blind, deaf, etc. differently than any other adjective, then you make them something "other," something special, or less, or whatever other connotations (usually negative) people want to ascribe to them.

I can understand how others would feel differently and there's a good argument to be made either way. It's mostly a matter of perspective and this one happens to be mine.

I hate person first language myself, which is why I always say blind person, but you should also understand that one size will never fit all.

My experience is that people who were born with or acquired a disability (any disability, not just blindness) at a name age often prefer identity-first language, but those who acquire the disability in old age often prefer person-first language.

The word "blind" has a lot of negative connotations for a lot of people and there is also the huge problem of sighted people encouraging a sort of hierarchy among us (if you have some sight, you're better than your peers with no sight, but you will never be as good as a fully sighted person). It comes down to the individual in this community, more than I've seen in any other. I work in a field where person first language is required so I do say visually impaired" when I'm talking about people outside my immediate community. But for myself I will always say "blind person" because it is a point of pride for me and I refuse to be shamed for my disability. Also basically nobody knows what you're talking about when you say "visually impaired" but everyone knows what blind means (or they think they do). :D

I think that person first is crucial to my self esteem, but what everybody else uses is up to them.

I'm both visually impaired and on the autistic spectrum and it doesnt matter to me either way.

I prefer identity first, and always refer to myself as blind/a blind person. imo "person who is visually impaired" just feels like an overly wordy euphemism for "blind", so why not just cut out the unnecessary stuff and say "blind person" instead?

that being said, it depends on the person. I was born blind, so because of that I've never had an issue with identifying myself as blind. But as others have noted in other comments, people who go blind later in life seem to prefer person first language, so it kind of just depends on the individual and their situation.

I looked again and found that there was $1 by the National Federation of the Blind supporting identity-first language.

"Person who is blind" is preferred.