That sort of thing makes social situations more difficult for those of us who wear them for medical reasons. iI causes people to question the necessity of a piece of medical equipment. I'm convinced it's why I hear so many pirate jokes when I don't have my guide cane with me.

Edit: Think of it this way - Would you use a wheelchair simply to look like Professor X? That's not meant in a hostile tone, just an analogy to add some perspective.

Medically: for a couple of hours during a costume party, fine. However, wearing it persistently for aesthetics carries the risk of amblyopia (lazy eye). It's treatable, but it's akin to getting carpal tunnel for having intentionally bad posture.

Socially: risky. It can easily lead to assumptions from people. Most people wear eyepatches for specific reasons (empty eye socket, recovering from physical injury, surgical recovery, etc.), so many people may treat you and your surroundings like you might need help so they might "try to be nice" and offer unsolicited assistance. When the help becomes unnecessary and under false pretenses (even though you didn't explicitly say it was needed), people can quickly get irritated and respond accordingly.

While most people won't try to "audit" the perceived disability, things may go very bad if they do. Even if you never claim a vision loss, the risk will still be there because of social assumptions. While not a 1-to-1 comparison, imagine someone putting a service animal harness on a dog because they thought it would look cute. Some might like it, some might not but not say anything, some might not and proceed to vigorously tell you. If you weighed the risks and still chose to do it, that's... your choice.

Edit: something that occurred to me later on... It leads in to how many times VI people get accused of falsifying their disability. Even if you never say it's for a disability, it leads back into the assumptions mentioned earlier. Even if they never ask/accuse you, they'll "remember this" a la TellTale Game, biasing their later interactions with VI people. "Is this one like that eyepatch guy, too?"

I lost most of my vision in one eye in 2017 and initially wasn’t sure if I would wear an eyepatch or not. It seemed to help when I would look at a computer screen but no one could tell by looking at me that I couldn’t see and eventually my brain started compensating so pretty quickly I gave up the patch. Before doing so I ordered a ton of eye patches online and found there we’re all kinds of different communities of people who wore patches for different reasons - some did it as part of a cosplay or as a fetish thing or even to support a relative (such as a parent wearing a patch to support their kid). I was fascinated by all the subcultures (and by extension all the designs) but certainly never insulted! If anything, normalizing patches is likely to decrease the stigma and make it more comfortable for those who have to wear them!

The only thing I can think about why it would be a problem is if you are doing it to get sympathy by pretending you have a vision issue or if you are actually mocking someone with a vision issue (I hope neither of these are the case!).

Uhhh, i had to wear an eyepatch as a kid to fix a squint that affected my vision and i hated it and people made fun of me for it, and people wearing one now for the ‘aesthetic’ doesn’t sit right with me

I’d be more concerned about damaging my vision. Patching an eye weakens the muscles that control the eye and can result in amblyopia or even exotropia/esptropia

As you can see from the responses you’ve gotten already, you’re going to get a spectrum of responses ranging from people thinking you are being offensive to people thinking it’s cool. Keep in mind that eyes are very good at adapting. If you wear an eye patch too often when you don’t actually need one you run the risk of weakening the vision in the eye you are covering. This could cause blurred vision and headaches that last even after you take the eye patch off. You will also lose depth perception when you have an eye patch on as well so be careful extra careful around moving things for trips and falls. In my opinion the risks outweigh the benefits unless it was for a short period of time and even then you’ll run the risk of some people finding it offensive.

Why do you want to do it anyway? What do you want to achieve haha! Be a one eyed pirate or something?

hi im visually impairred with less than 2 degrees vision. heres my thoug. only an idiot with no self esteem and who is sensitive way beyond reason would be offended by somebody wearing an eyepatch. i hate people that tiptoe or act different around me. i also engage in lots of blind jokes because way to many visually impaired people crutch themselves with oversensitivity and choose to find more negative than positive in life. wear that eye patch for a whole week even. with that kind of over sensitive tiptoing logic what are we gonna come to, one day we wont wear shoes or w/e in fear of upsetting an amputee? its really dumb. if somebody gets offended by that eyepatch ignore their anger, they probably need a real friend, and you can try and approach then to do so if youre interested (you dont have to people should also learn to tand on their own feet and find srength and confidence)

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as one commenter said the prolem is with people assuming things. as a blind person that means theyre imprinting their own biases on other people and making a rule that everybody should follow because they are not confident in themselves. and while you may want to avoid people feeling upset, guess waht theyre gonna face it one day or another, but at the end of the day its an issue they need to work on themselves and learn to stop assuming everything is out to get them. i know its one thing said but my lf=ife has been hard since i was a child, even before losing my vision.

Well, I'm blind, so turns out I wouldn't be offended at all, because I wouldn't even know. :)

As someone with some VI, who has had, at times, to wear one... what possible aesthetic could you be looking to achieve by wearing one? (Sincerely curious.)

Because I’m thinking there are probably a lot of alternate ways to achieve that aesthetic.

For instance:

• steampunk glasses with drop-down dark lenses
• Kill Bill stylized clothing
• pirate shirts/velvet jackets

Etc

on a side note, some pirates wore eyepatches on one eye so they would already br accustomed to the dark when heading below deck

I’m not sure, but you’ll get the majority of people assuming it’s for a valid medical need. Also you can really mess your vision up doing that to yourself, both while wearing (depth perception loss, dangerous driving) and long term.

I think it depends on the eyepatch. Like don't wear a medical eyepatch if you are not blind. (I mean why would you). But if you want to wear like a pirate style eyepatch then no one should feel that offended. They'll probably find it funny :)

If you want to wear an eye patch, do it.

Yes. If you do this you are breaking federal laws.

As a person with only one eye I would consider it unprofessional enough to report to HR and if this was outside of work, I would report them for illegally claiming a disability they did not have anyway since in America this is a felony.

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