I have been going blind slowly for 9 years. I am now legally blind, and only see clearly a few inches away - in one eye (other is gone). I didn’t notice any change to other senses at first, but I absolutely have the best ears in the world now. Someone can shut a car door down the street and I think someone is in front of MY house.

Extra: It’s always been odd to me that my brain improved my ears, but didn’t auto-adjust to the new distances. Why can’t I tell the noise is 100 ft away? Or maybe my brains working on it.

There IS an extra sense I can’t explain... like I’ll just KNOW when I’m about to hit my head on something... (and no, no hair brushed on anything). I just stop in my tracks and look / feel around. I’ve just sort of thought it was fairies - I literally have no other idea what it could be, and have never mentioned it before.

Extra: Same goes for when I’m looking for something. Scissors for example. I just had them, where’d I put them? It could be in multiple rooms... and I just outloud say “anybody see my scissors?” And every time I’m pulled toward them. I just KNOW where-ish to look. Again, I thought it was fairies.

Mental Images:
I have a (fully) blind friend who remembers colors and everything, but I’m losing faces and things. I’m remembering sizes and shapes okay... but I have to work hard to pull up things I used to remember - people, places, fav movies. This concerns me since my vision isn’t even all gone, but it’s been bad for years so I guess my brain is weeding it out.

Or, another possibility is my blindness comes with PAIN. A lot of pain. The interior of your eye has no nerves, but I have a great deal of horrible light sensitivity, and my eye muscles also become inflamed. I can’t take blood thinners (to help) as that could worsen my vision (interior bleeding). So for years I’ve had lots of bouts of mind shattering pain, and that definitely causes some memory loss - at least for me.

Stigmatism:
So far, no one has been unkind to me, even strangers, about my loss or limitations. However I have been very unkind to myself. I’d been an artist, so my identity was absolutely lost as the vision. That takes years to re-build. I lost my job a month ago, and that re-awoke a lot of inner turmoil as well. I’d always planned to kill myself at this visual level - not out of anger, just because I don’t believe this world has anything left I’m interested in. It’s hard to explain via text without sounding suicidal - it was just a decision I’d made years ago.

However, I just got married. He makes a lot of money so I don’t have to feel guilty. He’s shockingly good at describing the world around me, the couples, colors, interactions (his mom is an author, that might be why). And now I’m having a baby. So now I can’t just die, and I’m trying to accept the anger at my limitations instead.

So my point is, you might know a lot of happy, capable blind people - but don’t assume that’s normal, or easy. Pain, personality, support, adaptability.... it’s going to be different for everyone. If I hadn’t been an artist, it would’ve been easier. If my family had believed in my illness, THAT would’ve been easier. But if I’d been an introvert who didn’t know how to ask for help? That would’ve made all this a HELL of a lot harder.

See individuals. Remove assumptions.
And keep asking questions ^.^ well done!

That sounds like bullshit. Your professor isn't a neurologist, I don't think they know what they are taking about. I'm sighted but that myth pisses me off so much. Blind people go through trainig to learn how to manage daily life with visual impairment, that don't gain superpowers.

Your proffessor needs to get more accurate info. That thing about senses compensating for vision loss is not true and if it were possible to not run into a random string in a room I'd stop hitting the ceiling fan chords by now, which I haven't. :D
The one question I can answer for you is that, yes, there is a stigma surrounding blindness. This is one of the rarest disabilities and what most people know about blindness comes from myths, stereotypes, and whatever the latest Hollywood movie is making up about us today. People think that going blind means you magically acquire mobility skills and advanced senses when none of that happens. We get mobility skills through being taught them and our senses don't compensate, we just practice with them more.
I think your teacher might have been thinking of a study where the senses of some blind people were taking over their visual cortex. That's not the same as them having better senses though and that's one of those obnoxious myths that gets thrown at us all the time. It's even debunked in the FAQ post at the top of this sub.

