Hi. As someone who is partially sighted, I don’t see a race of blind aliens as inherently poor representation. They are not representative of blind humans, by definition. I do think there are going to be better or worse ways to write them, however, so here are a few thoughts.

First someone who is blind can do most things a sighted person can do, with adaptations, so don’t limit your aliens because of their sight, ie don’t make them weak and helpless because they’re blind.

Note, most people who are blind have some small amount of vision, whether that’s as little as telling light from dark, or something more detailed. Legal blindness is defined as a corrected visual acuity of 20/200 or less, ie 10% or less of full sight. When thinking of your aliens, you may want to consider whether they have any kind of vision at all, or just evolved without eyes.

Writers often describe what’s going on around a character in terms of vision. I remember reading a book where the POV character was blind, but the writer still wrote visual descriptions. It was a little jarring for an otherwise interesting novel. I’d suggest closing your eyes, or blindfolding yourself, and see what you notice when you’re not using your eyes. You’re not going to know what it’s like to be blind from this experience, because living something every day and learning to adapt to it is very different from putting on a blindfold for a while. But you may discover you notice more sounds that you usually ignore. You’ll use your sense of touch more. If someone is talking, you won’t see their facial expressions, but can read their mood in their tone of voice. Keep these things in mind when writing from your blind character’s point of view.

Note: someone who is blind doesn’t have better hearing, smell, or touch than a sighted person. However, we do notice more of those inputs to fill in information that a sighted person gets from their eyes. Aliens, of course, are a different story, and may have evolved heightened senses to compensate, like animals that have bad eye sight, but a keen sense of smell. It’s a bit of a tired trope for blind humans to have heightened senses, so I think it’s be kind of neat if your aliens didn’t have super powers.

I’d also do lots of research on how blind people navigate, do household tasks, live their lives while blind, as that will help inform on how your aliens could have figured out how to do things in a more authentic way.

Oh, and, if this is a story involving both sighted and blind characters, I’d really love if sight wasn’t treated like a magical super power. Because it paints a picture that the blind are lacking in comparison to the sighted, and that’s uncomfortable.

Note, this is only one blind person’s opinions, and I cannot speak for everyone. So others may have other suggestions, or different feelings about a book featuring a race of blind aliens.

I’d personally like the blind characters to be confident and powerful. Too many books/ movies plug blind people as the victim or some weak care yer like the blind bum on the street with his cane and coin cup.

Maybe show how they are able to do things better than other aliens or humans because they learned to do things differently.

I know it’s personal preference but it’s frustrating the general perception is helpless, weak, and puts full.