Activity A:

Introduction:

Blindness is associated with lack of vision or vision imparity. There are numerous definitions of

what blindness actually is. The ethos of the blind people relate to hyper sensitivity, acutely

conscious of what happens around them and most importantly the use of their other senses to

make up for their impairment is very interesting . Blindness is such an impairment that leads to a

total loss of self confidence and thanks to the different educational tools that have been

developed, blind people use Braille and have achieved great feats.

Discussion:

The information available on the internet regarding blindness and its causatives are a treasure

trove. The statistics regarding Blindness as given by the WHO is rather disturbing. The terms

used by WHO like distance vision, near vision, vision impairment are eye openers as ot kind of

vision impairment that exists and what is even more surprising is that 2 out of 1000 people suffer

from some kind of vision impairment which cause blindness or near blindness .what is even

more surprising that most of the people who are blind are over the age of 50. ("Vision

impairment and blindness", 2019) .Treatment for blindness is not fool proof and huge advances

have been made for treatment of vision deficiencies.

My experience in try to act blind and remain blindfolded for more than 30 minutes was the

toughest period of my life. I wished that I never had had to undergo this in my life. I could not do

anything without my eyes. I hurt myself in several places when ii tried to walk-in bumped my

head on the wall, could never get to open the door and rough edged my knees in the corners.

Blindness ,as I felt after the mock act, was something that should never come upon anyone .I was
totally at loss of not knowing what t do and how ot walk and felt absolutely incapable of doing

anything .It then dawned on me the importance of vision and how the eyes should be taken care

of . I could do just nothing and after the half hour when I opened my eyes I was shocked at the

mess I had made and the numerous bruises that I got on myself.

I learnt something surprising from my exercise that when I was not using my eyes, my sense of

hearing became sharper and I noticed that I could hear many more sounds that I would probably

never have noticed if I were seeing .

The various tools that are used by blind people especially Braille which is the language of the

Blind has enabled the blind ot not only learn all that others with vision could learn ,but also

learn so many other things like writing research papers, using the computer and contributing

their intellect to the growth of humanity. The blind schools teach all streams of study and

curriculum to the blind and enabled the blind to participate in mainstream education. The use of

computers specially made for the blind has made a huge difference to the blind who are using

this to work in corporates .There are blind graphic designers and animators and almost all

domains of work have blind people .It is surprising to think that the great Greek epics of the Iliad

which was written by homer the blind poet and are even quoted and widely read today and how

he could write these epics without seeing and without a scribe is absolutely wonderful. It is

thanks to Helen Keller that the blind today have access to language and can read and write.

Conclusion:

Blindness could be rare genetic disorder but most of the cases blindness has been due to lack of

healthy and good living and lack of awareness of the importance of eyes and vision. The diseases
that cause blindness have not been accurately listed out though awareness is slowly spreading on

those diseases that could lead to blindness. Healthy living and taking proper care of the eyes are

slowly being cultivated among people. Blindness according to the blind is not impairment as

they feel that they can do all those acts that people with vision can do.

References:

Vision impairment and blindness. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-

sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment