I agree to those saying to read the rules on posting and gain some knowledge first. As the other concern I see with your ask is the assumption that everyone is totally blind. When many of us are low vision or at different vision levels.

The blind community isn’t anything like the deaf community in terms of elitism. We don’t share language and culture in the same way; just life experiences and similar accessibility needs like any other community of disabled people. Honestly it’s one of the reasons hanging out on blind forums is more fun than deaf forums for me even though I’ve been hard of hearing my whole life and VI only a year.

If there is it's very small. I haven't encountered it yet but I can't say it doesn't happen just because it hasn't happened to me. It's certainly rare. I saw one asshat respond to a post with "Dude, are you even blind? LOL!" and he got downvoted so hard he never came back to this sub.

I was very hesitant to write my first post here because I'm legally blind but not totally blind. What if somebody who was *really* blind just tore into me for stealing the sympathy that rightfully belongs to them? Happyily I've never found anything like that.

We're all survivors of a shared misfortune. It doesn't matter how much or how little of the bad luck you got hit with, you're part of the community. Whether it happened at birth or later, whether it's total blindness or legal blindness, we recognize you.

I've not seen elitism on the basis of since-birth versus later-in-life blindness in the 30+ years I've hung around blind people in Canada-US. There is an acknowledged difference of experience between those who attended school as a blind person vs those who did not, especially for those that had experiences with "School for the Blind" institutions.

There is some snobbery related to those with low or poor mobility and living skills whether associated with inadequate education, too much parental coddling or failure to adapt to later blindness.

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I’ve encountered a bias at several training centers against telescoping canes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/hdkmo9/proposal_readme_for_sighted_visitors_thinking/ probably applies to some extent.

To a small extent it does exist, far less so today than in the past, but it's restricted to individuals with bullying, judgmental personalities, it's not a community-wide problem that the average blind person would need to worry about. It seems largely to go one way, formerly-sighted people heaping scorn on the bornblind minority because they are assumed to be ugly useless burdens who probably went to a special school their whole life and don't know how to act right/do anything for themselves (see CloudyBeep's comment above, if you believe in a "hierarchy of sight" there is nothing lowlier than a "person" born without it; they are more tainted by blindness than anyone else). I've never seen the reverse, although I have occasionally heard of bornblind people ignoring or even mocking the sadness and fear that comes with losing one of your senses ("watyou cryin' about, i've been this way for 24 years and i'm doing just fine!", that kind of stuff). These are not popular opinions, it's just that sometimes people become embittered by their life situation and they choose to take it out on others instead of making an effort to learn and grow like the rest of us.

My experience is limited to my fiance and a few friends who have all been blind since birth. However one of those friends is a trainer in Canada to teach people to use stuff like screen readers and specific programs so that they can find work. He normally works with people who are newly blind, and sometimes acts as my tech support because he's very good with computers. I don't think he or my friends are elitist at all, but I can't speak for the rest of the community.

Check out the Todo-Za

Hmm,

not elitism, but, those with late blindness, have more knowledge about how things look, and, depending upon the situation, it could be an advantage or disadvantage. On one hand, they will have trouble adjusting to their new blindness, and on other hand, they just know how the world looks like, so, that could be useful at times. But, in terms of mobility, I've seen both late blind and blind from birth people doing equally good job on the roads. Even those who have little bit of vision, they are on equal footing with other blind people, because, regardless of blindness level, they will have some or the other challenge, and, I've seen both working together as a group, supporting and solving amazing problems together.

There's this blind youtuber, says he is a blind film-maker, his name is James Rath I think. Try looking him up for some more knowledge may be.

Not as far as I know but we are individuals so they could be.

My question to you, will the movie be audio described?

This isn't my experience. However, something you may find, termed the "hierarchy of sight" is where people with more vision—including people with some residual vision—believe that they're superior to people with less vision—including blind people of course.

Honestly, as a person who was born blind, kind of. Like I always hear "when I could see" or stuff like that and it's kinda annoying sometimes, especially when those people are some of the only other blind people in the city I live in (Winnipeg). There's not many blind people I relate to or really click with in the city. Those who lost their vision later I've realised tend to complain about it sometimes and I understand that, but like it's still somewhat annoying to me at times.

Hey fellow socalian. I am also in the southern california area. If ever you want a real life example let me know. We can meet up or something. I’ve done a lot of representing and advocacy myself so would love to help for sure.

I am totally blind and born with severely low vision and lost it by 8 but had very little to begin with so basically almost totally blind and I don’t remember nor use that much of my time when I could see. I mean there is some things but it is so very few I suppose you could call me not really. I have been blind 20 years now. Totally blind at least. Had light perception could just see if a light is on, pretty useless if you ask me, for many years but somewhere along the lines lost it. I don’t know when!!!!!!!

