Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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What visual fact did you learn that changed how you imagine the world looks? (self.Blind)
submitted by mehgcap
I just found out that most circuit boards are dark green, or a variety of other colors. My entire life, I've imagined them as silver or gray. It's blowing my mind that almost every circuit board I've ever touched was green, not the color in my head.
Do you have any similar stories? What's something you found out after years of picturing things one way, only to find out you were completely wrong?
Do you have any similar stories? What's something you found out after years of picturing things one way, only to find out you were completely wrong?
KillerLag 23 points 1y ago
In this case, it wasn't me, but some of the my kid clients. In one of the summer camps I was running, I mentioned seeing something a few blocks away, and the kids were surprised I could see that far. I pointed out that from where we were, I could see a building over 2 kilometers away, and probably further if there wasn't a bunch of skyscrapers in the way. The kids had no idea how far regular vision can see.
mehgcap [OP] 12 points 1y ago
I can definitely relate. I was shocked the first time a sighted person told me just how far they could see. All the way to the end of a long, residential street? And you can read the sign from here? That's... Magic. It has to be magic.
TheSecretIsMarmite 1 points 1y ago
On a really clear day, like conditions completely perfect, and you have normal vision, you can see France from Dover in England, and that's about 21 miles.
mehgcap [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Right, magic. Thanks for the proof. :)
TheSecretIsMarmite 1 points 1y ago
Sadly I can no longer do the "is that France peeping over the horizon" squint, but it is definitely magic how far away someone with normal vision can see.
tasareinspace 9 points 1y ago
Somehow I managed to associate "kid" with "blind" because I only have one kid and he's why I'm on this sub. Once I took my (legally blind and like maybe 8 at the time) kid and one of their (sighted) friends to the trampoline park, and I legit forgot that other kids could see. The sighted friend was like "I'll go put this in the trash" and I'm like "okay the trash bin is over..." but they were already heading there. Because they could see it. I felt so stupid lol.
ravenshadow2013 3 points 1y ago
My wife does this with her co-workers, they all know I'm visually impaired
tasareinspace 7 points 1y ago
I have many time said “curb” when out with sighted people because I got so used to saying it to my kid lol
DrillInstructorJan 1 points 1y ago
The sun is visible and that's ninety three million miles away.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
But it’s also so bright!!!!!!
Daise_X 17 points 1y ago
Barcodes - I've been visually impaired from birth and as a kid, I never realised that items at stores and supermarkets had barcodes on them and that this was what got scanned at the checkout. I thought cashiers just waved their scanners across any part of the item and that was what made the beeping sound. To then learn that barcodes were a series of thin and thick lines....it was a wild ride.
akrazyho 4 points 1y ago
You can scan barcodes with the app Seeing A.I. using their product section. It covers roughly about 93% of products out there. And if you happen to get a weird result from your scan it’s because you scan the barcode upside down.
UnsightlyOpinions 16 points 1y ago
This is a really silly one, so please feel free to laugh at my expense. Somehow I missed the memo everyone else got that giraffes had long necks. I always just pictured them as yellow and brown splotchy cows. It took me until high school and a heated debate with a friend to find out just how wrong I was! 😂Seriously though, I’m always amazed at just how much sighted people see. It’s wizardry to me.
Pickleweede 12 points 1y ago
I’d hear people talking about pores and visible pores and imagine gaping holes in peoples faces. Since having surgery on one eye I can see that pores are so small they just a faint grainy look to someone’s skin and some peoples skin is so smooth that when people say “that person doesn’t have visible pores” that’s what they mean. Sorry if that one’s kind of silly
SoapyRiley 10 points 1y ago
Remember that black and white or blue and gold dress the internet was arguing about several years ago? My office had that same argument about a shirt I frequently wore. It was purple but nearly everyone else called it blue. We played around with some images and I realized I literally see more red than most people. I was 32 and was blown away that I never realized this before.
ravenshadow2013 10 points 1y ago
A few years ago I discovered that blue jayees ar a vibrant blue I'd always imagined the to have like a slat gray color ( like the Russian blue cat) but on actually landed close enought to me that I could clearly see that he was BLUE and it was awesome
[deleted] 9 points 1y ago
I never realized you could look into car windows.... Just thought that they were one-way...idk... Also my boyfriend told me lately that surprisingly many people have brightly coloured hair like blue and green. Also, apparently sighted people can tell how the other person is feeling by only looking at their eyes??