>I hear a lot of people say that if they were to suddenly lose vision their “life would be over” but I’ve seen so many people adjust really well and in most cases continue living their normal everyday lives

That probably depends on their age when they lost their sight and the degree of blindness.

My sight loss was sudden at the age of 40. 1 minute I have perfect vision, 2hrs later I have no peripheral vision, charles bonnet syndrome (geometric patterns/colours over everything I see) and have trouble reading anything smaller than 18pt print. The cause as a stroke during heart procedure.

For it to happen suddenly and so late in life was devastating, especially as for the first few weeks I had no depth perception either so preparing food or navigating my flat was very difficult. It didn't help that I got zero help or support from health services for at least 2 months and even then it was minimal.

Suicide was something I considered more than a few times during the first couple of months and I did indeed feel like my life was over. I already had mobility problems so now being unable to drive basically confined me to my small apartment unless my gf took me out.

5yrs on and things have improved dramatically as I'm 100% adjusted to the situation, but I can't honestly say I'd feel the same if I had gone 100% blind - especially with how dire blind services are in my area,

> Is there one sense in particular you feel has overly compensated? Like you can hear, feel, or smell where certain things or people are?

No, and I really wish this myth would die a death. Granted I was born blind rather than lose my sight later in life, but having known way too many people who've done the latter, still no. I do think we learn to pay attention to our other senses more, however. You may dismiss something as background white noise, whereas to me that's a detail or clue about what's around me. People who've lost their sight later in life are potentially still developing that skill. Like any other skill, not everyone--whether born blind or gone blind otherwise--will have the same level of capability. End of the day, it all comes down to observation/perception skills. If you're not an observant person, you'll miss details. It doesn't matter if those details are visual or auditory.

> Do you have any instincts or reflexes that you’d expect only someone with vision to react with? (Inherently knowing there is an obstacle and being able to avoid it)

You could say that. I call it facial perception. Other people call it spacial awareness. Either way, I can tell without making contact with a wall that there's a wall there. Certain objects (note: not string, sorry prof) I can tell will be in my way and can try to avoid them. The same ability allows me to know when aspects of environment change--for example, when a hallway widens up into a more open area. If I know an area well enough (my apartment, my parents' place), I can navigate with no mobility aids at all and just rely on things like that facial perception.

> Are you able to remember what things, people or places look like with mental images? Or do your other senses paint a better picture?

This is a tricky question. Never having had sight, I've never known what people, places and things look like--not in the same way you do, at least. But after 30+ years of being blind, I like to think I've gotten pretty freaking good at developing my own ideas of a place based on what's available to me. For instance, when I first moved to this city, there were two exactly identical apartment buildings next door to one another. My key opened the front doors to both buildings. I walked into the wrong one by mistake, and knew almost immediately. don't ask me how, because I couldn't tell you, but I got about a quarter the way down the hall and something felt slightly off. When I went next door, I knew why. Also, mental maps are a thing. Go to a particular place long enough, especially if you usually take the same route to get there, and you'll begin to pick up on particular details that come in handy as landmarks. Say you and a friend are walking to the bank for reasons. You're chatting away, and you pass by a parking lot with a water fountain in it. If you've done that route often enough, something in the back of your mind will ping very loudly and remind you that gee, perhaps you should have made a left when you passed that. Or perhaps that's just me.

> And finally, do you feel there’s a stigma surrounding blindness? I hear a lot of people say that if they were to suddenly lose vision their “life would be over” but I’ve seen so many people adjust really well and in most cases continue living their normal everyday lives. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