Anyway, I would say no there is not elitism , but if there is it’s almost the other way. People who feel that they are visually impaired only are more superior then us totals or has to be more protective of us.

A lot of us totals feel very bottom of the barrel and just not really understood.

People can understand oh you. Have a little bit of vision. So you have vision but have problems. I mean not that much, but it’s like

Oh no!!!!!!!!! You don’t have any vision at all!!!!! Poor child. You must be an alien! Even if I am 29 years old that’s their reaction. You’re a foreign creature. A lot of totally blind people feel very disconnected with society, because people are afraid of us. I can give you a video example. I actually did a personality typing video with someone, and someone was able to confirm for me that this man who interviewed me didn’t look pretty and was obviously really uncomfortable around me and that didn’t know what to do because I had no vision. So foreign a thing.


At least with people who had vision they look half normal. I do not. Not because I am weird but because I don’t see or haven’t used sighted body language. To speak. Some get the accusation that you’re faking your blindness. No one ever would think that about me, first I have a cane, secondly I look weird or more weird.


I did another personality typing interview this time with a actual psociologist with a school in kiev, who focuses a lot on body language. I told them ahead of time and on the r/socionics forums said over and over again, I don’t think this is going to work for me. How do you do this tracking of body language and looks with a blind person who basically has none. Some said well you could or didn’t know or just didn’t believe me. I did the interview with this guy and we threw out the evidence of body language basically and just went on other things. He actually tried to pull body language in and it was really funny or weird. I think he said slow moving meaning I didn’t move or gesture or move my face much. Well that’s totally blind people for you that never learnt or picked up body language or facial type expressions. If we do any it’s weird and we just made it up probably not the communal ones you have all learnt. Heh!

I think on this particular forum I think less totals hang out I am in the minority here. I’ve been in places that a lot of totally blind people hang out so yeah. I don’t think you’ve gottne a lot of total type responses here.



How do you define better? I mean like represent it more, maybe but I would say that could also be a really bad thing, coming out like a misfit. I think there’s a lot of in the totally blind communities I am in feeling like…….. we can not fit in to society. And there is often a lot of sheltering and being in a bubble. I haven’t been or I’ve resisted all efforts, my parents wanted to but I don’t let them. Even so I can feel the alienation. It’s much easier to hide being low vision there’s no way to hide being totally blind, you use a cane, and you walk out there. Also we look less natural sometimes. Especially those who were born blind or super super low vision and basically lived a totally blind life.

Bit late to the party here but if you need a consult I'm happy to help in detail. Blindness is a spectrum and it's different for every single individual. Some people struggle a lot with coming to terms with their vision loss. There's sometimes an sense of minimalization regarding people who were born blind versus people who have lost their vision later in life; this stems from the idea that it's "harder" on people who have lost their vision later in life because if you're born visually impaired you've never experienced "normal" sight and thus aren't losing anything. This is a pretty toxic mentality but it happens sometimes. I don't personally come across many elitist or toxic mindsets in the general community although there are certainly some out there. Just as blindness is a spectrum adapting to it is also a spectrum.
A serious piece of advice though: I have consulted on "disability enlightenment" projects before and every time without fail people always put some sort of event, film, or piece of art together that tries to related disabilities and their impact to the non impacted/non affected and they NEVER consult with an actual disabled person on the implementation of their final product. Please, please, PLEASE have someone who's actually experienced these things review your end product and be a part of the creation process. Here's a real life example of why that's important: At Seton Hall University the student body leaders were attempting to put together a demonstration about disability awareness to enlighten and educate people about what disabilities are like, how they impact people, and how those "more fortunate" should assist and be aware of these disabilities: Until they brought me on to consult they had a panel of students contributing ideas and planning everything out- none of them were disabled, had experienced with disabled individuals, or had a medical or social working background of any kind which would at least give them exposure to textbook or social experience of the disabilities they were portraying. Long story short they wanted to blindfold tons of people and spin them around in a chair then have them walk down a hallway with a ton of chairs- they equated all blindness to being dizzy in a hallway with little to no information or value. They tried explaining deafness as someone playing very loud music next to them while trying to have a conversation- being deaf is nothing like that. They tried explaining Autism as taking a test in a language you didn't understand. My whole point is that it was super tone deaf, kind of offensive, misleading, and encouraged people to force "help" on the "less fortunate" without their consent based on presumption. It created more inequality and misinformation.
Good luck on your short film!

>really heavily on visual effects

Sounds like the worst medium to present blindness and visual impairment.