well, the 2 obvious things to me are to avoid either the useless blind person or the superhero blind person. The visually-impaired are generally polarised in fiction, of course, so if you can tread a middle ground between these you might get somewhere.

I daresay you've already had the "we don't feel faces", "can wipe our bottoms", can usually see in our dreams if we had sight previously" things just by reading the last week or so of posts on here.

Be interested to read what you come up with. I've never seen any fiction before where more than 1 or 2 people have a significant visual impairment.

I'm all for representation, but weary of tokenism. Unless the plot of the story depends on the character being blind, I would only mention it in passing - saying things like:

"I'm so used to talking to Dave that phrases like 'to the left of the chair' instead of 'over there' come natural to me and I forget that not everyone talks that way".

Also -- we live in the 21st century. Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant all make life pretty normal.

PLUS we have our own cool tools. You can say things like:

"Staci swiped away at her phone, the screen dark but a voice quickly letting her know what she was tapping on. She navigated so quickly that she found the address faster than I could - but I admit I was slowed down by watching her fingers move so gracefully."

OH! I know one stereotype to avoid! The "can't even see light" blind guy. UGH!! That's super rare IRL.

In my life, friends and coworkers will often 'forget' I'm blind -- and last week a maintenance person commented on the GIANT text spread across three screens on my desk and I unfolded my white cane and smiled. His response was that he could not tell I was blind at all. I told him at home I know where everything is so during the day I look sighted. At night I've had friends ask to turn on a lamp. Kinda embarrassing. I have them on timers now.

So, I suppose my advice is: 1. Just write them as sighted and then remove/change anything they have to do differently if it MUST be mentioned. 2. Don't make them unrealistically blind. They can see light and movement and maybe even read the biggest of big print if forced to.

A quick "Blindness is a spectrum" convo (without getting preachy) is usually enough and maybe have them use a magnifier app on their phone to read signs or menus or something.

I hate when blind characters in stories are just blind. Like in some media it makes sense but in things with modern medicine, you should know what diagnosis your blind character has.

Just avoid stereotypes tbh. Eg, not every blind person uses a cane or reads braille

> Instead, I want to craft a story where being blind is both essential and nonessential to understanding the characters on a human level.


That alone means you are several steps ahead of like 99% of Hollywood filmmakers LOL. Beautifully worded and I think that’s the key. It’s not that we want people to pretend our blindness doesn’t exist or isn’t a part of our identities, just to see that it’s far from the only part of our identities

I am legally blind as well with a degenerative disease that will leave me completely blind ... I came across "In the Dark" on Netflix and am mostly really liking how themsin character is blind but her blindness is not the storyline and she doesn't seem tokenized either... It is the first blind character that I have come across that I like. Maybe check that series out?

Us totally blind people without light perception definitely exist and are not that rare don’t completely shy away from writing one or two of these in your novel honestly I feel this sub does pull away from the total blindness community a little.

Sound like an interesting idea. I know you pmed me before about a blind training center. I may be able to help you more generally. Like I said I’ve never been to a center itself but have done a lot in life despite being totally blind.


I can’t help you like I said about the centers but if you want to talk more to a totally blind person we can do that.

I think you should have some people be without light perceptions too.

I will tel you the total group when I have been part of a community with most of the people in it that has been pretty heavily sheltered and most if not all of that group is total, can be a real drama fest. Heh!

If you want a experience and have 5 dollars to spare, or so, go over to vorail and go experience it for yourself. Hahaha!

I think the idea of a little knott of them who are totals would be cool. Come from the school for the blind or something like that. Hahaha!

Then there is some of us like me who kind of stands aside and don’t really like all the drama but inevitably get dragged in from time to time but a bit more standoffish from the blind clique. There was a good article that someone posted about the blind cave at berkley that speaks to the same thing in a bit more of a positive light of this thing. Heh! That’s blind culture for you, usually totally blind culture. Look at the founding of nfb.