My whole worldview has been shaped by my visual impairment, and as I've become more self-aware and analytical over the years, I've noticed unique things about myself in relation to my visual impairment. I've compiled a list of many of the striking things I've noticed as part of the visually impaired experience. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I'll be adding to it as I come up with more interesting things. Of course, every visually impaired person's experience is different, so not everything I've said here is true for all VI folks. If you're VI, feel free to contact me with some interesting things you've noticed, about yourself and maybe I"ll put them here. I will also be reaching out to fellow members of the VI community and seeing if they have any unique personal experiences they'd like to share.

Totaly Ignoring my site for kinesthetic tasks

Tasks that require the use of fine motor skills are essential in the daily life of most people. Things like plugging in a cable, pouring a drink, or sifting through a pile of papers in a desk drawer to find a business card. Most people default to hand-eye coordination to get the task done. They look closely at both their hands and the task as they work. On the other hand, me and many other visually impaired people work with our hands only. As an example, if I want to insert an HDMI cable into a TV, I will instinctually start feeling around the back and sides of the TV for the port. Once my fingers have found it, I'll use them to determine the orientation of the socket, then orient the plug appropriately, and slide it in. Often times, I'm just looking straight ahead while my fingers fiddle. Often I consider my head to be in the way especially when I'm working in a tight space. I also do this sort of thing while building PCs when plugging in things like front panel connectors into a motherboard. Many people have pointed this out as odd. Another example, instead of watching the water level of a glass climb as I pour, I'll place my finger at the edge of the glass, and pour until I feel the liquid creep up. I'll also do this with measuring cups while cooking.

Seeing text as just... Text

Text is often a big part of visual media, be it a joke seen on a road sign as the characters drive by, graffiti on a wall, or an important world-building headline on a newspaper. However, when these sorts of things come up in media, oftentimes I'll miss them. I'm not usually able to read the text without making it larger, but I can indeed still identify it as text and even get the general shape of it (as in, how many lines in a paragraph or how many words in a line). However, mentally I register it as just "text" in the moment. It's merely another object. Maybe I'll see "tree, rock, sign, block of text". A few seconds later, I'll usually realize and have to go back and check what it said. I've nearly missed many a funny joke when they come up as purely text. Seeing text not for the language it represents, but just another visual object is an interesting part of the VI experience in my opinion.

Terrible Posture

By far the most important thing in elementary school was developing strong literacy skills. However for me, this came at the cost of my spine. I started out with large print textbooks with hardcovers and thick pages. A few of these made for quite a heavy load to carry for a nine-year-old's back every day. To read them, I had to get my eyes very close. I normally sat at something close to a ninety-degree angle, my head down on the pages. I did this every day from kindergarten to ninth grade. A reading stand might've been a good idea, but I never used one. I feel this has taken quite the toll on my posture, and nowadays, I sit with a bad slouch by default. I have to constantly remind myself to sit up straight. This "natural" slouching position has also probably affected my confidence in some way. When you sit up straight at your full stature, you appear more confident and approachable. My hunching was something I'd never even noticed until someone pointed it out making fun of me. This was a genuine revelation, and I'd never even thought to sit up straight. Today I'm making efforts to combat this nasty, lifelong habit, but I would say this is something unique to the visually impaired experience.

I tend to stick my nose in everything

Aside from being a deeply curious and nosey person, I've been told that VI folks tend to literally go nose-first into everything. In the post about the NFB STEM EQ program, I mentioned learning to work with saws and other tools of moderate risk. The instructors spoke to the partially sighted people in particular and warned us that we might have the instinct to get real close to the woodworking tools to get a good view. Many of the lessons emphasized working by feel instead of visually. This is because we would be at greater risk for facial injury. I've been getting very close looking into tight spaces for a long time, possibly to my detriment.

A formless world of figures

There are many times when I see something far away and can't quite make it out, I'll think I'm seeing something different. A coat hanging on a chair 20 feet away, maybe it's my brother. Once I was sitting in a meeting and a woman had a monochrome cotton tote depicting a nature scene. I thought the jagged cutoff between the edges of the trees contrasting the white sky looked more like anime hair from a distance, and I told her I liked her Goku bag to much confusion. A great example of this can be found in this painting, "Windy Day" by Claude Monet:

The painting depicts two women with parasols walking up a hill. But their figures also form the illusion of a stren old man facing to the left. Contrary to what Tiktok and Buzzfeed would have you believe, which one you see first probably doesn't have to say about your personality, but this image is a great example of how I see. Everything for me is the old man. Connecting dots and making inferences from what may or may not be there. This is why I also really love cubist art because it often depicts the texture and shape accurately, but forgoes details and instead relies on the implications.

The constant re-realization

Frequently there come momements in my life that elate me. I'll have an idea, discover something new and start my treck down a rabbithole, and many steps ahead dof myself remember a siimpole fact of reality. This thing that has captured my fascination, be it a new piece of tech, game, or even an activity like learning a new instrument, or something like horseback ridding, all of it, was designed from a sighted point of view. Thus for me to persue it, I'm going to have to make so many concessions, negotiations, and come away with unique questions and uncertaqinities that only I, or someone like me, could begin to answer. Somoe examples would include trying to learn to sightread sheet music. I want to be thinking about learning the grand-staff, mastering creshendos, and basking in Debussy's expressiveness, but I'm trying out all kinds of softwwares to give me the most control over how to magnify the staff, placements of music standds, bluetooth pedals to scroll the music at a pace that otimizes for readbility and verbosity. Getting hyped to play Half-Life: Alyx, only to realize my usual dish-dashing in and out of fire won't work when I have to aim down real virtual sights. And so instead of prawling through the seedy underworld of City 17's latest alien gangsters, I'm setting up infinite ammo cheats, or looking into accibility mods to try and balance the game for myself. Only to be berrated with twitter discourse about how games with features like this built in are "woke" now? In any case, It's a frustrating reality. I think the phrase "this world wasn't built for me" first echoed in my head when I was 15 struggling in marching band when it really hit me seeing piers excel with so many opportunities, and me wishing I felt on the same "literal" playing field as everyone else. But the silver lining is that this situation has made me an aggressive problem solver. My earliest memory is stacking these tubs of stuffed animals high like a tower to stand atop and watch the TV tall on a dresser, and guess I never stopped coming up with janky but functional solutions to a world that dares me to challenge it.