Guimple 11 points 1y ago
About telling how people are feeling, I wouldn't say it is by looking at their eyes only, but at their stance and facial expression in general. People tend to move their body in different ways depending on how they feel. For example, someone confident may stand with their shoulders back, raised chin and legs a bit far apart, while shy people tend to avoid "using" too much space with their bodies. This is what they call "body language", but not every sighted person can interpret it well
TheSecretIsMarmite 3 points 1y ago
Also eyebrows play a big part in determining someone else's mood too and can express joy, suprise, worry and annoyance. It's not so much the eyes by themselves, but the whole package.
lil-alfalfa-sprout 1 points 1y ago
I would say that the eyes contain "microexpressions." The slightest narrowing of the eyes can communicate suspicion, hesitancy, criticism, etc.
1eyedwillyswife 7 points 1y ago
I’m sighted, but thought y’all might like to learn that there are some butterflies that are blue on the inside of their wings, and it’s a beautiful iridescent color. Nothing in nature quite looks like a blue butterfly.
ifyoulovesatan 4 points 1y ago
Very few things in nature are blue, and those that *are* blue are usually blue because of the way microstructures on their surface scatter light. This is in contrast to things that have color due to the way they selectively absorb certain colors of light. That scattering also leads to the iridescent look that blue butterflies and other blue things in nature have.
As a counter example, a red shirt is red because it contains dyes which absorb colors besides red, so the unabsorbed reflected light is red. Very few things in nature selectively absorb everything but blue in this way. It is a very slight effect, and can't be easily seen unless you have a very thick and clean sample of it to look through, but water is one such thing. Water absorbs red and adjacent wavelength of light to an extent which gives it a very slight blue tinge.
As a counter example, a red shirt is red because it contains dyes which absorb colors besides red, so the unabsorbed reflected light is red. Very few things in nature selectively absorb everything but blue in this way. It is a very slight effect, and can't be easily seen unless you have a very thick and clean sample of it to look through, but water is one such thing. Water absorbs red and adjacent wavelength of light to an extent which gives it a very slight blue tinge.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
That’s really interesting. So you’re saying blue is almost a noncolor.
ifyoulovesatan 1 points 1y ago
Hmm, I wouldn't say "noncolor." Just that the color blue rarely appears in nature except for in cases of microstructures which selectively scatter light. That is, things that are blue are rarely blue because they selectively absorb non-blue wavelengths in the way that, say, chlorophyll makes plants appear green because it selectively absorbs non-green wavelengths. Water is an exception. As are sapphires, which are a mineral whose structure would suggest it would be clear, but it contains impurities which create environments that absorb non-blue wavelengths.
When you consider things that aren't natural, there are many strong blues. This is typically due to organic dyes designed specifically to be blue. But there are also natural or less natural chemicals that are very blue.
Copper sulfate is an interesting one. When it is totally dehydrated, it is colorless or white depending on whether it is crystalline or powder respectively. However, when it is hydrated (water gets introduced to the crystal lattice), suddenly there are electronic transitions which absorb non-blue light. So if you had a pile of blue copper sulfate powder and heated it long enough, it would turn white. (This is a common teaching laboratory topic in chemistry at the high-school or early college level. You can actually calculate how many water molecules are associated with each crystal unit with this experiment. It's usually somewhere between 4 or 6 water molecules)
You can actually work out on paper with math and chemistry why exactly the color changes when water is or isn't present in the crystal structure. You could do something similar to show why a solution of copper sulfate (crystals dissolved in water) is blue. As a note, saturated copper sulfate solution might be the blue-est thing I can think of. Whereas with water you would need to look through many feet of water to even detect that it is partially blue, even a very very thin sample of copper sulfate appears blue.
When you consider things that aren't natural, there are many strong blues. This is typically due to organic dyes designed specifically to be blue. But there are also natural or less natural chemicals that are very blue.
Copper sulfate is an interesting one. When it is totally dehydrated, it is colorless or white depending on whether it is crystalline or powder respectively. However, when it is hydrated (water gets introduced to the crystal lattice), suddenly there are electronic transitions which absorb non-blue light. So if you had a pile of blue copper sulfate powder and heated it long enough, it would turn white. (This is a common teaching laboratory topic in chemistry at the high-school or early college level. You can actually calculate how many water molecules are associated with each crystal unit with this experiment. It's usually somewhere between 4 or 6 water molecules)
You can actually work out on paper with math and chemistry why exactly the color changes when water is or isn't present in the crystal structure. You could do something similar to show why a solution of copper sulfate (crystals dissolved in water) is blue. As a note, saturated copper sulfate solution might be the blue-est thing I can think of. Whereas with water you would need to look through many feet of water to even detect that it is partially blue, even a very very thin sample of copper sulfate appears blue.