It's easy to not comprehend how you would do something without sight if you've never had to do something without sight. Putting on a blindfold for a day just doesn't count, as much as some folks would like it to. Life's hard. It's harder still when 1: you have to relearn how to do pretty much everything (this doesn't apply to me), and 2: you have to have the exact same arguments/conversations/discussions/whatever you want to call them with people who are as convinced you can't do X, Y and Z as you are they're wrong (this applies to me in so, so many ways). As you can imagine, this definitely translates to a stigma of sorts. And it's all over the place--including, depending on the jurisdiction, in education. But not just. Employment, accessing government services, daily interactions with people in general, it's really never very far away. What that looks like depends on the situation, but always comes back to a perception of blindness as being incapable. I've always said I don't suffer from my disability, but from people's perception of my disability. I believe that to be entirely and completely 100% the truth. I've had two jobs, and been to college. Those are probably my 3 biggest challenges--in all 3 cases, step 1 was overcome people's concerns about how well I'd do not being able to see. Unfortunately, this is a stigma that isn't helped by members of the very blind community it affects. There are lazy blind people. There are blind people who either choose not to do for themselves, or who've never been shown they can do for themselves. There are blind people who have never worked a day in their life, and couldn't do a job if you paid someone to hire them. And there are blind people who are perfectly happy being part of that group. I like to think they're a small minority, but it only takes one. I had to work against a member of that minority when I took the college program I did. He took that program previously, and expected people to instinctively know how he needed accommodating. This ended as you would expect--he flamed spectacularly out of that program. But because of their experience dealing with him, they were concerned about me. Once I established what had them so concerned (what I said above), it was incredibly easy to blow those concerns out of the water. I completed that program, with decent grades, and after semester 1 didn't hear so much as a word about the person who took the program before me. I'd like to say the story ends there, but it really doesn't. Every day, someone new needs an education. Some of them are willing to listen. Others not so much. I can't do much about that, and that's I think what irritates me more than anything else, but the ones who are interested in learning are usually the easiest to work with. The rest of them aren't worth my time. If more people even thought about the kind of questions you have in your OP, I'd have fewer headaches.

Your professor's full of shit.

Where is this information coming from? We don't just happen to get better senses, the thing that happens is we need to draw on them more, which makes us learn how to cue in better. Also the thing about the string sounds ridiculous. Some objects are big enough they do sort of give off a presence, but a string? I just don't see that being accurate. There are; however, blind people who just have it down about navigation and can just basically walk around without a cane or dog. I am not in that camp, I'm closer to the other end of that scale in fact, so maybe?

Reach out to your state's Vocational Rehabilitation Services (all states should have some version, it is Federally mandated). They usually have specialty units for those who are blind or visually impaired (also Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Traumatic Brain Injury, and a few other focused sections). They should be able to assist you with identifying alternative resources. You can also reach out to the National Federation for the Blind which holds annual conventions.

I actually believe my sense of touch is somewhat hightened, as that is my eyes. As for all my other senses, I'd have to say that it is a bit of a myth that we blind folk have super hearing, smell etc. I do believe that my hearing is probably more fine tuned, again because I need it, but its definitely not better than most. As for being able to avoid stuff, yeah well that's called echo location. I love being able to weave around cars in a parking lot for example, purely because I can hear and feel their presence. Again, I think everyone has this ability, its just that sightlings don't need it, so they're unaware of it. As far as mental imaging goes, I can absolutely remember travel routes, the layout of houses I've visited etc. Things like shopping centres present more of a challenge because they're open environments. I hope I've answered everything. PS. There was nothing wrong with the way you asked the questions.

Hi, people are in different stages in their lives. Some have adjusted to their blindness, and many are still trying to cope with the loss of vision. I don’t believe that my senses became any better, but I did developed spacial awareness.

lol. your professor has a very romanticized and uneducated view of what it's like to be blind. I still run into things daily. I notice sounds more than others because it's how I orient myself. I don't think that I hear any better now than when I had more sight, I just pay attention to sounds more than I did before.
Yes there is bias against blind people. We would all be gainfully employed if there wasn't. It's not impossible to live a happy normal life while blind, but there is a psychological and sociological toll that it takes which you must be able to push through and process. Also the education of our neighbors and partners and employers (and redditors) about blindness falls on us which also becomes a burden and is especially annoying when it feels impossible to exist outside of stupid old wives tales regarding blindness like the ones your professor is spreading.