48m, legally blind since birth. I certainly do not mean to set a truly negative tone, but consider this a rant/vent post.

It’s astonishing to me how hurtful people can be. Kids, I sort of understand, they rarely have working filters. But adults have this problem too, especially on the internet( though that’s a different topic entirely…)

As an extremely near sighted child of the ‘70s and ‘80s, my Rx was good enough to correct to 20/100. To do that the lenses were thicker than the typical coke bottle glass, and ground in such a way that if I looked to the outer edges, I could see behind me.

‘4 eyes’ wasn’t good enough, kids in my school took it to ‘16 eyes’.


I started to wear hard contact lenses in the 6th grade after a significant meltdown ( one too many comments by someone earned them a desk to the face).

The contacts helped a bit, but then I had other problems. I never learned cursive, hand eye coordination was terrible. My print was almost worse. The Nebraska Association of the Blind was able to furnish me with a computer ( Apple 2e) and monitor, which stuck with me through senior year.
6th grade teacher decided one day to rearrange my computer cart, moving the monitor to the side so SHE could see it. I moved it back, as I couldn’t actually use it like that. Consequently I was sent to the Principal for ‘being a disruptive influence’. Parents came in, sat in the Principal’s office with the teacher, heard the whole tale. I sat in the corner being defiant :). Stepdad to teacher ‘are you a fucking idiot? Why would you move the screen so you can see it? It’s for him to be able to succeed, not you!’. She did not deal with that very well, that year sucked.

All through school I dealt with that, eventually got better because I was able to sort of hide that I couldn’t see shit. High school teachers were aware and actually helped often with larger print or sending me to the computer lab to work.

I’ve spent the intervening years doing IT work at various places, I still catch snide comments from people when I ask them to zoom the eye chart presentation they’re sharing. I just ignore it at this point, though. Eventually I’ll be let go, at which point I’ll have a nice discussion with HR :).

The point of this topic, and the actual example of people being clowns: I was working for a telco in downtown Denver in the mid ‘90s, as a consultant. I had an annual review with the consulting company after the first year. One of the comments they made stuck with me ‘Your coworkers say that you are not very friendly, you don’t look at them. And when they see you in the hallways and wave, you don’t acknowledge them’.

Which is fine, so far as it goes. I don’t use a cane, there are no outward signs of a disability. It still struck me as out of line though, to be effectively written up for.

These days I likely should have a cane, my vision has steadily gotten worse( totally blind in one eye, 20/209 corrected in the other). I’ve started the process, difficult during pandemic, and I need to get over some pride problems I have.

What are some of your experience s in this space?