Not everyone is fully blind, so I usually say "blind or visually impaired". Covers everybody and you don't need to worry about it

It depends on the person and sometimes what groups they’re affiliated with. We’re an active NFB family. My daughter prefers blind even though she has a good bit of vision left. She was brought up seeing blindness as a spectrum. I also raised her to not see blindness as something that was bad. A good friend who’s black made the comparison once that he is black, not legally black and he is blind not legally blind. I notice a lot of professionals working in blindness prefer to say that even those with small amounts of light perception are “visually impaired” and when asked they will argue that blindness means total blindness. These people are usually teachers of blind students and voc rehab specialist. In my opinion it sets a person up to view “blind” as a dirty word and further alienate “blind” people from those who are “visually impaired” “partially sighted” “high partial” ect. ect. To me anyone who has a visual detriment over 20/200 is blind but if they prefer for me to refer to them in another way I’ll gladly comply.

Honestly the Blind community is a lot more low key compared to the Deaf community. I don’t think a lot of people would be offended either way, but I use visually impaired because people use blindness means you don’t see anything at all.

But I’m certainly not bothered if someone calls me blind.

Blind people change there mind regularly on what the most politically correct way to address them... I call us blind people, but that’s just me, classic

I use blind to encompass all low-vision levels

I call myself totally blind. If I had some vision I would say I was visually impaired.

Oh and also: my one blind friend calls us "blinks" claiming that's our new slang name.

I think I might be offended if I was called blind but still had some useful vision, but I don't so I prefer the term blind. The way I see it is that I am blind, my mother (blind in one eye) is visually impaired.

I am just figuring things like this out, because it's not something I gave much thought to before I lost sight.

I hadn't really considered it, partially because I don't really go anywhere (due to covid) and therefore haven't needed a term to quickly describe that I couldn't see normally. The few times that I did, I found myself giving an actual explanation of my specific vision issues (because I didn't think that the word blind applied to me) whenever I needed to explain things like dropping my debit card and not being able to find it. It felt too long winded.

I've settled on visually impaired. I used that for the first time last night when I went to the dentist, and it was brief and I feel like it got the point across well.

This is coming from a person that lived for 35 years being well sighted, and am using my own ignorance to make assumptions about what the best way to communicate personal vision loss to someone that I have no real relationship with. With friends or family, or people I end up talking to in a more personal setting, I may go into the long winded explanation instead of trying to sum it up with a couple of words.

It tends to help out for those such as myself with impared vision to say 'low vision blindness' as saying legally blind tends to immediately make most people think I am totally blind.

Total blindness is quite the minority for the blind community. Most are in various stages of legal blindness and the wild degrees that can entail.

Otherwise, just a person. Don't care for some title. I shouldn't be identified by my disability, no disabled person should be.

I like VIP

I say blind too.

I don't think it's that important. What's important is the intent behind what people are saying which is usually clear from context. I don't think it's very accurate when people describe me as visually impaired because for that I'd need some vision to be impaired, but it's not a big deal to me.

Hmmm.

Thought it was going to be a leftist circle jerk. Glad to see it's not.

Yeah, I've had friends use blind & visually impaired rather interchangeably, but I guess I've just defaulted to visually impaired.

* Blind -> no sight or practically useless sight
* Visually impaired -> some useable sight

Simple as that. Why should it be more complex?

Wow after reviewing so many replies to this already it is hard to make a statement. So I am totally blind in my left eye. However in my right eye I am "20/20" in my available field of vision (25%). I know that every situation dictates if I am blind or have partial vision. I tend to just face the fact that accepting being blind and call myself that ends a lot of questions, while often good learning questions it is very draining at times. I use a cane as a warning and my tool to navigate, Braille to be sure when it finally is required I can manage that and a sense of humor that borders on a bit to much at times.

If it is a group of mixed people, "visually impaired" is a good general term. It includes all levels of impairment. Otherwise, an individual is likely to go with what most accurately describes them.

Regardless of legal terms I say VI/blind to encompass all levels, totally/fully blind to denote people with no sight at all or only a bit of useless light perception, low vision to denote those with serious difficulties seeing things but they can still get buy with technology or read large print really close up if they focus, and partially sighted for those who can see pretty well most of the time.
I my self am totally blind.

I use visually impaired usually, used to use partially sighted and my mum used to say I was partially blind, when I was a kid, but that got my questions about which eye I was blind in. I'm not sure what low vision is defined as, but I probably fall into that group.

I use legally blind, visually impaired and partially sighted interchangeably. However, it is important to note that I am registered legally blind in my country but not everyone who is visually impaired or partially sighted is blind. It really is a question of case by case.

I use visually impaired when referring to someone with some degree of functional vision remaining. I use blind when referring to someone with no degree of functional vision. I think someone can be both. Some people have vision that works under specific context such as lighting and contrast and not under other contexts. Therefore, someone can identify as both visually impaired and blind depending on the context. Because I almost never have functional vision, I refer to myself as blind. After reading all the comments, I think the biggest take away here is that blind is not a bad word. If someone calls me visually impaired, I just correct them and say that I’m blind because I don’t want them to get the impression that I still have some functional vision left.

I’m partially sighted. I tend to prefer that term, but that’s just me, and it describes what I can see fairly well compared to legally blind which is very vague.