Filed under: Blind,Eyeglasses | Tags: Blind, education, glasses, walking
Today I saw two “blind†girls walking through downtown. What was unusual to me was that they were wearing sleeping masks, like the ones they put on long-haul airplane flights (I’d never seen a blind person wear such a thing).
I was in no hurry, and slowly ambled along behind them. They had the walking sticks, and somewhat irregularly walked along, entirely different than the amazing straight-line vectors experienced blind folks take.
After watching them walk across the street at a red light, when there was fortunately no traffic whizzing by, I realized something was really up. They kept bumping into each other, too. I ran to catch up with them.
Hailing the girls, I did my best to tentatively question whether they were actually blind. Lifting their masks and looking at me, they explained that they were studying to become special education teachers, and that this was a lesson to help understand the potential students they might have. I thought it was interesting – I’d never heard of such an exercise, and after trying it myself, I highly recommend that everyone give it a try to experience, if just for a moment, what it’s like to be sincerely vision-impaired.