TechnicalPragmatist 2 points 1y ago
Thanks this is really interesting. But that makes sense. I never knew this much about the color blue and this is fascinating just on a knowledge type level. Thanks for engaging. Definitely learn something new! :D
Mirage32 1 points 1y ago
I always thought water as completely transparent...
ifyoulovesatan 2 points 1y ago
Water is effectively completely transparent, but if you get a thick enough sample you could conceivably see that it is actually blue. Or do the optical experiments to prove that it's blue. I've personally not seen blue water. I'm just a chemist and chemistry nerd and think color is super cool.
ParaNoxx 5 points 1y ago
I have had monocular vision all my life so I have no depth perception. Apparently, to sighted people, television or videos look "flat" since they are filmed with a single camera lens. Real life to them looks different than how it does on a screen, because sighted people have two eyes and can see depth between objects...
I still have no clue what depth between objects looks like, lmao, but learning that TV and IRL *don't look the same* blew my fucking mind.
I still have no clue what depth between objects looks like, lmao, but learning that TV and IRL *don't look the same* blew my fucking mind.
graveyrdbabyy 2 points 1y ago
Felt this one way too hard. Wtf even is depth like ????
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Yeah, try 3d and geometry and trying to work with drawings and real 3d objects. A few sighted people including my own father a math professor and stuff had to work on me to help me understand and I kind of get it only.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Yeah, teach a totally blind person now, wasn’t always so but had terrible vision no depth perception and could only see 2 or 3 feet in front of me or something like that. Teach this person what 3d and depth perception really was that was interesting. I took a geometry class and my father and my teacher had to work on me to make me understand a little what 3d is and how sighted people saw say a cup. Or a house. We could feel a cup and go that’s a round thing but that’s not how vision works. I was like why does a cylinder look so odd on paper?
toastoftriumph 1 points 1y ago
Lurker / visitor to this sub, but I'm curious what you think of these images:
https://wifflegif.com/tags/344367-stereo-vision-gifs
They use a jitter effect to mimic depth perception. Fairly close to the real thing, though in comparison, the jitter movement gets annoying / sorta causes motion sickness for me.
https://wifflegif.com/tags/344367-stereo-vision-gifs
They use a jitter effect to mimic depth perception. Fairly close to the real thing, though in comparison, the jitter movement gets annoying / sorta causes motion sickness for me.
ParaNoxx 1 points 1y ago
Whoah. I've never seen anything like this but I totally get a weird feeling of depth and "extra"-ness from these pictures that I don't get at all elsewhere. This is really tripping me up. Thanks for sharing!
mehgcap [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I can somewhat sympathize. I have binocular vision, but what I have lacks depth perception and is very blury. I understand depth, but my depth information comes from sound cues, knowing an environment, the apparent size of objects, and so on. I still can't truly understand what 3d vision would be like.
graveyrdbabyy 4 points 1y ago
When I was little I thought sighted people could zoom in on stuff and that's how they read so far away.
I didn't know that wasn't true until highschool- 😅
I didn't know that wasn't true until highschool- 😅
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
Never really understood how 3d objects worked and found them to be the strangest thing I think people in high school tried to explain it to me but I was stressed and they didn’t do it. Well. Years later I am almost 30 now last fall I took a geometry class to get some review. At 29 I think I finally get how 3d objects work a little. We can feel a whole cup or can of soda or a model of a house but the drawings on paper seemed…… so…….. strange……. That’s not really a cylinder right. Why does it look like that. That doesn’t look like a cylinder or a cone. It took a few sighted people to help me, my own father and my professor jami. It was like oh that’s how it works. Part of it was learning how vision works and depth and seeing only one side of the object and other stuff.
lucyarmour 1 points 1y ago
When I was a kid, I used to wonder why pictures of strawberries had yellow dots all over them. Then when I got my first short focus monocular at about age 12, I realised that strawberries were covered in little yellow seeds! That explained it!
mehgcap [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Wait, but strawberries are red. Are the seeds not also red? There are so many seeds that the berry would take on the seeds' color. Are there fewer seeds than I thought? And these seeds are yellow?
toastoftriumph 1 points 1y ago
I think they range a bit in color. I see pictures of some that are definitely yellow, but others that are brown or red.
The seeds are very small though, so even if they're yellow it can be hard to distinguish from the rest of the strawberry, unless it's very close to your face.
The seeds are very small though, so even if they're yellow it can be hard to distinguish from the rest of the strawberry, unless it's very close to your face.
mehgcap [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Thank you for the clarification. No matter how small they are, the thought of yellow seeds on a strawberry still blows my mind.
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