Everything—blind people can lead normal, independent lives, but many people don't think so.

A major one is cooking. For some reason people get scared when I have a knife in my hand yet I've never cut myself in my life.

I can snowboard though I once went off the side of a run down a hill. I climbed back up though so no biggie.

Speaking of sports, I'm a pretty strong swimmer which sighted people are surprised by.

I can do makeup without a mirror flawlessly. I love those youtube #NoMirror makeup challenge. Makes me laugh every time. To add to this, I enjoy fashion and style but I focus more on the feel of fabrics than details.

I've noticed that there are some things I'm almost better at because I focus on touch rather than sight. I can untangle anything you give me.

I focus a lot on what people say and how they say it as apposed to physical body language so I have caught on to things before my sighted friends. I've found that people make sure to not give away much via body language but they way they often don't pay as much attention to manner of speech or tone.

Honestly Most things I can do perfectly fine being visually impaired as long as I can adapt the activity to my needs.

Don't know about other people, but before going blind I never even thought the blind could use computers, and worse, touch-screen devices like the iPhone. I still remember when I was told that the iPhone was actually revered by blind people and feeling amazed as I had absolutely no idea that VoiceOver existed. Nowadays, after having been blind for 7 years, I'm a power user of technology and even write software for entertainment. Can't say I'm as comfortable with technology like I once was, because I haven't found workarounds for all the limitations imposed by blindness, but I do much more with technology than most people. Even things that blind people are unlikely to touch, like computer graphics, aren't much of a problem to me, because at the end of the day it's just math.

Last Sunday I was having a walk with my mother and my dog in the park and I hear she is walking off rhythm if that makes sense so I ask if she had injured herself. Turns out she just bought new shoes and I know she hates socks. She only wears those elastic ones with without toes.

Literally anything.... just some of it isn’t legal...
For example, I’m visually impaired since birth and I can drive a car.

I think what people need to realise is that we can do pretty much anything everyone else can- we just have to do it slightly differently...

Shooting guns. People freak the fuck out or go silent.There is completely blind concealed carry holders. There’s been instances of soldiers being blinded using their weapons proficiently. There’s even blind marksmanship. We can do virtually every sighted person can do

Household chores and cooking!

I absolutely love to do dishes, vacuum, doing the laundry and so one. I can use my fingers and feel where the dirt is, then I clean it up, feel again and see if it’s still there. When it comes to laundry, I just assume when clothes need to be washed. People around me also knows to tell me if I have a stain on my clothes and so.

When it comes to cooking, I have practiced for a long time. My parents have let me prepare meals since I was 8 (i’m 18 now). I started out with simple meals like boiled pasta with fried sausages and have proved on to more and more advanced things throughout the years. Again, I use my hands a lot and it’s not that important that everything is 100% perfect!

Cook.

I only see with one eye and I have to push through the you can't do that threshold very often. Like cutting. I wonder if i can skateboard and I saw this gift with this blind guy skateboarding. I don't know why people think we can't do stuff just because we can't see. I can shoot hoops even I miss the loop often. I can cross a street safely.

Power tools. My spouse taught me how to use Alison Chainsaw a couple years ago. That was awesome.

I am not visually impaired but I noticed people were surprised my two blind classmates in college could do math with a lot of symbols (letters, tons of parenthesis, giant fractions), especially how much they could do in their heads.

I was surprised at how good their handwriting was, but mainly because they both preferred the computer or an assistant. I'm still jealous, as my handwriting is somewhere between that of a toddler and a drunken monkey.

I had a mentor at the Louisiana Center for the Blind, and all of us students had to take his class. It was the shop class. As in wood shop. Using wood to create stuff. And not a single tool he had was altered in any way for the blind. He taught us everything. How to use a click ruler, how to use a drill press, how to use a table saw, (scary AF!!!) how to use a planer, and then a router to bevel edges. Hammer and nails, screws, clamps, glue, everything. Everyone had to think up a project they wanted to do. Some guys made bookshelves. Some made boxes. A lot of us women made cutting boards.

I had a flat plastic rabbit keychain, the rabbit was in a running position, and we used to to enlarge the image onto wood. I had to cut and glue several pieces together to give it that striped cutting board look. The router was a lot of fun. The table saw scared the hell out of me. Our teacher had taught this class for nearly 20 years, and no one ever lost a finger. He showed us exactly where to put our hand on that saw, so we were safe. That class taught us that everyone could do these difficult tasks, despite our blindness. It was one of the most favorite things I ever did at the LCB.

My cutting board is now 23 years old and still in excellent condition!!

I just thought of something I'm really good at: typing!
I took two years of typing in high school, and I HATED it! It was SO hard for me. I really disliked my teacher a lot too. But now looking back, I think, wow, what a great teacher she really was! I mean, can you imagine sitting in a classroom for 6-7 hours a day, with 20 or so typewriters clacking away? I bet she had several bottles of Excedrin in her desk drawer, hahah! All of that noise, ALL day long!!! Nothing but 'clack! clack! clack! ding! vwrrrrr! clack! clack!

And this was way back before we had electric typewriters.. I learned on a manual typewriter. You had to REALLY POUND those keys to get them to imprint on the paper. Man, it was hard for me. That teacher, was an amazing mentor she turned out to be. She kept after me. Two solid years. I wish I could tell her now how it impacted my life in a really good way. But she is gone. :-(

So, that is one thing I CAN do, that people don't think a blind person is capable of. I learned how to type correctly, with finger placement on the correct keys, and all of that jazz. Typing is now one of my favorite things to do.

Sports. While in school my teachers did not allow me to join physical training class, I had to sit on the bench 2x a week for 8 years and watch others train. But I loved ice skating and cycling even as a kid. As an adult I picked up running and now I run marathons for fun, go hiking, dance, go ice skating, etc.